Re: Level 100 Farmer

Chapter 121 - Above

"Great…great…one."

Li blinked, his senses returning to the present. The sudden influx of foreign memories had come to him in a jarring instant, but at the same time, it did not feel unnatural. To feel the memories and emotions of an entirely different existence so vividly as if they were his own did not feel strange to him. It was just one of many things that were part and parcel to his existence that he was not yet familiar with. 

Li looked at the old man whom he now knew was Ivo. He wore a smile of yellowed teeth as his hands clasped desperately around Li's arm.

Ivo struck out a hideous contrast to his youthful days. Where before the man had been tall and sturdily built from farming fields and foraging through the forests, he was now hunched over and shrunken in, his ribs poking through skin pulled taught with hunger. Eyes that had once flashed green with the blessings of life sense now were dull, not even having the clarity of sanity.

"Thank you," whispered Li. Li patted Ivo's hands while they were wrapped around his arm and gently pulled them apart. Ivo's mouth opened like a beached fish's, trying to voice protest but finding that his deteriorating brain could no longer support it. 

Even now, Li doubted Ivo even truly recognized him. Ivo, through his whole life, had lived guided by the feeling of a guardian, of a beat in his heart that he had followed through life and while facing death. It was that feeling that he recognized a semblance of when he made contact with Li, awakening if just the slightest bit of memories faded by decades of deteriorating brain function. 

Li knew the cause of the deterioration. It was a tumor rooted in his brain amplified by the stresses wrought to his body caused from casting [Roots of the Kindred One], an A ranked spell strong enough that even Li used it in combat with other level 100 players. Morrigan had healed that tumor, but with her death, there was none more to heal it again now that it had come back from remission. 

None but Li, yet now was not the time.

"You've told me everything I need to know," nodded Li. He put a hand on Ivo's shoulder as he stood up. "I promise I will make you whole when my presence upon this world is made truly known."

With that, Li turned to Ada and her husband. He was primarily curious about the faith of the farmers and whether they had maintained it. If they had abandoned their faith, if it had not been truly strong to begin with, then it would have been hard to forge the basis of a following.

But the faith was there. It burned so strongly that it let an entire army of farmers march to their deaths without ever looking back. That kind of faith did not dim easily, and though Li had not interviewed all the other surviving farmers, he was confident that most of them were like Ivo.

That settled just one more thing: the matter of acquiring the land itself. 

"Are ye a healer like the good lady in middletown?" said Ada as she looked wonderingly at her father, at how he had managed to show some recognition and emotion for once. 

"Yes, I am." Li looked at Ada. Hope was written all over her face, but he could not give her more for now, though he did wish to reward the love she showed her father for taking care of him as an invalid all these years. "I'll continue to look his condition," he said simply, tempering her hopes.

"Then is your business done with us?" said Ada's husband as he licked his lips nervously.

"Just one more thing," said Li as he resumed taking his seat in front of the two. He looked over them to make sure their daughter was still behind her room and asleep. He did not want her to hear how this conversation would go.

"It's about your farmland. Am I mistaken to think you own it? Forgive me if the question is a little sudden, but I'm afraid I do get curious when I see so much land around the city going unused."

Ada and her husband exchanged looks. Ada nodded, and the husband said, "Yes, yes it is. We do not have an idea of how to run farmland, and my wife inherited it from her father, so there was not much else but to let it sit."

"Then let me be direct: what would it take for you to sell that land or part with it in any way?"

"Ah, well, that is, it would be terrible to let father's land simply fall to the hands of strangers."

Li crossed his arms. He had a hunch that they did not want to admit anything about the true purpose of why they kept the land as a money laundering scheme for Chevrette. They had been tense about the topic of farmland the moment he had walked in, and, to their credit, he had broken in during the middle of the night, but this caution exceeded that. 

"Better than letting it rot, no? Well, don't worry about it. I'm not here to grill you two about that. Need to evade taxes somehow, right?" Li watched as the couple's faces blanched. "But finding a loophole in tax laws alone isn't illegal, so I have no idea why you two are getting so worked up. Honestly, it's admirable that you managed to read through the codified laws without any education or a lawspeaker to help you."

"Yes, we have done nothing outside the boundaries of the good law," said Ada's husband with an attempted firmness betrayed by trembling hands.

Li pointed above, to the low ceiling of this cramped room. There was a reason that it was so small despite the size of the building. A reason why he had heard much more than the breathing of this family when he had first stepped in.

"You know what isn't in the 'boundaries of the good law'? Those slaves you're hiding in the attic above."