Note : This chapter contains some disturbing scenes. Please skip if needed.

One of the older farmers interrupted their argument by saying, "The point now is not about your family's heirloom or the hunters!"

He then slowly turned towards John and said with a voice filled with sorrow, "Leader, I know that you want us to not give up and continue farming, but.... But it's just not possible anymore. We don't want to face the famine again. I think the only thing we can do is to quit farming..."

John looked at the farmer with helpless eyes. John said slowly, "I get what your saying, really I do... But, farming is what has sustained us for so long... The satisfaction you gain when you see your plants grow, and then the fulfillment you feel when people eat your crops happily, these are things you won't find any where!"

The older farmer smiled with a tinge of sadness and melancholy hidden within it and said, "But, the hunger that we faced last time and the sadness that we felt when our friends and loved ones died, those terrifying feelings scare me. I don't want a repeat of last time. I can live without fulfillment or satisfaction, but...I would feel like dying if such an incident happens again."

The older farmer started crying. He said while choking on his tears, "To live... To survive... Do you remember what atrocities we committed before? We ate humans, leader! Human dead bodies! No one knows about this except us farmers! Do you think I felt good, feeding a human to my child?!"

The two brothers that were arguing looked down at the ground and John too looked away, ashamed.

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Before the rice donated by the noble had arrived, some people took desperate measures.

Meat was too costly, and they couldn't hunt the beasts. There was nothing to eat, and their town of ten thousand had fallen to five thousand members.

They had nearly killed the king, and were certain that no support would come. So, they did what they thought they never would.

Some people scouted for fresh dead bodies, and ate them. Some more civilized people cooked human meat, while others ate it... raw.

One of the desperates was the older farmer. His elder daughter and younger son were crumbling due to hunger. His pregnant wife had it even worse.

He recollected the incident distinctly during the famine. He went to his brother's home to beg for food. He remembered that his brother had left his wife and children some food that he had bought, and set off to the nearby town to somehow acquire some food.

He decided that he would beg his brother's wife for some food, maybe even touch her feet and kowtow. They were after all related. 'She wouldn't be that merciless', he thought.

But the sight that he saw when he reached her house was still fresh in his mind.

Blood was splattered here and there. He slowly entered the mud hut and he felt his heart lurch at what he saw.

There were four dead bodies. Three children and a women had their heads cut off cleanly. The hut was ransacked. Leave alone food, there was nothing there.

Note : This book is being rewritten and all the comments for this chapter were for the previous version of it.