Chapter 439: Evil God Festival - Boathouse

Kitahara's house is on a hill, and it took the group a long time to climb the path, or rather the steps, before they could see the magnificent building hidden in the dense jungle.

The huge eaves of the house loomed large in the dense forest, and as he strained his head to look up, he could see another, slightly smaller, but much more dignified wooden building with flying eaves and a redwood birdhouse on one level, higher up behind the Kitahara house.

"Closer to us, this is the address of the Kitahara family." Mifune looked up at the building with the flying eaves behind the torii, gathered the hem of his coat, and bowed respectfully, "The one higher up is the residence of the Evil God-sama, the Kagome Shrine."

The offerings and attendants bowed in imitation of the motion of the imperial ship.

Further up, there is a regular rocky path that curves up to the gate of the Kitahara family, beside which stand two stone lanterns, Bai Liu took a restful glance and realized that the stone lanterns are very new, they look about a year old, and the heads of the lanterns are carved in the shape of a naive Shiba Inu with a lolling tongue.

Mifune knocked on the door of the Kitahara house.

The door slowly opened, an old servant with gray hair and a steady posture poked his head out, he and the knocking Gofune glanced at each other, then glanced at the sacrifices following Gofune, lowered his head and withdrew his gaze, bent down and pulled open the door, "Lord Gofune, the master of the house has been waiting for you for a long time, please come in."

Gosun hummed an unspoken hmmm from his nose, and walked in without looking away.

Bai Liu followed the royal boat inside, and was greeted by a scene of an elegant and extravagant Japanese garden, with jagged rocks to the left and right.

These clear springs on the rocks and stones gurgled and flowed, appearing lively and interesting, should have drawn the spring water from the mountains, but in this season, the spring water on the mountains should have been frozen and would not have flowed, but this Kitahara family actually used a stone furnace to heat the pipeline that drew the spring water, and hardened it so that the spring water flowed steamingly on the man-made rocks and grasses and trees in this cold weather.

This kind of stone furnace was used to heat up the spring water, keep the courtyard beautiful and integrate with the courtyard, Bai Liu briefly glanced at it and slightly estimated in his heart, thinking that there should be almost a hundred of them.

Seeing this scene, Cangta didn't hold back from leaning over and whispering in Bai Liu's ear, "So many squires and animals nearly froze to death in the rain last night, if even a third of these stone furnaces were divided down, they wouldn't be like that ......"

The old servant, who had heard Cangta's broken voice from the sidelines, turned his eyes sideways, gave Cangta a condescending glance, and spoke:

"What you, as new arrivals to this place as sacrifices and attendants, should be thinking about is working hard to get ahead so that you can be chosen by the Lord of the Kitahara family to enjoy the beautiful gardens made up of these stone furnaces, instead of sympathizing with those who don't even have the ability to see these stone furnaces, the inferior creatures of the self-absorbed cages."

"The stone hearth is for the viewing of the sacrificial adults who can endure the pain and offer sacrifices to the evil gods to bring more value to Deer County, not for the squires to keep warm."

"Here in Deer County, these squires who aren't painful enough to live in cages are animals that can't produce more value and just shouldn't consume any resources to live."

Cangta shrunk her head at the look in the old servant's eyes, lowered her head and answered yes with a shaky voice, and stopped talking.

The old servant withdrew his gaze indifferently, and stooped forward with quick, broken steps to the head of the procession, leading the offerings through corridor after corridor of solid wood.

Side head can see the scene in the courtyard, gurgling spring water flow, courtyard birds and flowers, bamboo see one by one knocking on the stone tank, from which flows down the falling flower petals, in the courtyard of the lake convergence, looks pleasant and fresh and elegant.

Everyone was continually marveling at the finesse and beauty of the courtyard, both the offerings and the attendants, and it was clear from their eyes that they were all yearning for this place.

Cangta, who was walking at the end of the walk, lowered his head and clenched the umbrella in his hand, an unspeakable stifling and grayness arose in his heart, and he secretly raised his head and glanced at Bai Liu, who was walking at his side with a shallow and unruffled expression, and his gaze was bewildered.

Bai Liu also wants to be chosen by the Kitahara family ...... Is he the same as these offerings?

Would he ...... also agree with this old servant?

"You can just say whatever you want to ask." Bai Liu looked ahead and spoke calmly, "You've been staring at me for ten minutes."

"I'm sorry!" Cangta lowered her head in panic, then slowly raised it again and asked very softly, "Bai Liu do you also think what that old servant just said is right?"

"The stone hearth was used for the viewing of the sacrifices more than for the warmth of the squire?"

Bai Liu replied, "The rightness or wrongness of each person's words has to be seen from the other person's standpoint."

"From the point of view of these people who are now the sacrifices, from the point of view of the servants of the Kitahara family, from the point of view of these vested interests in exploiting others at the upper end of the food chain, it is natural for them to feel that they are in the right."

"Stone hearths for the squire to warm them get nothing, but put here for viewing, and indeed daily is the benefit they can see and get."

Cangta gathered her courage, "What about from Bai Liu's point of view? Do you think they're right, too?"

Bai Liu turned his head sideways, his eyes serenely glanced at Cangta, a glance that made Cangta uncontrollably hold her breath, the umbrella in her hand clenched tightly until her palm turned white.

"No." He replied in a light tone, "I don't think they're right."

Cangta let out a long breath, his eyes widened, "But Bai Liu is now a sacrifice and a vested interest too, so why doesn't it feel like they're right?"

Bai Liu looked at him, his pupils dark, his eyes wavering, the broken hair on his forehead falling loose over his eyes in the fine breeze, "At the very top of the food chain these people have constructed, there is an old evil god who is supposed to exploit everyone."

"But because he chose not to exploit them, he is now being tortured and exploited by everyone."

"That old evil god, that man is my lover."

Cangta is completely frozen.

Bai Liu withdrew his eyes and looked at the old man walking at the forefront of the offering, not a trace of emotion in his open tone:

"I came here to deal with these people who have profited from his exploitation, to take out that food web that is structured around him."

"And then I'll tell him." Bai Liu paused, "No matter what happens afterward, he wasn't wrong to choose in the first place."

Cangta's eyes burned a little for some reason, and he had so much he wanted to say, and a stomach full of questions he wanted to ask, that he finally just gave a heavy hmmm, and in a sobbing tone of voice he agreed with force, "There is nothing wrong with the Evil Lord, or with you."

"The offering over there." The Imperial Ship at the front of the line impatiently turned around and urged, "What's with the idle chatter? Hurry up and keep up! It's time to go to the parlor to pick out the offerings!"

"Yes!" Cangta panicked and pulled Bai Liu into a fast run, "We're coming!"

The Kitahara family's parlor was also extremely large, with an extremely open view as you entered, and because it was so large it even looked a bit like the main meeting place of a dojo, with the floor covered in silken cloth of a soft material, and fronted by a few servants sitting on their knees behind a low table, with a shaved hairstyle of a traditional kanabimoto in a bun combed at the back of his head, with his head shaved right in the center of his head.

This person's eyebrows slanting into a tight wrinkle, the body is strong like a strong man in his forties or fifties, but the corners of the eyes, forehead, chin wrinkles, look at the aging as if there are sixty or so, the expression of the tense and somber.

He glanced down at the album of offerings that lay before him, flipping through it casually before raising his head his gaze swept sorrowfully over the offerings sitting on their knees before him before pausing at Bai Liu, who had walked in at the end.

"There's a kid named Bai Liu, isn't there?" He spoke in a dark voice, "Raise your head so I can see it."

Bai Liu slowly lifted his head and leveled it impartially with the other man.

This Northern Plains family head nodded with quite a bit of satisfaction, "Marked looks, very willful, can be tempered for a long period of time."

"The boy is wanted, and his squire stays with him."

Finally Kitahara chose Bai Liu and another sacrifice, leaving their attendants behind, and soon a servant came up to present them with new wooden plaques that read [Kitahara Bai Liu] and [Kitahara Cangta].

That head of the family got up and gave them a sidelong glance, "Since you are now an offering lord of the Kitahara family, you will stay and live in the Kitahara family in the future."

"I'll send someone over from the boathouse to bring your pets and luggage over, and first have someone show you the ropes to familiarize you with your surroundings, to know where you can and can't go, as well as what you need to do to stay in the Kitahara house and enjoy all that it has to offer you."

Saying that, the Northern Plains Family Head tilted his head and nodded at the old servant who had led the way in, "You take them to familiarize themselves."

The old servant nodded respectfully and turned to Bai Liu and the others and said, "Come here, my lords."

"First of all, congratulations to all of you, and from now on the adults will live in the mansion of the family that makes people happy and pays taxes first."

The servant's footsteps were thin and quick, as quick as swimming snakes through the wooden veranda shrouded in shade, which was lined with crushed red maple leaves that had just fallen less than half an hour ago, clattering and trembling under the servant's footsteps, and fluttering and shaking as they were jolted down into the water pavilion beside the veranda and drifted outside the house.

Moisture floated warmly and sultrily through the air, clinging to one's skin on such a cold day, but not at all pleasant.

It's really a pretty and bright, eerie and dreary place.

"In the Kitahara Family, the Sacrifice Lords are the supreme beings, and the Kitahara Family has grown to its current size all thanks to the great dedication that generations of Sacrifice Lords have given to us, and without their suffering, there would not be the beautiful courtyards of the Kitahara Family that we have today."

"That's why the first thing anyone who enters the Kitahara family has to do is to sacrifice these sacrificial adults who have borne supreme suffering for the development and growth of the Kitahara family."

The old servant stopped in front of a very well-built room, and he bent over with his hands clasped together in high-fives before reaching out and pushing open the door to this room.

Cangta couldn't help but suck in a cold breath when she saw what was going on in the room.

The room issued a huge wooden shelf, the shelf double side flying eaves and tails, made a shrine style attire, the wooden shelf from high to low placed dozens of shrines, each shrine inside the black and white photographs, these black and white photographs of people look to be no more than a teenager, or even a few years of age of the child.

The old servant clasped his hands out of the way and drooped his eyelids, "These are the sacrificial adults that the Kitahara family has purchased over for the past three years, but didn't make it to the end and committed suicide because of the pain they were in, and they are enshrined here."

"If you hadn't stuck it out and killed yourselves, you would have been offered up here as well."

"Ask the four lords to come in and salute them."