In the mosque, the old man Ibn sat cross-legged in the clean room before Imar's ceremony, dressed in an ivory robe.

Two young acolytes were putting on a white cloth for the old man of Ibn, and unlike the usual cloths that the congregation used to wrap in sackcloth, the high priest Imal was to be fastened to a soft lambskin hat and then carefully circumnavigated by the two acolytes for seven turns.

These seven turns represent the seven tenets of a Zoroastrian priest and the seven vows of all Zoroastrian people: to believe in the one Lord Ahura Mazda, to trust in the will of the angels, to believe in the teachings of the Zoroastrian book Avestria, to abide by the teachings of the canonized sage Zarathustra, to believe that light will triumph over darkness, to believe in the final judgment of the end times, and to believe that everything is the predestined trajectory of the Lord.

The next six turns are the ones that these acolytes who are called "Mred" and are not even considered scattered scripture teachers cannot interfere.

According to the four hadeeths of the Avesta, every Zoroastrian priest who becomes an immaar has six responsibilities -

The responsibility to lead people to recite the name of Ahura Mazda.

It is the duty of instructing people to pray five times a day to the One Lord for the light.

The duty to protect people from the temptation of darkness to covet desires.

Teach people about the responsibility to give money and goods to support a sacred cause.

The responsibility of leading people to the country of Sabbath to worship ****.

It is the duty of the leaders to wage a holy war against the infidels who believe in the demons of darkness.

The old man took out an orange-red agate with the inscription of the Avesta verse and placed it in the center of the thirteen-week headcloth, which he put on and spread out the old parchment scroll on the reading shelf in front of him.

The two acolytes respectfully withdrew from the clean room, not bothering the Great Imar to revisit the prayer one last time before evening prayer. The two young acolytes were of the same origin, and their parents had a lot of money during their lifetimes, but after a sudden illness, they made a strange will. The will states that he donated his only son to the mosque along with his family property.

The old man Ibn took great care of these two children, who were dedicated to the only master, and he taught them the language of Sabbath, and made them read the Bible from an early age, fasted, fasted, and did not even speak Chinese. For the acolyte, knowing the Sabbath language, plus a little Tocharian language, which is common to the people of the Western Regions, is sufficient. As for the Chinese language and the Chinese language, this is the language of the pagans who do not follow the domination, and the devout parishioners should not understand this, and if possible, it would be better to shut down all the Confucian schools in Liangzhou that teach in Luoyang Mandarin.

The old man looked down intently at the parchment scroll, but this precious time for revision was quickly interrupted by another uninvited guest.

On the other side of the chamber stood a brazier, from which flames rose and the ghost face that the old man Ibn called "Myryut" emerged.

"Ibn the Great Imar," he unceremoniously called the old man by his name, and said with the ghost face in the fire, "Today's daytime incident is a warning, and there is a big problem with that soldier who passed through Blackwater. Either this soldier is accompanied by a monk, or this soldier is a monk himself. But either way, this guy seems to be coming for us, and the Lord is planning a big thing to the west, and he can't go wrong at this moment. ”

For the "lord" in the mouth of this fire demon, the old man Ibn showed some respect, but the eyes that looked at the fire demon still carried some mockery: "That Han official who passed by, whether he was a priest or not, I couldn't touch him casually. In Blackwater City, the strength of our sectarians is still very weak, and we can only fight civilly, not martial. Killing officials and rebelling is not yet the task of the Diocese of Blackwater City. ”

Seeing that this fire demon was about to attack, the old man Ibn waved his hand as if to soothe: "But I have asked the people of the county court, this soldier is going to continue to go west, isn't it more convenient to have a diocese in Dunhuang?"

Listening to the old man Iben's explanation, the fire demon showed a thoughtful look on his face, but before he could think about the stakes, the old man Iben had already waved his hand: "If there is no problem, you can go and send a message to the diocese along the road to the west, now is the time for vespers, and the old man will not accompany him." ”

Leaving the clean room to the fire demon, who was still thinking hard, the old man Ibn, dressed in an ivory robe and a headcloth, pushed open the door of the clean room and walked all the way to the prayer hall of the mosque.

At this moment, on the felt carpets all over the prayer hall, many parishioners in white clothes and white heads were already kneeling.

Among these people, some of them were Hu merchants who came to Han from the Western Regions, and some were descendants of Hu merchants from the Western Regions, and it was natural for them to believe in Zoroastrianism. But there are also some people, just to marry the daughter of a religious family, voluntarily give up their ancestral ancestral relatives and become the inverted son-in-law of the sect, and there are also some people whose whole family is Han Chinese, but they feel that the religious people have a lot of preferential treatment, so they simply bring their families into Zoroastrianism to eat food.

Of course, there are also many thugs who steal chickens and dogs on the streets, hoping to rely on the protection of the mosque to avoid the trouble of lawsuits.

Old man Ibn approached the altar of fire after glancing around at the kneeling parishioners with the loving eyes of a herdsman, especially those who had been beaten less severely during the day for running into a foreign official. He threw a piece of tamarix wood cut into the shape of a flame into the altar and recited the prayer of vespers in the Sabbath before he spoke slowly:

"In the name of the only Lord of universal mercy, all praise be to our Lord. May the Lord bless the sage Zarathuthra and his disciples who guide us, and may the Lord bless every believer. Today, a parishioner left us early because of the Lord's arrangement. He was a faithful and innocent man who studied the Revelation of God, and when he died, may the Lord cleanse him of the remaining darkness and lead him into the world of light. ”

As this began, there was a buzz in the worship hall. Blackwater City is no better than a capital city like Luoyang, and the news of the inexplicable death of a scripture teacher during the day has spread at this moment, and many gangsters who are not so seriously injured even show their wounds to the people who are familiar with them.

In the midst of the chaos, the old man Ibn stretched out his hand and pressed it downward, and the chaotic chatter stopped. The parishioners in the prayer hall of the entire mosque stared at the leader of the Zoroastrian Workshop with burning eyes, expecting what powerful words he would say.