It has to be said that Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai are good at picking dates. The day they came to Zuoyuan happened to be the sacrificial day that happens every twelve years.
In Sawara, the people naturally know about the regular "sacrifice". After all, it has been going on for hundreds of years, and it is impossible to completely hide this from the people. Masahiro Sawara, who held the "first sacrifice" that year,
He had already thought of it, so in the first twelve years, he came up with a set of rhetoric for future generations.
Its content is roughly as follows: The Sahara clan is a clan chosen by the gods, so every twelve years the gods will take a descendant of the Sahara clan to the heaven for "study"; as long as this descendant has the blood of the Sahara clan, he may not be
He is a descendant of the Zong family, but he must be a boy, and he must be under the age of sixteen, and he must remain "pure"; and the child who was sent did not just disappear, he will be reincarnated again in the next sixty years.
Return to the Sawara family and become the new generation head of the family.
Seeing this, many readers must have noticed that Masahiro Sahara was very good at using myths, legends or religion to maintain rule in the feudal dynasty.
The rhetoric he came up with, from our modern perspective, not only has a beautifying effect in external publicity, but more importantly, it sets several restrictive conditions that are conducive to the continued implementation of this tradition.
First of all, why does the age of the sacrifice have to be under sixteen years old?
In fact, this should be easy to think of, because children are easier to control. If you brainwash them from an early age and tell them how sacred and glorious it is to be a "sacrifice", then there is a high probability that they will cooperate obediently.
Adults, on the other hand, have more mature thoughts and more complex interpersonal relationships, and they will run away or even resist if they are not protected.
But the age cannot be set too young, such as under eight years old... With the mortality rate of young children at that time, it would not be good if a certain generation had a shortage of children and there happened to be no children in this age group.
, so the range from zero to sixteen years old is relatively generous and appropriate. "It does not necessarily have to be from the clan family" is also relaxing the conditions.
Secondly, why does it have to be a boy?
If we are worried that age restrictions will lead to inadequacy, wouldn’t it be better to also relax gender restrictions?
But this is obviously not possible...
Because girls are more likely to arouse sympathy and pity, especially beautiful girls, they are more likely to attract people who are greedy for their looks. People in that era were exposed to sex at an early age. Girls who were nearly sixteen years old were already capable of giving birth.
Once before the sacrificial year, a girl who has been decided to be a sacrifice has a lover, or becomes pregnant or even becomes a mother, then things will become complicated.
Sahara Masahiro fully understands human nature. He will not risk letting the "sacrifice" establish some kind of strong emotional bond with others, let alone let the sacrifice leave direct descendants, so he reduces this possibility from the beginning.
When it reaches a very low level, the latter one is kept "pure" undoubtedly for this reason.
Even so, in the past hundreds of years, there was still a certain sacrifice that quietly left an heir. When the child grew up, he learned from his mother what happened to his father, and later he actually tried to destroy it.
The priest came to take revenge, but ultimately failed.
After that lesson, the descendants of the Sahara family added another rule - those who "defiled" the sacrifices would be executed immediately if they were found, and if they had descendants left behind, those descendants would also be regarded as "unclean things"
"Dispose of them together.
Finally, there is the line "I will be reincarnated and come back to become the head of the family within a decade." This is a typical picture, but it is not completely meaningless.
On the one hand, this was meant to be spoken to the outside world, and it also had the element of beautifying the sacrifice; on the other hand, this article could be regarded as a supplement to the previous article "restricting boys". After all, women could not become feudal lords at that time.
The above is the essence of what Sahara Masahiro said to the people after careful consideration.
As for how the "sacrifice" works specifically, only a few people within the Sawara clan know it, let alone the common people.
Therefore, for the people living in Sawuan, "sacrifice" is not a terrible thing. Anyway, the children who are to be "sent to heaven" are not ordinary people's children. Besides, the interval of once every twelve years is not short. People in those days
How many twelve years can a life last?
For those outsiders who travel to Sawahara, this is nothing more than a local folklore; in ancient times, local folk customs of sacrificing living animals and even human beings existed all over the world. To be honest, in a place where people are dying,
In the days when it was valuable, no one really took it seriously.
The Sahara family would not do anything like "closing the country" before and after the sacrifice, because that would make people feel weird... So they just "loosen the outside and tighten the inside", which is the same as usual on the surface, but secretly strengthen the access.
Inspection of the feudal lord.
This is also why Keijiro, who came a few days earlier than Shuangxue, was locked up just because of his "weird description"; the people of the Sahara clan themselves didn't plan to do anything to him, but just in case, they wanted to get him
Keep it until the sacrifice is over and then release it.
However, Sun and Huang don't know these situations...
That night, after the sky darkened, Sun Yixie saw that the security in this cell was quite lax, and all the prisoners in the cells next door were asleep, so he started to implement his plan to "steal a house" as planned.
.
chuachuachu——
As soon as the trident came out, the barred door of this cell was like nothing else. Sun Yixie easily led Keijiro out of the cell door.
The two of them walked out in the dark, passed through the other two rows of cells with little light, and then walked up another flight of stairs until they came to a small room with a slight firelight.
This room is regarded as a concierge used by the jailers. Because it is winter, the two jailers on night duty have already dozed off in the corner without any surprise.
If Sun Yixie and Keijiro just want to escape, there is no need to disturb those two people, but tonight Sun Yixie is here because of the matter of "sneaking into Sawara Residence to search for the Dragon Bi", so in order to take action
It was easier to get up, so he and Keijiro subdued the two jailers, took off their coats and put on them.
Then, Sun Yixie and Keijiro, disguised as two Sahara clan soldiers, came out of the underground cell.
As mentioned in our book here, the Sahara family's residence is not just a few large houses, but a complex of buildings surrounded by walls.
In the center of the building complex is a small Japanese-style castle, which is a flat castle with a tower shape and a castle tower on top. Surrounding the castle, there are ordinary bungalows or longhouses such as armaments depots, food depots, stables, and military residences; while the common people
His fields, residences, and shops are all outside the walls of "Sahara Castle".
But...the exit of the "dungeon" where Sun Yixie and the others were imprisoned was inside the city wall. Therefore, when Sun Yixie and Keijiro came out from underneath, they could go to the castle without passing any sentries and holding lanterns.
Go there.
And because there was a "sacrifice" tonight, many people in the city were transferred to the "Valley on the Lake", so the two of them moved unexpectedly smoothly, and successfully reached the castle without encountering many people along the way.
Inside.
Sun Yixie is a very thief. After entering the castle, he didn't even need to arrest anyone to ask for directions. He only relied on his own experience and intuition to determine that the room where valuables were stored must be on a high floor and not close to the castle.
Any external wall, but there are stairs up and down nearby.
Because this is the only place that will not be affected by rain or wind leakage, nor will it be affected by moisture in any season, nor will it be stolen by drilling holes in the exterior walls or underground... In case of fire, the nearby stairs are also convenient.
Fight fires and transport supplies.
As a result, the two of them followed Brother Sun's idea and found the Sahara family's study after ten minutes of sneaking into the castle.