Chapter 436: Evil God Ritual - Boathouse

"I'm sure everyone hearing this wants to be a sacrifice rather than a squire." Mikifune put his hands behind his back and the smile on his face became meaningful, "But I can tell you the good news, in Luming County, sacrifices and squires are not fixed, but are tested every six months."

"In this test, sacrifices that are not so good will be reduced to squire, and those that do well will be promoted to sacrifice."

"You must be wondering what the criteria are for judging the sacrifices and the squires, right?"

The eyes of all the children showed anticipation.

Mikifune looked around at everyone and said slowly, "It's pain."

"He who suffers more among you will be the sacrifice."

The children shrank back a little in confusion and a little in fear, the relatively negative and abstract concept of [pain] scaring them subconsciously.

The imperial ship looked at the performance of the sacrifices, grunted again from her nose, and said, "Of course, the pain of becoming a sacrifice is acute, yet only for a moment; only once do you need to offer your sacrifice and then you never need to suffer again, whereas the pain of becoming a human inferior like a squire, though not as intense, lasts a lifetime."

"Long pain and short pain, it's up to you to choose."

Mikifune said, looking down at his watch and saying carelessly, "Now children who become sacrifices, your pets can be treated with the utmost care at the hospital."

"But for the children who become squires, we can only arrange for your pets to be seen by a regular vet, and it's up to these little ones to survive."

The children below began to group themselves in twos and threes, hesitantly, automatically dividing themselves into two groups, the [sacrifices] and the squires, and then into teams. The expressions on some faces changed noticeably, with many children weeping in fear and many clenching their fists, with a light in their eyes.

Bai Liu watched the scene calmly, without moving.

The food chain of desire is formed when these children voluntarily divide themselves into two unequal classes, [sacrifices] and [retainers], under the induction of the imperial boat.

Aota looked from side to side with a pale face and finally walked behind Bai Liu, folded his hands in front of him and bowed his head respectfully and tremulously - the gesture of a squire who has decided to serve Bai Liu as a [sacrifice].

Bai Liu glanced obliquely back at Aota, who was standing behind him, "Have you made your choice? Are you sure you want to choose me?"

Aota nodded slowly, glancing at Xiaokui, who was standing motionless in the crowd, and spoke in a muffled voice, "...... I can't do the sacrifice, I'm too scared by Xiaokui's appearance... ..."

" Beiyuan Xiaokui, send her back to the original boathouse." Gifune ordered indifferently, "Let her stay with her original squire and show her what her good friend who took responsibility for her was tortured into after she ran away weakly and without a word."

Xiaokui's shoulders jerked and she was soon pulled away by two adults.

"The rest of the children." Mikifune swept the hem of his coat, "Follow me to the boathouse where you will be given shelter."

Bai Liu followed the imperial boat and did not have to walk very far before he reached the boat house in the mouth of the imperial boat, which was much newer than the one Bai Liu had been in seven days later, when he practised the evil god ritual dance as the heir to the evil god, facing the shimmering sea.

At the moment, in the setting sun, the water-resistant paint on the hull of this strange and elegant house glows with a dazzling golden scale, the edges of which are a reddish shade, and the painted design of the house at the entrance glistens in the light of the sea against the sun, not like a cage that is about to bring suffering to the sacrifice, but like a gilded palace.

The children looked dumbfounded and one pointed to the boathouse and exclaimed incredulously, "Is this a place for us to live?!"

"Yes." The imperial ship turned over and he pointed to an entrance off to the side, "Go over there and collect the wooden token with your name on it, after you get it you go in and insert it into the wooden niche next to whatever room is there and that room will be yours."

As the group of children were excitedly preparing to rush over to collect their wooden plates and run to the boathouse, the imperial boat spoke again, saying coldly, "But the room is for the sacrifice to be chosen first and the attendants second."

"The squire will not be able to choose until every offering has been chosen for the room."

The excitement on the faces of the children whose status was [squire] stalled as they watched with bated breath as the [sacrificial] children rushed into the boathouse to cheerfully choose their rooms, shouting how wide and nice the house was, the pieces of their own wooden cards clutched in their hands slowly tightening.

Bai Liu walked in with his wooden badge in hand and was greeted by a row of neat and brightly lit boathouses, but it was clear that the width of each one was diminishing, with the innermost one being only as wide as two doors.

The moment they realised that the house here needed to be robbed, the children, who had shared the storm on the boat and had cultivated a bit of fellowship, immediately started running like mad, trying to get their wooden cards stuffed first into the wooden niche of the widest and largest room.

"This room is mine!"

"I was the one who shoved the wooden sign in first!"

Several children were fighting over the largest room.

Bai Liu swept the rest of his eyes and withdrew them, walking past the largest rooms without looking away, remembering his own orphanage, where a bunch of children grabbed toys.

But such things were generally not relevant to him; the toys the group liked, Bai Liu generally didn't either, as in this case, and he walked straight to the last room, lifted his head and flatly inserted his wooden sign before pushing the door open.

Sure enough, the layout of the room was exactly the same as the one in which Cang-tae had taken him to rest afterwards, even the picture of the waves hanging on the wall, except that this time there was no shrine behind this picture of the waves.

Bai Liu retracts his hand from stroking the wall.

It seems that there is no idol here in the last room, so the next key idol for this branch should be on [Old Evil God - Spirit].

-- in other words, as set in the Siren copy, that is, on Xie Ta's body.

There were footsteps from outside the door as children poured in, but these soon stalled.

Bai Liu drops his eyes - it seems these [retainers] have found out.

The children were still for a long time, staring blankly at the boathouses they had longed for outside the door, thinking they could live in, and asked, "Where are we going to live when all these boathouses are full?"

All four rows of boathouse rooms have wooden signs already inserted next to them, none of which are free.

"Of course you have a place to stay." Mikoto's tone took on an inexplicable creepiness and excitement as he looked at the children's stunned expressions, "But there is still a place in this boathouse where you lowly squires can plop down and get some rest."

He lifted his steps, unhurriedly, and walked forward through the townhouse, stopping beside an open-air water-storage masonry tank, turning to look at the group of children with a smile, "This is it."

These children who chose to become [squires] could not believe it as they looked at the building that housed the water tank.

The ground around the tank was damp and dark, densely covered with barnacle-like creatures, with blood from fish kills, discarded shells of oysters and shells, and some rotten and spoiled fish and prawns, it was clearly a place where ingredients were handled, and the mud smelled like it had been pickled by these things, giving off a fishy smell.

And that's not even the most shocking thing for these kids.

Cang Tai looked in a trance at the water storage tank next to it, a dense array of spiked wire cages half the size of their bodies, with a tattered plastic water shelter over them, a water bowl and a feed bowl in front of them, filthy with muddy water, and next to them, in the same cages, were various meat walkers like chickens and ducks, clucking and squawking.

--This is totally a dog house for pets, or a cat house.

These cages have a place where they are hung, and that place has long been hung with the names of these [squire] pets, or perhaps the names of these squires themselves.

Mikifune raised his hand and pointed to the cages, "This is where you will live."

All the children stared blankly at the cages and no one spoke.

Mifune continued familiarly, "You are to climb out of this cage with your pets at 5:30 during the day, then grab the animals in the cage next to you and kill and process them and take them to the kitchen to be cooked for the masters so that by 8:00 you can have the freshest and tastiest dishes for the sacrificial lords."

"Note that it's not finished dawn here in the morning for five and a half days and it's rather dark, so if you catch the wrong animal in the cage and kill it by catching someone else's pet, we are not responsible for any of it and you are on your own to deal with it."

Gifune said carelessly, "But that might not be a bad thing for you, after all, the last squire whose pet was accidentally killed by the person next to him managed to be promoted to Lord of the Sacrifice in the first round of the test that year because of the excessive pain."

"That's a really hard working and motivated boy, I like him a lot." As if remembering something interesting, Mikifune smiled with satisfaction, "After being promoted to the rank of priest and enjoying the privileged yet respectful life of the priestly adults, he was too afraid that he would be reduced from priest to squire again in the next round of examinations, so in order to consolidate his pain- "

"-the boy forced himself to eat his own pet."