Black Sail

Around nine o’clock at night.

With the guidance of a local from Chenxi Port who was part of Galen’s team, Liszt had already settled into an ordinary-sized inn in the Central District.

As an internet celebrity from the East Sea, it was naturally unfitting for him to show his face in public, let alone visit the adventurer’s guild, a place teeming with prying eyes. He had two tasks for Galen.

One was to send the letter Liszt had written to Haywood of the Black Sail at Golden Palm Port— the faster, the better. The other was to hire some adventurers to run errands and inquire whether there were any relatives or friends of Mika’s still in Chenxi Port.

You see, Aran had a system of collective responsibility.

But collective responsibility depended on the circumstances: it mattered whether it was an ordinary criminal case, or a case with severe implications or political considerations.

If you randomly killed someone, that was a typical case; you’d also be killed to quell public anger. It was that simple. If there was no public rage, no one cared what happened to you. With one less labor unit, it mattered little—the vast Aran could afford the loss, easily disposing of life.

However, if the victim was a government official or some merchant with a bit of clout, even if it was not a matter of life and death, if the dignity of the state system was tarnished, then there would be no pleasant outcome. Collective punishment was initiated.

The saying "ignorance is no defense" didn’t exist and certainly didn’t fit the standards for collective punishment.

The only criterion was whether one was a beneficiary of the incident.

For example, if a woman’s husband was an expert at stabbing lords with random knives and a habitual criminal of home invasion and robbery of nobles, even if the woman was unaware, if she used that money, she wouldn’t be killed, but she would end up being thrown into a labor camp.