Chapter 406: Zuan People’s New Year

"Happy New Year." Leblanc pouted and said reluctantly to the visitor.

"?" Seraphine turned her head and looked at Levi in confusion.

She has been busy on the front lines in the countryside of Ionia for more than two months, and only returns to her home in Zaun to rest at night.

Because today is New Year's Day, she took a day off at Levi's request and went back home during the day.

As a result, before Seraphine even entered the house, she met a strange woman standing on the curb in front of her house like a robot.

"she is?"

"Leblanc." Levi explained casually.

“She…” Seraphine looked at her carefully: “She changed her appearance?”

"Yeah." Levi nodded.

The fact that Noxus was secretly controlled by the Leader and LeBlanc confessed her guilt and surrendered to the Leader remained a secret at the public level.

Ordinary people only know that the Noxian Empire experienced a coup d'état from below, and two months later it experienced an internal purge among the upper echelons of the empire.

In short, for some reasons unknown to outsiders, some high-ranking generals of the Empire, such as Amistan, lost the favor of Commander-in-Chief Swain and were thoroughly and ruthlessly liquidated.

On the surface, the Noxian Empire is still controlled by military nobles represented by Swain and Darius.

But no one could have imagined that these two "emperors" were actually Leaders of the Wind. The positions vacated by the senior generals who participated in the abdication, such as Amistan, were quietly replaced by the imperial officers who believed in Leaders of the Wind and were promoted by Swain.

In other words, the current Guild of Leaders is like the Black Rose before, and has become the "deep state" behind the Noxian Empire.

However, in order to prevent the name of the Leader from irritating the warlords within the empire, Levi still needs to let the Leader remain in the dark and let Swain continue to disguise himself to maintain the old order of Noxus and prevent it from collapsing prematurely.

Therefore, LeBlanc's presence in Zaun is still a secret.

Her clones also have to undergo a transformation before being allowed to work on the streets.

"But...what is she doing in front of our house?"

"Look at the gate."

"?" Seraphine asked with a question mark on her face: "Do we still need a doorman?"

"Isn't this a matter of helping her increase her work intensity?" Li Wei said, "This guy can create tens of thousands of clones by himself. I really can't find any job to satisfy her, so I can only help her create some unimportant positions."

"Besides, she can do more than just guard the door." He chuckled as Miss Leblanc looked at him with a sly look in her eyes. "She can also stand guard on the street, give directions, help guide traffic order, monitor uncivilized behavior on the road, and at critical moments, she can provide some simple first aid treatment to passersby in need."

"I call this project 'Neighborhood Assistant'. It's just in the pilot stage now."

"Once we have trained her well and straightened her attitude, we can spread the message to all of Zuan."

As he spoke, the blue bird incarnation on Leblanc's shoulder nodded slightly...

Then he pecked her head rudely: "Warning! If you don't serve with a smile, one silver wheel will be deducted from your food allowance this month."

"You?!" Leblanc gritted her teeth.

"Hmm?" Bluebird tilted his head.

LeBlanc immediately forced out a smile like a bank clerk being filmed by a camera: "Happy New Year."

Seraphine: “…”

She instinctively felt a little sympathy in her heart, but when she thought about what Leblanc had done before, she stopped sympathizing.

"Let's go home." Levi ignored Leblanc and just asked her to walk around the street and practice her skills of smiling service.

Then, he held Seraphine's hand and walked into the house side by side: "You have been too busy recently. Even I haven't seen you for several days."

"Look at you, you've changed."

Seraphine's appearance has indeed changed.

However, she didn't become too dark or too thin. As a supernatural being, staying up late and overwork could not affect her charming beauty nourished by magic.

The main change of Seraphine is in her appearance.

She took off her favorite princess dress, white stockings and leather boots and put on a coarse cloth robe in the style of an Ionian country village.

At this moment, Seraphine's exposed calves were still stained with fresh mud, and her white feet were wearing a pair of crude straw sandals. The pink toes sticking out of the sandals were also stained with mud that had not been cleaned.

It was obvious that he had just returned from the Ionia front and had not had time to pack up properly.

Levi knew that fashion was Seraphine's biggest hobby after music.

Seeing that Seraphine was now dressed like an Ionian village girl, he couldn't help feeling a little emotional.

"You don't need to do that, Xiaosa," Li Wei said. "After all, leaders identify comrades by their beliefs, not their clothes. Even if you dress better and go to the front line, no one will blame you."

"No, the situation in Barue is different." Seraphine was quite free and easy.

“I just realized this in the past few days.”

"What we are facing there are not leaders who are well-read in theory and workers in Zaun who have heard enough propaganda, but the vast majority of Ionian farmers."

The local culture of Ionia is very conservative and exclusive, especially for the villagers who have lived in the traditional order all their lives.

Although the Leader has gained their gratitude and trust through his confrontation with the Noxian invaders.

But if you dress differently from them, speak differently, or even look like a foreign lady from Piltover, or a high-ranking leader who has come down to inspect... then the villagers' attitude will unconsciously become unnatural when they communicate with you.

“In your words, I dress like this so that I can get closer to the masses.” Seraphine said with a smile, “Besides, a little dirt doesn’t matter.”

"Leaders are not afraid of getting dirty."

This is not a statement of meaning, but a statement of reality.

Seraphine threw her dirty sandals at the entrance and summoned a breeze. The air flow swirled back and forth against her skin, easily removing the stubborn dirt between her toes and on her calves.

Then, Seraphine playfully flew onto the sofa and thrust her white and tender feet in front of Levi, who had just sat down. "Look, it's clean now, isn't it?"

Levi: “…”

"What?" Seraphine pouted, a little dissatisfied with her boyfriend's reaction.

But Levi was just silent: "You..."

“Did you step on fresh cow dung when you were in the countryside?”

Seraphine was stunned for a moment: "Didn't I wash it clean?"

"..." Levi was speechless. Janna flew away silently.

"Hmm..." Seraphine is a little lady of Piltover at heart after all.

She retracted her feet a little embarrassedly, and blushed to change the subject: "Is Lina coming back?"

"Lina is not coming back." Levi shook his head: "There was a little trouble with the work she was in charge of in Ionia."

"Oh?" Seraphine was curious: "What is Lina responsible for over there?"

Although they were both working in the rural areas of Ionia, their responsibilities did not overlap. She hadn't seen Lina for a while.

"It's a pilot project for village and community self-governance," Li Wei replied. "In short, it's about letting the villagers choose their own people to make decisions."

The current Leaders Association is so short of grassroots cadres that it is impossible to send Leaders cadres to every village for long-term management.

Moreover, most of the current cadres of the Leader come from Zaun and Piltover. They have faith and enthusiasm, but have never seen a countryside or engaged in agriculture in their lives, and they have no understanding of the various complex conditions in the Ionian countryside.

Even if the Leaders Association was willing to risk causing Zaun's administrative system to malfunction and airdrop a large number of cadres into Ionia, into every village in the province of Baruo... the outcome might not be as good as they imagined.

"So after discussion, we decided to extend the presence of leading cadres only to townships for the time being. The most basic village-level units will still be elected by the villagers themselves."

"Oh." Seraphine understood a little.

Isn't this the same community self-government that Piltover used to have? However, it is now being applied to rural areas in Ionia.

"What, is there a problem?" she asked.

"How can it be okay?" Levi shrugged. "Seraphini, think about it, was there any problem with Piltover's community autonomy in the past?"

Seraphine's pink hair trembled, and she understood instantly.

That's a huge problem.

Community autonomy sounds good, and it actually works well in Piltover - but that's only in wealthy communities and relatively upscale middle-class communities.

As long as the community is of a lower level and more disorderly order, this community self-governance system will immediately lead to chaos such as vote buying, forced voting, statistical cheating, and secret voting.

But if it's a Zaun community, that kind of shabby community full of poor people... then there's no need to even resort to vote buying.

The gang is the actual controller of this community. The community council has long been completely controlled by the underworld bosses and has become a mere name.

If this situation goes a step further, we get Old Zuan.

Zaun was completely split from Piltover. In the beginning, there was community autonomy and a community council, but as the elections went on, the people who were elected became gang bosses, warlords, and finally the chem-baron came to the fore, making this universal system that had been advocated by the people of Piltover for many years a joke that was out of order.

"But..." Seraphine frowned, "Lina and the others are in charge of supervising Ionia. "

"Under such circumstances, can the villagers' self-government still lead to bribery and forced elections, and elect some local tyrants?"

"It's not like they are local tyrants..." Li Wei shook his head: "After all, we just defeated a group of them."

This has just been cleaned up. It will take years to form another batch.

"But some villagers are indeed too smart... or too stupid."

"They still think that the village chief under the leadership of the leader can still be a local tyrant like the previous village chief, so they are determined to elect this person to make the decisions."

"With the supervision of leaders like Lina, they dare not do anything too outrageous. But small actions like vote bribery are still inevitable."

"Bribing the voters?" Seraphine was puzzled. "How did they do it with the leader supervising them?"

"They don't give money directly." Li Wei said: "They are on good terms with you, so they use their own money to buy a pound of meat, a dozen eggs, or a few cigarettes imported from Zaun, and visit you at your home."

"You had a great time chatting while eating, and finally decided to vote for him. Even if the higher-ups investigate, it would be hard to classify it as vote-buying, right?"

“This…” Seraphine questioned instinctively: “Can the villagers of Ionia be bribed with a pound of meat, a dozen eggs, and a few cigarettes?”

But soon, what she had seen and heard in the past two months overshadowed the instincts she had developed over more than a decade as a Piltover lady.

Yes, that's enough.

For the Ionian peasants, this gift was not heavy, but it was not light either.

"This is even after we distributed the floating wealth to the villagers so that everyone has some money in their hands."

"If it were in the past... maybe two eggs would be enough to buy off those impoverished farmers."

After all, this is the first time that villagers have implemented self-governance.

Who is capable and who is not, who will be really good to everyone as the village chief...people's hearts are hidden in their stomachs, how can the villagers tell?

In the end, I can only choose the one who can chat and send gifts. No matter how bad he works in the future, I can still get a dozen eggs, right?

"So, we can only wait." Li Wei said: "The attempt of villagers' self-governance has encountered many problems, but it is ultimately a human problem... If it is a human problem, it can be solved through the faith test of the leader."

"We just need to wait a few years until a team of leaders is truly cultivated from the masses and each village has enough leaders. Then we can add a rule that 'leaders can be given priority in the election of village chiefs' and the problem will be solved."

"They want to be village tyrants, but that's impossible."

In agricultural societies, the existence of village tyrants is inevitable, and in the industrial age, it is difficult for their influence to completely disappear.

Because even the current leaders cannot completely solve the problem of the gap between the rich and the poor. When people become rich, they have power in society and will want to use this power to gain corresponding political status for themselves.

As a result, the upper-class villagers who became rich first formed different factions within the village in order to compete for political power and the power to redistribute resources. Factions bribed each other in order to get elected, and after being elected, they thought about cashing in on their power to earn back the cost of the bribery... These situations are almost unavoidable.

But fortunately, the Leader Association has the plug-in of Goddess Janna. They can avoid this "inevitability".

"That's why we can win." Seraphine said with emotion.

"Okay, okay..." Seeing that his girlfriend cared more about work than he did, Li Wei couldn't help but knock on her head: "Today is New Year's Day, so let's not talk about work."

"New Year..." Seraphine blinked: "What happened again?"

In fact, she had always wanted to ask.

Li Wei seemed to attach great importance to the New Year. He usually worked 007 all year round, but today he actually asked for leave for both himself and her just for the New Year.

But in reality, New Year has never been an important holiday in Zaun.

The people of Zaun don't celebrate the New Year at all. Only the people of Piltover celebrate the New Year, and even regard it as an important festival second only to Evolution Day.

Although Seraphine grew up in Piltover, she was unable to go out for years because her talent was out of control at a very young age, so she was unable to enjoy the joy of celebrating the New Year.

In addition, her parents are from Zuan and do not celebrate the New Year, so her family has never had the custom of celebrating the New Year.

After the Leaders took over Zaun, the Leaders Association, which is mainly composed of Zaun people, continued the tradition of not celebrating the New Year.

Although the Leader has confirmed the New Year as a legal holiday this year, there is still no festive atmosphere on the streets of Zaun. Everyone just treats this holiday as an ordinary weekend and takes a rest.

So Lina would rather work overtime on the front line in Ionia than come back for the New Year.

Because she felt that her brother's request was inexplicable. What was she going to do on such an insignificant day?

Therefore, Seraphine couldn't understand: "Is this day important?"

Levi thought about it. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Celebrating the New Year was just a habit he inherited from his previous life, and it did not conform to his customs as a Zaun.

"But it's strange, isn't it?" Levi said. "The New Year is the beginning of the year, symbolizing the rotation of time and the renewal of everything."

“Whether it’s Demacia, Noxus, Shurima, or Ionia, it’s an extremely important festival in any civilization that uses any calendar.”

"But why do the people of Zaun hardly celebrate the New Year?"

"Hmm..." Seraphine thought about it seriously.

If it were in the past, she might have answered from the perspective of cultural differences.

But now, she can see the essence very quickly.

The people of Zuan don’t just celebrate the New Year…

"Zuan people don't have any festivals at all." Levi gave the answer: "We don't celebrate any festivals."

"Because the premise of the festival is that the Alchemist Baron will be kind enough to give you a holiday."

"Not to mention, most civilizations celebrate the New Year with their families. But most Zaun people... don't have a home. "

No matter whether you have money or not, you will go home for the New Year.

But if you don’t even have a home, how can you enjoy the year?

"So, the people of Zaun didn't celebrate the New Year before." Levi sighed, "But now, they can have a good New Year."

"It's just that everyone has been suffering for so long that they haven't realized it yet."

"Levi..." Seraphine couldn't help but think of her boyfriend's life experience.

She gently grasped Levi's hand and said, "Let's call Lina back. The family will be together..."

"No." Levi shook his head: "This is Lina's own choice. If she wants to work, let her go."

“Hmm.” Seraphine sighed thoughtfully and emotionally, “Perhaps for us leaders, this process of pursuing our ideals and moving forward is more joyful than a festival.”

"Lina is a true leader. She doesn't celebrate the New Year so that more people can have a good New Year..."

"Stop, stop, stop." Levi held down the pink-haired girl that was trembling with excitement.

Don't sublime yet.

"What I mean is..." He said, "Lina and I have been dependent on each other for half of our lives, and she is tired of being with me as her brother."

"It doesn't matter if she doesn't come back. We can celebrate the New Year together."

"How?" Seraphine was stunned.

"It's up to you." Li Wei said, "New Year's Day is all about having fun."

"Do you want to eat first? Or watch a movie first? Or..."

"I..." Seraphine thought seriously for a moment.

Then she pecked Levi lightly on the face, like a happy bird, barefoot, with long hair flying, riding the wind to the air: "Wait a minute."

"I'm going to take a shower first."

Janna: “…”