Among the saints present, almost only the white-haired priest remained calm.
Her tone was even calm: "Bazhi, please send Xiangkari's head over. It is placed in my monastery and I have already paid homage to it."
Qing Bazhi gritted his teeth and left without saying a word.
This is tradition.
This is tradition...
Qing Qishu and Qing Jiuye remained silent, looking ashamed.
"Young man from a foreign land." The priest looked at Jiang Wang: "Didn't you ask me what is the predicament of the Land of God's Shade? Our holy clan has to let the young and strong warriors in the clan fight each other, and then the warriors who die in the hunt will be killed.
...Bringing out his head, this is the dilemma we face."
"What is the cause of this predicament?" Jiang Wang was infected by this depressing atmosphere, and his voice became hoarse: "That cry just now?"
The old priest looked at him and told such a story
a long time ago.
A swallow without a tail came to the door and uttered human words: "Good Samaritan, I am very hungry and I am about to die of starvation. Can you give me something to eat?"
A kind-hearted girl from the holy tribe brought some fruits.
The tailless swallow said: "No, I won't eat this."
The saint girl brought it a bowl of rice and a bowl of water.
The tailless swallow said: "How can these things fill my stomach?"
The saint girl got angry and said, "What on earth do you want to eat?"
At this time, the tailless swallow showed its ferocious face, and it said: "Only your head can make me stop being hungry."
After saying that, it pounced on the saint girl.
This scene was seen by a saint warrior, who raised his bow and shot the tailless swallow to death with one arrow.
But the scary thing is that the tailless swallow appeared again the next day.
Exactly the same, no damage to the feathers.
It even begged people in exactly the same tone: "Good Samaritans, I'm hungry and I'm about to starve to death. Can you give me some food?"
People already knew its ferocious appearance, so no one answered. The brave saint warriors shot it to death immediately. In order to prevent this strange tailless swallow from resurrecting again, the saint warriors burned its body.
For ashes.
But on the third day, the tailless swallow appeared again.
This time it cried: "I'm going to starve to death. Please give me a human head to eat."
Of course no one would agree.
The Holy Warrior killed it again, but in the process of killing it, the Holy Warrior discovered that it was much more powerful and sensitive than last time, and killing it was no longer so easy.
The fourth day...
The fifth day...
Every time the Tailless Swallow is killed, it will appear again intact the next day. And it will be stronger than the previous day.
No matter how you treat its body, whether you bury it, chop it into pieces, or even roast it and eat it... it can always come back to life.
Finally one day, the holy warrior was no longer its opponent and was killed by it in the fight.
The tailless swallow pecked off the poor saint warrior's head and ate it in several bites.
Then he happily said to people: "This is the hundredth head I have eaten, kind people, thank you! I am full! See you in a year!"
After saying that, it flew away from here.
And sure enough, it never appeared again until a year later...
When the Tailless Swallow reappeared, the warriors of the Holy Tribe had been preparing for a whole year. They set up a trap and worked together to kill it. They trapped its body with chains and put it into a wooden structure made of Shenlong wood.
In the coffin, the wooden coffin was buried in front of the tree altar, hoping to use divine power to suppress evil spirits.
But what is desperate is that the tailless swallow came back to life again the next day.
And like before, it gets stronger.
In a great battle, it killed seventeen saint warriors and devoured the head of one of them.
When leaving, it said: "I'm full, thank you for the treat! See you in a year!"
A year later, when faced with the Swallow's visit again, people had different opinions. Some people worked hard to practice combat skills to fight against the Swallow again, while others tried to use new methods to prevent the Swallow from resurrecting.
At this time, a saint warrior stood up and said: "It only needs to eat one human head, why do we have to kill so many people?"
The warrior committed suicide in front of the tailless swallow and donated his head.
After the bird swallowed the human head, it left without harming anyone else.
This kind of "head sacrifice" continues to this day, and is the predecessor of the tradition of "hunting" among the saints.
This story is not long, but it is extremely dark and desperate.
A monster that can never be completely killed and becomes more powerful the more you fight against it, has turned the appalling thing of devouring human heads into a habit.
People fear it and are used to it.
The white-haired old woman finished telling the story.
Jiang Wang and the three of them were silent.
The tradition of "hunting" among the saints is a great history of sacrifice.
But looking at it from another perspective, isn’t this the history of a tailless swallow’s taming of the so-called “saints”?
"I have a question." Wu Quji asked straightforwardly: "Since that tailless swallow can eat one human head a year, why don't you give it to the old people or children who are unable to work, but to let the young and strong warriors of the clan
How about dying? From a value perspective, it’s not appropriate. Young and strong warriors should be the guarantee for the survival of the group, right?”
The old priest looked at him deeply: "The old man is history, and the children are the future. Losing history means losing honor. Losing the future means losing everything. We have no tradition of letting old people and children die."
Qing Jiuye glared at Wu Quji: "Although our holy clan had to surrender, our backbone has not been broken!"
At this time, Jiang Wang asked: "Is that tailless swallow the swallow owl?"
Before entering the Land of God's Shade, Qing Qishu mentioned this seemingly taboo name, which impressed him deeply.
"Yan Xiao?" Before the priest nodded, it was Su Qi next to him who spoke out curiously.
When the priest told the story of the tailless swallow, he kept thinking deeply and seemed to think of something.
"Young man, do you know Yan Xiao?" The old priest looked at Su Qi with his cloudy eyes.
"I once found an ancient book, and there was a passage in it that recorded Yan Xiao." Su Qi said hesitantly.
Jiang Wang's heart moved. The ancient books that exist in the modern world record the monster Tailless Swallow in the source world of Senhai?
This matter is becoming more and more mysterious.
Everyone looked at Su Qi inquiringly.
He thought for a while and declared: "I'm not sure whether it's true or not. I'm just telling you what I've seen."
"But it doesn't matter."
Su Qi organized his words and said: "According to the records in that ancient book..."
"The swallow is a good bird, and the owl is an evil bird.
In ancient times, people hated owls very much.
Cut off the owl's head and hang it on a tree for public display.
This is the origin of "showing one's head to the public".
This has become a punishment still used by humans today. People often cut off the head of the person being tortured and hang it on a tree to show the public.
It is said that after the death of an owl, evil thoughts will continue. Only out of one hundred thousand owl whose heads are hung in public will there be one extremely evil bird bred from the owl's head.
His name is Yan Xiao.
According to legend, this object is the evil intention of the owl. Because it hates the same bird, people love the swallow so much, but are so hostile to the owl, so it turned into the shape of the swallow. It is to use the shape of the swallow to kill people. It uses the appearance that the human race "likes" to harm the human race.
Because it is born from the head and is born with a head and no tail, the biggest difference in appearance between a swallow owl and a swallow is that the swallow owl has no tail.
The Yan Owl is the most evil of all Owls. It is cruel by nature and feeds on the heads of living beings."
At the end of the sentence, Su Qi's voice even trembled a little
"When the owl sings, he will eat a hundred songs!"
