Planetary Museum

Fam has a small settlement in the city of Elis, and it is a storage room in the home of a small merchant.The room is small and leaky, and there are rats at night, but it is much stronger than sleeping outside in the open air.

After dinner, Fam returned to this small room that was temporarily his own.

It was night, and the room was pitch black.Fam found a candle stub, and carefully lit it. Under the dim candlelight, he took off his clothes, and carefully shook out the spoils of the day from the inside pocket.

One, two, three... While counting with his fingers, he counted. When the fingers were not enough, Fam used the toes, and finally the toes were not enough, so he had an idea , carefully scratched a mark with a wooden strip on the wall, and then started to count for the second time with my fingers...

The difficult counting work was finally completed before the candle burned out, and Fam had a total of 34 peppers in his hand.All these peppers together were only the size of a handful in the palm of his hand.

Fam stared at the handful, smiling foolishly, until at last the stub of the candle was dying and the flame was flickering, and Fam put them back into the pouch.

There was a little noise outside the house, Fam opened the door to see, it was the owner of the house, his current landlord John.He was holding an oil lamp in his hand, and the small light illuminated his face, and Fam grinned stupidly when he saw that his face was covered with blood.

"What's the matter?" Fam leaned forward, looked at the injury on the landlord's face by the light, only saw several obvious bruises mixed with half of the wrinkles on his face, from these bruises From the shape point of view, the shape of the shoe can be clearly distinguished.Fortunately, there were no obvious wounds. As for the blood, it probably came from the nose, so it shouldn't be a serious problem.

John didn't seem to care about the injury on his face. On the contrary, he endured the injury and forced a smile on his face.After Fam walked in, he took out his own hand from his pocket and spread it out in front of Fam—two golden coins, shining attractively in the candlelight.

Fam chuckled, and took out the peppers he had just counted from his pocket.

The two looked at each other and both smiled.They all had a lot of success today.

"I'm old," John sighed, looking at the number of peppers in Fam's hand, "It's dark, I can't see clearly, and the peppers are so small, if I were as young as you, I would definitely touch one outside All night."

"Then you'll miss out on the cookies tomorrow. There will be a lot of people queuing up to grab the cookies tomorrow." Fam calculated the score, "It's not worth it."

"Sweet cookies are available every day, but pepper... I don't see it that many times in my life." John took out a gold coin in his hand and asked Fam, "How about I buy a few?"

Fam shook his head: "No, I want to save it for the journey."

John glanced at him in surprise: "Are you going to participate in jihad?"

"Yes," Fam nodded. "The clerk at the bakery said that after the team leaves, Wangcheng will no longer distribute cakes, but there will still be ones in the Jihad Army."

"That's going to war." John has lived in King Elis all his life, and he has no way of imagining what the world hundreds of kilometers away is like. "You may never come back for the rest of your life."

According to the king, after they got to the south, they might stay there forever.

As for the claim of kings and angels that there are innumerable spices in the south, John was skeptical.Because he was a caravan traveler when he was young, and he traveled from south to north across the entire continent, basically going to every corner.He had been to the place described by the king, and he had never seen flakes of spices in the mountains. What impressed him most were bare stones and bottomless caves.

But he didn't dare to just say that the king and the envoy were lying, after all, it happened when he was young, and the envoy did bring back a large amount of spices.Even if it was a true lie, he didn't have the guts to expose it.

"That's okay," Fam said nonchalantly, "follow the army, at least you won't be hungry anymore."

"Yeah..." Speaking of cookies, John still licked his lips unconsciously, "It's a pity... Maybe I will never eat such delicious cookies again in my life... If I were 20 years younger, I might be I left with you. When are you leaving, Fam?"

"I'll report tomorrow," Farm said. "There's a conscription office in the bakery."

"That's great, that's great...but your rent..."

"It's all right, John," Fam said. "I'm not here to ask for rent. I'm going to be rich in the future, and these few silver coins are nothing to me."

John didn't speak, just held the lamp and walked up the wooden stairs step by step.

Just when Fam was about to go back to sleep, John came down the stairs again, holding two pieces of leather that had just been tanned, and threw one of them to Fam and said, "Take this and make yourself a leather armor." Well, put it inside, at least it can protect against bows and arrows."

……

The next day, Fam woke up early.When he went out, it was almost dark in the sky, but Fam couldn't fall asleep anyway because of his excitement.

On the streets of the city, as before, there are a large number of young and strong men sleeping.Along the way, Fam could hear the sound of snoring one after another.Some, like Fam, were awake and packing their last luggage around their sleeping quarters.Like Fam, all these people owned was a piece or two of cloth, a small stack of bonds, a few peppercorns, and gold coins.

If it was the pastry shed, the stove must have been lit by now, and the aroma of sweet cookies came.But today, this smell did not appear. Everyone knew that after the king issued the holy war order yesterday, all the bakery sheds were moved out of the city. If they wanted to eat bread, they had to go out of the city to eat it.Today it is only at the south gate of Wangcheng. Starting tomorrow, it will move ten miles south every day. After a week, the entire bakery staff will go south with the army.

Although there was no aroma of cakes, everyone still started to line up under the habits they had cultivated before.Fam noticed that in the team, in addition to mature men like himself, there were quite a few who were very old or very young.Some even looked older than John, with shriveled mouths that seemed to have lost all their teeth.And some are so small that they haven't developed yet, and they look childish.

But no matter young or old, men and women, as long as they enter the conscription office, they will be accepted.Then everyone was issued a simple coarse cloth with a shiny little strip attached to it.When Fam and his group received their clothes and arranged them in a square formation like eating cakes, a soldier told them that the clothes and slips were proof that they would eat pies in the army in the future. Report, or there will be no cake.

Then they lined up neatly and set off towards the south gate.Along the way, Fam saw countless people in front of him and behind him, wearing the same clothes as himself, with the same flashing notes on their chests, like a newly gathered flood, walking straight and orderly along the road , continuously flowing towards the south.

After walking out of the city gate, Fam, like everyone else, took a deep breath almost subconsciously.The aroma of food, the aroma of cakes—no, the aroma today is stronger than before, this smell, and so on...

Just as Fam was trying to distinguish the different ingredients of today's food with his nose, someone in the squares eating pie in front of him shouted the answer in surprise: "Meat pie! My God! Today is meat pie!"

"Meatloaf..." Even though she was used to eating cookies, Fam couldn't help swallowing hard.

Just as Fam was looking forward to when it would be his turn to eat the pie, worrying that the pie might be eaten early, the crowd became noisy again.Fam stood on tiptoe, and soon heard someone shouting in front of him: "It's an envoy, an envoy of the land god!"

Fam was at the back of the line, he could only hear the voices of those in front, but he couldn't see the appearance of the other party at all.

Fam, the envoy of God, has seen it before, all four of them have seen it, and they all remember it.Fam believes that anyone who has eaten at the bakery in the city has paid attention to the appearance of the angels, because it is well known that these angels are the source of the cookies.In the pastry shop, Fam had seen God Envoy watching them pie-eaters several times when queuing up. Fam still remembered that when one of the youngest God Envoys saw him, he The expression on the face - like a real god looking down on a mortal.

"All the women come out," the voice came from the soldiers beside the envoy, "The envoy has ordered that men and women must be separated during the march."

"Father..." Fam saw a little boy-like person hugging a man's thigh tightly beside him.

The man reluctantly used his body to block his daughter, as if this would prevent him from being separated from his relatives.

"Anyone who reports a woman in the team will be rewarded with a piece of meat pie! Surrender is also counted!" The soldiers raised the pie in front of everyone.

Just when Fam was still debating whether to report the father and daughter in front of him, the father immediately raised his hand: "My lord, I will report! This is my daughter! Give her the meatloaf!" ...Just give it to her..."

Except for this little girl, basically one-third of the women came out of the team. Before this, Fam could hardly tell that many women looked no different from men, and even looked uglier than men.

After all the women were selected, the line was much thinner than before, and through the gaps in the line, Fam could clearly see the appearance of the envoy.He is the Divine Envoy Fam that Fam had seen before. At this moment, he is sitting on a tall war horse, holding a whip in one hand and a sword in the other. The reflected light made it almost impossible for Fam to look directly.