Pawn Crossing the River

Qi Xuansu was wearing an ordinary Taoist robe, with a sword hanging on the left side of the belt and a firecracker hanging brightly on the right side. This reminded Qi Xuansu of the days when he was a seventh-grade Taoist priest.

Once upon a time, he used fire blunderbuss, but now he uses heavy artillery.

Qi Xuansu once visited Cusco. New Paititi still has many similarities with Cusco, but New Paititi is larger than Cusco. This is the main reason for building New Paititi. one. Cusco is adequate as the capital of a backward agricultural country, but as the capital of an industrial country that has just started, it is a bit inadequate.

The world is in a great situation. The steam revolution of Westerners has led to the rise of the West and swept the world. Easterners have followed closely and found new ways to develop creation projects. The New World, which has not changed, has almost entered the state of national subjugation and annihilation.

As the saying goes, knowing shame and then being brave, the Tawanting Empire had to change. No matter what ancient traditions, they were not worth mentioning in the face of issues of life and death and racial continuation, and they could not stop the general trend of change.

As a result, Xidaomen successfully launched the all-round integration and transformation of Tawanting, and in the process gradually obtained the highest power of Tawanting.

Of course, Xidaomen alone cannot complete such a huge project. Sufficient resources must be available. After the Westerners made a major breakthrough, they chose to plunder the outside world. In addition to other necessary measures, Xidaomen also chose a tricky path. , strive for external financial input, and this "external" is Daomen.

Daomen launched large-scale assistance to Xidaomen, and also cultivated a large number of pro-Daomen factions within Xidaomen, or the return faction, which is the faction that advocates the return of Xidaomen to Daomen, and likens it to a wanderer returning to the Taoist family. This gives Daomen great influence within Xidaomen. Daomen can indirectly influence Tawanting by affecting Xidaomen.

Strictly speaking, there are no anti-Taoist sects in the true sense within Xidaomen, only anti-returning factions. Therefore, the battles within Xidaomen seem to be very contradictory. There are both disagreements and disputes, and issues of seeking support from Taoist sects and paying attention to Taoist sects. In lockstep.

Speaking of Xidaomen's transformation of Tawanting, the first step was to abandon Cusco, build New Paititi, and build a large number of workshops.

Looking at all the forces, the military has been most successfully transformed by Xidaomen. This is also the core requirement for security reasons. When it comes to the army, we have to mention armaments. Once a large-scale war is about to start, Daomen is thousands of miles away, and it is unrealistic to rely entirely on Daomen for support.

Because the form of war has fundamentally changed. It is no longer the era of cold weapons. Food is not enough. With the large-scale application of artillery and gunfire, the demand for ammunition has greatly increased. It is difficult to rely solely on Daomen's support.

After one or two large-scale battles, the ammunition may be exhausted, and the guns and artillery will become scrap metal.

This requires Xidaomen to establish its own production system, and Daomen only supports high-end weapons, so the first to start are various military-related military industries.

The progress and development of the military industry has also placed higher demands on those working in the industry, requiring continuous learning, including the samurai who operate these firearms.

Tawanting does not have this relevant knowledge and must learn from the outside world. The West is the enemy and cannot learn from it. It can only learn from the East. Learning starts with writing. Writing is the foundation and core of civilization. Eastern writing contains Eastern ways of thinking and inherent concepts. Therefore, while learning Eastern knowledge, you will gradually be assimilated by the East. And because of their strong-willed mentality, they will also imitate various behaviors and habits of their study subjects.

This is why Zhang Yuelu doesn't like Western culture. With the prevalence of Western learning, although the advantages of the West have been learned, many of the Westerners' dregs have also entered the Central Plains, and many people's ways of thinking have even begun to become Westernized. That is to say, the East today is not weaker than the West and can resist this kind of erosion. Once the East weakens, there will inevitably be calls for total Westernization to obliterate its own civilization.

Therefore, the centralization of Tawanting's army is inevitable. With the military as the center, various other strata near and far have also undergone varying degrees of Centralization. Only the priest class is the most conservative and the most Tawanting. Other classes, including the royal family, are a bit less Tawanting.

Because of this special reason, the style of New Paititi is a bit strange. Generally speaking, it still maintains the style of Cusco, especially the temple area, which is even more traditional within the tradition.

But in other places, there are many traces of Centralization in this Cusco style.

For example, the Central Plains-style Pixiu, Tao, and Qilin suddenly appear among various decorative sculptures; another example is the Central Plains bell hanging under the eaves of the temple; and another example is the statue of Taishang Daozu not far from the statue of Kukulkan. Maybe the locals are used to it and don't think anything of it, but to Qi Xuansu, a pure Central Plains person, it is very inconsistent, the style of painting is fragmented, and it is indescribably weird.

Just when Qi Xuansu was about to find a place to stay, a bloody smell suddenly came from the direction of the temple area.

This smell is not a real smell, but an invisible aura similar to murderous aura.

Qi Xuansu was a little surprised and followed the flow of people towards the temple area.

Proficient here

There were quite a few people who spoke Mandarin. Qi Xuansu asked some random people on the road and found out that a blood sacrifice was being held in the temple area.

Blood sacrifice was once popular in the era of ancient witchcraft. After the Taoist sect defeated the witchcraft, it abolished blood sacrifice. In the Central Plains, any blood sacrifice will be regarded as a cult.

However, the Southern Continent still maintains such barbaric methods, and even Xidaomen has not been able to abolish them, because the driving force behind the blood sacrifice is the ancient god.

Qi Xuansu followed the flow of people and came to the square of a pyramid, where he saw the blood sacrifice ceremony that was about to be held.

The temple is located at the top of the pyramid and is connected to the square in front of the pyramid with long steps. Onlookers gather in the square. There is a protruding platform "halfway up the mountain" in the middle of the steps. This is the place where blood sacrifices are usually held. ——The highest level of blood sacrifice requires entering the temple.

At this time, there were priests and temple warriors wearing green masks, green feather crowns, weapons made of obsidian, and prisoners tied with five-flowered flowers standing on the platform.

There were many corpses piled up under the platform, like a mountain of corpses. However, the blood sacrifice ceremony has not stopped yet.

The drummers around the platform beat the drum heads hard with both hands, containing strange rhythms and rhymes, and chanted songs used in sacrifices. To those who don't know its meaning, it sounds like some kind of howl.

Qi Xuansu stood among the crowd, lost in thought, "Are these ancient gods already so weak? It's not enough to just harvest the incense and wish, but they also have to use blood sacrifices to speed up their recovery."

This reminded Qi Xuansu of Master Yan Da's record of his experiences in the Western Regions. At that time, the seven ancient immortals had just been resurrected and were still very weak. Some of the ancient immortals headed by Wu Luo began to perform blood sacrifices. However, except for Wu Luo, who was an ancient witch who was more familiar with blood sacrifices and more tolerant, and withstood the backlash of blood sacrifices, the other ancient immortals who performed blood sacrifices fell one after another. Although the blood sacrifice was not the only reason for their demise, there was also the purge of the Taoist sect and the internal fighting among the ancient immortals, but it was hard to say that it had nothing to do with the blood sacrifice.

After all, blood sacrifice to create karmic fire is tantamount to drinking poison to quench thirst.

True Lord Taiyin and True Lord Ziguang, who did not perform the blood sacrifice, instead ushered in the dawn of transcendence.

In addition, Siming Zhenjun is another way. He is not a direct blood sacrifice, but provokes wars, spreads curses, and then harvests the living souls. It is an indirect blood sacrifice, so he did not die.

From this point of view, the situation of these ancient gods is not optimistic.

Soon, a batch of "sacrifice" were slaughtered, and the temple warriors brought more than ten shackled "sacrifice" onto the platform.

During this interval, the priests began to pray and dance in a dialect that Qi Xuansu could not understand.

The faces of these "sacrifice" were smeared with various oil paints, just like theatrical masks, making it difficult to see their true colors.

The warriors brought these "sacrifice" to the center of the platform, forcing them to kneel down, and then the priests began to circle, dance, chant, and pray around these "sacrifice".

The sound of ancient musical instruments sounded all around.

For a moment, thousands of people watching also prayed in unison.

Qi Xuansu could feel that the souls of those "sacrifice" were actually in a very confused state, confused and lost, and did not know what kind of situation they were in.

About half an hour later, the priests completed the ceremony, took out the sharp blades they had prepared, and disemboweled and gouged out the heart with great skill.

During the whole process, the "sacrifice" did not resist at all, just like cattle and sheep waiting to be slaughtered, and they did not even make any sound.

Instead, the crowd watching cheered.

The priests then pushed the corpse off the platform onto the mountain of corpses below. Only then did Qi Xuansu notice that there was actually a blood trough in the square. The blood from the corpses gathered into a blood pool along the blood trough, and then quickly disappeared.

Qi Xuansu can also see many sights that ordinary people cannot see.

Each illusory soul is being swallowed up by a mysterious force, and the flowing blood quickly loses all spirituality and vitality, turning into dirty blood.

The gods do not just feed on the incense and the power of wishes. The power of incense and fire comes from people, so the human soul is also the food of the gods, similar to the relationship between eggs and hens. Because the water needs to flow slowly, few gods will try to catch the fish. In this regard, both the Holy Court and Buddhism are experts, and can even establish a long-term system of mutual benefit and healthy development between gods and believers. Those barbaric ancient gods usually cause a lot of damage. From this point of view, the Holy Court still has merits.

Qi Xuansu had no intention of saving anyone. The blood sacrifice involved the ancient gods. Xidaomen couldn't change it, so he couldn't change it. It would be a life-and-death feud if his life was cut off. Even if he wants to change, he must do it slowly. It is not a good thing to expose his intentions too early.

Then Qi Xuansu shifted his gaze again

When it comes to the temple priests, they also have a surge of divine power, mostly given by the ancient gods, but it is not much. It seems that the landlord's family does not have any surplus food.

Qi Xuansu did not wait for the entire blood sacrifice ceremony to end and turned around and left early.

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