Don't Mess with That Dragon-Chapter 732 - 118: The Second Wave of Refugees (Second Update)

The populace of the newly occupied territories has completely settled down and genuinely supports the existence of the Blue Dragon Kingdom.

If the former noble lords wish to return, attack the grassroots officials of the Blue Dragon Kingdom, and reign over the territories again, then in any place, whether among the freemen or the peasants, they will undoubtedly pick up pitchforks in resistance instead of applauding their return.

The malicious rumors that the former noble lords endeavored to spread about the Blue Dragon Kingdom have thoroughly collapsed without any defense.

The eyes of the people are bright and discerning.

They clearly distinguish who is truly benevolent and who is genuinely evil.

All these days, the efforts of the grassroots officials and militiamen of the Blue Dragon Kingdom have been noticed by these farmers and peasants.

Moreover, all of this,

has even spread to neighboring countries and regions.

In these nearby areas, oppressed by the noble lords, who levy harsh war taxes through cunning and force, which leads to public resentment boiling over, freemen and peasants, unable to make ends meet due to natural disasters, have been escaping their hometowns, migrating southward towards the Blue Dragon Kingdom.

This journey almost replicates the scene of the refugee wave generated within the Eight Great Dukedoms when confronted by the Blue Dragon Kingdom in the south due to various reasons!

And this time, the scale is far larger than before.

Because in the past, when the Blue Dragon Kingdom merely occupied the Border Great Wall, those refugees who fled southward were just seeking a mouthful of food, most were poor souls with nowhere else to turn.

Very few were those who had relatives from the same village who had escaped to the Blue Dragon Kingdom long ago, and after settling down, passed the news to invite their families to move there, consequently, with someone to look after them, a few from the same village nearly unable to survive moved over together.

The latter amounted to very few, unable to cause even the slightest ripple in the massive wave of refugees fleeing southward.

Needless to mention those forced to stay and barely survive, with a bit of savings left to get through the perilous year, without being pushed to the brink, few would risk an uncertain future.

But this time,

comparing the newly occupied territories with a ten percent agricultural tax, and other noble taxes like poll taxes, war taxes used for exploiting the lower classes,

the existence of the Blue Dragon Kingdom, for those in vast regions, is like a heavenly paradise.

As the minstrels spread the news almost everywhere, numerous low-class freemen families became agitated, and after collecting their harvests, they packed up, planning to migrate.

And more peasants,

upon hearing that even as peasants, one can farm their land in the Blue Dragon Kingdom, own their property, and like freemen, after paying a ten percent tax, the rest is theirs,

a large number of peasants under the lord's command dropped their hoes and fled, escaping southward to the Blue Dragon Kingdom.

Under the medieval feudal system, peasants were essentially slaves to the noble lords, with no concept of private property, everything belonging to the lord, and they were subjected to even more severe oppression than freemen.

Their status was inferior to that of livestock.

In the past, noble lords generally executed escaping peasants as a warning, a universally accepted rule among the noble class.

Therefore, there were few places willing to shelter escaped peasants; no matter how harsh the exploitation, even on the brink of despair, many peasants would rather not become runaways even if it meant death.

The bolder ones who couldn't bear it ran into the deep mountains, but in a world full of beasts and monsters, most were dead and gone by the next day, a path leading almost to certain death.

But now,

with the news coming from the southern Blue Dragon Kingdom, numerous peasants whose lives were in the hands of the noble lords were tempted, and they seized moments when the guards weren't watching to flee southward.

Besides the freemen and peasant classes,

another group followed suit, heading to the Blue Dragon Kingdom to seek a living.

These were the mercenaries and adventurers living on the bottom, leading a precarious existence.

Mercenaries and adventurers frequently become protagonists in minstrel stories,

however, in this world, more bottom-tier mercenaries, like those in thousand-man mercenary corps, are mostly cannon fodder slightly stronger than ordinary people due to knowing some breathing techniques.

These cannon fodder were generally ordinary people from poor villages seeking a living and handled responsibilities such as carrying goods and boosting morale, unlike those truly powerful mercenaries, they were ordinary men thrusting themselves on the line between life and death with each mission.

Faced with the arduous life in the countryside, these strong men had no choice but to stay in mercenary corps, bleeding and sweating, living a precarious existence.

But as the Blue Dragon Kingdom's message spread, where ten percent of harvest is only taxed,

many who weren't doing well at the bottom, with no power, started contemplating heading south to find a living.

After all,

farming wasn't as dangerous as hanging one's neck on the tip of a sword, like a mercenary.

Therefore, this group also migrated southward with the masses heading toward the Blue Dragon Kingdom.

Natural disasters, man-made calamities, oppressive taxation,

as the saying goes, without comparison there is no harm, and compared to their own lives in turmoil, life under the rule of the Blue Dragon Kingdom was far better.

The mass exodus of freemen and peasants left much land of the noble lords uncultivated, reducing output, which led to even harsher oppression by the lords, forcing more people to leave whom otherwise stayed.

The foundation of the nation is gradually being hollowed out.

Even the noble lords noticed this and not only increased vigilance over their territories but occasionally sent knights to intercept those refugees fleeing south, capturing them to replenish the dwindling population on their lands.

However, amidst the dispersed human spirit, many newly captured peasants rebelled when the lord's knights were absent, killing guards, uprooting unripe crops, and once again embarking on the path of escaping south.

When the lord returned with the knight squad to find the devastation wrought upon their land, they were furious beyond measure.

In this series of disturbances,

the originally oppressed residents of the territories became restless, leaving those noble lords at their wits' end.