Chapter 437: Evil God Festival - Boathouse

"This is where you will be staying from now on." Gobune turned his head away without looking back, "Tomorrow morning at 7:30 you and the Sacrifice Lords will all be traveling together to wherever some of the largest Clan Faction Families in Kagome Prefecture are."

"Tidy up my appearance dress code, I don't want to see any unbecoming attire or behavior."

Waiting for the imperial ship to leave, the [attendants] looked at the rusty cages somewhat dumbfounded, and soon there was a man in a grayish attendant's clothes coming out of the boathouse wearily with a bony puppy in his arms, skillfully pushing open the cage and getting in, turning around and pouring part of the leftovers not wanted by the Lord of the Sacrifices in a plastic bag into the dog's bowl, and eating the other part by himself.

The dog got out of the cage, eagerly buried its head in the cage to eat the dirty leftovers, and when it was done, it withdrew its head, and one person and one dog huddled together in the narrow cage, embracing each other, and fell asleep that way.

Cangta almost looked stupid.

Soon, a number of attendants came out of the boathouse, also giving the leftovers to their pets, eating the other portion for themselves, and going to sleep as if they were curled up in their cages in a variety of positions to keep each other warm.

Some of the newly arrived [squire] children shook their heads in fear and backed away, while others, as if they had already accepted the reality, pushed the cage door open in despair.

These old attendants glanced at these new attendants, and someone opened his mouth to inquire:

"Are you the new squires this year?"

"What is the character of the Lord Sacrifice in this batch?"

None of the other children knew how to answer, so Cangta answered hesitantly:

"They're all pretty good characters ......"

A squire with his back to everyone sneered, "Whether the sacrifice is good-tempered or not, whether it will torment us squires or not, how can we tell now, we'll have to look at the test after half a year."

Cangta was stunned by the dislike, and the other squires whispered to him, "He was the one who fell from the sacrifice to the squire position during the examination in the first half of this year, because his pain didn't compare to his own squire."

"His squire killed his kitten, cried over the body for a whole week, managed to get promoted to sacrifice in the test, and he was topped."

"But I think he'll be back for the second half of the year." This squire glanced at the one behind him, "Because it's rumored that he and his squire were good friends, and he never let his squire or his squire's cat live in a cage or eat leftovers when he made sacrifices, they all ate with him."

"But his squire seemed soft-tempered, and the first thing he did when he ascended to the sacrifice was to drive him and his dog here to live in a cage."

Cangta was a bit surprised, "A squire can live with a sacrifice?"

This squire nodded, "You can certainly stay with Lord Sacrifice as long as he wishes, but ......"

"Few Lords of Sacrifice are willing is all."

Cangta is a little confused, "Why?"

Before this squire had a chance to speak, the squire over there, who was cowering in his cage with his back to everyone, answered in a cold voice, "The sacrifices have to pay so much pain to get a boathouse, and to casually give it to a squire to live in is simply disrespectful to the immense amount of pain that they have paid for."

This squire next to him added in a whisper, "That's what the man's squire told him when he came to power, that if he let him easily share a room with himself, he'd be completely sorry for the kittens who died at his hands and had him elevated to the rank of sacrifices."

Cangta was speechless for a moment, and he was surprised that he didn't know what to say.

Seeing Cangta's face turn white with fear, this squire sighed and kindly consoled, "Being a squire isn't as scary as you think, we're the lowest of the low, and there are quite a few who are treated better than us."

"You should be taken with the Lord of Sacrifices to the Great Clans tomorrow for them to choose from, and if you are chosen by the Lords of the Great Clans to bear the Great Clan name, the Great Clan adults will rent you a room in the boathouse, and you won't have to live in a cage."

Cangta sounds a little confused, "The Great Family? Why are we being taken to the extended family to be selected?"

This squire was slightly surprised, "Don't you know the rules of the Deer Mines County Evil God Sacrifice?"

"The evil god festival here is a biannual one, divided into a winter festival and a summer festival, held in August and January of each year."

"One month after the end of the Winter Festival, Lord Mifune, the governor of Kagome Prefecture, will start working on buying a new round of sacrifices to start conditioning them, and half a year later, around June or July, your batch of sacrifices will be considered semi-mature, and you can be offered to the Evil God on stage at the Evil God's Festival, and if your pain is up to par by this time, the sacrifice will succeed, and if your pain isn't up to par, the sacrifice will fail."

This attendant recalled, "But from the time the Evil God Sacrifice was carried out until now, less than half a year's worth of sacrifices can be painfully up to the mark to fight, and more than half a year more will have to simmer down, waiting until the Winter Sacrifice to offer another sacrifice."

"Generally speaking, the probability of a batch of sacrifices being successfully consecrated in the Winter Festival is much higher than in the Summer Festival, while if there are still those in the batch that have not yet been successfully consecrated, they go into the Summer Festival of the following year and continue to be consecrated."

This squire shrugged his shoulders, "But usually if the first year's sacrifice isn't successful, it's hard for this sacrifice to be successful later."

"Of course it won't work again." The squire with his back to the crowd had a hoarse voice, "Any more intense pain lasting a year will numb a person."

This attendant sighed, "But if this kind of sacrifice that has lasted in pain for a very long time if it can transcend its numbing pain and become even more painful, and then be successfully sacrificed in one of the Evil God's sacrifices, that kind of pain is said to make the Evil God-sama very happy, and the quality of the fulfillment of the wish will be much higher as well, that is why nowadays, many of the great clans will intentionally store up this kind of sacrifices, and will not let the first year of this kind of sacrifice on the god stage."

"Kitahara Xiao Kui of the Kitahara family is such an offering."

"The offerings and attendants bought each year will be distributed by Deermeade County according to the contributions everyone made to the county the previous year, and the top eight great families that paid taxes in the county can pick two of their favorite offerings or attendants first, in that order."

"And the sacrifices that were selected and left over were waited for until the day before the Evil God's Festival, as gifts for everyone, and distributed randomly to the people at the [Ship Palace Night Pleasure Festival]."

"Usually these leftover sacrifices are less willful substandard ones, not easy to sacrifice successfully, and most of them will not be able to support themselves in the middle of the subsequent [Painful Cultivation], and even if the sacrifices are successful, the wishes that can be traded from the hands of the Evil God Lord for that level of pain are not superior wishes, and that's why they will be disregarded by the big families. "

This retainer looks up to Cangta : "The family that paid the first place in taxes last year was the Kitahara family, because their family sacrificed a young boy of a year and a half of agonizing maturity at the winter festival last year, I heard that it seems to be Kitahara Xiao Kui's younger brother, so they succeeded in wishing for a high-quality wish last year."

"Exactly what this wish that the Kitahara family made is, those of us who are retainers aren't sure, but in short, it's for the Kitahara family to expand rapidly within the last year, surpassing the original number one tax-paying family, the Gobune family, and becoming the current number one family in Kagome Prefecture."

"You guys don't want to live in a cage, so figure out a way to get picked by the Kitahara family's eldest tomorrow."

While the men of the two parties were talking, a group of adults in long tunics came in, the group carried a cage covered with a black cloth in their hands and tossed it casually in front of Cangta and the others, saying indifferently, "Your pets, some of them died untreated, some of them are still alive, peel them out for yourselves."

Cangta scrambled up and peeled away the black cages, one by one, and finally found her dying kitten in a black cloth cage that had been flung so far that it was leaning against the corner.

The little black cat not only did not receive any treatment, but became even weaker, lying in Cangta's arms, unable to even microphone out, with blood all over its buttocks, not knowing whether it had pooped blood or was bitten by other animals in the same cage.

"[Cangta]!" Cangta's face went white with fear as she looked at the blood on the little black cat's buttocks and the other's gradually heaving chest, tears falling immediately afterward, "How could this happen!"

The other small children's pets weren't much better than the little black cat, all of them out of breath more than in.

For a moment, the entire backyard was filled with the cries of children.

Those squires lying in the cage looked more or less intolerant, and the one who had been chatting with Cangta and the others earlier poked his head out and instructed them with a mixed look, "It's going to rain outside again today, so you'd better not bring the cubs to live in the cage, they'll freeze to death."

"If you are on good terms with the Lord Sacrifice now, go and beg them to take you in."

As if they had found their way, a group of small children brightened up:

"Yeah, he and I agreed in the beginning that we'd both be tied together as a pair, and I'd be his squire first, and he'd be nice to me as a sacrifice, and if he fell off the sacrifice, I'd be nice to him as a sacrifice, so that we'd both get the treatment of a sacrifice!"

"Me too! I'm going to find her now!"

The children ran toward the front yard, clutching their pets as if they had grabbed a lifeline.

Hearing these words, this squire's eyes were complicated, and he glanced at the squire behind him with a desire to speak.

The squire in the cage behind him with his back turned suddenly gave a nervous laugh, "That's what I agreed to with him in the first place."

"I said I couldn't hold out and didn't want to be in pain, and he said he'd suffer for me and be a sacrifice in exchange for him sheltering me, and what happened?"

The man, clutching a motionless, already-cold dog, laughed hoarsely, intermittently, "My dog froze alive out there, and didn't he open the door for me?"

The children, who had already run away, did not hear this, and they knocked excitedly at the doors of the offerings.

The offerings pulled open the door, most of them dressed in cozy yukata, clutching a wooden tub that had obviously just been to the hot springs, radiating heat, and with an unfinished pot of hot soup and deep-fried lobster on the floor inside the door, it was scrumptious to look at.

The pets, dressed in delicate warm little outfits, lounged on plush white blankets, stretching out in a sweet, cozy sleep.

And the squire standing outside the door was unkempt and unkempt, his clothes tattered and torn, reeking of the stench of rotting food, with petroleum-like muddy dirty water dripping from the edges of the ends of his hair because of a little drizzle, and in his arms he was hugging a shivering, dirty little animal with blood dripping down from its body.

The moment the door opened, both the sacrifices inside the door and the attendants outside the door, the expressions and movements on their faces froze for a few seconds.

-Just a few hours apart and it's like everyone is already in two worlds.