As someone who had read a wide range of books and watched countless films and documentaries in his previous life, Lin Hai felt that he had long understood human poverty and the evil of human nature.

In many documentaries about poverty alleviation, poverty is a wall made of loess and straw, covered with a plastic sheet full of holes picked up from somewhere. In worse cases, it may not even be a plastic sheet, but an advertising spray-painted product discarded by a shopping mall. And under this leaky advertisement of "Down payment only 1 million yuan" live people with no income who suffer from various diseases that people in normal life only have nightmares.

Yes, this is the poverty that Lin Hai has experienced.

But even with such poverty, we can still see the figures of poverty alleviation. There are always poverty alleviation cadres going to the mountains and the countryside, trying to find ways to relocate these people, find ways to get medical insurance for them, and find ways to find sources of income for them... In any case, such poverty is rapidly decreasing in Lin Hai's world, and has been reduced to the point where it can only be seen in documentaries.

Lin Hai has seen the evil in the world before. Whether it is the horrific cases in the news or the dark side of human nature in film and television works that have been unleashed by the imagination of screenwriters and directors, there is always a lot of content about evil.

But even with the shadow of evil like that, there is always the light of order shining through the darkness. No matter in reality or in movies, no one dares to continue to do evil openly. If you always think about doing bad things in public, the police don't need to come to find you, the people nearby who are brave enough to do good will let you know what the iron fist of justice is.

Yes, that's it, at least most of the time.

It was not until he arrived in Xichuan, or to be more precise, until he arrived in the area of ​​Xichuan ruled by bandits, that Lin Hai witnessed the most extreme poverty and evil in his two lives.

In Lin Hai's impression, the poverty in the medieval world was probably to the point of selling children. However, when he got here, Lin Hai discovered that the prerequisite for selling children was that there had to be rich people who could afford to buy people. After all, as long as you didn't buy them as food, you had to give the person you bought a meal to eat, and this meal had long been a luxury.

The refugees who gathered in the mountains would not sell their children because no one would buy them. Of course, no new babies were born during the years they had gathered in the mountains. After all, women who were starving to the point of menopause and men who felt that standing up was a waste of energy could not have children.

Bandit bosses who gathered large numbers of refugees wouldn't capture them all. They also had to consider whether they could feed so many people, so many bandits simply used refugee settlements as supply depots, looting whenever they wanted. Just like after dinner, if they needed exercise, they'd go kill a few refugees; after dinner, if they needed some food, they'd starve to death and needed a supply, they'd rob a few refugees; after dinner, if they needed something to keep warm, they'd rob a few beautiful refugee women (or men, too).

The Great Chen Dynasty gave up this area. After all, they were defeated in the war and this area had been ceded to Daliang. The Great Chen Dynasty also needed to concentrate its forces, hoping to make a breakthrough on the front line in the central part of the continent, so they took away the last grain of food, the last penny, and the last soldier on this land, and also took away the security and order that the Great Chen Dynasty had established in the southwest for hundreds of years.

The Daliang Empire had no control over this region. Although they had won, the imperial army had lost a significant portion of territory on the central front. The empire couldn't even send a single century-man squadron to the mountains and forests of Xichuan to assert its sovereignty. They were unwilling to invest even a penny in this completely disordered and unproductive place. In the words of the Imperial Ministry of Revenue, during wartime, they had to choose between rebuilding Xichuan and providing military funds to the Ministry of War. Of course, the post-war empire hadn't given up on properly governing its newly acquired land. They sent local officials and retired soldiers to reclaim the wasteland. If all went well, the area would be fully under imperial rule in ten years, unless... unless a new round of war preparations began...

The Khmer Empire, well... the Khmer Empire desperately wanted to rule this region. To this end, they deployed heavy troops into Xiangyun and Xichuan provinces during the war. Through their tireless efforts, they successfully destroyed the last vestiges of humanity in the land, and any efforts to restore normal life collapsed under the blood and fire of the Khmer Empire. Of course, the exasperated Tran people finally concentrated their forces and taught the Khmer a lesson, preferring to cede this territory to Daliang rather than the Khmer. The Khmer are still striving to gain control of this territory. Although they are hesitant to launch direct military action due to fear of provoking Daliang, they continue to support bandits to sow chaos, hoping to gain advantage in the coming chaos.

As for the Great Xia Dynasty, they said it's none of my business. I haven't even cleaned my own ass...

So when Lin Hai reached Xichuan, especially the southern part of Xichuan, it had become a paradise for wild beasts. Two-legged and four-legged beasts roamed here, happily hunting and reproducing.

Lin Hai still remembered the first bandit leader Lu You had captured. His name was something like "Wang." He didn't care what he was called. These uneducated bandits all had similar names, even some with the surname "Cao." Any name wasn't surprising. Yes, Lin Hai felt his best choices were probably "Zhentianwang" and "Qitianzhai." Anyway, they felt much better than what these bandits had chosen.

When the big boss was brought before Lin Hai, his impression of the bandit leader was completely overturned. Lin Hai's impression of bandits, or rather, bandits, or local bandits, came entirely from later film and television productions. In these films and TV series, bandit leaders were either fat-headed, cruel, and tyrannical, or sinister, vicious, and calculating, emanating an aura of evil. One look at them and you'd be tainted by them. So much so that when Lin Hai was a child, whenever he saw a movie with a villain, his parents would constantly remind him, "Don't learn from them."

My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!