After passing through the woods, we approached the village

Joey: They have been investigating this village for a long time in the past few days, with the information I have provided, this is one of the five villages that originally belonged to the Lepnin family, and it is the wealthier of them, with its own mill and pasture, but recently the lord has repossessed the mill and is ready to impose twice the tax on the pasture, which makes the dozens of farmers who run the ranch need to provide sixty more torches, twelve barrels of honey or preserves, a bag of amber, seven large bales of wool, and nineteen rounds of cheese every year

In the past few days, the territory has been full of chickens and dogs, and the lord's family has pushed out a prisoner cart that has not been used for many years from the warehouse, and has also applied for the use of torture instruments in another town with a gallowsIn the past, the Lepning family was responsible for execution, but now, the county guard of the Berks has deprived the lord's family of the right to enforce the law, and when the execution is needed, the people of the lord's family need to apply to the Berks, and then go to the designated place to register the execution

Fortunately, the Berks will not interfere too much in the trial, as long as the boyars have judged, the Berks will generally recognize it, unless it is a crime involving the Berks, at that time, the Wikians cannot be executed at will, but to hand over the prisoners to the Berks' courts, and the Berks can only accept the Berks' judgments

In the early days of the Berke occupation, the Berke soldiers raped a large number of Wikiasian women, at first, the Wikiians maintained restraint, but then because the youngest daughter of a Count of Wiki was kidnapped by the Berke soldiers on the way to get married, and only returned home after a few weeks, which made the Wiki nobles begin to protest and Lech also felt that this was really ugly, when the Berks began to retreat, so Lech sent an advisor to return part of the judgment rights to the Wikiians, and finally, Seven Burke soldiers and one Burke knight were duly punished, which Lech promoted as an equal cooperation between the two countries: "We are friends who go to help Wikibians eliminate bad habits and move towards civilization, although some people will misunderstand us now, but one day, Wikibians will thank us,"

This time, the noble retinue involved in Vekia was assassinated, and it was a blatant assassination on the territory, so there was nothing to say, and the Berks quickly approved the application of the Vya boyars

In fact, the relationship between this family and the Burkes is quite close, before the war began, this family began to contact the Berks, and served their masters, when the Berks attacked the Riverlands, the road was smooth, and thanks to the strong cooperation of many such loyal and brave families, such families are generally landless small nobles or samurai nobles, they can't get an exhibition under the current environment, so they simply defected to the Burkes, hoping to get a good opportunity to show through the war

After the end of the war, it was necessary for Burke to start rewarding these Viktian families The Stoll family rose at this time, he once accurately reported the movements of the Vikya parliamentary army to the Burkes before the war began, and at the beginning of the war, he incited the already demoralized soldiers to flee, and caused a great upheaval This family, which originally made cheese and pottery for a living, only had a few dozen tilts of land and one or two workshops at the beginning of the war, and thousands of sheep, but after the end of the war, The family became the lord of several surrounding villages

Due to the lack of sufficient soldiers and skilled officers to take over the land, the Stoll family had to choose to share power with the Burkes, and the rule was not something that could be learned overnight, which was the most expensive and disgusted and despised by the old Stoll family, who had always called each other brothers in the past, and they had always called the patriarch of the Stoll family 'sir' as a sign of indifference

Joey inquired about the news that this is probably the case, he knows a few soldiers and officers who served in the Burke army, but those people are not in the river now, fortunately, many of these past comrades-in-arms are here, Joey found a few of them without difficulty, these people are not uninterested in Joey's origin, so they have some scruples, but Joey's inquiry does not involve major secrets, so they are also happy to help this Berk mercenary

I originally thought that the unpopular approach of the Stoll family would make their rule impossible for a long time, but in fact, due to the weakness of the Stoll family, they could only choose to fully lean on the Berks, so the Berks could tolerate the people in the territory to challenge the Stoll family, so that the territory fell into chaos, but the Berks would not allow this family to be overthrown, because then it would in turn affect the rule of the Berks

This time, the facts of the case are clear: a foreigner, who holds a grudge because he has been taught a lesson by the young master of the lord, finally kills an honest and motivated young affairs officer at the funeral as a retaliatory sentence is also very simple, hanging

When the king of Eastern Wikia ascended the throne, it coincided with the rebellion of the Vekia expeditionary force on the continent of Calradia, and the whole eastern world was panicked, and the king of Eastern Wikia made more than a dozen gallows from the best wood and sent them to cities and towns around the country to demonstrate that these torture instruments were dismantled into parts and reassembled in various places Many years ago, countless people lost their lives on this gallows

Time passed, and the gallows hanged the spies of the West Vecchia, the rebellious Iron Shield River Cavalry, the freedmen who refused to pay taxes, the captured soldiers of Burke, and eventually, the king of East Vecchia himself and the men of the royal family ended up on the gallows

Now, the gallows here is going to hang Giovanni

The hanging of a foreigner is not a big deal, but it is a big day for the surrounding small traders and farmers, because on the day of the execution, there is no tax to pay in the village where the execution is located, this is a tradition handed down from ancient times, no one knows why this is the case, it may be that it is unlucky to collect taxes at this time, but there are also people who suspect that it is the wisdom of the Zenda era, so that the governors of various places can reduce the number of prisoners executed, because then it will reduce the tax revenue

When I heard that Giovanni was going to be hanged, I was very ashamed, because Giovanni and I were together, but now he was going to the gallows, and I was able to escape, but Joey comforted me and said, "If God wants you to escape, let him go to the gallows, he will do it, everything is arranged by God, and if you don't come to tell us about Giovanni, we may not know about Giovanni's execution a few days later, in that case, we won't be able to catch up."

Joey's words reminded me of the pastor, who blamed everything on God, which would make my heart feel better and less guilty, but I always felt that this was actually making excuses for myself to escape my inner torment

On this morning, a lot of people gathered around the execution ground

The gallows was in a village square, more than ten miles from the village where Giovanni had been arrested

We're going to rescue Giovanni at the time of the execution

At first, some farmers, carrying their little grain and handicrafts on their backs, began to stand around the gallows in advantageous places: such as forks in the road, near the hotel, and so on, Joey's horse chewed a few mouthfuls of a farmer's oats, and the farmer jumped up and asked Joey for money, but Joey was unwilling, he said that the oats were mixed with hay, and there was only half a bag of oats in them at most, which made the farmer very angry, and at this time, the prosecutor who maintained the market came with a swagger, and the farmer suddenly became afraid, picked up his bag and ran away

There were also some peasants who came from the forest with goats, geese, and chickens, and within two days they all learned that this place was to be hanged, and I wondered who had told them the order

And since the news had come out two days earlier, Giovanni's trial had not lasted long at all, and it was likely that he had been executed on the night he was arrested by the farmers

"Do these people put people to death without trial?" I asked Joey

"According to you," said Joey, "I guess the farmers and priests wish Giovanni died sooner, and the longer it goes on, the bigger the flaw in their own lies, and then they will not be able to rein in themselves, and if Giovanni is killed, they will do whatever they want."

"What about the priest?" I asked Joey, "Isn't he necessarily shameless?" He's doing something murderous."

"Haha," Joey laughed with the other Burke crossbowman, "you know what? In the west, who sleeps with Ji Nu the most? Who is it that encourages killing on the battlefield? Who took the biggest amount of taxes? Who drinks beer, eats beef, and tops whole-wheat bread with applesauce every day? They are all priests, and the reason why the Eastern Church is declining may be because your priests are too weak, and the pastor you are talking about has a few of the demeanor of our priests."

I was a little surprised, "In that case, they just put on their armor and went to be knights."

"Hehe," Joey laughed, "the clergyman's robe is safer than the knight's armor, and if my family had contributed enough, I could have gone to the convent, but unfortunately the clergy thought I was ugly, and they didn't have enough gifts at home, so they didn't take me in, and let me be a diner for two years and kicked me out, otherwise, I wouldn't have run to help Giovanni, an old pervert, and now I'm going to save him, but I'm looking forward to seeing Giovanni tremble with fright."

The people around him were nervous, and Joey was deliberately saying light things to comfort them, but it didn't seem to have obvious effect, but it was the Creelian who showed a very disdainful expression when he heard about the church in the East and West, and it felt as if he was saying, "God is really pathetic compared to Allah"

There were more and more farmers around, the smell of animal manure and shochu wafted into the air, and the streets were filled with cloth, thick thread, wooden furniture, and bags of beans, dates, preserved fruits, mushrooms and fungus

Then, there was a commotion, and a group of town militiamen approached from the corner of the street with an ox-cart

It was a prison cart, and Giovanni was standing in it, surrounded by several fierce-looking men, who were going to be executed together today

The townspeople threw turnip heads and rotten leaves, and some threw clods of soil

The others were all dejected, except for Giovanni, who looked around with blazing eyes

Joey raised his hand lowly, "Hide it, don't let the old pervert see it, let him think that we didn't come to scare him for a while".