The Fall of the Golden Empire (Novel) (Volume 1) "Bloody Sunset" by Zhang Baotong
When Hernando heard this, he was convinced that the gold had been hidden by the priests. So he asked the soldiers to take the old man back to the next door and bring in a young priest. Hernando walked up to the young man and asked viciously, "Where is the gold?"
The young priest shook his head and said timidly, "I don't know."
Hernando gritted his teeth and said, "You really don't know?"
The young priest said, "I really don't know."
Hernando said, "I'll let you know."
As he said that, he waved his hand vigorously towards Letomundo. The soldiers rushed over, pushed the young priest to the ground, and beat him with whips and sticks. The beating made the young man roll with his head in his hands, cry for his father and mother, and kept shouting, "Don't fight, don't fight."
Hernando thought he was about to confess, so he asked the soldiers to stop, and then asked the young priest, "Okay, tell me, where is the gold hidden?"
The young priest sat up from the ground holding his head and said, "I really don't know! Because they didn't ask me to hide the gold."
Hernando said, "Then tell me, who hid the gold?"
The young man hesitated for a long time before saying, "I don't know."
Hernando kicked the man to the ground and shouted, "Hit me hard." Then, whips and sticks rained down on the man's head and body. After a while, the man was beaten until he couldn't move. The man shouted weakly, "Stop it, I say."
As soon as Hernando heard that he was about to attack, he pointed his sword at the man's neck and said, "Okay, you tell me. If you don't tell me, your life will be lost."
The man gasped for a while and then said, "Our high priest Ukumari, he led others to hide the gold."
Hernando told the soldiers, "Bring their high priest here."
Letomundo said, "Yes," and led the Indian interpreter out of the house.
After a while, Letomundo brought in a middle-aged priest in his forties. Hernando asked him, "Are you High Priest Ucumari?"
The middle-aged man said, "Yes."
Hernando asked again, "Did you hide the gold?"
The middle-aged priest said, "Yes."
Hernando asked, "Why did you hide the gold?"
The middle-aged priest said, "Atahuallpa sent people to ask us to remove all the gold from the temple and the palace hall and transport it to Cajamarca, but we are all priests loyal to Huascar and do not want to listen to him, so , and hid all the gold.”
Hernando pointed at the young priest who was lying on the ground and was beaten unable to move and said to him, "Do you want to live or die?"
Of course, the middle-aged priest chose to live, because in the Inca Empire gold was only used to decorate temples and palaces. Apart from that, it had almost no other uses. Therefore, of course he would not kill himself because of gold. He looked at the young priest who was beaten to the ground and agreed to take Hernando and the others to the place where the gold was hidden.
So, Hernando asked the soldiers to gather, mounted their horses and followed the middle-aged priest out of the temple gate. They walked for a while on the urban streets at dusk, then came to the door of a large stone house, opened a large copper lock, and entered the house. The room was dark, but the alluring light of gold could be seen. They walked closer and took a look, wow, what a big pile! At least one or two hundred kilograms, worth about eighty thousand Spanish gold coins.
It stands to reason that this amount of gold should be a very generous reward compared to the hardships they suffered on the way here. But the Spaniards' appetite for gold had become too great, and not even all the gold in the Inca Empire could satisfy their greedy desires.
While Hernando asked the soldiers to put the gold in cloth bags, he asked the high priest, "What else is there?"
Because his brother Francisco Pizarro wrote in a letter that the Inca King said that the gold here was no less than that in Cusco.
The high priest said, "There is still a lot of gold, which can fill several rooms like this. However, the palace priest sent people to carry it on camels to hide it in the desert."
Hernando asked, "Where is the palace priest?"
The chief priest of the temple shook his head and said, "He has gone into seclusion. Because he is Huascar's biological brother, Atahualpa will behead him if he is caught."
Hernando didn't believe it, so he arrested several more priests and tortured them to extract confessions. In the end, they all said the same things as the high priest. Hernando had no choice but to lock the priests in the stone house.
Hernando and his soldiers stayed in Pachacamac for several days. Every day, people are sent into small teams to search and find gold in cities and people's homes. However, the harvest is very limited. Moreover, all the news confirmed that a large amount of gold was transported to the desert by the palace priests and buried. This frustrated Hernando because they wanted much more than what they had already received.
Since the priests could no longer provide them with any more clues about finding gold, Hernando planned to release them from the stone house. So Hernando asked the soldiers to make a very large cross out of stones and plaster. Then, he gathered all the priests in the temple and the palace hall together, put the cross high, supported by two soldiers, and began to speak to the priests, saying, "Today, I solemnly tell you this Indian priests, your ugly and ridiculous idol has been smashed by us, because it cannot bless you or bring you any good luck. Otherwise, how could your huge Inca Empire be overthrown by our Spanish? Defeated by others?"
As he spoke, he pointed to the tall cross erected behind him and said to the priests, "Look at this cross. It is the idol we worship. It is the amulet for us and you. It can protect us and you from all kinds of diseases." Damage from the devil. It can bring us good luck and protect us from disaster. The reason why we can defeat Atahualpa is because we have its protection. Therefore, I want you to worship and believe in us in the future. Christianity, worship this cross.”
The local priests were originally puzzled by the impunity for the intruders who broke into the temple and smashed the idols. Now listening to Hernando's speech, they felt that the idols worshiped by the white people were indeed higher than what they believed in. The idol had more divine power, and he began to have a sense of reverence for the cross made of stone and plaster in front of him. After speaking, Hernando asked the soldiers to carry the cross to the temple and place it in front of the shrine.
(Please pay attention to Zhang Baotong's signed work "Poetic Emotions", which includes short prose, life essays and short stories. Today's release is the exquisite prose "No Predestined in This Life")
