Although there is still a week before the Midwinter Festival, the atmosphere of the festival has already begun to be in a big city like Jishui City.

The calendar used by Correll is 360 for 12 months in a year, and the extra 5 are reserved for festivals, which are used for rest and celebration in almost all civilized cities.

The Midwinter Festival, also known as the Winter Feast, is traditionally held by local lords before the end of the year to form alliances with other lords, renew covenants and exchange gifts.

For the common people of the kingdoms, it was the "day of the dead winter," for the bitter winter was just halfway over.

But from another point of view... It also means that this is the coldest time of the year.

In the past, most of the people who were in the 'off-season' of the port would choose to take out the year's meager savings to buy the ingredients for a decent dinner for the upcoming Midwinter Festival, and follow the example of their lords to buy a gift for each of their family members and friends, which is also a common custom in the city-states of the Northlands.

But this year, things are a little different.

Due to the birth of the Hogg Workshop, the fox fur snow boots produced by the Hogg Workshop have almost become the most inexpensive gift in the eyes of all the people of the Water City, and there is no one!

As long as you spend a silver coin to become a Black Iron member of the Hogg Workshop, you can give it away for free, and then you can buy a fur coat for your wife or reward yourself for a hard year in this cold winter.

As for the weapons and armor that were hyped up by the merchants, it was said that if you bought one piece at a member price and sold it after the beginning of spring, you could make a small profit.

But for the vast majority of people living at the bottom, it is not a game that they can participate in with their existing conditions.

Because the higher the level of membership, the more favorable the reserve price can be reached, and if there is no certain wealth to enter the market, there is not much competitiveness at all, and the risk in the hand is too high.

Even a standard sword of 20 silver coins is not something that most civilian families can afford, because they may have just saved such a sum of money after a year's hard work.

On the contrary, middle-class families above the southern district and the trade zone will choose to buy a handful as a self-defense, and it is also a good decoration to hang on the wall.

So even though this year's winter is extremely cold, the long queue in front of Hogg's Workshop has not been interrupted since it opened, which can be regarded as a unique scenery of Drawing Water City.

However, this situation is only for civilians and above.

But for the poor at the bottom of the port area of Jishui City, it is a completely different scenery.

This is especially true for some of the most disadvantaged groups.

Angus is one of them.

He shouldn't have been here, but a homesteader living near the Moon Forest of the Silvermoon Federation, due to the population and arable land pressure of the Silvermoon Federation, there are not a few people like them who defect to the territory of the Silvermoon Federation.

It's a pity that half a month ago, the residents of that area were attacked by a gang of slave traders, and almost all the adults who threatened them were slaughtered, including his parents, and... A couple of moon elves sheltering their colony.

That's Lo Carrie's parents.

"I don't know if Lo Carrie... How's she doing? Hopefully... She's okay. ”

He remembered that before he was captured, Lo Carrie didn't seem to show up, and he didn't know if she had escaped it, and then they were loaded into the cabins of two 'cargo ships' and drifted all the way down.

Once on the boat, the leader named them on their foreheads with a cold red hedron as if to confirm something, but nothing seemed to happen.

It wasn't until the dawn of the next morning that they arrived at one of the city's more remote ports.

Originally, the children really thought that the guards patrolling the harbor in the city would save them from the sea of suffering, but they saw the leader of the slave trade put a money bag into the guard's pocket, and the guard counted them as living people in the 'goods'.

They are like real goods, sold in batches to the gray forces of this bustling port city.

And among these people, these trafficked children, named:

Dog wishes

From then on, they no longer have everything to spare...

Including the most basic dignity and personality.

After being stuffed into several wagons from the port, they were sent to a sewer somewhere in the port area.

In that foul-smelling environment, they were gathered and artificially screened.

Yes, filtering.

It's like picking an animal, rudely breaking your mouth open with your hands and checking your teeth.

Handsome children will be singled out and sent away.

Angus didn't know what fate they would face next, because at that time, the rest of their children were already shrouded in the darkness and cruelty that followed.

They have no time to take care of anything else.

Soon, some of the children who were weak and crying were dragged out on the spot, and they would break a leg or even cut out their eyeballs on the spot.

Because the lame and the blind are easier to control and more likely to win people's sympathy.

These children were sent to the southern district or the trade district as a means of begging to exploit people's sympathy.

Angus was terrified, and the screams and cries of his past companions shook his heart deeply.

Fortunately, he is one of the relatively healthy ones.

At this time, the children, who were already too scared to cry or speak, were asked to do a coherent set of movements according to their posture.

This set of movements has a high degree of flexibility on the body, especially the fingers.

So a large part of them were screened out, and they were taken away, and no one knew what they were going to face or what they were going to do with the villains.

Angus, on the other hand, was 'lucky' to be one of the chosen children.

In the next few years, Angus finally knew their intentions and roughly guessed their identities.

They should be the thieves' guild that their parents once mentioned, and a gang of people is full of dark layers in various cities, engaged in a series of crimes such as smuggling and slave trafficking.

And at the moment, they are trying to train him to be a qualified thief.

And the training of a thief, whether it is the harsh method or the intensity of training, is also far beyond Chang Rao's imagination.

He was assigned to a female thief, Jeong

Angus seriously suspected that the ugly female thief was a sadist, for she was fond of inflicting pain on her children with the whip in her hand.

At night, they were asked to walk barefoot on barbed wire, sharp horns, or broken glass, sing some kind of religious song and dance in a circle, while the female thief whipped them with a long whip.

Angus didn't know how he persevered, maybe he was just afraid of falling into the fate of those eliminated children.

Originally, according to the established trajectory, his closed training cycle would last at least two to three months, and then under the premise of being monitored, he would go to the trade area to complete a successful theft without being detected or escape smoothly, and after going through a initiation ceremony, he would be accepted as a thief at the lowest level.

But the birth of Levi and Hogg's Workshop is like a dragon that sets off a hurricane, and many of the city's fates have been lifted away from its original trajectory.

Angus is one of them.

Four years ago, he was in training, and like many children, he was recruited by the boss of the block.

They were given a silver coin and something called a membership application form, and given an impromptu assignment.

Take this coin and the application slip and line up in front of the Hogg Workshop, then go and buy a membership to the Hogg Workshop and receive a free pair of fox fur snow boots.

The application form is drawn using tricks, and it is attached to the [Lingua franca], so even Angus, who has not had much education, can read the above content without hindrance.

Although there were not many types of goods in Hogg's workshop, Angus couldn't help but envy when he looked at the dazzling array of goods on it, especially the long swords and shiny armor that glowed with cold light.

At one time, he also dreamed of becoming a knight, armed with a long sword and armor, and fighting to protect his family.

It's just that now, he has nothing to protect, and even his personal freedom and destiny are in the hands of others

Just imagining it makes me feel a little hopeless.

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