Tianhu is next to the snow-capped mountains, and the sky above is as blue as water dripping from it.
It has the most magnificent scenery of snow-capped mountains, sky and lakes in the world, as well as the most barren land in the world. In winter, it is covered with white snow and ice, and in summer, it is a desert Gobi where no grain of rice can be grown.
You can imagine how difficult it is for people living here.
As we go deeper into the hinterland of the Black Stone family, most of the local people we see along the way are unkempt, sallow and thin, and most of them are serfs. The big landowners and serf owners live in tents and eat butter tsampa to avoid the scorching sun on the plateau, while the serfs
They graze and cut grass day and night.
Due to year-round hunger and heavy work, these serfs all looked numb, their eyes were empty, and they had no hope for the future. They could only repeat the heavy farm work they were doing over and over again.
Although they are all serfs, there is a clear gap between the energy and spirit of these serfs and the serfs under the jurisdiction of the Tianshen Clan, the Golden Clan, and the descendants of the Monkey God.
The numbness of hope cannot be seen in the serfs of the Blackstone clan.
Even if they saw outsiders like Jin An passing by while grazing by the lake, they would just keep their heads down and busy cutting grass or driving cattle and horses. Hungry and heavy physical work had left them with no energy to distract themselves and think.
Because the ancient Shangshung Kingdom was the area with the worst environment and the poorest land in Tubo, many people asked landlords for credit or borrowed seeds because they could not survive. Moreover, it was difficult to grow things because of the poor land, and natural disasters often occurred.
, every year a large number of farmers or tenants go bankrupt and become serfs.
To become a serf here means that the whole family, young and old, will become serfs for generations to come. It is like the whole family has fallen into an abyss dug by the devil in advance. Once they fall in, there will be no way out.
Moreover, because the land in the ancient Shangshung Kingdom was barren, both livestock and farming could only receive minimal harvests. Therefore, those landowners, serfowners and aristocrats who tried their best to exploit the serfs and only saw cattle, horses and gold would be even more exploited by eating human blood steamed buns.
Every serf.
It ranges from increasing grazing time to farming time and shortening the serfs' rest time, so that the serfs can work full twelve hours a day without having to sleep; it can range from as small as the fact that every piece of cloth and dry food on the serf's body is inhumanely squeezed, which is more sucking than Zhou Papi.
Human blood, in the eyes of these superiors, the most indispensable thing on the plateau is a steady stream of serfs. Today a few serfs are exhausted to death, and tomorrow there will be seven or eight people from a family who cannot afford the seed money to become new serfs. But
These landowners and nobles still feel that this is not enough. They even want to take away the last bit of dignity from the serfs. During the day, they are no longer able to wear clothes, so they are grazing and farming naked. At night, they have no house to live in, no clothes to keep warm, and they can only sleep in animal sheds.
A serf who huddles with the cows and horses to keep warm.
This is the miserable experience that happened to the serfs that Jin'an saw along the way! And there were several cannibal mountains weighing on them that made them breathless!
Along the way, he encountered miserable serfs, all naked, men, women, old and young, standing on the meadows next to the holy lake in the snow-capped mountains, grazing, cutting grass to feed cattle and horses, their bodies tanned and thin, and the magnificent scenery of the plateau.
The snow-capped mountains, holy lake and blue sky form a sharp contrast.
It's not that they don't know etiquette, justice and shame, and are only numb, but that people are not as decent as beasts in the face of hunger.
Only by seeing more in this dark age can we fully understand how dark the mountains pressing down on this era are.
When we were near the West Kunlun Mountains, because it was deep in the plateau desert and far away from human settlements, except for some mobile herdsmen, we could rarely see a few people after traveling for several months. Jin'an was deeply aware of the darkness of this era.
It only stayed in some memories that were about to be forgotten, but when he really saw the dark side of this era with his own eyes, he realized that this cannibalistic hell was even more bloody and cruel than what he had seen among the serfs in the West Kunlun Mountains.
direct.
At this time, Jin'an came to fetch water from a living lake formed by the melted snow at the foot of a snow-capped mountain. On the other side of the lake, there were several male serfs with naked skin and severely sunburned skin grazing. These people
They should only be about twenty years old, but each of them is as old as forty or fifty years old. The heavy work has long crushed their thin bodies, making their already overwhelmed bodies prematurely bent.
Facing Jin'an, an outsider who came to fetch water from the lake, these male serfs turned a blind eye and continued to huddle up, staring blankly at the cows and horses that they had herded until their furs were shiny, trying to save energy and make them hungry as much as possible.
Gotta go slower.
I don’t know if they are thinking about their future life at this time? Or are they thinking about whether they can get an extra piece of dried meat for the evening meal after feeding the cows and horses earlier?
Jin An got the water and stood up. He looked at these serfs with no hair, yellow faces and thin muscles, and he couldn't bear to look at them. He distributed the remaining dried meat to several people.
Because of hunger, those serfs became slow to think. They did not notice Jin An's approach. It was not until Jin An left the dried meat and turned around to leave that the slightest expression change appeared on their numb faces. Their empty and numb eyes gradually focused on Jin An.
An's back, Jin An's back at this time has gone far away.
This living water lake is very large, so it also attracts many herdsmen and passers-by to come here to fetch water. When Jin'an fetched water and was about to leave, he unexpectedly saw a familiar figure.
"Huh? It's the trafficker's kidnapper Gesang!"
The first time he saw this kidnapper Kelsang was when Uncle Dorjetso took them into the Kunlun Snow Mountains. When they were resting outside the tundra meadow, they accidentally met this man. The guide was leading a group of Tianzhu people into the Kunlun Snow Mountains.
Uncle Dorjetso’s evaluation of this person was not good at all.
It is said that this man was possessed by some unknown evil ten years ago, and his temperament suddenly changed drastically. He stopped being a good herdsman and gave up his cattle and livestock. He actually not only trafficked people but also sold his own wife and daughter.