Chapter 1711 Chapter 1717 Ancient Cult

Chapter 1711 Chapter 1707 Ancient Order

"Shut your mouth, raise your head, and listen. You understand what I mean, and your intelligence level is average." He said, "You can notice my weapons and armor, but I need you to look at my Eyes. These armors and weapons are prepared to deal with threats you cannot imagine. They are not for you. The torture instruments on the other side are for you. "

The man opened his mouth.

His hands and feet were tied to the wooden seat with rough hemp ropes. He tried his best to move, but he couldn't get anything except the worn skin. The speaker looked down at him. The other person was very tall, with a majestic body, and was equipped with thick armor like gold. The opponent held an extremely exquisite dagger in his hand. Before the man could react, he only felt a cold feeling on his wrist. The dagger pressed against his skin and cut through the rope tied to his wrist.

"Those who knew you reported you to me, and they gave testimony. Their testimony has been recorded and archived, and their signatures and fingerprints are on the parchment as a guarantee of the authenticity of this testimony. The file is before you. Do not "Look at the file, look at me." The Imperial Guard said, "When I ask a question you must answer. I can tell if you are lying. I only want the truth, so in order to get the truth I will do something you don't want." You only get one chance, don't give up hope."

The man followed the Custodes' instructions with great fear, his body shaking uncontrollably as he looked into those blue-gray eyes above. The cell was quite empty and he had no companions. When the Janissaries pushed open the door of his mud-brick house, his family was seized along with him. The man lived here alone for a week, dirty and smelly, and no one had any communication with him during his imprisonment. He seemed to be in a trance, and every night here he could only fall asleep with the wailing coming from the distance, and then imagine the ending of himself and his family in panic. The fear of the unknown severely affected his sanity, allowing him to comply with the interrogation of the Custodes. The man moved his chapped lips, but the sound could not be squeezed out from between his teeth. He waved his arms, his fingers bent and scratched beside his ears and in front of him, and finally fell silent again.

The Imperial Guard didn't speak, just looked down at him and waited. This was not the first interrogation, nor was this man the only subject. After a while, the man made another move. He seemed to use all his strength to open his mouth.

"I said……"

"You talked about your family history and those traveling traders. We know that your family began to worship paganism five generations ago, and we know that there is a basement under your mud-brick house filled with human skin, human bones, and gold. "

The Custodes sat on a marble seat in the center of the room.

He was not equipped with the Guards Spear, which was a perfect combination of close-range weapons and long-range weapons of the Praetorian Order. He only carried an oath dagger and an extremely exquisite heat-ray pistol. This pistol was made using Attila technology. When it appeared in the hands of the Imperial Guards, it was already hundreds of years removed from its birth. The Imperial Guards erased the royal seal of Attila on the gun and took it away from the database. All technical reserves of Attila people. Although the man did not know the purpose of the weapons in the hands of the Custodes, he knew that anything in the hands of the golden angel was a life-threatening weapon.

"Maybe you will get lucky, so we have to start over. In the past month, I have heard different lies every day. If you lie to me again, we can only do it again. I will not use this to you. "You know nothing about a gun, so you can't understand the fear it brings you, you can only understand the threat it brings to you."

Suddenly the man collapsed. He began to cry and tremble, the wooden seat supporting his body to prevent him from falling. "This is a mistake..." He raised his head, as if he suddenly gained courage, "But I didn't know that my parents and my grandparents all worshiped those gods! I have been told since I was a child that the gods I worship are the true gods! Those priests are all It is impossible for me to refute the priest!"

He became eloquent, the Custodes remained silent, and the helmet placed on the arm of the marble seat recorded every word and expression of the man. Two hours later, the Imperial Guard walked out of the room and passed through the temple corridors through the young men and women from the nomadic tribe who had been recruited half a year ago. The Custodian Commander was waiting at the end of the corridor, and Hannibal handed him the data pad and parchment file.

"He revealed so little information," Hannibal said, "that he didn't even realize he was lying."

Constantine opened the file and heard the sound of the man crying during the interrogation. He touched the parchment scroll written by the scribe with armored fingers. Eridu is a primitive city of 4,000 people. Three households in this city are polluted. In addition, there are traveling merchants from the offshore trade and yeoman landowners from several nearby villages. The empty houses near the temple are full. suspects. Considering the frequency of cultural and trade exchanges among human settlements during the Ubeid period, this data is quite astonishing. The Praetorian Order does not rule out the possibility that more potential believers have not been cleared.

After interrogation, the sources of these contaminations varied.

The paternal lineage of the first household did not worship the local primitive gods. When humans were still smearing cattle and hunting grounds with their fingers on the caves, their fathers had carefully concealed their true beliefs. They received the so-called "revelation" quite early, and the clues were interrupted because of the death of the relevant personnel; the second household was a foreign merchant who had been multiplying in Eridu for twenty years. The pollution they suffered came from the northern Mesopotamian plain. At first, it was just a social activity of people in the same industry, and then they were gradually attracted by regular secret gatherings. Finally, they were given a clay tablet full of words and settled in Eridu according to the instructions; the third household was a local resident of Eridu. All 30 direct blood relatives in the city were participants. They made highly toxic hallucinogenic drugs with materials brought by merchants from offshore trade, and then sold them to the north by inland merchants. The original polluter of this family is no longer traceable, and time covers everything.

Although the sources of pollution are different, these people do not know that they have similar religious beliefs, but they have all performed burnt offerings. The earliest of these disappearances can be traced back to hundreds of years ago. The victims were local residents and foreign merchants, and the bodies were hidden in mud-brick houses and undeveloped farmland in nearby villages. According to local records in Eridu, the village had experienced several outbreaks of plague, with symptoms of heavy bleeding from organs and pores until death. Once a merchant passed through the village and came to Eridu and fell ill outside the city. The locals dug a pit and threw him in and buried him alive. Those who buried the merchant were also infected with the plague, and finally rotted and bled all over their bodies and fell on their beds and died.

The plague stopped spreading until the entire village was burned and everyone was killed. Everything indicates that this may be a filovirus plague similar to the Marburg virus, but the origins of the Marburg virus and the Ebola virus are in Africa, and it is impossible for merchants in offshore trade to reach Uganda and come into contact with fruit bats carrying the virus.

"My Lord needs answers. The number of believers that have been discovered exceeds the average, and we must find out the source."

It would not take a few days for the Guards to fully investigate a settlement of 4,000 people, but there was no household registration information and identity documents in this era, and the popularity of roller seals was far less than expected, so all investigations could only rely on visits. This means that the Guards need to talk to every household in Eridu, and the Guards spent half a month making roller seals and registering household registration information for every household in Eridu.

"Did Captain Miller cause any trouble?"

"No, the school was established smoothly, and he spent a lot of time teaching those children."

"Let the school attract all his attention, and don't let him interfere with the actions of the order." Constantine nodded, "Autopsy results?"

Another guard, Hammurabi, was not wearing armor. He was wearing a heavy robe woven from several layers of linen, which was the most suitable medical work clothes in this era.

"No virus was detected," he said. "The temperature of this era cannot kill filamentous viruses, and no asymptomatic infections were found in the animal populations near the bone burial site. It can be confirmed that this is a psychic plague."

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The emperor's work every morning is to wear a robe made of silk and cotton, wear a golden crown and appear on the 25-meter-high rammed earth temple base to overlook the city. Every day Dinah accepts gifts on behalf of the emperor. Sometimes it is 2 cows or 6 sheep, sometimes it is dates, honey, milk and lard, sometimes it is carefully brewed beer and at least 4 guls (volume unit) of grain and flour, and sometimes it is unrefined natural silver. The emperor does not communicate directly with local residents. He only represents the supreme power of this era. Just like human beings' fear of nature, the power he represents cannot have self-awareness, and he is unwilling to abuse this part of power.

A part of the imperial guards was sent out to announce the emperor's power to the surrounding hundreds of kilometers (basically the coverage area of ​​the Ubaid culture), bringing some of the sons of merchants who were literate in the city to act as scribes, bringing clay tablets made by the residents and the emperor's cylinder seal to issue land certificates for all the villages of the Ubaid culture. These imperial guards were also responsible for recording geographical conditions, cultivated areas, crop types, expected yields, the use rate of agricultural tools, the number of livestock, etc. When the imperial guards returned, the emperor already knew clearly how much property each household in Eridu and its surrounding villages had, including livestock, precious metals and expensive dyed fabrics. For the first time, the prototype of a social welfare system appeared in Eridu, although it was only to give meat, livestock and grain to residents who established new families and gave birth to new lives. Perhaps this welfare system pacified the city, and the arrest operation carried out by the Guards in Eridu did not cause panic among the local residents. Instead, the former rulers of Eridu were panicked, even though most of them had been cleared of suspicion.

There was no written code of law in this era, and all laws came from the temple.

Managing the city was just entertainment for the emperor in his spare time from work, and he had been conducting real research work in the temple, but for Dinah, she had always been dissatisfied that the city could not provide him with the best quality of life. There are no beautiful gold-rimmed crystal glasses, no soft silk bedding, and even the cushions on the marble throne are not made of cotton. The only thing that satisfied her was the woolen carpet that stretched from the temple door to the throne above the stairs. This carpet took one-fifth of the women of Eridu four months to make. For this carpet, the temple paid flour to the women who worked every day. In order to distract the maid from worrying about the scarce supplies of this era, the emperor could only allow her to select young girls from the wandering tribes of Eridu and Hasuna to receive the standard education of the sisterhood.

In this era, girls after the age of twelve are the best age to form a new family, and men around the age of ten also have to take on production tasks. The school's admission age freed the chosen children from the tasks of breeding and farming, and Dinah's handpicked girls also did not have to work but received more lessons. In addition to standard military training and medical training, and most importantly, home economics education, she regretted that this era did not provide enough chainswords and power armor for girls. It also regretted that these girls were not true reserve members of the sorority after all. Girls There was even a salary for working in the temple.

The emperor didn't know what Dinah's selection criteria were, but he found that the girls chosen by Dinah seemed to have learned how to put on makeup. Adequate nutrition, enforced hygiene regulations, and carefully selected clothing also made them look far stronger and more beautiful than before. . At first they were still afraid of the emperor and the Imperial Guard, but six months of close contact weakened their fear. Although he made no sign of it, the Emperor still felt that it would make him feel better, and he was happy to see them being naughty and mischievous where Dinah couldn't see them. .

The girls held up trays containing pure glass goblets and flasks that could not be produced in this era. Dinah stood next to the throne, her eyes stern, looking at the girls standing quietly on both sides of the stairs. They were in awe and envy of Dinah. Judging from the function of this temple, Dinah was the emperor's priestess, and they were the priestess apprentices. They hope that one day they can wear the power armor like Dinah and become as beautiful as Dinah. Perhaps in their little minds, the job of the priestess is to kill people with a sword. You can't blame them, after all, Dinah is not a priestess.

"You did very well."

"Half a year of education is not enough to make them fully qualified. They cannot fight and complete services independently." Dinah looked at the girl indifferently, "I'm sorry, my lord, they are only half-finished products."

The Emperor stared down at the data pad in his hand without looking up. He had become accustomed to not wearing armor in the temple, and even the holy sword was put away and handed over to the commander of the guards for safekeeping. He was wearing a white and crimson silk robe today. The hot and humid weather was not suitable for wearing strict clothing, and the crimson holy cloth was not suitable for the Mesopotamian plains of this era. The temple is the tallest building in Eridu. The thick mud brick rammed earth walls and glazed mosaic walls isolate the heat from the sun, and the moist wind passing through the temple brings a little coolness.

"I need the report of today's interrogation by the Praetorian Order."

The emperor put down the data tablet and picked up the clay tablet beside him. Running a primitive city of 4,000 people plus some slaves means that his work is not onerous, and he does not need to use a large number of complicated regulations to supervise the lives of every resident. Even local residents raise sheep and cattle in the city. It is also something that is allowed. He was promoting the construction of a sewer system, which required funding from the nobles of Eridu, and the temple could not afford to build a sewer system that would last for hundreds of years. "Where's the grain merchant representative? I remember he had a negotiation with me today. Tell him the meeting is postponed until thirty standard minutes. Any questions, Dinah?"

"They are looking for you, and you are still concerned about the survival rate of livestock calves of farmers in the city."

The emperor raised his head and glanced at Dinah, and found that she was as deaf to the voice as those girls. Time seemed to stand still, and even the floating curtains were stagnant in the air.

"I'm glad that you can come to this world from the vast sea. I hope that you have obtained the ultimate secret of the universe." A figure in black robes appeared next to the throne, and the Supreme Mage smiled and nodded at him. The emperor could no longer remain aloof. There are very few people in this world who can see him showing his emotions, and the Supreme Mage is one of the few. "I wish you could still call me child, but we both know that is unlikely. I have already taken the crown and become the Lord of Kama Taj."

"I didn't expect that the person who defeated the white giant in myth was actually you. The holy sword is yours, I only keep it temporarily. Destiny is always so capricious and annoying." The Supreme Mage said. It seems that after abandoning the mortal body, the Supreme Mage is in a much happier mood. "I'm here to remind you that they are looking for you. They have dismantled every Planck time since the birth of the universe to find you. You have to be careful, you may think that these cases are just from the age of the gods. There are remnants, but no one can rule out that it may be a bait thrown by them.”

The emperor raised his eyebrows and reached out to pick up the crystal wine glass on the tray beside him. The crimson wine resumed its movement, and the physical laws of the real plane came into play again. "This is wine made from wild grapes picked. It tastes terrible and is not suitable for making wine, but this glass of wine is my only choice. There are no Belgian wheat, Indian pale beer and stout now, let alone sherry barrels and bourbon barrels, let alone tequila and rum."

"You think you only have one choice?"

"They can't come to this era for the time being, right? Behind the curtain is not always just an attacker, and the relationship between illusion and reality is not eternal. Now that you have found me, I must ask you for some help. I know you can't interfere with the real plane directly, but sending messages between reality and illusion will not change the Shannon entropy of this universe, and will not attract the attention of those behind the curtain." The emperor said happily, "I am preparing to give them a counterattack, are you interested in seeing it?"