I'm working on infrastructure in Xihuan

Looking from the river near the almshouse, you can see the spire and high roof of the main temple.

In the early morning, at noon, and at sunset, the bell tower will ring with dull and heavy bells. The buzzing sound seems to come from the distant sky. When people hear the bell, they will stop their work. Pray for a blessing of light.

Didn’t Joan before? I don’t know why, she was very afraid of hearing the bell, and every time she heard it, she would feel a sense of sadness and depression in her heart, and she was so sad that she wanted to shed tears in her eyes.

Now she kind of knows, should it? Because the bells in the Clocktower are also rung at weddings.Every time she heard the bell, she would think of the wedding she had seen before. The bride with expressionless eyes and sad eyes was married off by her parents and exchanged for a calf.

The calf is a bride price, doesn't Joan think about her? The verb "exchange" should be used.People in the village are all talking about how precious this bride price is. The bride is going to marry into it? The husband's family has a rich life, it is the best, and it is a good marriage that was found only under the blessing of the God of Light.

So Qiao An didn't know whether the bride with a sad face in her memory was just an illusion, or it was actually a good kiss that the girls in the village envied, and the bride was married with a happy face.

But what? Come to think of it, the husband her father wanted to make for her, the man who made her want to throw up, in the eyes of those people in the village, isn't he also a good husband who can't be found even with a lantern?

Joan was sitting by the river, mechanically scrubbing the diapers from the relief center, and thinking about something.She can't recall the details of the wedding that she saw when she was a child. She only remembers the bride's face under the veil, which was wiped as white as death, and the cold atmosphere that made her start to cry for no reason.

Looking back now, she still felt slightly chilled all over, but fortunately, the fear of the bell had disappeared as she put on the white cloth.

Joan was wearing an outfit similar to that of the girl Lucien saw in the temple. The plain skirt was rolled up for the convenience of work. Her hair was wrapped in white linen, and some short fringes were exposed at the edge. hair.

Compared with when she was at the construction site, she seemed to be a different person, and the light in her eyes was completely different.

Joan was very grateful to the Lord Lawrence who rescued her. When she recklessly escaped from the team back home and was about to freeze to death in the wilderness, Master Lawrence picked her up and gave her food and a place to sleep. , and took her in for several days at her request, and did not send her back to the village by force.

Fortunately, the God of Light had blessed him. Master Lawrence was a decent man, and seeing her situation of nowhere to go, he didn't take advantage of her. Instead, he took care of her for a period of time and sent her to a relief center near the Temple of Light.

Joan had heard about the relief center. When the stewards of the lord came to the village to collect labor, a few orphans who were left alone were taken there. There is a good place for church priests to heal the sick, but it is said in the village that it is the place where the lord wants to save some food and take the useless old, weak, sick and disabled to be executed and buried. .

There are also adults who scare children and say "send you to the relief center".

Joan also believed the rumors for a time, but she didn't know how ridiculous the rumors were until she went to the relief center herself.

The conditions in the relief center are terrible, even worse than her dormitory on the construction site—the sick are put together in one room, and the rest, big and small, old and young, are crowded together. Older children and elderly people who can still move have to take care of babies and elderly people who are dying, and people like her who can work with hands and feet have to undertake various heavy tasks such as cleaning and tidying up to maintain the normal operation of the relief center.

But at least, those who have a chance to live can linger here, and those who are destined to die can listen to the apprentice priest praying for him in the afterlife.

Joan has seen the lonely old man in the village who has no one to take care of when he died. When he was alive, he was skinny, dirty and smelly. He was not found until his body rotted. After coming out, in order to avoid infectious diseases and save the funeral expenses of the priest, he burned the whole house with a fire.

And the disappearance of babies is more simple and silent, especially the babies who lost their parents or were unable to support them. A little cold wind or two missed meals, the children born by their mothers desperately disappeared in the mud in a blink of an eye.

There are women in the almshouse who have lost their children just like that, and their faces are sallow and often talk crazy, which scares Joan just like the bride at the wedding.

But that woman is very kind to the children. Those who work like them can share an extra piece of black bread. The woman often breaks the bread and distributes it to the children who have not eaten enough.

Joan was sometimes treated as a child—she was sent by Lawrence himself, and she was more or less treated differently, so she was only assigned to scrub and wash or do some work in the kitchen, and she was never allowed to live near the patient's room, nor No? Let her take care of the elderly who are about to pass away. At most? She is arranged by the supervisor to be a babysitter for the children, changing diapers and so on.

Are you in charge? Knowing the relationship between Lawrence and this girl, thinking that at least no one will die here, and arrange some chores to save money, and the little girl works quickly and can endure hardships, Lawrence has something to say when he asks.

In the second month after coming to the relief center, Joann covered his head with a white cloth.

She is always worried about her parents at home, that is the shadow that can't go away in her heart.She also guessed that if she ran out so hastily, her parents must have been in a panic. If they knew she was here, they would definitely be entangled. Relatives and friends came to bring her back.

But Qiao An was afraid to go back from the bottom of her heart. After running once and then going back, her parents were even more anxious to find her a husband and marry her out - if she wanted to marry, she would rather spend the rest of her life doing these rough jobs in the relief center. There are so many orphans in the relief center. Even if she doesn't get married, she can probably raise children until she vomits.

In such a mood, dedicating herself to the gods became the best choice she could find.Joan cut her hair short and covered herself with a white cloth, and the apprentice priest who came to the almshouse to preside over the funeral completed the ceremony for her by the way.

After putting on the white cloth, Joan miraculously was no longer afraid of the bells of the clock tower.She can also pray quietly when the bell rings like everyone else, thanking the gods for the light and grace bestowed by the gods.

Qiao An asked the passing merchant to pass a message to her family, dedicating herself to the gods would also clean up the dirty rumors in the village for her, and her parents might feel relieved, no?

She was not the only girl in the relief center who was covered with a white cloth. In fact, most of the women who were stranded in the relief center would go to this point—in order not to be arrested by her husband, in order not to be arrested by her parents, in order to find a way out— —Because of this incident, the steward of the relief center had been in a long-term dispute with Priest Elaine.

Don’t think you’re not in charge? Know how much water the church’s so-called board and lodging has. In addition to cultivating the church’s sacrificial fields, the women who defected here also have to reclaim the land to repair the house. The odd jobs in the box make a living, and the tithes they earn have never been underpaid by the church.

The lives of those women are hard, but they have nowhere to go, and they have no way to survive without the church.Of course, Priest Eleanor hoped that the more free laborers would be tied to the church ship for the rest of their lives, the better, and the steward of the almshouse knew that if he let the church cut off the leeks of this wave of lords , the lord can cut off his head.

The only good thing about the manager is that Elaine is really easy to persuade. Although it is not as easy as Lucien's persuading Elaine, and he has to grit his teeth and bargain to make some concessions, but in the end he saved everyone , none of them were snatched away by the church.

——Women covered with white cloths in the almshouse do not need to go to the temple to serve, the church only needs to recognize their existence and give them a title of fleeing from their parents and husbands.They still stay and work in the relief center, and the relief center will bear their board and lodging accordingly. If they leave the relief center in the future, as long as they don’t marry, leave Velvet, or engage in dirty work that violates the doctrine Dirty business, can't the church stop it?

There's only so much the steward can do? He can't explicitly forbid women in the almshouse to swear to serve the gods.

Lucien did not hold the steward accountable for this matter.He still hadn't forgotten that the almshouse was opened in cooperation with the Church of Light. The house was built on the land where the temple was sacrificed. Light art, even if it is more for the practice of divine art, so the patient who is rescued is a real life.

As long as you keep people for him, don't rush to sell yourself to the church to work, and keep the good labor? It will be fine for the construction of the territory in the future.

As for relying on faith to entrust the pain of reality while working, Lucien actually has no objection. After all, the level of social development and spiritual construction is at that level. If the common people at the bottom do not have faith to stabilize their emotions, it will easily lead to social order, right? stable.

Like William, who has no worries about food, clothing and a stable job, why go to the temple to report on time, why pay tithes to the temple every month, Lucien didn't say a word? Tell him.

What Lucien objected to was the behavior of poor people who couldn’t even eat enough to squeeze out money to worship the gods, expecting? Because belief has a negative effect and slows down the pace of his territory construction.

The conclusion is that you can believe in God, you can also pray, and you must worship the gods. Lucien does not agree or not? Oppose, but you must have a scientific, reasonable and moderate attitude towards beliefs, and [absolutely] it cannot affect normal work and life.

Of course, it is not allowed to discriminate by faith. The Church of Light is a legal religion recognized by the empire, and the goddess of the moon, Muenna, is also a legal belief recognized by the empire. All legal beliefs recognized by the empire are not ranked in Velvet. , everyone should respect each other's gods, this point Lucien even wrote directly on the county government's recruitment notice.

There are too many people on the territory? He can't manage each one, but the officials of the county government must respect the differences of beliefs.

There will be a day in the future when Lucien will start with the church's tithe, and there will be a day when he will try to give the Hall family a seat in the county government meeting. He can accept disputes due to the distribution of benefits, but if the following Officials getting into trouble because of different beliefs probably made him want to change the county government directly.

This is the same for the Hall tribe, all those who want to enter the county government are the same, and they have to pretend to be a harmonious and respectful one.

The author has something to say: Lucien: Fortunately, the teachings of the Illuminati Church recognize the existence of other gods, otherwise we really have to think about how to get the church down [猫猫喜喜]