Chapter 15 The Pied Piper
Sitting on the ground in a strange posture, Horn could feel the alternation of hot and cold blood all over his body. The muscle soreness and shortness of breath from the previous exercise were all gone.
The turbid air was softly exhaled from his mouth, and the alternating feeling of hot and cold gradually dissipated. Horn opened his eyes, only to feel a continuous gurgling in his stomach.
He quickly threw a few berries and dried meat into his mouth as a cushion for now.
The Knight's Breathing Method has very high requirements on food. Not only does it require adequate intake of meat and fat every day, but also rice and noodles are indispensable.
This means that if an ordinary person wants to practice breathing methods, he must either have a talent like Jeanne and gain weight even if he eats shit, or he must eat meat and vegetables three times a day and have time to practice.
This is why the practice of Knight Breathing Technique is widely spread, but the vast majority of practitioners are from the armed peasantry.
Ordinary people cannot afford such high food consumption.
However, since the end of the Hundred Years War, the wages of laborers and craftsmen have increased significantly, which has led to the emergence of first- and second-level breathing method practitioners among ordinary workers and even refugees, and the mercenary industry has risen accordingly.
The Imperial Council of Nobles hurriedly issued two laws, the "Fugitive Slave Law" and the "Labor Law" to restrict it, just because they were afraid that this group of lower classes would master extraordinary power.
In this world, supernatural strength equals violence equals power.
After taking the last two bites of the rough wheat bran bread and mixing it with water, Horn burped and exhaled a lot of unpleasant sour gas.
Closing his eyes, Horn slowly recalled the previous feeling.
According to Jeanne, the hallmark of a breathing technique is the ability to activate this feeling at will.
By then, physical endurance will be greatly enhanced.
"Master Holy Grandson..."
Horn opened his eyes, and Jeshka's big wrinkled face popped out.
"Is everyone here? Let's set off when we are here." Horn thought Jeshka was here to urge him to get on the road to the forest.
But Jeshka shook his head with a grimace: "There are no people here. When we were collecting the cages this morning, two members of the hunting team were missing."
"Missing. ? Did you get lost? "
"We only found one, but he was already unconscious. We just carried him to Father Cosset. We hope that Father Cosset's blessing can wake him up."
Jeshka just finished her words. , Horn heard a crisp and loud sound of "pop" not far away, followed by a cry-like whine and repeated praises from the villagers.
Tucking the handkerchief into his belt, Horn stood up and walked towards the open space where the villagers gathered.
Halfway through the road, I saw seventeen or eight villagers, surrounding Father Cosset, with a young man sandwiched between two young men walking this way.
The young man's nose was crooked and his eyes were slanted, with two lines of clear tears streaming from the corners of his eyes. There was a high, swollen, blood-red slap mark on his right face.
"Tell me carefully, what's going on?" Horn walked up to the boy who was stunned by Cosey's slap.
“I don’t know what happened. My brother and I were collecting prey cages in the forest, and then I felt dizzy and dizzy, and then I heard the sound of a flute, and then I don’t know anything.”
Before the young man could finish speaking, Father Coser murmured with a pale face: “The Pied Piper in Green must be the Pied Piper in Green.”
Whether it was Jeshka, the other villagers who came from the other side, or even Jeanne, who was fearless, their expressions changed suddenly.
The Pied Piper?
Based on this keyword, Horn quickly searched for relevant memories in his mind, and soon found the relevant memories.
The Pied Piper is similar to the legend of Horn’s hometown “Paihuazi”.
It is said that the ancestors of the Qianhe River Valley people were besieged by a group of giant rats on their way to the Qianhe River Valley from the Kush River in Bear Castle.
The chief of the Qianhe River Valley people hired a green piper to take away the rats with one hundred pounds of silver.
The flute player accepted the clan leader's request and took away the giant rat while playing the flute.
But the patriarch did not fulfill his promise, so every few years, the angry piper would raise the mist, play his flute to abduct children, and push them off the cliff.
If in Horn's hometown, this kind of legend is just used to scare disobedient children.
But in this world called Middle-earth, this does indeed exist. Basically, there are a bunch of unlucky people every few years.
Whenever there is heavy fog, children under the age of twelve will be locked in their homes and not allowed to go out.
However, considering that the Thousand River Valley is the area with the second most frequent activities of secret parties and cult groups in the empire, it is not difficult for Horn to guess the origin of this group of "Pied Pipers".
Thinking of this, Horn's eyes couldn't help but fall on Kesei.
He remembered that Father Cosset's twin daughters Anna and Lina were abducted by the Pied Piper in this way.
Father Cosset, who had always been indecisive and indecisive, was looking at Horn steadily, making Horn feel a little embarrassed.
Why did a witch and another monster pop out? Horn really didn't expect that a small Moulin Rouge village could give birth to so many sleeping dragons and phoenix chicks.
Nowadays, there is very little food that can be obtained from the forest. If the news spreads, will anyone dare to enter the forest? If people's hearts are broken, it will be difficult to lead the team.
Scraping his thumb with his thumb, Horn thought for a while, but when he looked up, he found that everyone was staring at him eagerly.
No one said anything, they were all waiting for their decision.
No longer able to hesitate, Horn took out the sword hanging from his waist, pointed it high at the forest, and said in a solemn tone: "This is no longer an ordinary devil, we must hit hard! Each of the ten collection teams The collection was temporarily stopped, and the heads of the ten households immediately deployed young men to serve as meat... guards, and follow me to slay the demons!"
A few bold young men immediately started cheering.
Horn had a confident smile on his face.
No matter what ghosts and monsters you have, in front of the witch, it is just a little devil meeting a big devil.
In countless witcher stories and adventure poems, a very prominent feature of witches is that they can suppress or even drive some monsters.
Gold content, the gold content of the leader of Messiah’s enemies!
After some preparations, Horn, Jeanne and thirty young men each took fishing nets, pitchforks, flails, axes and torches and set out on the road.
The pertinent old Coser, who always seeks good fortune and avoids evil, did not escape this time. He actually picked up the butcher's knife that he had not used for a long time and went into the forest together.
The sky was gloomy and there was no rain. Occasionally, a few drops of water passed through the burning torches, stirring up bursts of green smoke.
Walking through the black pine forest speckled with morning mist, apart from the annoying cries of jays, the only sound left in my ears was the slippery sound of shoe soles on the slippery ground.
It was like a sticky tongue licking people's ears and eyes. Anyway, that was how Horn felt at the moment.
He put on the leather waistcoat of the knight, and walked in the second row with a long sword.
Beside him, Jeanne was holding a long stick with the front end sharpened and blackened, and wearing leather armor. She looked around and walked forward silently.
"Master Holy Sunson, look, this is where they fainted." Jeshka pointed to a simple wooden cage trap and said.
Following the direction that Jeshka pointed, you can see that it is a beech tree.
Stepping forward, Horn looked around and used his half-sword to push aside a patch of grass, revealing a clear footprint submerged in the mud.
“Let’s go!”
Following the direction of the footprints, Horn and others set out again holding torches.
As Horn and others advanced, there were more weeds and shrubs, and the fog also became thicker.
The messy footsteps stopped from time to time, and Horn and others had to stop frequently to cut out roads, or jump over streams, ditches, and fallen trees covered with moss.
Horn reached out and took hold of Jeanne's hand, and Horn pulled him across a ditch.
Jeanna's face was visibly red, but she did not break away, but held Horn's hand tightly.
"Follow me." Horn, a powerful weapon like the witch, felt more at ease if he held it in his own hands.
The cries of jays in my ears disappeared at some point, even the cries of insects began to become fainter, and the footprints on the ground were still deeper and shallower.
Following the footprints, Horn and his party stopped at a creek, where the footprints disappeared.
Did you jump into the stream?
Everyone who has watched horror movies knows that in this situation, dividing the troops is taboo. Horn frowned. He was about to say hello and let the young men go upstream.
But suddenly, he felt a little dampness in his ears, and a strong gust of wind came from nowhere, making leaves and grass rustle.
“Buzz——”
What is that? Amidst the whistling wind in his ears, Horn seemed to hear some strange sound, like a window that was forgotten to be closed on a hurricane night.
No, it’s the sound of a flute.
The sound of the flute is slight and melodious, quietly penetrating into people's eardrums.
After the strong wind passed, Horn felt as if it was quiet. Even the footsteps stopped, let alone the whispers of the young men.
Amidst the faint sound of the flute, Horn turned his head, but his hair stood on end.
I saw that all the young men present had come to a standstill at some point, their faces were in a trance, and they were swaying slightly in the wind as if they were sleepwalking.
Like thirty robots that suddenly got stuck, they stopped all their movements and remained motionless in their original posture.
After the sound of the wind passed, the air suddenly became quiet, so quiet that it was almost breathtaking.
The faint sound of the flute disappeared into the distance, and Horn swallowed a mouthful of saliva, no, are you really kidding?
(End of this chapter)