Qi Xuansu was wearing an ordinary Taoist robe, with a sword hanging on the left side of his 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.
1. As the capital of a backward agricultural country, Cusco is adequate, 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 situation of national subjugation and annihilation.
As the saying goes, knowing shame and then being brave, the Tawanting Empire had to change. Whatever ancient traditions were not worth mentioning in the face of issues of life and death and racial continuation, 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. It must have sufficient resources. 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 at the same time 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, and 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. They include disagreements and disputes, and they are also seeking support from Taoist sects and paying attention to the issues of Taoist sects.
In unison.
Talking back to 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 one that has been most successfully transformed by Xidaomen is the army, which is also the core requirement for security considerations. When it comes to the army, we have to mention armaments. Once a large-scale war is about to start, Daomen will be thousands of miles away.
In addition, it is unrealistic to rely entirely on Taoist support.
Because the form of war has undergone fundamental changes, it is no longer the era of cold weapons, and food is not enough. With the large-scale application of artillery and muskets, 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 put forward higher requirements for those who work in the industry, requiring continuous learning, including the warriors who operate these firearms.
Tawanting does not have this relevant knowledge, so he must learn from the outside. The West is the enemy and cannot learn from it. He can only learn from the East. Learning starts with writing. Writing is the foundation and core of civilization. Eastern writing contains the Eastern way of thinking.
, inherent concepts, so while learning Eastern knowledge, they will gradually be assimilated by the East. And because of their strong-willed mentality, they will also imitate various behaviors and habits of the people they are learning from.
This is the reason why Zhang Yuelu doesn't like Western culture. Western learning is prevalent. Although the advantages of the West have been learned, many Westerners' dregs have also entered the Central Plains, and many people's ways of thinking have even begun to become Westernized. This is today's East.
It 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 army as the center, other classes near and far have also been Centralized to varying degrees. Only the priest class is the most conservative, the most Tawanting, and other classes, including the royal family, are the most conservative.
It's a bit not 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 Kirin suddenly appear in various decorative sculptures. Another example is the Central Plains bell hanging under the eaves of the temple. Another example is the statue of Taishang Daozu not far from the statue of Kukulkan. Maybe the local
People are used to it and don't think much 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, blood sacrifice was abolished. In the Central Plains, any blood sacrifice will be regarded as a cult.
However, the Southern Continent still maintains such barbaric methods, and even the 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 platform protruding outwards "halfway up the mountain" in the middle of the steps. This is the place for general blood sacrifices.
——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.
Many corpses have been 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 their meaning, it sounds like some kind of howl.
Qi Xuansu stood among the crowd and fell into deep thought, "Are these ancient gods already so weak? It's not enough to just harvest incense and make wishes, you have to use blood sacrifices to speed up your 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 ancient immortals headed by Wu Luo began to perform blood sacrifices. However, apart from Wu Luo, who was an ancient witch, he was more interested in blood sacrifices.
Being familiar with the road and more tolerant, they withstood the backlash of the blood sacrifice, and the other ancient immortals who performed blood sacrifices fell one after another. Although the blood sacrifice was not the only reason for their fall, there was also the purge of the Taoist sect and the internal fighting among the ancient immortals, but it was also very
It's hard to say that it has nothing to do with 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" to 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 around these "sacrifice", dance, chant, and pray.
The sound of ancient musical instruments sounded all around.
After another moment, thousands of people watching also prayed together.
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 cut out the abdomen and gouged out the heart with very skillful movements.
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.
On the contrary, the crowd watching cheered.
Then the priests pushed the corpse off the platform and landed on the corpse mountain below. Only then did Qi Xuansu notice that there was actually a blood trough in the square. The blood from the corpse 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.
Immortals do not just feed on incense and wish power. Incense and wish power come from people, so human souls are also food for the gods, similar to the relationship between eggs and hens. Because water has to flow slowly, few gods will drain the lake to catch the fish.
.In this regard, the Holy Court and Buddhism are both experts, and can even establish a long-term system of mutual benefit and healthy development between gods and believers. And those barbaric ancient gods usually cause a lot of damage. From this point of view
, the Holy Court still has merit.
Qi Xuansu has no intention of saving people. The blood sacrifice involves ancient gods. Xidaomen can't change it, so he can't change it. It will ruin his life, but it's a life-and-death feud. Even if he wants to change, he has to do it slowly and be exposed too early.
Your intentions are not good.
Then Qi Xuansu turned his attention to the temple priests. They also had a surge of divine power, most likely from the blessings of the ancient gods, but it was not much. It seemed that the landlord's family did not have any surplus food.
Qi Xuansu did not wait for the entire blood sacrifice ceremony to end and turned around and left early.