Outside the slum orphanage in the Xicheng District of the capital city of Divine Grace, three 14-year-old children, two men and one woman, shivered in the cold wind. Just before half an hourglass, they were expelled from the orphanage for stealing food outside and ruining the orphanage's reputation. Such a reason may have deceived Xiaoshan and Bai Yang, but the precocious Jim had already seen everything, and there was only one reason why the three of them were expelled, and that was that they were too old.

This orphanage, where the three of them have lived since childhood, Jim has long been familiar with it, not only in daily life and annual welfare, but also in the spring and autumn of each year, and from time to time the small Mass is held. And after each mass, the priest of the Cult who presides over the ceremony chooses one or two children, and although the mothers of the orphanage describe the children who are taken away as the lucky ones, Jim never sees a trace of love in the eyes of the priest who leads people away, and he is inexplicably resistant to such things. Not only did he never cooperate, but the priest who presided over Mass shook his head and pretended to be stupid when he asked anything, but he also succeeded in convincing his two friends to be like him, and to this day, like a few older brothers and sisters, who had to go to the streets to find food because of the reduction of food, and then were kicked out of the orphanage for various reasons.

"Jim, I'm hungry. Xiaoshan, who was a head taller than Jim, rubbed his belly, his voice was pleading, and his eyes looked like a large dog eager to caress him. "Give me another little black fruit!"

"Do as I said, stand quiet!" said Jim. Just now, Jim explained that the two of them had to put on the most pitiful appearance, and wait until the sun went down and the bell rang three times to make sure that the orphanage would not pity the three of them and send them a dinner, and then they would leave for the secret base.

The secret base was discovered by chance of being taken out of the orphanage sooner or later, and Jim, who was often wandering the streets, stumbled upon while catching rats in the slums to eat, and it seemed to be a place where some slave trader stocked. Half above ground and half underground, there is a small opening that can be drilled into the high place of the foot, as if it is the entrance to the drainage channel at the corner of the road in the main city.

The strange thing is that there is a vine plant that climbs all over the walls, and there are many magical things. The first is evergreen, and the second is that although the opening is close at hand, not a single branch grows out. Finally, there are small black fruits hanging on the vines, and Xiaoshan is longing for them, and they taste very good with roasted rat meat.

Xiaoshan was reprimanded, shrunk his neck, and his face became more bitter, but in terms of effect, he also achieved the goal of pretending to be pitiful. As the sun began to set in the west, the roofs of houses large and small were stained with blood. The shadow of the orphanage's low wall crept up the calves of the trio, then their thighs, and when they reached their lower abdomen, Jim draped the rotten skin vest he had picked up over the little girl named Bai Yang.

"I'm not cold, ......" As soon as Bai Yang's words came out, they were exposed, just because they were mixed with the sound of teeth colliding at high speed.

"Don't talk nonsense, dress!" said Jim, but his mind began to think about abandoning the plan to pretend to be pathetic.

At this moment, a woman dressed slightly thicker than the three approached the orphanage, and was obviously stunned when she saw the three of them, but she did not stop. After putting down a small swaddling baby at the entrance of the orphanage, he walked away quickly, hiding his face from the side of his face the whole time, so that the three children could not see their faces.

In fact, this is completely due to the lack of experience of abandoned babies and excessive caution, the three children have seen such things many times in their short lives, and they can even guess that they should eat the same, so they have no interest in taking a second look. But probably because hunger stimulates the brain, today's Xiaoshan questioned this for the first time: "Jim, why did you say that our mother gave birth to us, but we were left here, doesn't the scriptures say that mothers love their children?"

Jim had long doubted this and launched an investigation, but the conclusions were not happy.

The description of the role of the mother in the ancient tree is indeed very great and desirable, and even when defining charisma, it is partly compared to maternal love. However, the 20th paragraph of chapter 4 also reads: Because the child is a pure and unbeaten-chested treasure given by God, it must be given birth after pregnancy, and it must be nurtured after childbirth, otherwise it will fall into hell and suffer eternal fire.

Considering that most of the women in the slums are half-starved and barely starved to death, it is obviously impossible to feed a small child, so they take advantage of a loophole: let others raise them, which can barely be regarded as the psychological comfort of not going to hell and being burned forever.

However, even if these half-inferential and half-speculative reasons were spoken, Yishan's brain would not be able to understand them, and he would only waste time by asking endless questions, so Jim used the universal answer he learned from the mothers in the orphanage: "I'll tell you when you grow up." ”

"Oh. Xiaoshan nodded, and sure enough, he didn't ask any more.

The three of them waited for a while, and when the first bell rang, an old woman carried the abandoned baby into the orphanage, without looking at the three of them, and when the second and third bells rang, no one took half a step out of the orphanage. Jim knew that the plan had failed, and that time had been wasted, but that if one of the three of them fell ill, it would be all the same. So without hesitation, he said hello, and according to the agreement, he took the two of them to the secret base for the first time.

After turning around and coming to the vicinity of the entrance, Jim walked by casually to make sure that it was still empty, and then beckoned the two to come over, and then went into the secret base together. In the darkness, only the outline of the room could be faintly seen, but there was no magic lamp in the orphanage, and the three of them had long been accustomed to this, so they first plugged the exit with the prepared straw, and then snuggled together at the base of the wall, and began to discuss their future lives.

It was said to be a discussion, but according to convention, it was just Jim gushing, Bai Yang asked for the details, and Xiaoshan kept echoing the 'um', but the other two knew that this thing didn't understand much at all, and they couldn't remember it, and they needed to tell it three times when it came to the end.

"According to what I've heard from the streets, there will be a big celebration in the main city in three days, and there will be free food, so for the time being, it will only be enough to survive the day and a half. There are small black fruits here, and it shouldn't be difficult to catch some mice. But this is not a long-term solution, we have to find something to do. Jim's voice was flat and untouched by the howling wind, for it was already a question he had been thinking about for a long time.

"Do you want me to go out to pick up customers?" Bai Yang asked weakly.

"It's a solution, but even if you become the best business in this slum, you won't be able to feed three people, so you can't veto. Jim said.

"So what should I do? steal or rob? But Lai Pihu ...... those people."

"Even if Lai Pihu agrees to let us join, we can't do it. Not to mention how much can be stolen from this slum, most of the harvest has to be handed over to him, which is simply in vain. It's better to wait for two or three years, Xiaoshan's body is taller, and he can fight some and replace it directly. ”

When Xiaoshan heard his name, he let out a heavy 'um' in a deep voice.

"My plan was to find a way to go to the artisan quarter, where not only are you richer, but people are also dumber. ”

"But we can't get in, right?" Bai Yang questioned.

"It's very simple, just get decent clothes, dress up as clean as the children in there, and pay attention to the words you use. To imitate the priest who celebrates Mass, not the old lady and the slum gangsters, you know, and the celebration in three days is a great opportunity to steal clothes. ”

Xiaoshan hummed heavily, and Bai Yang hesitated for a moment, then nodded slightly, and the messy hair of the shawl rubbed on the shoulders of the two on the left and right. The general direction was set, and some details were discussed, and the topic gradually drifted away, from which women were most popular in the slums, to the style of dressing in the artisan quarter, and finally the reason for the celebration in the main town.

"I heard that he won the war and took back the sacred relics belonging to the gods from the evil magicians. Jim said this, dismissing this reason, after all, if God is truly omniscient and omnipotent, how can he lose something important.

Because of his miserable life and the indifferent expression of the priest of Mass when he took people away, Jim had long had no good feelings for the Cult, although his words and deeds could be exactly as required in the ancient scriptures, and he never said blasphemous words publicly, but he was only unsure whether he would really go to heaven and hell after death. If it exists, although it does not want to exchange Yishun I for entering heaven, it does not want to go to hell and be burned forever.

"When we grow up, it would be nice if we had the opportunity to participate in such holy wars, so that if we die in battle, we can avoid the suffering of a lifetime and go directly to heaven. Bai Yang muttered.

After a long time, Jim squeezed his body to get more warmth, and then said, "Yes, I hope so." "It sounds like a desire to participate in the holy war, but only Jim himself understands that what he hopes for is that what the gods really say in the Book of Trees will be fulfilled by the gods. "But ordinary people are not qualified to participate in the holy war, they are all priests and guardians of God, don't expect extravagantly. ”

"It's also a sin to have too high expectations, and I'm going to do it three more times tomorrow in the morning. Bai Yang said, tilted his little head, and fell asleep on Jim's shoulder.

And just as Jim was about to fall asleep, he suddenly felt a burst of light through his eyelids, as if he was facing the sun with his eyes closed. When he opened his eyes suddenly, he saw that the vines that crawled all over the walls of the room were shining, comparable to the magic street lamps in the main city, and in the center of the room, a black figure slowly appeared.

Then I heard the figure say something I didn't understand, and then the back of my neck hurt, and my eyes turned black, and I didn't know who was going to do it.

I don't know how long it took, but Jim woke up and found that he was still in the semi-underground secret base, the vines no longer glowing, and there was no black figure, just a strong man sitting in the middle of the room. Shaking his body slightly, he realized that he was tied in a sore feeling in his legs, turned his head to look around, and saw that although the two friends around him were also tied, their chests were rising and falling, and they were still breathing, and they were immediately relieved.

Jim's movements obviously caught the other man's attention, and the strong man got up and tapped on the side wall of the room, and the sound of heavy stones grinding against each other sounded, and a small inconspicuous stone door was pushed open. Half the room was dim, half the stone door was rare, and Jim, who had been probing many times, had never found it. In Jim's astonished gaze, there were two people, a man and a woman, the man with ordinary black hair and yellow skin, and the woman with short black skin and short hair, who were more beautiful than the woman with the best business in this slum, no, it could even be said that there was no comparison at all.

"Hello, little brother, what's your name?" came out of the dark-skinned woman's mouth in an egrosque accent, reminding Jim of the devout pilgrims who had come from the remote mountains.

Jim did not hesitate to report his home, and by the way, he also said the names of the two friends, and then said with the most sincere expression: "We are orphans in a nearby orphanage, because we missed the curfew because of fun, we found this empty house by chance, and thought that no one used it, so we wanted to sleep all night and leave......"

"Brother Jim, please slow down, my Evsen doesn't speak very well. The dark-skinned woman interrupted, but Jim was stunned by the revelations, could he speak Ifsen, was he from a more remote part of the theocratic country, or was it ...... Foreigners? Noting that although the three of them were ordinary civilians, their faces were ruddy, and they didn't look like they had been hungry and cold for a long time, but they were not wearing green clothes like the priests of the Divine Religion or other big figures, and they were even more sure of their thoughts: foreigners. And it is definitely not a good thing for foreigners to sneak into the holy city in disguise, this time there will be big trouble, and I am afraid that I will get out alive.

In this way, Jim completed the initial communication with the self-proclaimed butterfly woman, and when the other two friends woke up, they had reached a deal to loosen the tie and eat without making any noise. And when the three children had a full meal, what happened next was again beyond Jim's expectations, Dieda actually took out an ancient tree scripture, and asked the three of them for teachings word by word on the condition of winter clothes, and translated it to the black-haired and yellow-skinned man named Jiao Ming, and judging from the interaction between the two, the latter obviously had a higher status.

Half a day passed like this, when the red of the setting sun was reflected in the small skylight, after dinner, everything continued in the light of the magic lamp.

Jim found that the two of them were quite strange about the content of the Ancient Tree Sutra, the most important thing was actually the creation and the end of the world, followed by the daily behavior precepts, but they were not interested in the two articles of heaven and hell, you must know that these two parts are the most common words of priests and grandmothers. Another little strange thing is that before dinner, Lord Jiao Ming actually solemnly asked Dieda to ask the three children if they ate pork, and after receiving a positive answer, they still didn't believe it, until the three children ate pork, then they laughed, making everyone in the room baffled.

It wasn't until late at night, after explaining the entire ancient tree scripture, that Jim finally got the courage to ask if he could let the three of them walk, but unsurprisingly received a negative answer.

"But the grandmothers from the orphanage might come to me. Jim tried to trick him.

"Then let the grandmothers who have found it have a few good meals. Butterfly replied with a smile.