Duchamp spent a few more days in the village in boredom, and although he learned several of Uncle Machete's other specialties, and made them with great passion, none of them were rewarded.

After a few days, Manglong came to talk to him.

Manglong looked to be almost healthy, walking with a tiger's breath, and deliberately stomping out his strength at every step to verify the fact that he had regained his strength. He stood in front of Duchamp and looked seriously at Duchamp who was squatting under the eaves to enjoy the coolness.

"Brother." Manglong said enthusiastically: "I know, you must be a person with a story. ”

Duchamp was shocked when he heard this, his eyes were fluttering, what he was most afraid of was that others would explore his three-no identity and origin.

But after listening all the way, it turned out that Mang Long was here with him to discuss the question of where the team should go.

After the prison robbery, there were seven people who were willing to flee with Manglong, plus Manglong himself and Duchamp, who joined by accident, there were already nine people in this illegal gang. Manglong's plan was to continue north into the mountains, enter the Getapunia Dominion within the Erebonian Empire, and form a small mercenary group by himself, or join other mercenary groups.

Gatapunia is a dominion located in the northernmost part of the empire with complex terrain, with large lakes, mountains, and deserts in its territory, and from here to the north, if you can cross the towering Lianyun Mountains, it is the coastline of the northern part of the continent. At the same time, as an outlaw, it is also a suitable place to go. Gatapunia was self-governing and the law was lax, and next to it was the territory of the northern nomads, and the black skins of the empire could not reach there.

When it comes to Gatapunia, the dragon obviously has a sense of color.

"What does Gatapunia mean to Big Brother Manglong?"

"Because, we are highlanders."

The Highlanders, once widely inhabited in the mountainous regions of northern the continent, have now been reduced to a minority. Its external features are rhinoplasty, deep eyes, and a darker complexion. Historically, he has lived on safari for a long time. But over time, naturalization has long been accepted, land has been divided on the plains, and generations have settled.

Manglong stared at Duchamp and said, "Don't you want to hear my story?" ”

Duchamp hurriedly moved the small bench and took melon seeds, looking like a good listener.

"I heard my father say that our ancestors used to hunt freely in the mountains farther away in the Northland, and we have been hunting monsters for a living for generations, and we are a people of warriors, because we live in the high mountains, and we are also called highlanders.

About a few hundred years ago, the temperature in the Northland became colder and colder, and even the hardy monsters moved south. The highlanders had no choice but to move south to the mountains near the Julai Plain, where they continued to hunt for their livelihood. Later, the lord here drove the highlanders down the mountain with his army, and asked us to reclaim the land, and half of the wheat planted every year had to be handed over to the lords, which was called naturalization.

We did not live in the mountains and accept the rule of the lords of the plains, in Julai we were people without citizenship, we could not own land, and we had been tenant farmers of the city state of Julai for generations, and we had no share in the elections and official positions. In order to obtain citizenship, many highlanders desperately marry the locals, and even despise their own history, changing the title of the highlanders to the northlanders, thinking that this will change something, naïve!

Only my family, which has always maintained pure highlander blood, our family does not rent government land, and still maintains the tradition of hunting. My father was a master of the Highlanders' martial arts, and he had a high reputation among the Highlanders. My father's wish was to be a mercenary, but since he met my mother, he had to settle down in Wheat Field and open a blacksmith shop to make a living.

A few years after I was born, I don't know why, the economy of Julai City was getting worse every year, and even in the countryside like ours, the wheat produced was gradually unsellable, the adults were sad, and my father's blacksmith shop was deserted.

When this happened, my father was not disappointed, but comforted my mother and said: "The business of the blacksmith shop is not good, I can go into the mountains to kill the magic beasts a few more times, and exchange the magic crystals for money, and our family's life will only be better than opening a blacksmith shop." ”

When I was five years old, I was given a real iron sword as a birthday present. My father asked me to wear this sword, and he took me into the mountains to kill demonic beasts and practice the traditional martial arts of the highlanders. I often remember him saying, "We are highlanders, and we should be free to soar in the mountains, not to be sparrows, pecking in the wheat fields every day." ”

I took this to heart, and since I was a child, I vowed to go out of Wheat Field Town and be the strongest mercenary in the future. When my father heard my oath, he laughed and said, "You cannot change the fate of the highlanders if you only have power, but not knowledge." "For this reason, he kept pushing my brothers to study.

If it hadn't been for that incident, maybe my life would have gone down this trajectory.

It has been said that the gradual depression of Julay is due to a widespread natural catastrophe in a great duchy that has been trading with us in the north, and the maritime trade between Julay and them has basically come to a halt. After many years of this, the councillors finally got tired of the growing financial strain, and he proposed a plan to all the Highlanders:

You can acquire the perpetual rights to the land that you are currently cultivating, and you can buy it at your own expense, and you will not have to pay rent. ’

In this way, the plan to sell the land that the Highlanders had rented for hundreds of years to the Highlanders at a low price, so as to obtain a large sum of money to subsidize the municipal finances, was carried out by the Julay Municipal Government.

My mother was an ordinary Julai, and it was tempting for her to have a large piece of land to pass on. "When Comelu and Virgood get married, no one will refuse to marry on the grounds that their family has no land." That's mom's reason.

My father was persuaded by my mother, and he took out his savings from years of hunting and bought a large tract of rich land near a canal, which amounted to hundreds of acres, and in doing so, our family became a small farmer. That was eight years ago.

Like our family, there are many highlanders who have used all their savings to buy land, and everyone sees this as an excellent opportunity to change the situation of highlanders, and some even go so far as to sell all their valuable things to buy land.

But just three or four years later, things took a huge turn.

Due to the economic difficulties of the city of Julai, the Erebonian Empire, which has always been adjacent to the city of Julai, but does not have much economic contacts, threw an olive branch. The Erebonian Empire, a vast and mountainous country with a constant shortage of food production, was willing to spend huge sums of money on a railway connecting it to the city of Julay and to import grain and fishery products from the state of Julai.

This news aroused a frenzied pursuit of domestic businessmen, and people rushed to buy railway bonds and houses in the city to prepare for the re-prosperity of Chulai.

And for our family, the biggest surprise was that the land that my father bought happened to be in the place where the railway passed.

The railway company quickly posted a notice of land requisition, and the uniform compensation price given was exactly double the price of the land sold to us by the government!

Luckily we weren't the only ones, as there were more than 20 families in the town of Wheat Field, more or less, which was included in the scope of railway requisition. For those of us, it's like a windfall.

Everyone was elated, but no one expected that what was waiting for was nothing.

Construction of the railroad began, and soon the foundations crossed our land. However, not a single cent of the land requisition money has reached us.

The representative of the occupied land went to the railway company to inquire, and the railway company replied that the town government of Maitian town had issued a certificate of ownership of the land, so the land acquisition money was paid to the town government.

People flocked to the town hall to ask for an explanation, and received another interesting answer: "What you bought with your money is only the right to cultivate the land in perpetuity, so after the railroad company has taken possession of the land, you can only redistribute some land of the same size." ”

Asked about the origin of this claim, town officials issued a new government document, stamped with the official seal of the city council, reinterpreting the form of ownership of the land sold to the Highlanders. Since the highlanders had no political power in Julai, the city council easily passed such a shameless law.

The mayor took out a map, drew a mark on a forest, and said, "This is the land that the city council has decided to supply to you highlanders after deliberation, and the area is about twice the size of the expropriated land, and the government is generous enough!" ”

The highlanders were furious, and they pulled out all the signs that had been planted in the land indicating that the land had been expropriated and threw them away, dug up the roadbed that had been built, and replanted the land.

By the end of 1193, the railroad on the Erebonian Empire had been fully completed, while the construction of the railway on the Chulay Empire was delayed.

Finally, the big guys lost their patience. By the time the year 1194 arrived, before the ice had melted, the railroad company posted a notice in the town of Wheat Fields, claiming that the construction must be completed within six months, and that no one could obstruct the construction by any means.

On the day the announcement was posted, the construction car of the railway company drove up to our family's land again, and more than 20 people in the town went to sit in. That night, the town of Wheat Field was suddenly attacked by armed men, and heavily armed hunters rushed into the town to burn and loot, and the houses of those who participated in the sit-in during the day were all burned down. My father heard that after killing a man, he was beaten into a sieve, and many others died that night. After such an example, no one dared to obstruct the construction of the railway.

In those years, I have been following various mercenary groups in the Northlands and have not stayed at home. When I heard the bad news, I rushed back, and the whole town was filled with wailing. My mother suffered a lung injury in the fire and became ill, so it didn't take long for her to follow my father.

After burying my mother, I felt calm. I entrusted Goode to Chuck to do something I had wanted to do for a long time.

I went directly to the mayor's house, and the shabby didn't know that his end had come, and pointed at my nose and scolded, 'Mud legs, do you still want to come out, think about the fate of your old man.' I waited patiently for him to finish scolding, then reached out and punched him in the head.

I fled into the mountains, and the highlanders told my story to the gods, and the officials and lords suffered one after another. Those guys who took our black money, their houses were burned down in the middle of the night, some of them were made by Ah Jin, and some of them didn't know who did it, anyway, there was a mess everywhere. The sheriff said I did it, I was wanted everywhere, and I didn't care.

Two months ago, the railway bridge from Julay to the empire was blown up by someone and it was blown up well! The sheriff planted the blame and said that I blew up the railroad. I also arrested my brother and many of the families of the victims of the tragedy a few years ago, saying that they wanted to send them to the empire to calm their anger. When I heard the news, I rushed down the mountain overnight and rescued my brother and the others. ”