Three ragged citizens carried a bucket of water, doused a burning wooden door, and soldiers lined up around them into the city.

The gate is carved with a beautiful decoration and is the work of a Rhodoc craftsman. Everyone in the city loved this kind of thing, and the Rhodok woodwork, ivory carvings, iconographic panels, and even the small bronze lanterns that imitated the oriental mood all made the princes like it. When the waterways are open, these goods are very expensive, and casually putting out more than a dozen items at a large banquet is an excellent way to show off your wealth, but when the war affects the trade routes, the price of these goods will slowly rise to about double or even triple times".

The ground was full of mud and smelled foul, and in some of the mud there were many dead citizens buried in the mud. Law and order in the city has deteriorated to such an extent that open robbery and chaos is a nightmare. Yesterday, the regional priest was found dead in his home, suffocated in a barrel of sour wine, his wife had died of the plague two months earlier, and his daughter was found in a square where the twenty-four-year-old woman was sucking hard on the genitals of an old man, surrounded by hundreds of gangbangers in broad daylight. The woman didn't care about her father's death or inheritance, but told the people who came to her that if they wanted to be happy, they should wait quietly or get out.

The sheriff constantly sent soldiers and armed citizens, using sticks and whips to punish those who did not speak and told them to go home. But one day, when the sheriff himself is caught with several women, what little majesty the city has left is lost.

The plague destroyed the most vibrant part of the city, the docks, and killed and injured the workers on the docks. In the past, it was bustling here, people fought for the order of landing of goods, for one or two warehouses, for a certain girl who sold flowers, and in the past there were a hundred big ships moored here, with a thousand sails. There used to be a foul stench here. Oil and rotting meat stench in every corner. Workers who never bathed were sweating and their hair was oily, and the wind could not blow, Saland vendors peddled roast lamb and suspicious butter, Varans threw stinking leather everywhere, and hordes of pilgrims trampled in the mud and asked boat by boat if they could be sent to the Holy Land for free.

Now it's empty.

A few dock workers sat lazily on stone slabs in the scorching sun, with no business. The merchants fled. The Nord Chamber of Commerce also maintained only a jewel shop in the northernmost corner of the city, and bought their jewels from the citizens at the lowest price: in fact, the so-called low price was not gold coins, which had lost any value in the surrounding large tract of land, and now the goods were worth more than a barrel of wine for a handful of pearls, a handful of spices for two earrings, and a live cow for a large and bright house. The Nord Chamber of Commerce brought by water what the city urgently needed: food. Cloth and drinks.

People roamed the city drunk, and the docks were empty. Ships float quietly up and down in the harbor, and the water of the East Lake laps against the shore with a roaring sound. Wild dogs appear in flocks in urban areas and live on carcasses, but they are quickly hunted and eaten by the townspeople. Before the citizens knew that the famine was coming, they had already tossed up a large amount of food stockpiles.

When the siege first began, people never worried about anything. It is widely believed. Things will be the same as imagined. The lake thawed completely, and the Burkes had enough food in stock. Reinforcements would blow into the city like the wind, and the nouveau riche Earl from the west would be driven away like a dog, and then die of the plague or of conspiracy.

The city, from the princes to the citizens, is generally very optimistic. Before the siege began, the timely arrival of several teams of mercenaries brought this optimism to a climax. Mercenary units of the Salanders and Varans are popular here, although the latter are often suspected of harboring spies. In the second week after the siege began, there was even a military parade in which all the princes and magistrates of the town were present, and from the pier onwards, the citizens of each city saw how strong the soldiers of the city were, and how abundant their food reserves were.

At the final ceremony, the Grand Mayor conferred the title of Honorary Citizen on a wheat merchant, who had stockpiled the city with wheat, barley, and salt for twenty-four granaries, and his uncle, who dutifully organized a patrol for the city. Honorary citizens have many advantages, such as the fact that they now have political rights, and are no longer subject to changing policies, as in the past, and they can choose to support or oppose a certain councillor, and use this means as a weapon to protect themselves. Among the citizens, those who have a lot of wealth in their families are also inclined to marry with such citizen families. This is a status well worth pursuing, if not for that plague.

The plague first spread from Salander's mercenaries, several of whom developed coughs, purple sores on their chests, and were thirsty. Then, the crowd fell like wheat with a scythe, and mercenary groups, dock workers, and petty traders, the most approached groups, were the first to be hit. People have reduced their travels as they have avoided the plague in the past, but they are still in a normal state of mind, because this commercial city by the lake has been through the plague too many times, each time it is menacing, but it will eventually be subdued. It wasn't until after the death of a city councillor that a general panic began.

At that time, the streets were already beginning to be depressed, and although the prices of daily necessities were repeatedly suppressed by the city councils, it soon became clear that this suppression was in name only: it was no longer some merchant who took advantage of the disaster to make a fortune, but that goods were indeed scarce to the point of preciousness. At this time, rumors from the south began to be taken seriously: half a year or even more earlier, it had been heard that the city of the Salanders had been devastated by a terrible plague. At that time, no one believed this rumor, but only used it as a dispensable talking point, used by parents to scare their children into bed, and pastors used to warn Salander merchants to convert.

After that, there was a collapse of order.

News of the death of entire families began to appear, and people were initially horrified, accusing the trained doctors of not making an effort, or accusing the city council of holding back the herbs from being distributed for profit. Rumors are flying. People in order to save themselves. He even rashly took to the streets to attend the funerals of the victims, as a dissatisfaction with those in power. The church also joined the citizens in holding a large prayer event. Members of the Eastern Church rebuked those who converted to the Western Church, saying that they had drawn God's punishment. The converts, on the other hand, blamed the rotten and stubborn Eastern Church for causing God's displeasure. Within the Eastern Church, support is given to those who possess icons. began to spit on those who had destroyed the icons, saying that their blasphemy had caused disaster; Those who destroy icons fight back with the inevitable punishment of 'idolatry'.

Regardless, religion played a stabilizing role in the beginning. Inside the church, people coughed incessantly, huddled together, praying that the disaster would pass. The priests chanted with loud singing and holiness. to calm the panic of the citizens.

But the plague spread even more rapidly.

Family after family, from the elderly to infants, has been spared. Things like this are shocking, in the past, when there was a plague, people were always able to find a pattern, and sometimes, children would die more easily, sometimes. The elderly will die more often. Sometimes, young people are more vulnerable. Misfortune though misfortune. But there is always some kind of hope, some hope that a new life will start again after a disaster. But this time, hope died bit by bit.

People began to burn the houses of families devoured by the plague, burning their furniture, burning their clothes, and even burning their corpses. But the plague still knocked people down one by one. Suspected of witch magic, over the course of a month, more than sixty women were arrested, more than a dozen of whom were burned or drowned without being interrogated by either the town hall or the church, but the plague continued to spread, causing even more casualties. Radical citizens demanded the death of all suspicious women, and the pious pointed out that the women should be released as a redemption for the lost lamb in exchange for God's mercy. But neither side could achieve their goals, because the plague also hit the prison, and the jailer and the warden died together, and the successor died of the plague on the way to office. The prison door is open, and the inmates stagger out, only to find that the world has completely changed, and what they used to need to loot to get their hands on is now at their fingertips. These people began to do what they did in the city.

The town hall began to form a citizens' guard, because the hungry citizens began to storm the granaries of the city, and set fire to many houses, and many of the houses of the councillors were breached by the citizens, who feasted in the courtyards of these councillors' homes to enjoy their food and their daughters.

The Civic Guard made a last-ditch effort, but ultimately failed. The Civic Guard was getting slower and slower to respond to the order, and many of the members of the Guard could not resist the temptation, and tried all the tricks that they had not dared to imagine in the past, priing open the priceless wine and drinking special drinks, even bathing, silk was used to wipe the buttocks, gold and jewels were decorated on the women of **, the men were clapping their hands on the side, and the women laughed and walked through the streets of the collapsed city, scratching their heads at the drunken citizens on both sides.

In such a situation, the Salander mercenaries and the City Guard did their part, and they patiently guarded their city until the last moment.

In the camp outside the city, the plague also began to appear, but it was far less severe than in the city.

The armies outside the city had heard of the disaster inside the city, but they didn't believe it all, because they couldn't have imagined it. They continued to dig trenches, craft siege equipment, and use a terrifying weapon that clattered at the same pace.

Soon after, the captain of the Salander Guard and the general of the City Guard** put on their upper bodies, bowed to the troops outside the city, and handed over their respective military flags. The conquerors outside the city and the surrenderers inside the city kept the shape in this way, standing for a full third of the way, so that the painters who accompanied the army could record the scene and use it to paint large murals.

The next day, Lord Kalinin and his thousands of the sharpest soldiers entered the city first, announcing themselves as the new masters of Little East Lake.

A small piece of news was hidden by Kalinin: Giovanni was besieging Vrankov at that time.

Shocked by the stench of the city and the citizens roaming the streets, Kalinin uttered his first words when he entered the city of Little East Lake, "Hell, how is it more stinky than Varankov!" ”

At the same time, a military clergyman and several of his subordinates went to the church in the city to meet with the bishop of the small Donghu City Church, which had converted to the Western Church at that time.

The clergyman found the bishop in a bathroom covered with spooky paintings, and the bishop, looking tired, threw his arms around an oriental woman and a local noblewoman, and drunkenly inquired about the priest's intentions, while the two women seduced him with seductive eyes.

"The Eastern Church will be restored to its position here," the priest told the bishop briefly, "and you and your fellow will be sent out of the city tomorrow." ”

"you," the bishop scolded, and Juliè's tremor made his bishop's crown fall off the thigh of the oriental woman's **, causing the women to laugh, "I'm not going anywhere." Who the fuck are you? ”

"Servant of God," the priest replied to him, "you may call me Innocent." ”