Chapter 38: Chapter 35: Agriculture and the Empire_2

After marching through the forest for two days, they had not seen any of the attacking Otomi Warriors. Instead, they encountered Otomi villagers coming out of the forest to surrender. Now, the nearby villages were all under the control of the Mexica warriors, and the spring planting was about to begin. Without spring planting, there would be no harvest for the year and certain death thereafter. The villagers had no choice but to abandon hiding and come down from the mountains.

As for the villages that could be controlled, the legion treated them as their possession, showing enough mercy.

When Xiulote arrived at the nearest Otomi mountain village, extinguished blue smoke lay before his eyes. A stretch of forest outside the village had been completely burned down, and the peasants were taking out stone ploughs, a simple digging stick, from between the thatched cottages and mud walls along with corn seeds, getting ready to begin spring planting.