Blade and Poetry

I realized that I should no longer passively procrastinate.Such a leisurely and endless life is not difficult, but there are many things in the country that are still waiting for me to solve.I'm going to get a ticket—if I can't, I'll try something else, like diving out of the river, mingling with a caravan, or finding a loophole in the gate guard.

"Let's part ways tonight," I said to Lindsay after the choir had dispersed. "I'm going to get out of here."

"What?" Lin Xi said in a daze, the smile on the corner of her mouth disappeared.He didn't seem to be able to tell if it was a joke or not.

"The Ninth City is not where I am - I want to go back."

"I thought you were going to wander with me forever." Lin Xi paused for a while.

"How old are you, sixteen, seventeen?" I said hard. "It's time for you to go home too. I know you're not an outcast out there—not your upbringing or your clothes." Said. After the cold wave of winter comes, we can't continue this kind of life of eating and sleeping in the open, so sooner or later we have to go our separate ways."

Lin Xi lifted her chin, as if she insisted on being angry with me.

"What do you mean the Ninth City is not where you stay?"

"I don't like the Ninetowns Rangers." I said.

"But there are patrolling guards everywhere," he said, "there are also seven cities, and there are also eight cities."

I was silent for a moment, but decided to whisper to him: "—I am not from Puguo."

He just asked: "Then what are you doing here?"

"I'm here to play," of course I couldn't tell him the truth, "I'm here to see the scenery."

He stood up abruptly and shouted, "How beautiful is the scenery!"

His eyes seem to say: Yes, I know.

I stopped talking and waited for his final reply.

He frowned and looked at me, a cold sadness suddenly appeared on his pale face.

"You want me to go home?" he said angrily. "Come on!—you say it, and they all say it. If you want me to go back, I'll go back."

He groped around in his arms, took out the god statue I carved for him with small stones—although the god statues on the black market have blurred faces, my knife skills are even worse—throwing it heavily on the ground, Turned around and walked in the other direction.

I sighed, sat there for a while, picked up the little idol, and walked towards the place where I used to sleep recently.It was also a narrow alley, a good location that Linxi and I discovered together, with deserted buildings on both sides and few patrolling guards.I leaned against a wall and closed my eyes, thinking about whether to dig the box or explore the path tomorrow.

But I wasn't lucky enough to wake up the next morning as I usually do.At first I was woken up by the temperature on my wrists, as if something cold was weighing heavily on my hands.

I vaguely heard someone say: "Please tell them something, I understand what they mean by letting me stay outside for so long. I am too tired outside, and I will go back and continue to live with my tail between my legs."

I couldn't tell if this was a dream or real, so I opened my eyes a little in a daze.After seeing the scene in front of me clearly, I lost all sleep at once—the alley in the distance seemed to be full of people, each wearing a gray burqa and holding a sword-shaped scepter.There was only one person parked in the gap between the alley and me. He probably changed into clean and expensive clothes, and he looked very different from the daytime.

I felt for a moment that he was still afraid, but he turned around and added an order to the patrolling guards.

"Let me talk to him first." Lin Xi said.

The rangers did not salute him, nor did they look respectful, but heeded the instruction nonetheless.

"Didn't expect that," I said, looking at the shackles on my wrists.The wrist cuffs on my right hand are bigger - I recognize that they are special items for magicians, which can prevent their magic power from flowing into the right hand.

I looked at him: "So, what is the reason for arresting me, Mr. Lin Xixiao who ran away from home?"

"I've known for a long time that you're not from outside the city, or even from Puguo." Lin Xi pursed her lips, "You have exposed too many suspicious things. Your understanding of this place is very shallow. I have seen you pass on the butterfly book, You have used small magic quietly. You are always looking for news about going out of the city. The time of your appearance also coincides with the time when a certain arrest warrant appeared. I have asked the homeless people around in private."

"It's amazing. I didn't guard against you in the details—it was my fault." As I said this, I saw Lin Xi's slumped shoulders tremble slightly, and I couldn't tell whether it was because of anger or what, "But I can know , Since when did you start to doubt me?"

There was some aggrieved eyes in his original eyes, but now he suddenly sneered, lowered his head, leaned into my ear and said, "From the very beginning."

"What?" I was completely stunned.

"The first time I met your eyes. On Gray Lane," Lindsey said, pulling away. "You know what? I used to meet a lot of people when I was a kid. Hundreds of different people every day I come and go, I only need to meet them once to make a name. When I can pick up a paintbrush, I can put anyone I have ever met on paper. I told you' Every pair of eyes is different' - I recognized your eyes at first glance as the ones on the wanted poster. Although I don't know what camouflage you put on to cover the rest - you wizards always have some Little tricks—but I'm sure I can't be wrong. I've never been wrong on this one."

"Don't overestimate the level of my magician." I whispered.

Lin Xi continued: "It took me a lot of effort to convince myself to follow you and see what tricks you were going to do; I showed the courage of this moment. I was always wary of whether you would murder me at first. .”

He talks too much, I think.It's a bit like an arraignment attitude.

"But I didn't hurt you," I said.

"I know you don't," he said after a moment of silence, his eyes suddenly turned red, "but my father is a cowardly piece of shit, why do you still want to steal his crown?"

This time I was dumbfounded.I seem to see the connection of all the oddities in him—his statement that he is one of many children, his antipathy for bishops, his manners and talents not befitting a vagabond... and his eagerness to flee home Mood.

"I didn't steal the crown," I said.

"You've lied to me too many times," he said.

He seemed to be very tired, he swallowed hard, and walked towards the crowd of the Redemption Society with a dull head.The Redeemers took me away with a noose around my neck, and I was shoved all the way to a church-like place, sent straight into it by many hands.

I thought I'd have to go into a cell, face a judge or torturer, and let them try to wring the truth out of me, but it turned out to be much better than I expected.I lined up with about a dozen people, each with their hands bound.Under the bright lights of the church, their expressions were either ignorant or frightened; on both sides of this vertical line of people, there were dozens of people who could dress up from a distance.On the podium at the very front of the church stands the priest.Every 10 minutes, he would call one person from the line to interrogate, leaned down, spoke softly, and instructed the person to wait on the right hand side when the interrogation was over.Others were sent after me, and they all lined up behind me.

Full of doubts, I was called to the presence of the priest.Because I was looking up at him from this angle, I could see his face under the hood: gray temples, drooping eyelids.He didn't ask my name either, he just spoke flatly, as if this matter was just a cliché to him.

"Where were you on June [-]nd?" he asked.There is no case file spread out on the podium, only a portrait of me on the wanted warrant.He didn't even look like he had the heart to ask my name.

"I don't know exactly where it is," I quickly compiled the words, "but in early June, I was walking around the Black Cat Bridge, occasionally doing some selling business to make a living. Sometimes I went to the Lime Water Cave, and at night Sleeping in Gray Lane. The cheap perfume sold well at that time, and many people passed by there. I saw that the resident Peggy and Edingen’s business was doing well, and I was tempted.”

"Perfume!" the priest muttered meaninglessly, and he asked me a few other unsophisticated questions.He then quizzed me on a few words in the scriptures—fortunately, when I was bored, I read the scriptures privately made by black businessmen a few times to pass the time, so I was barely able to respond without digressing.After the questioning ended, the priest raised his right hand and motioned for me to wait with the previous group of people.

This group of waiting people is no longer required to line up neatly.All the people on one side of the podium were quietly facing their final fate, with their hands hanging down and overlapping, and their faces were full of uneasiness and apprehension.I was expecting everyone to stand here after the interrogation, but I noticed that the priest raised his left hand twice, so the two of them moved to the side opposite us.One of them hesitantly claimed that he was illiterate when the priest asked about the scriptures; the other was shaking like a sieve, and couldn't even answer the basics clearly.

Standing in this close position, I could finally hear what the priest said.I found that his questions to everyone were the same, and there was no preference for one or the other, which made me feel strange.

It stands to reason that this would not be where I am now if all of what Lindsey said had reached the ears of some judge—whose evidence is solid, and even if it is not convincing, an “unloved king The testimonies of "The Unfavored Son of My Son" are enough to nail me, a rootless outsider, into the foundation of crime.But judging from the current situation in the church, it is nothing more than a group of ordinary suspects who are taking turns to be interrogated.The priest wasn't even aware of my disguise.

I felt a little relieved, and thought with a headache: Maybe Lin Xi didn't want to kill me, but just used it to teach me a willful lesson on the eve of my departure.

When I woke up in the early morning, I felt the cold rising from the handcuffs, which completely froze my whole heart at that moment, but now there was another small crack in the layer of ice, and from there I could finally live Send out some feelings.

Not bad - I think.This time it wasn't that bad.

The priest's next move confirmed my guess.He called the gray-robed believers on the side and asked him to take these "weak and innocent lost people" on the right to the worship room for reflection, and after we prayed, they were locked in a prison for a few days.There was a person beside me who wept immediately after the priest spoke, thanking God for His grace incessantly.This cry was accompanied by a low, dry howl from another direction.When I was being driven to the ceremony room, I looked back, and saw the two people on the other side were being led out of the door with their arms intertwined, and one of them was falling with weak knees, so the Redemption Society members simply dragging him along.

We knelt side by side on the kneeling benches in the ceremony room, and a believer said: "For our supreme God, the benevolent Lord."

What he said was like a signal, and for a moment everyone raised their heads and began to pray.The wall we were facing had a huge stone god statue, and following the movements of others, I looked up at the face of the sculpture.

This is the first time I have entered a church in Puguo in a month, and it is also the first time I have seen clearly the face of their new God.I was chanting a passage of the Lord's Prayer that I was already familiar with, but at this moment my heart was turned into a turbulent sea.

It wasn't some kind, strong, middle-aged face I'd expected—it was a face I'd seen before.I still remember his beige hair in my memory. Compared with him, this statue lacks only those thin glasses.I think of the smile he showed by the lake, somewhat relieved and compassionate, very much like the expression of this sculpture.

He had a name I first heard during the Vanguard test: Wise Floyd.

Many doubts I have accumulated are suddenly clear at this moment.For example, why did Pu Kingdom suddenly promote religion in 797, and it was quickly accepted by the people? If this happens to happen after they suffered a disastrous defeat in a certain war, the population is sparsely populated, the social structure is crumbling, and the people urgently need to recover from despair. When saved, then it makes sense to introduce religion to put people in faith.If the wise man in Pu country had a certain status equivalent to theocracy as shown in his memory before being captured, then it is not surprising that the people of Pu country adapted to the new god religion quickly.only--

I looked at the sculpture fixed on a high place again, and felt a slight shudder in my heart.

Who made such an absurd and bold move to cast a person who was alive more than 60 years ago into a god of a religion practiced throughout the country?

It's not a very neat step.It might even be self-defeating for a generation that actually saw a sage himself. There is no god hidden behind the name of the wise man, and it does not have the omnipotent hint behind those high and ethereal unknowns.

Archbishop Galenno undoubtedly has the most suspicious points—referring to the historical fact that he deprived the kingship in a short period of time, I even firmly believe that behind the scale of the new gods from the initial popularity to the current development, there must be such things everywhere. The shadow of a bishop's plan.

I tried to recall every detail I saw in the test, and then my intuition tapped on the unresolved part of my heart, and suddenly the little apprentice's name "Aixental" and the history book "Galen Nuo" connected together.

I couldn't stop thinking about it: If Aixenthal planned all this after leading the remnants of the army back to the country after the defeat, while persuading the king to promote the god religion, while gathering the power in his hands day and night, six years later The wings are full, and the king who gave them military orders was pushed down... If the past I saw in the vanguard test is true, the scene that was inserted abruptly was once a part of history.

Azenthal - that's a name.Could his full name be Aixental Galenno?

Did he turn the wise man whom he admired and loved, who finally left alone, into a god admired by tens of millions of people?

I can't imagine how the angry and confused young man by the Weiming Lake turned into a scheming archbishop with the overall situation in his hands.During the one month I spent in Puguo, I already had a deep understanding: this new god religion is only partially benevolent in its bones, covered with the skin of saving all living beings, and stuffed with the flesh and blood of foolish believers.It is not born with the light of benevolence, but only with the claws of control.I even felt that that night when I sneaked in, the bishop of Galenno didn't really care about the people around him as the coachman said.He sealed the bustling window facing the donation point, but left the window facing the thin lake light wide open.Rather than saying that he has all sentient beings in his heart, it is better to say that he is like a lonely fanatic; his way is essentially contrary to the purpose of God's scriptures, but sometimes picks up moral laws contradictoryly, just like the piece of God he admires. A clumsy imitation performed by altars.

I remembered the sigh of the Galenor at the window as I crouched under the table.But then I remembered something else: how young I remembered him that night.His exposed chin was not shriveled, the skin on the backs of his hands was not slack and soft—and his voice was different from that of an old man.And the real Aixental, or Galenno, should be over 70 years old by now.

Of course, there is a possibility, and that is the existence of memory bias under extreme stress; maybe Galenno does not appear old, but still maintains the appearance of a middle-aged person, and my memory pushes this age forward.After all, it is impossible for a young man to sit firmly on the position of Archbishop of Puguo.

The people from Puguo who were kneeling beside me stood up one after another.I realized that some believers might have just issued an order, but I was too immersed in my speculation process, so I didn't hear it.We were taken out of the ceremony room, our hands were still bound, and we walked in another direction.

I touched the arm of the person next to me during this brief confusion, and took the opportunity to ask, "Does our god have a name?"

He seemed to be taken aback, but maybe because of the lenient punishment, he seemed to be in good spirits.