CHAPTER 515: CHAPTER 493: WHERE THE IMPERIAL KNIGHT GOES

"Ibaminuo! Ibaminuo!"

An anxious shout came from behind, and Ibaminuo stopped his large strides.

"What’s wrong?"

The young man with a garlic nose in a linen robe was panting heavily, supporting his knees: "Someone fell behind, someone fell behind."

"Who, who fell behind?"

"From the Si Kevin’s Family."

"Damn it." Pushing through the crowded refugees, Ibaminuo walked towards the end of the line.

If the Lancer Squad caught them, it would be over.

In early October, the rains were no longer as frequent as before.

September’s downpours had completely taken away the heat.

The sun in the cold sky shone but without much warmth, instead, the thin linen clothes were swept by a cool breeze, causing uncontrollable shivers.

Muddy puddles reflected the clear sky, and only the rainwater dripping from the green leaves could show that it had rained a lot recently.

The dirt roads, covered with puddles, were not as desolate as usual.

In the past, the fields on both sides would certainly be filled with farmers in tight-fitting short shirts, bending over working in the fields.

But now there were no silhouettes in the fields, instead, the roads were crowded with fearful, numb migrating citizens.

They packed their luggage in sacks, loaded their belongings and livestock onto donkey carts, and slowly moved forward along the dirt road.

Objectively, they were just moving slowly, but subjectively, these migrating citizens wished they could fly away immediately.

There were occasionally thatched houses on both sides of the road, but hardly any people, as everyone was heading towards the non-Knight District.

The so-called Knight District is the 210,000 hectares of land that Prince Kongdai required to manage.

After Prince Kongdai’s land distribution meeting, all the religious and secular nobles confirmed the planting, satisfying Prince Kongdai’s request.

Each family shed blood and sweat, piecing together east and west dejectedly, indeed gathering 200,000 hectares of land.

Since Prince Kongdai was out of money and couldn’t support such a large army, nor could he find anyone to lend him money, he could only let them fend for themselves to make money.

Although there were repeated orders not to recklessly rob and extort, how could these knights adhere to such commands, isn’t this just tax monopoly?

Except the taxes were their own.

And since Prince Kongdai said it was a lease, they didn’t need to cherish it even more, it wasn’t truly their territory anyway.

The priority was to grab enough spoils before their withdrawal to guarantee the next three to five months of military pay.

Under such circumstances, the means that the Imperial Knights might use were self-evident.

That’s when the respective Lancer Squads of the Imperial Knights came in, and they were astute, first recruiting a group of local knights to fill their ranks before taking action.

What the Lancer Squad did was very simple, just cruising around demanding supplies.

They spread out along the main roads, finding villages to demand military pay.

If there was no military pay, then they took things as collateral, porcelain wasn’t too much, ceramics weren’t too little.

If there was no money and no things, they would sign a contract of selling oneself and an IOU, the Master Knights were very generous, it was okay to owe first.

Don’t think these knights would practice any budgeting, first calculating how much was needed and then collecting that much.

The behavior of the Lancer Squad was to extract as much money as possible, and then find a place to spend it all.

In less than a month, wherever the Lancer Squad went, the people turned into illusions.

All the farmers under the Knight District, upon hearing of the arrival of the Lancer Squad lords, would carry their families and baggage to places where the knights couldn’t plunder nearby.

After all, the so-called "Knight District" was composed of scattered territories, leaving the area was not considered difficult.

For these runaway serfs, the Lancer Squad had the Fugitive Law in place but they had no authority to capture them, once they escaped the Knight District’s boundaries, they could only watch helplessly.

Because they only had temporary ownership of the land, and the true ownership was with the original lord.

If the original lord didn’t mind, they couldn’t pursue them.

The original knights of the Knight District regarded such escapes as unnoticed.

Aside from their own slaves, other dependents could flee as they wished; after all, the fields remained, and the towns wouldn’t admit them, so they would have to return sooner or later.

During this period, their dependents would certainly suffer losses, but mutual losses were better than unilateral gains for the other side.

Only the 500,000 acres of land left by the dead lord barely managed to collect taxes, while other Knight Districts turned into total chaos.

"Don’t just stand and watch, keep moving, move faster." As he walked, Ibaminuo urged them to hurry up.

Ibaminuo was one of the refugees, and also the leader of this group.

However, he had a special identity; he was a believer of the Juanist Faction.

He had opposed the lord and the steward of the manor several times, holding high prestige among the people.

Especially since the emergence of the Saint Sun’s Army this year, during confrontations he could even summon the Saint Sun’s Army for assassinations and attacks.

Although ineffective against knights, it was quite useful against the servants of the Knight Castle.

In fear of the Saint Sun’s Army and the Salvation Army’s forces, the lord finally took a step back and waived this year’s tribute.

Ibaminuo hadn’t even begun to celebrate when another bad news arrived—the lance cavalry was coming.

Without respite, Ibaminuo once again led the people of the manor to flee, setting their sights on the nearby Stone Wall Town, less than twenty miles away.

"Where did they go?"

"Did they go to relieve themselves by the roadside and didn’t keep up?"

"Let’s look for them; you all keep going."

Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Ibaminuo, along with several young men, detached from the group and began searching along the path they had come.

A cool breeze brushed cover his body, refreshing yet cold, but unable to suppress the anxiety and anger in his heart.

"Where could they have possibly gone?" After nearly twenty minutes of searching, they found nothing, only cursing under their breath.

Suddenly, a sound came from afar. Ibaminuo instinctively glanced over but only saw a flock of wild birds flying from the forest.

The young men following Ibaminuo stopped and gazed in that direction, while he swiftly ignored the dirt road and pressed his ear to the ground.

The sound of hooves? Ibaminuo listened incredulously for a while longer, confirming it—it was indeed the sound of hooves.

"Go, let’s return!" Ibaminuo turned, scrambling and crawling, not even bothering to clean the dirt off his clothes, as he sprinted madly toward the refugee group.

Holding wooden sticks, Ibaminuo and his men frantically ran along the muddy road as wild birds flew from the forest.

Thistles tore a large hole in his trousers, his straw sandals were battered, and the muddy water turned them into a messy clump of grass.

Yet Ibaminuo didn’t stop for a moment, feeling his heart pounding and his lungs nearly bursting out of his throat.

The sound of hooves grew clearer in the distance, as did the sight of the refugee group ahead.

"The lance cavalry is coming, run!" Ibaminuo shouted hoarsely.

"Lance cavalry, run!" The other young men shouted along with him.

No sooner had he finished speaking did he feel a chill at his back, a warmth flowing from his chest to his belly button.

Looking down, a spear tip protruded from his chest, blood pouring out in streams.

He ran a few more steps out of inertia before completely losing strength, collapsing uncontrollably to the ground.

"Ah—"

"Runaway slave! Die!"

"You betrayed the trust of the Prince!"

Leia’s voice, thick with Windmill Land accent, resounded as more than a dozen hooves trampled past Ibaminuo’s face, crushing his spine and arm.

Raising Knight’s Sword high, the Imperial Knight charged into the chaotic crowd.

Slicing with his longsword, one by one, former village friends stiffened and fell.

Hooves crushed the heads of children, even sending a pregnant woman flying, with misty blood raining on the roadside flowers.

"Forget the luggage, just run into the forest, into the mountains, don’t run on the road." With eyes wide, Ibaminuo desperately shouted at the refugees’ backs.

But their ears were filled with fear and screams, unable to hear a sound.

They instinctively ran down the road until pierced by longswords.

"No—no—" Ibaminuo watched helplessly as bodies fell into pools of blood.

Some knights even tossed a girl’s head back and forth for amusement.

In no time, these hundreds of refugees were massacred by less than ten members of the lance cavalry.

The accompanying knights stared at the civilians who used to greet him respectfully in the territory, unable to say a word.

He indeed looked down on civilians, even hated Ibaminuo, but he never thought of slaughtering them like this.

"Hey, there’s another one here." An Imperial Knight spotted Ibaminuo, barely breathing amidst the trample, "Can you still talk?"

"Go hell! Go hell!" Ibaminuo shouted hysterically, almost berserk, "You will face retribution one day, the Holy Father will manifest, the Saint’s Grandson will descend, to burn away the world’s sins, and you..."

Raising its head gracefully, the warhorse lifted its hoof from Ibaminuo’s neck, and with its bounty departed the way it came.