Baron Gregory and his men had already left, but Xiao Chen did not see much joy on the dwarf's face. Farrell looked at Xiao Chen solemnly, and then said: "Mr. Mage, even if you save me, I still won't go with you."
Xiao Chen did not answer, but walked in the room that was messed up by the soldiers. The shelves fell to the ground, the armor parts were scattered all over the floor, and many weapons were bent and broken. Farrell followed behind him with one foot high and one foot low, and repeated: "Dwarves always keep their words. I will not go with you."
"Are you planning to clean up this place and continue business?" Xiao Chen asked, pointing at the messy ground.
The dwarf looked around, shook his head dejectedly and said, "I can't stay here any longer. I will leave here with my sons tonight. That bastard Gregory must have done it on purpose today. I guess the city lord has long been eyeing my property..."
Xiao Chen sighed and shook his head, "Where are you going to go? To a strange city and start all over again? And then in a few years, those greedy lords will make you lose everything like wheat?"
"I..." The dwarf was speechless and looked at him with red eyes. Xiao Chen could see the anger like volcanic lava in his eyes.
Xiao Chen continued, "Or, be framed for some crime and thrown into jail? Forge weapons for the lord in a dark dungeon every day? Is this your plan?"
"Ah~~" Farrell yelled, picked up a nail hammer from the ground, and used both arms to break the two-finger-thick hammer handle. He threw the two-piece hammer on the ground, as if throwing away the body of an enemy, and said angrily: "Those bad guys can't beat me, I will fight back. If you hadn't come in just now, I would have used this hammer to smash the head of that bastard Gregory! Those, those who wanted to bully us in the past and in the future, I will let them know that no dwarf is easy to bully!"
"Yes, Dad! If we start over, we can earn back the money of a shop in less than a year! With our skills, we are not afraid of going anywhere." One of Farrell's sons echoed loudly.
The other son said, "If you hadn't told me not to do it, I would have broken the necks of those two soldiers."
"Shut up. Just shut up, you two idiots!" Farrell said angrily. "Pack your stuff, take the valuables, throw away the clutter, and load it all onto the flatbed truck. Let's get the hell out of here."
The two young dwarfs had no idea what their father was angry about. They were stunned for a long time before they went to the inner room muttering something.
Xiao Chen looked at the backs of the two people leaving, and then at Farrell, who looked like he had a rage for nowhere. He knew that the dwarf was actually struggling in his heart. He changed to a more relaxed tone and continued, "Mr. Farrell, I have been in this city for some time and have come into contact with many people in the city. You should know that Gregory - the bastard and asshole you mentioned, actually has a good reputation in the city. Listen: Gregory the Cautious, Sir Kindhearted, Gregory the Baker, oh, he got this title because he bought some bread to help some poor people last winter."
"What do you want to say? Tell me that bastard is actually a good person? They are all bad guys pretending to be bad. You should know it when you see the blood on my son's face." Farrell said with wide eyes.
"I mean, why would a person who occasionally shows kindness to poor people become so vicious when he comes to your store?"
Farrell was stunned for a moment, lowered his head and kept silent for a while, and finally said angrily word by word: "Because I am a dwarf. Dwarves are not humans! Dwarves are deformed, they are monsters. They are similar to cattle and sheep... livestock! I have heard countless people say this, and I know that many more people think so viciously in their hearts."
Farel paced back and forth in the room, looking upset. "But I managed to survive. I managed to hold on. Look, I built my own shop in the big city of humans, and used my own forge to make them realize that dwarves are great!"
Xiao Chen looked at the dwarf in silence. The dwarf loudly recounted his hardships, but his voice began to sob. Bean-sized tears flowed down his rough cheeks and seeped into his big beard, "But... But all these are going to be gone..."
"Would you really not consider going with me to a safe, free place where people respect you?" Xiao Chen asked sincerely, "I promise that nothing like what happened today will ever happen again."
"Haha." Farrell smiled self-deprecatingly with tears on his face, "But you are also a human being. To you, an exiled dwarf like me will always be an alien. There is a huge difference in our heights, and everyone will look down at me. Since I was exiled from the Dwarf Kingdom, I feel like I am trapped in a chimney emitting black smoke. I can swing a 200-kilogram hammer in my hand, but I don't have the strength to break through this layer of black smoke."
Farrell glanced at Xiao Chen, whose face was filled with regret, and turned to walk towards the inner room. "I'm tired of having to look at other people's faces. I just want to live my own life. At worst, I can hide in the mountains."
Xiao Chen looked at Farrell in frustration. He had never expected to encounter such a good opportunity. Even after helping Farrell, he still couldn't convince this stubborn dwarf. But he had no other choice. Without basic trust, he simply had no idea where to start.
"Are you willing to accept this?" At this time, Luo Ling, who had been silent, spoke up. Her voice was like a needle that pierced Farrell's heart. "Have you ever thought about whose fault all this was? Who made you wander around? Who caused you to lose your wife? Who made you flee in the middle of the night like this?"
Farrell stopped and turned around: "Woman, what do you want to do! Don't use such despicable means to provoke Farrell."
"I just want to ask if you have the courage to take revenge. A person may not have the ability to take revenge, but if he doesn't even have the desire to take revenge, he is not worthy of being called a man."
"Who said I don't want to! I dream of letting those old stubborn people know that they are the ones who are wrong! I want to let them know that my miserable days over the years and Lisa's death are all their fault! I just don't want to..."
"You don't need to explain anything. You want to take revenge on your own. You're not even willing to make the sacrifice of living under someone else's roof. Is there any chance of success?!" Luo Ling's voice was cold and sharp, mercilessly poking at Farrell's sore spot.
"What do you know! I believed in others, believed that I could go back in glory to prove it to them, and believed that I would make those old guys pay the price in the end. In order to achieve these, I worked day and night, but what did I get in the end? Nothing, and I lost Lisa instead! Everything was fake, and the cunning human easily deceived a stupid dwarf time and time again." Anger and disappointment alternated on Farrell's face, and finally froze in sorrow. "You tell me, what should I do? How can I still trust humans? How do I know if it will be the same ending after I leave with you?"
"You have no way of knowing. I won't guarantee it either." Luo Ling said seriously, "But apart from us, who else would trust you as much as Xiao Chen does and give you his folding knife to test? Who else would listen to your distress and talk to you in such an equal manner? Maybe this is the last chance worth trying in your life. If you still have a little bit of ambition, you should take a gamble."
Farrell stared at Luo Ling, whose eyes were so penetrating and piercing that he soon stopped looking at her. He grabbed his beard and spun around in confusion.
At this time, his youngest son's voice came from the door of the inner room: "Father, maybe we should try again. I was born outside the Dwarf Kingdom and have never seen what my hometown looks like. You said that every dwarf should be born by the lava river in his hometown, feel the burning breath of the God of Forge, and be buried in the lava river to become a part of the bloodline of the God of Forge. But now I can only imagine the magnificence of the lava river."
"Yes, I also want to see the Valley of Ten Thousand Hammers again. It would be such a wonderful thing to wake up every day to the sound of countless hammers." said the eldest son.
Farrell looked at his two sons, whose faces resembled his own when they were young, and sighed softly, "I had already... given up. I became a coward with only a bit of strength. I just wanted to take you to a place where no one cared about me. I didn't want anyone to bully you and turn you into slave-like craftsmen. But, damn it, maybe running away for a lifetime is too unfair for you... It's too fucking unfair for us!"
He stared at Xiao Chen fiercely and asked, "Are you really going to let me go one day, let me return to the Dwarf Kingdom with the latest technology, and slap those old fools in the face until their faces are as red as iron ingots? Swear on your heritage?"
"In the name of the magic tower I belong to, I promise." Xiao Chen replied solemnly.
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Coming out of the blacksmith shop, Xiao Chen was excited and in a different spirit. Cai Long and the other man were left in the blacksmith shop to protect Farrell's family, while Xiao Chen was going to ask Baron Goya to smooth things over so that Gregory would stop causing trouble for the dwarves.
"Look how happy you are." Luo Ling shook her head and smiled.
"You are really sharp-minded. You immediately grasped the dwarf's weakness." Xiao Chen praised.
"That's because you landed in the wrong place."
“You mean about discrimination?”
Luo Ling sneered and said, "Don't you think people like us won't discriminate? Will Farrell receive fewer strange looks when he goes to school?"
"Hey, it's better than these locals. Modern people still take equality seriously."
Luo Ling shook her head and said, "Are modern people less discriminating? In our world, can you truly treat white people and black people equally? Can you truly treat urban people and rural people equally?"
Xiao Chen hesitated for a moment and said, "I know what you want to say. After all, I worked as a reporter for two years and investigated the illegal stay of black people in Guangzhou. I admit that I couldn't stand it at the time. I thought they were of low quality and wanted to repatriate them all."
"So let's talk less about equality and more about reality. We need to bind them with interests, not just empty words."
"Of course interests are important, but we must never underestimate the power of values!" Xiao Chen stopped and stopped Luo Ling, saying seriously: "This is a different time. When we arrive in the new world, we become an absolute minority. If we still hold the same prejudices, we will not be able to integrate into this world. This is a matter of life and death, and it is not just empty talk. We cannot stop opposing discrimination just because we cannot completely eliminate it."
“From acceptance to habituation, from habituation to integration?”
"Yes, and it must be an integration centered on me. Our values must be attractive to people in order to do this! The addition of people like Ciro, Morey and Farrell is a good start. We must make them feel that we really accept them."
"It will certainly be difficult. Maybe it won't be done for generations."
“Although I cannot reach it, my heart longs for it.”
Luo Ling discovered that Xiao Chen at this moment was no longer as lazy as usual. His eyes were focused and clear, like a newborn baby, which made her feel a moving power.