Your Eternal Promise

9

Agape was really surprised when he saw that man for the first time.

He would be very tall if he could ever recover. Not only was the man skinny, but his body was also covered with scars from torture. Those wounds had not been treated and maintained, so that after the scabs fell off, the keloids were like a group of snakes with raised knots, twisting wildly on the skin.

His lower abdomen was also deeply sunken, with only a thin layer of skin supporting his frame. Agape could tell that it was the result of long-term hunger and lack of water. He had seen slave owners use this trick on the island to deal with disobedient slaves.

"Are those injuries caused by your injuries?" he asked the young crew member reluctantly.

The young crew member hurriedly cleared his name: "No way, my good sir! When we picked him up, he was already like this! It's true that we didn't feed him much, but he is so big. , I can’t even afford it at sea!”

"How long have you been at sea?" Agape asked again.

The other party replied: "Three months, sir, this is a short voyage!"

Three months later, Agape couldn't help but feel compassion. If this person didn't have a strong body to rely on, I'm afraid he would have become a mummy by now.

He held back his discomfort and carefully observed the "goods" in front of him. A worn-out leather collar was tied around the man's neck, and an iron chain was tied around the back of his neck. The hawker's crew pulled him hard, and he was forced to raise his face in a daze.

Now, Agape was even more shocked. The man's entire face was covered with twisted knife marks and scratches from unknown sharp instruments. The longest one even split from the temple on his left face to the corner of his right face, which completely destroyed him. appearance. When his lightless dark eyes looked forward through the same wet and dirty black hair, he looked like a devil staring into the world through the abyss.

At that moment, an extremely ridiculous thought occurred in Agape's mind: Could this poor man be a slave who escaped from the island?

The crew member who tied him up was still bragging about his cargo to passers-by. One moment he said that this man was a foreign prince exiled from the far east, and the other moment he said he was a victorious warrior who had escaped from the Colosseum... The onlookers booed constantly, and Agape interrupted him and asked: "If I want to buy him, how much will it cost?"

"It's best to exchange for something, sir," said the crew member who brought him hastily. "You know, ships have no fixed abodes -"

He used a slightly formal word and coughed twice: "Local currency may not work well in other places."

Agape was still hesitating, but he saw the man's cloudy pupils scanning the bustling crowd in a hazy manner.

This person is going to die soon, maybe tomorrow, maybe tonight. If no one buys a lowly, disfigured slave, he will soon be abandoned. A heavy stone, together with this scarred skeleton, the boundless sea is his final grave.

He made up his mind.

"...I bought this man, give him some water, and I'll get the ransom."

When Agape came back, he only had a small linen bag in his hand.

"What is this, sir?" The sailors gathered around curiously, their curiosity overriding their concern for the insignificant slave. They just wanted to know what the man in front of them was willing to exchange.

"Although not from...the Molucca," Agape took a breath and passed the name vaguely, "it is also the most famous black pepper from Baramal, weighing about seven ounces. I know there are slaves Is this the precedent of redeeming yourself with pepper? Is this enough?”