Chapter 336: The Reformer

The little girl stared at Gawain with a hint of surprise, then asked curiously, “You know my name?”

Gawain smiled gently and reached out to stroke her hair. “It seems you know me too.”

“You’re Gawain, the great hero from long ago!” The girl’s voice was bright but hoarse, quite different from the clear, melodious tone she had in the dream world. “Daddy used to tell me stories about you… The maids say you’ve come to the castle…”

As she spoke, her breath grew shallow and she stopped to catch it, clearly overwhelmed with excitement and forgetting her own frailty. Seeing this, Gawain quickly said, “Take it slow, no rush. I’ll be here for a while.”

“Oh my…” Amber’s voice came from behind Gawain, tinged with pity and shock. “How could she be like this…”

The maid standing behind the chair lowered her head nervously before Lady Ropeni. “I’m sorry, my lady, but Miss Patty…”

“I know,” Lady Ropeni said, looking at her daughter with helplessness. “Take her back to her room to rest.”

Patty tried to lift her head with effort. “But, Mama, I want to—”

“Be obedient. Go rest in your room.” Lady Ropeni’s tone was firm. Then, hesitating slightly, she glanced at Gawain.

Before she could speak, Gawain stepped forward and said to the little girl, “Listen to your mother and rest first. I’ll come see you later.”

“You have to come!” Patty’s big, sparkling eyes looked up at Gawain with eager anticipation. She had no idea that this man before her was the very “Uncle Cecil” she had seen many times in the mind network—she only saw a hero come to life from the stories.

Gawain smiled and nodded in response.

The maid helped Patty away, pushing a specially made chair that looked like a crude wheelchair. Gawain watched them disappear down the castle’s deep corridors, then turned to Lady Ropeni. “How did she end up like this?”

The lady seemed reluctant to discuss it and gave a vague answer. “There was a fire when she was very young.”

“A fire?” Gawain shook his head. “You mean the accident that befell Viscount Romanglan…”

Romanglan was Lady Ropeni’s husband, the previous lord of the Grant Viscounty, known among nobles and bards as the “mad, arrogant, cursed young noble.”

Ropeni’s expression stiffened slightly, her gaze growing distant and cold. She turned toward the banquet hall door and took a breath. “Duke, we shouldn’t keep our guests waiting too long.”

“A ball can last until dawn, and the host’s absence will be managed by the steward,” Gawain said calmly from behind her. “Perhaps we can discuss the ‘Land Act’ and the ‘Free People’s Law.’”

Ropeni stopped and fixed her eyes on Gawain.

“Let those inside wait—their time is not precious,” he added lightly.

“I have no interest in the topics you raise,” the lady said flatly. “They are all products of failure and error.”

Gawain gave a half-smile. “Aren’t you at all curious why your husband failed?”

Ropeni was silent for a moment, then summoned the steward who had been observing outside the hall. After giving some instructions, she looked back at Gawain. “We can go to the study on the second floor. But I must emphasize—I have no interest in what you want to discuss.”

Gawain and Amber followed her upstairs to the castle’s study. There, Gawain once again saw the portrait of Viscount Romanglan—the young man smiling from the frame, as if still working in this very room.

What made Gawain a bit embarrassed was the painting opposite it: Romanglan standing on a high hill, holding the Sword of the Pioneer and the Shield of the Guardian, looking dignified and resolute—the most famous image of Gawain Cecil himself.

Amber poked Gawain’s side from behind. “Hey, look! You’re hanging on the wall!”

Gawain subtly dodged her finger and awkwardly said, “I thought after I ‘rose,’ everyone would have taken my portrait down…”

“Your husband idolized you,” Lady Ropeni said calmly. “Since his passing, this study has remained unchanged.”

Gawain nodded silently and walked to the desk, tapping it lightly. “So this is where he wrote the Free People’s Law?”

“I told you, that was a product of failure and error—the facts later proved it,” Ropeni said coldly. “So this is why you came here? Not to meet a new neighbor or discuss business, but to talk about the mistakes your husband made in life?”

“No, my initial purpose was truly just a visit. But after learning more about Viscount Romanglan, I became interested in his life. Still, I don’t think it’s fair to sum him up with just the word ‘mistake.’”

Gawain spoke deliberately, piecing together the information Amber had uncovered about Romanglan. Stripping away the distortions and misunderstandings of ignorant people, an image of a pioneering reformer gradually took shape in his mind.

“He banned all slave trade, emancipated all serfs and slaves on his lands into free people; remeasured the land, confiscated all excessive, unjust, and unregistered plots to redistribute to the new free citizens; allowed anyone to trade, work, hunt, and cultivate; abolished the ‘untouchable’ laws within the domain, letting freed slaves learn trades and become craftsmen; revoked the noble-born’s exclusive right to become knights, allowing commoners the same chance to apprentice…”

Gawain listed each reform, watching Ropeni’s expression darken bit by bit. Finally, he shook his head. “These were all great ideas.”

Indeed, this was the intelligence Gawain had gathered through the intelligence bureau’s investigation—a young noble who had stood up before Gawain’s own resurrection, striving to change the times.

Ten years ago, a young southern noble awakened. He saw with uncommon eyes the darkness beneath the surface, recognized the backwardness of the Ansu system, the constraints of the noble hierarchy, the baseless oppression of commoners by traditional laws, and the wasted productivity caused by this oppression. He may have even realized the power of the people—or at least their value.

Then he launched reforms, driven by youthful zeal.

At first, the lord’s strong authority and the old noble system’s sluggishness allowed his reforms to begin smoothly. He enacted new laws in parts of his domain and achieved some results…

But this initial phase was brief.

The backlash was fierce. Almost no one understood the young noble’s intentions. He was branded “insane,” “heretical,” “bewitched by demons.” In the blink of an eye, the promising viscount became the symbol of disorder and corruption in the kingdom, condemned by nearly half the southern region.

After that, records became vague and chaotic. No reliable texts or wandering bards could accurately describe what happened next. Amber had only found a fragment in a scattered folk poem about Romanglan’s final fate:

“On that stormy night, the viscount entered his testing grounds, seeking forbidden knowledge to sate his ever-hungry soul—but thankfully, the gods intervened, sending a holy messenger to end his madness. A great fire rained down, purifying flames blazing bright!”

The poem was likely the work of a reckless bard—one bold enough to sing such a tale probably ended up hanged in some square, making the source impossible to trace.

But Ropeni still remembered what happened:

“Riots stormed the castle, disguised as mercenaries and commoners, mixed with knights and mages wielding supernatural powers. They charged up the hill, broke down the gates, and burst into the main hall. The knights and mages who should have defended the castle vanished at the crucial moment. My husband faced the mob alone… until the castle’s magical core exploded,” Ropeni said, her face icy. “Then the rioters suddenly stopped. ‘Reinforcements’ from neighboring lords arrived ‘just in time.’ After a chaotic battle, the mob retreated. My husband died, and my daughter was left barely alive…”

Gawain met Ropeni’s eyes. “To preserve noble dignity, the ‘mob’ could storm the castle and kill nobles, but never take the castle or destroy a noble house. So the powers behind the scenes had to step in at the critical moment, appearing as righteous saviors to erase all shameful evidence after the mob’s attack.”

“You have sharp insight,” Ropeni sneered. “Do you know what happened next?”

“A purge and a deal. You expressed your desire to return to the right path. The nobles declared Viscount Romanglan was cursed by demons, causing his change in character. The rioters were found guilty; hundreds were hanged on the walls of Grant Castle, their bodies left to dry before being thrown off cliffs. Justice was served, order restored—or so people believed.”

Ropeni suddenly clenched her teeth, her cheek muscles trembling uncontrollably. “Do you know who those rioters were—the ones storming the castle and then hanged?”

Gawain’s face was expressionless. “Only ordinary people without supernatural powers could be caught and convicted. The knights and mages who truly ‘did the work’ fled early on. Those hanged were serfs who had gained land, commoners allowed to trade, and hunters and craftsmen who prospered under the new laws. The castle gates bear not only sword and blade marks but dents from pitchforks and hoes—that’s solid proof.”

“They were guilty!” Ropeni ground her teeth. Her carefully maintained composure finally broke. Knowing Gawain had uncovered the truth, she no longer hid her feelings. “Those who benefited, those who gained freedom—they were the mob! They deserved to be hanged! If death came only once, I’d wish to bring them back just to hang them again!”

(End of chapter)