Rebirth of the Viking King

Chapter 586 8 Vatican Trial (3)

The third witness who entered the court was a man from East China with yellow skin and black hair.

From the appearance, he is not too old. But he could only hunched his back and relied on crutches to help him move forward.

It is not difficult to see that his spine has been broken, and he is able to walk now because he used forbidden medical skills to forcefully piece the broken bones back together.

After walking slowly to the witness seat step by step, he raised his neck with all his strength.

The head that almost always faced the earth was raised with difficulty. Two blood-red eyes appeared among the messy hair. He looked at the two Legalist mentors with almost cruel eyes.

Gu Huaian was surprised to find that he actually knew this person!

What he didn't expect was that this old friend was still alive.

"Two commanders, you haven't forgotten me!"

"Hehehe"

"An Ruhai?" Mr. Shang's eyes widened, "Commander, am I right?"

"This guy shouldn't have been there three years ago."

Gu Huaian stretched out his hand again, interrupting his subordinates' murmurings.

What Shang Junzi said was correct. Appearing on the witness seat in the court at this time was indeed a dead man who should have turned into clay.

Compared with the previous two witnesses who were like clowns, the appearance of An Ruhai immediately made Gu Huaian feel a sense of crisis.

This stems from his instinct to persecute others over the years.

He knew that he was in danger.

**

"Dear Judge, it was the Holy Light that saved me after I was tortured by these Legalist beasts into such an inhuman state!"

"Today in the holy 'Heresy Tribunal', under the gaze of the Holy Lord Christ and the 12 angels, I sincerely hope that the divine truth can speak out justice for me and judge these two people wearing human skin and walking in the scorching sun. The devil below!”

"No!"

"To describe them as demons is blasphemy against the devil!"

Then An Ruhai began to tell his story in a hoarse voice.

He was originally a diligent and hard-working businessman from the Tang Dynasty. Although the scale of "Anjia Trading Company" on the Silk Road was not particularly large, it was still a large-scale chamber of commerce that could be named by other merchants.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of 14 generations of the An family, the company has developed from the Hongwu period when the "Empress of the Tang Dynasty" Wu Zetian came to power to the Tianbao period when Li Longji came to power.

From an unknown family business, it gradually grew into a huge horse team with thousands of horses.

When it was passed into the hands of An Ruhai, the company not only established a foothold on the "Silk Road", but also developed a large number of loyal customers in the Western Continent relying on the shopkeeper's reliable personality and reputation of attaching importance to love and justice.

Changes occurred in the Anshi Rebellion that began in AD755.

In just eight years, a terrible military disaster swept across the entire Eastern Continent.

While the war lasted, mourning was everywhere and the people were in dire straits.

An Ruhai is a person who attaches great importance to friendship.

He will carefully remember everyone who has helped him.

Whether it's a drop of grace or a half-hearted relationship.

At the same time, he often walked this route and was deeply influenced by the teachings of the Holy Lord.

“Prophet Moses” led the Israelites out of Egypt two thousand years ago.

An Ruhai believed that the meaning of his existence was to save his companions in this military disaster.

When the war started, An Ruhai stopped all activities of "Anjia Company" and mobilized all members of the company to go out to find those who had helped him.

Downstream, he found tea-growing masters, skilled porcelain masters, laywomen skilled in brocade weaving, and skilled Mohist disciples.

In An Ruhai's eyes, these Tang civilians wearing coarse robes and working hard all year round are the real treasures of this country.

Their minds store the essence of craftsmanship accumulated by their families for hundreds of years. If they die in a war and their skills are lost, there will no longer be any exquisite products made by them on the Silk Road.

This is not only a loss for Anjia Company, but also a loss for human civilization.

In the middle reaches, he helped his former competitors, renting carriages, warehouses, and manpower to them for free, allowing these fellow merchants to transport the gold and silver hoarded at home out of the country, and find a pure land without war to escape the disaster of the war.

Unlike the caravan boss who sits at the rear and directs his subordinates to travel, An Ruhai personally leads the caravan across the East-West Continental Bridge every time he travels.

Personal experience of this commercial route from east to west gave him a deep understanding of the life of merchants.

It is true that the influx of too many firms at the same time will cause business competition.

A low-level merchant would think, "It will be of no harm to me to kill these competitors while the war is going on." However, in An Ruhai's eyes, what he saw was the deep hidden hiddenness under the humility of the foreign race. Malice.

After all, most of this route is in the territory of foreign races. If the Tang merchants cannot join a group to keep warm, what awaits them is one stringent checkpoint after another on the route.

If all his colleagues died, An Ruhai could even see him becoming a piece of fat in the eyes of the Western Region vassals in the future.

Those days of being at the mercy of others will definitely be much more difficult than now.

Towards the upper reaches, An Ruhai also showed sincerity and benevolence.

In any dynasty in the Eastern Continent, "emphasis on agriculture and suppression of commerce" was one of the important policies of the rulers.

On the one hand, the lords never had too much of the material "food"; on the other hand, the farmers guarded the fields and lived in their hometowns for generations, while the merchants were constantly on the move.

This year I will be in Luoyang, tomorrow I will be in Chang'an, and the year after next I may go directly to Qiuci. If I think about it for three to five years, I still can't find it.

Under this kind of thinking, every East China businessman who can make his business bigger and stronger has more or less connections in the government.

When the war broke out, An Lushan's army marched straight into Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty. On the other hand, Li Longji made a series of stupid moves. First, he killed Gao Xianzhi without investigation and granted Changqing the title, and then forced Ge Shuhan to send troops to Tongguan.

This directly led to the fall of Chang'an and all officials were forced to flee.

In the war-torn land, An Ruhai sent the backbone of the Chamber of Commerce to risk their lives to find all the six officials who had helped him and transport them out of the country together with their families.

An Ruhai generally placed the Tang people transported out of the country in the Byzantine Empire at the end of the Silk Road. All the survivors who had benefited from him chanted his name and told his stories.

After the war in the Eastern Continent was extinguished and the Legalist politicians succeeded in taking office.

His story eventually reached the ears of the Legalist rulers.