The heart that I had been hanging high was finally put down. It seems that what the previous swordsman detected with the stone seal was not me, but the blood power in my body. Although this power is not as gorgeous and changeable as psionic energy, and the effect is only limited to allowing me to recover quickly after being injured, it is also a genuine foreign divine power, and it is reasonable that it will be misjudged by the stone seal.

"What are you doing?" The plaid shirt asked me uneasily next to it.

That's right, he was chased because someone else wanted to sacrifice him to some Ceres, and now I should be a little apprehensive to see me, a person of unknown origin, suddenly pretending to be a ghost and not knowing what he is doing. I silently observed his expression, having solved the most pressing problem just now, and now it is time to find out his problem.

After all, it was because of the divination of the Turin doctor that I went to the train and rescued him, and was locked by the swordsman; And the swordsman is also because of other people's divination, so he will lock me through the fact that I saved him. He seems to be the center of this divination, and even if he is an ordinary person, he should have some special meaning that is inexplicable and inexplicable.

However, it is also ironic. If it weren't for divination, the swordsman and I wouldn't have met together. It is not so much because of this fate that there is this divination; It is better to say that there is this divination, and there is this fate. How wonderful.

"Now, let's talk about you." I approached him in a position where I took the initiative in the conversation, and he unconsciously took a step back, then tripped over the bed in the back and sat on it.

He craned his face in cringe and cautiously asked, "What...... What's up? ”

"Of course, it's about the god of grains and sacrifice." I looked straight down at him, "How did you get involved with that so-called Ceres, and why were you treated as a living sacrifice and chased by the two people on the train?" ”

He hesitated, then seemed to harden his courage and asked, "You ask this, do you want to do something?" ”

"I'll make a decision after I've heard that." I said, "And then, as you can see, I'm not a good person. Next, I suggest that you just answer and not continue to ask questions. Knowing that this is a motel next to the road, not in the city, I can also have peace of mind when I do the 'finishing touches'. Do you understand what I mean? ”

His face turned pale and he nodded repeatedly.

After a while, he pondered his words before he said, "The two people who chased me before were both residents of Harvest Village, and the god of Grains was the object of worship in Harvest Village. Fengshou Village is located in a remote and closed mountainous area, and sacrifices are held every once in a while. I was chosen as a living sacrifice, but I ran away. ”

"Are you also a resident of this harvest village?" I asked.

"It used to be." He said, "Recently, due to some things, I returned to my hometown of Fengshou Village, but I didn't expect ......."

Remote and closed mountain villages, barbaric and bloody religious practices, and young people returning to their hometowns...... I feel as if I can find a lot of horror stories in my head that correspond to these keyword groups.

But in order to avoid certain preconceptions from affecting my judgment, I continued to listen to him. And what I heard later was pretty much the same story. But when you look closely, you can find something quite wrong.

*

The young man's next words, though superficial, were profound, but perhaps they were forced by the pressure I had created, or perhaps because he had accumulated too much fear in his heart, so he poured them all out to me.

The first is Harvest Village, which is not quite the same as the closed mountain village I imagined. If anything, it's more closed than you can imagine – for about two-thirds of the last century, the villagers thought there were no living people outside.

Yes, the ancestors of these villagers are actually the survivors who fled into the mountains to escape the catastrophe of hell.

Because of this origin, the village also has certain strict rules, such as that the villagers are not allowed to go to the outside world. After all, the outside world was full of undead and living dead in those days, and some villagers went to the village to do small things, and it was a big deal to bring back the undead and the living dead when they fled back. In fact, the villagers don't know why this rule is set up now, but the fear of hell has been deeply engraved in the villagers' genes. As long as they can live safely in the village without going out, they are willing to do anything. This has even formed some kind of stubborn ideology.

How stubborn is it? To use an analogy...... There is a lake of southern cockroaches, and the villagers live on the island in the middle of the lake. The villagers never find it inconvenient to live in it, and it is okay to go to the outside world, but there are no boats or other means of transportation on the island in the middle of the lake, so they can only swim to the other side of the river if they want to go to the outside world. Under this premise, the villagers will not think about "going to the outside world" unless they are crazy.

Of course, this metaphor does not stand up to scrutiny, but it can still be used as a reference. In addition, although I don't know if in reality, there are really people who will go to Cockroach Lake, but in Fengshou Village, there is indeed a person who goes to the outside world.

This man is the father of the plaid shirt.

No one knows what expectations he had from the outside world when he went to the outside world, but judging from the fact that he returned to Fengshou Village to live again a few years later, he was probably disappointed in the outside world. However, he did not come back alone, he also brought back a woman, and this person was the mother of the plaid shirt. The latter came to Harvest Village pregnant, so she quickly gave birth to a plaid shirt.

Since childhood, Plaid Shirt has had a strong curiosity about everything around him, and likes to get to the bottom of everything. In fact, strictly speaking, children are basically curious, but they may not have a family environment that matches their curiosity. I don't know whether it was lucky or unlucky, but the plaid shirt happened to be such a mother who has been systematically educated and consciously maintains the curious nature of children, and the father who approves of it.

As time went on, the child grew into a teenager, and the teenager grew into a young man, and his character of asking questions about everything became more and more intense, and his doubts about the customs of the village became more and more serious, and gradually more friction occurred with other villagers. It is said that people's character depends on the environment in which they grew up, and this makes sense. The more the other villagers talk about him, the more he reinforces this character in an antagonistic manner, so his character cannot be said to be free from the influence of the environment. But he also knew that he was too small compared to the old ideas that had lasted in the village for an unknown number of years. Living in this environment, he felt that his brain was getting stranger and stranger, and maybe in a few years, he would become no different from other villagers.

One day, he finally left the village and went to the city to earn a living.

After some hard work, he finally got a place in the city, and he would go back to the village to see his parents during the New Year's holidays. But four years ago, the bad news reached his ears that his parents had been caught in a mudslide in the mountains and both died.

As a result, he never returned to the village until last evening, when his little boy suddenly called him and said that his parents had not been "killed by accident" but "murdered".

*

When I heard this, I was actually a little puzzled, is there still a communication tool with the outside world in such a closed mountain village? So I asked about the plaid shirt on that point. He nodded and said, not to mention the means of communication in the village, not even electricity. Of course, it does not mean that there is no electricity at all, for example, there are several loudspeakers in the village, and these are for electricity. But other than that, apart from the thunder and lightning in the sky and the stinging static electricity in autumn and winter, there is basically no trace of electricity. The way of life of the villagers is quite primitive.

So, where did this call come from? How is the signal guaranteed?

He told me that it was a satellite phone that he had saved up to buy in the city, and that it had a solar charger. Although the latter has a poor charging efficiency and depends on the sky, it is enough to make an occasional phone call. Originally, this phone was given to his parents so that they could exchange feelings with each other from time to time, but since his parents died, the phone has been left untouched in the old house. He didn't transfer the phone to Fa Xiao, it is estimated that the latter took it without permission, and found his number from the record.

After the doubts were cleared, I motioned for him to continue. He was silent for a moment, and then said: "I didn't know at the time that everything Fa Xiao said to me on this phone call, although every sentence was true, but in the final analysis, it was to ask for my life. ”

*

Fa Xiao did not specify on the phone who killed Plaid Shirt's parents and what his motives were, and why Fa Xiao did not tell the truth about Plaid Shirt until today.

He just said to the plaid shirt that if he wanted to know all the truth, go back to Harvest Village, and he would explain everything to his face.

Hearing this, the plaid shirt immediately returned to Harvest Village non-stop.

In fact, there is no suspense in this puzzle at all, why did his parents die? Nine times out of ten, it was sacrificed to the god of grains as a living sacrifice. As for who the murderer is, it doesn't matter anymore.

But why couldn't a plaid shirt anticipate this possibility? He said that because he grew up in the village, he had never heard of the custom of human sacrifice or anything, let alone seen it.

So, is it because the elders in the village didn't tell juniors like Plaid Shirt because they were taboo? It doesn't seem to be. Plaid shirt swore that the elders would definitely not know about this barbaric and bloody custom, and even the village chief would definitely not know about it.

However, it is very paradoxical to reverently shout the clichéd slogan of sacrificing the parents of the plaid shirt to the god Ceres...... It's still these people.

Plaid shirt, without knowing anything, returned to the harvest village after a four-year absence.

Those villagers who had a bad relationship with him actually warmly welcomed him this time, and also arranged a sumptuous banquet. Originally, he wanted to ask Fa Xiao directly after he came back, but he was overwhelmed and even flattered by being made like this. So he decided to finish the meal first and then talk to Fa Xiao privately.

However, as he ate, he suddenly noticed that something was wrong. It wasn't that he had been drugged in the meal, but that he noticed a strange person sitting in the corner of the room.

The man neither ate nor chatted, and sat there without saying a word. According to the plaid shirt's memory, there should be no such person in the village, this is obviously a foreigner. And he was also dressed very strangely, he was wearing a cloak, and if you looked closely, he also carried a knife on his body, exuding the smell of a dangerous person.

Undoubtedly, he is a swordsman.

The swordsman stared at the plaid shirt without saying a word.

The latter was about to ask questions. At this moment, the village chief suddenly walked into the house and asked him if he was satisfied, and if he was not satisfied, he could serve more food.

He said yes.

The village chief nodded at first, and then said to the villagers behind him that it was time to get down to business.

He looked back in confusion, and before he could ask, he was pushed to the ground by the villagers, his hands and feet were tightly tied, and he was thrown into the basement of the house.