Gift

Not long after returning to the room, the wing troops brought the remaining repaired materials.

During this period, there was also a Wu Buqu who fell into a coma and then woke up.

"Master, this is the number of 'Wu', please take a look."

Some of the soldiers in the wing department were not so noisy. The one who was reporting at this time was very methodical. After putting the paper on the table, he said no more and walked out of the conference room.

Qin Lan yawned, picked up the paper, flipped through it, and put it back on the table.

"See for yourself."

"The common people living at the foot of the Seven Gorges Mountains probably turned to this plant to worship 'Lu' for this reason."

Xiao Yingzhu had no intention of looking at the information first, so Jiang Nian just reached out and took it.

It was exactly as Qin Lan said. The people there had been receiving gifts from "Lu" for many years, so they believed in "Lu"'s words and almost always followed his advice.

Therefore, when 'Lu' proposed the need for this kind of "mineral grass" to believe in, these people immediately did so.

As for things like warding off evil spirits and driving away ghosts, they were also fabricated by people hiding in the "Lu" statue.

After reading the notes on the data and the information related to plants and the transportation of "witches", Jiang Nian silently put the paper down and sighed softly.

"Since the people were deceived, when the statue of 'Lu' collapsed, did the people realize that the god they had always believed in was a disguised one?"

"They call transporting these plants 'transporting 'Wu'. I guess this 'Wu' is what the Wu people are preparing to aggravate the plague in Cang County this time."

Xiao Yingzhu tapped the table, a rare hint of relief emerging from her relaxed features: "Once we've properly resolved what we need to do, the deeply buried truth will naturally come to light."

"When they believed, we were unable to intervene because we arrived too late. But with this epidemic, we can still prevent tragedy from happening."

Jiang Nian was silent for a while, then lowered his eyes to look at the words that looked like dismembered human body parts.

The Wu Mi people have always been proud of cutting meat to feed crows. The more meat they cut, the more money they get as a reward, and the higher their status among the Wu Mi people.

These Wu Mi people who hide in the caves of Qixia Mountain and steal mines and pretend to be gods to defraud money will deceive the people living at the foot of the mountain into offering sacrifices to their children on time by planting money for good fortune.

These children, who are only ten years old, will make up for what the Wu Mi people lack.

Because they were afraid of having their flesh cut and the pain it would cause, they dug flesh from children to replace it.

They were afraid that the people above Wu Mi who were researching those strange powder substances would take them for experiments, so they took these children for experiments.

This method of cheating people out of money and making up for the suffering they had to endure among their own people really made them feel the sweetness, so they became more and more aggressive.

Their desires are not only to satisfy the villages below the Qixia Mountain mine, but they also reach out further, using their skills of brainwashing and deceiving people into joining the organization, and taking those who are desperate or who happen to pass by here into their hiding places.

By the way, they let the common people spread their good words to deceive more people into coming to offer sacrifices, and then they continue to get these... young children.

"The people who pretend to deceive the people, that is, 'Lu', don't they have enough manpower?"

Jiang Nian frowned and pointed at the decomposed part of the human body.

"The markings next to these limbs and...internal organs are ages, right?" The characters above are all Dong Lan's, and she couldn't understand them because she had never seen them before.

Qin Lan hummed, then said solemnly, "These are their unique characters for marking their ages. They are indeed children."

"...They only tie up and dismember children. Is it because they don't have enough manpower? Or is it because they need to develop those things among the Wumi people?"

The page in his hand was filled with data about how many 'God-given ones' had been obtained on which days and years - this was a beautiful name given by the Wu Mi people to the common people. They advertised that as long as they offered children of the right age, these children would be blessed by God and repay their parents for their upbringing.

According to the text marked above, the ages of these children mostly range from six to nine years old.

"'God's Gift' has many uses. Judging from the years back then, those were still famine years in Donglan, but not as severe as it is now."

"The Wumi Clan is a cult even more deviant than a cult. Their use of human flesh not only involves raising crows and using their heads for experiments, but also involves using them as 'vegetable people' to be eaten or sold. Children, being weak, are the first choice for 'vegetable people'."

After the children were cooked, their flesh was tender and even their bones could be cooked until they were soft and chewy. To the Wumi people, these children were definitely more edible than wild vegetables, leaves, bark, and roots.

…The chance of death is simply too high.

"Besides being used as a 'vegetable person', it could also be used as a prize to reward those who have collected the most Blessing Money... The purpose is similar."

Qin Lan's expression was not very good. People who did not agree with the ideas of the cult could not imagine more similar things.

"But the 'God-given' in this document isn't necessarily all...dead beings. Some of them were able to walk out of that basement alive."

He pointed to the other side of the document.

Jiang Nian turned the paper over and looked down at where Qin Lan was pointing.

The records here are incomplete, not because they have not been repaired, but because the original recorder was hesitant to write, and stains and ink stuck to the paper, obscuring some data.

"These are the children who were not separated at the time. Perhaps due to external factors, they were originally the last in line, but changed their minds midway and kept these children."

Is there any other use?

Even if he walked out of that basement and arrived at the Wu Mi clan's headquarters in Donglan, it would be difficult to escape the possibility of becoming a 'vegetable person', a test subject, or a gifted crow.

Unless you use your own intelligence and talent to gain a place among the crowd.

This is too difficult for children under ten years old.

There are many people who regret joining the Wu Mi people, but once they have taken those formulas, even God cannot save them.

The lower class people in the Wu Mi crowd usually use those recipes to replace normal diet - first, they will not feed them the same meals as ordinary people, and second, these recipes are very cost-effective and labor-saving, and can also easily control the nerves of these people, preventing them from escaping or resisting.

And once you take it... you will never be able to climb above the Wu Mi people in this life.

This is a vicious cycle.

Unless you do something that surprises the people above you, you may be able to skip the smoking step and move on to raising crows.

"Will they do publicity?" Jiang Nian shifted his gaze from the information and looked at the two people opposite him. "Children doing publicity... should be very common, right?" In this era.

Xiao Yingzhu responded indifferently, then shook her head slightly.

"There are a lot of human traffickers. If we let children go out to promote the cause, they are likely to rob the traffickers."

Go out for ten promotions and come back with two.

Some of them starved to death, some were kidnapped and sold, and some were beaten to death.

Even if you inhale the powder, it can't relieve your hunger and you can only be on the verge of survival.

On the way from Pingzhou to Cangjun, Jiang Nian also saw children being beaten and scolded to death for snatching food bought by others.

If we let them go out to promote it, it would indeed not be reliable enough.

People cannot control their nature of wanting to survive.

So, to put it another way, the purpose of these children is still to be "vegetable people", to feed humans and crows.

"..." Jiang Nian couldn't imagine what other way out these children would have except to walk step by step towards impending death. He sighed and stopped thinking about it.

These events that happened on paper happened so long ago that even the edges of the pages have turned yellow.

In the past, I had only heard about it from other people and had never experienced it in real life.

But now that she was truly involved in and touched upon this kind of thing, even when looking at the words written with ink, she couldn't suppress the feeling of powerlessness rising from the bottom of her heart.

Even if you feel sympathy and an urgent need for help, there are people around you who can help.

Nor can we save the child who is separated by time.

All she could do was sigh after seeing the information.

If it weren't for the restoration work of the tribe, I'm afraid we wouldn't even be able to see the words on this piece of paper.

It has long been drowned in time.

"Since these people are only tying up children, doesn't that mean they don't have enough manpower?"

Qin Lan thought for a moment, pulled back some information that Jiang Nian had not picked up, and began to search through it.

After finding what he was looking for, he turned it over and showed it to Jiang Nian.

"Some civilians were influenced by the sect at the time and questioned the existence of the gods here, so they organized a group to go and see."

This piece of paper records that the members of the Wu Mi tribe discovered that there were many civilians who were looking for possible places to hide people besides the statue.

These civilians were first influenced by the theory of equality of all beings, and then went on to ask the sect whether there were gods in this world. If there were gods, why didn't they hide the famine and plague, but just let them grow on the earth.

Given Shouzan's tendency to spread rumors everywhere, his response at that time was most likely negative.

That's why some civilians went to 'Lu' to scout the area.

At first, the Wumi members couldn't understand why someone would disrespect the gods, but when they figured it out...

That was the day the statue collapsed.

"The collapse of the 'Lu' statue was man-made." Qin Lan lowered his eyes thoughtfully, looking at the creases on the paper caused by panic.

"After all, if such a tall statue collapses under normal circumstances, it is usually a major natural disaster."

"But at that time it only caused some local collapses." For example, in the mine.

"The Seven Gorges Mine must have had some unstable factors to begin with." It was just that the fall of the statue accelerated the collapse of the mine.

Jiang Nian lowered his eyes and looked at the information in his hand.

"These plants have now been moved to Donglan... but they are still mining in the mines. This means that the current sources of plague they have are not enough to give them peace of mind."

Otherwise, there would be no need to take such a great risk of being caught and work overtime day and night.

"So we're doing both at the same time?"

Xiao Yingzhu lowered his eyes to look at the pages of paper and nodded slightly: "After we find the way, when you come back from Zuihualou, we will go to the mine together."

"The plants there are the ones you are most familiar with."

…

The use of that "mineral grass" is different from that of modern ones. The only similarity is their appearance.

But if it has a habit of liking minerals, it should be easy to find it in the mines.

Thinking that there are still some mines that have not been discovered in this era, Jiang Nian paused for a moment and then nodded.

"That's fine, but if Huandu doesn't have enough minerals, even if we find a new mine, it will take time to mine."

"The amount of 'mineral grass' in just one mine is too small. It's unlikely to meet demand. Besides holding back the Goddess and Meng Jian, we also need to ensure the supply of 'mineral grass' and mineral resources."

"Can you confirm when Donglan will launch an attack?"