These barbarians respect them more and more, but they feel that these people are getting farther and farther away from them.
Bu Xiaotian and Letian barely responded to their thanks, and then left here and returned to the old priest's tent.
The people in the tribe saw the two of them leaving and did not stop them. They still had to install the idols and deal with the damage caused by the wolf attack.
The tribe was very lively that night, but the old priest didn't come back all night.
The next morning, when Bu Xiaotian and Letian walked out of the tent, they found that the statue had been placed in the center of the tribe.
They walked around the tribe, and the barbarians they met along the way still greeted them enthusiastically, but their attitudes were somewhat respectful, and the way they looked at them had changed. Few of them even dared to look at them. .
There was no malice in their eyes, but a kind of awe and admiration, not like looking at friends, but more like looking at gods.
The two saw the old priest and some other barbarians to the west of the tribe.
On the grassland far in front of them, the corpses of the barbarians who died in last night's battle were arranged in a row, and scavenging vultures circled in the sky.
The old priest chanted something that Bu Xiaotian and Letian couldn't understand, but from the low and distant tune, it should be a funeral ceremony for their family.
Bu Xiaotian and the other two did not go up to disturb them, but quietly watched these barbarians burying their dead companions from a distance.
Listening to the dull and falling-in-love tune, Bu Xiaotian and Letian couldn't help but feel a little sad in their hearts.
After the old priest finished singing, the vultures hovering above the corpses seemed to have received some instructions, and at the same time they landed on the corpses placed side by side, pecking at the flesh.
Such a scene was really bloody and cruel, and both Bu Xiaotian and Letian couldn't help but look away.
After a while, there was a sound of flapping wings, and the group of vultures flew high into the sky and left here.
Bu Xiaotian and the other two turned around and saw that all the flesh and blood on the original corpse had disappeared, leaving only a few white bones.
The barbarians also stepped forward at this time. They put the bones into the pit dug nearby and buried them with soil.
There are no graves, no tombstones, just a piece of plowed land. When next spring, the place will be covered with weeds, and it will no longer be possible to tell that the clan members who died in the war have been buried here.
It seems that the barbarian people do not have the custom of offering sacrifices to their deceased relatives.
The whole process was solemn and solemn, and no one made a sound.
By the time everything was done, it was already noon.
The barbarians returned to the tribe under the leadership of the old priest, but there was no sad look on their faces.
When they arrived in front of the two people, everyone greeted them warmly. It didn't look like they had just buried a few dead clan members.
"Old priest..."
Bu Xiaotian was really puzzled. When he saw the old priest approaching, he asked:
"Will the bodies of all your dead people be treated like this?"
The old priest nodded:
"Yes."
"But isn't this a bit too cruel?"
The old priest looked at Bu Xiaotian in surprise and asked:
"Is it cruel? We eat these birds and beasts on the grassland when we are alive, and let them eat us after we die. Is there anything wrong with that?
When we are alive, everything is given by the grassland. After death, we should return everything to the grassland! "
Hearing the old priest's words, Bu Xiaotian was a little unable to refute, and couldn't help but think about it carefully.
Seeing Bu Xiaotian lost in thought, Letian also asked his doubts:
"Why don't you build tombs and erect monuments for these dead clansmen?"
After listening to Lotte's words, the old priest had a blank look on his face and asked:
"Build a tomb and erect a monument? What is that?"
Letian was also stunned by this question. Don't they even know what a tombstone is and what a tombstone is?
But the confusion on the old priest's face didn't seem to be fake, so he patiently explained:
"A grave is a tomb, a place where deceased relatives are buried, and a stele is a tombstone, which is engraved with the name and past of the person buried here for worship by relatives and future generations."
The old priest understood the meaning of tombs and monuments explained by Bu Xiaotian, but he did not understand what the word worship meant, so he asked directly:
"What does worship mean?"
"Sacrifice is a custom of our human race, in order to prevent the deceased relatives from being forgotten."
"Why must we remember the dead?"
The old priest asked with some confusion:
"We believe that if a tribesman loves the tribe, then after his death, the true God will let his soul return to the tribe, reincarnate in the tribe, and grow up again. Then he will always be in the tribe and never leave. We No need to remember him.
If he no longer loves the tribe, his soul will leave and be reincarnated elsewhere. For a person who does not love the tribe, why should we remember him? "
Now the old priest's words stumped Lotte. If the true God really exists, the old priest's words are indeed right.
And after experiencing what happened last night, he no longer dared to say that the true God does not exist.
None of the three of them spoke again along the way. Only the old priest walking in the middle coughed from time to time.
Back in the tribe, in front of the old priest's tent, the young barbarian man who first spotted Bu Xiaotian and the two that day was waiting there.
He couldn't help but show a trace of sadness on his face. Maybe he couldn't help but feel sad for the dead tribesmen?
Seeing the three people approaching, the barbarian man saluted them.
The old priest nodded and walked into the tent first.
The young barbarian man waited for the three of them to enter the tent, and then followed them in.
The old priest sat on his animal skin bed and waved to the young barbarian man. The barbarian man came forward and knelt down in front of the old priest.
The old priest whispered something in their language to the young barbarian man, and the barbarian man responded a few words, his voice indeed choked with sobs.
The old priest showed displeasure and scolded him with a straight face. Because he was a little excited, the old priest coughed even more seriously.
The young barbarian man stopped sobbing and bowed to the old priest.
The old priest nodded, raised a hand and placed it on the young barbarian man's forehead, muttering something in his mouth.
Both Bu Xiaotian and Letian felt a special feeling from the old priest. At this moment, the auras of the old priest and the young barbarian man were faintly connected.
The two of them kept doing this for half an hour.
Suddenly, the two felt that the aura on the old priest's body suddenly disappeared!
Bu Xiaotian and Letian looked at the old priest almost at the same time. They saw the old priest lowering his head, and the hand that was originally placed on the young man's forehead was gently blown off. The life in his body slowly dissipated, like an oil lamp. The lamp ran out of oil and slowly went out.
The two men immediately stood up and wanted to check on the old priest's condition.
The young barbarian man stood up at this time, lowered his head and looked at the gray hair on the old priest's head, and said:
"You... don't... be anxious, the priest... is dead."
? ? ? ! ! !
Letian and Bu Xiaotian looked at the young barbarian man in shock.
what happened?
It was clear that this young barbarian man could not speak the human language before, but after just half an hour, he actually learned the human language?
The young barbarian man turned around and saw the shocked expressions of the two men. He explained in a somewhat jerky human language:
"You...don't be...surprised, the...effect of inheritance."
The role of inheritance?
Hearing his words, Bu Xiaotian and Letian seemed to understand something. Did he mean that what the old priest did with him just now was the inheritance of the barbarians?
"Why did the old priest die?"
Bu Xiaotian looked at the barbarian man in front of him and asked:
"Inheritance... consumes... life. The priest... is old... and still injured. His life... is not enough..."
The young barbarian man had just accepted the inheritance, and his words were intermittent and not very coherent, but Bu Xiaotian and Letian still understood what he meant.
This kind of inheritance requires the vitality of the old priest, but the old priest is too old and his vitality is not strong. He was injured before and could not support the consumption of the inheritance, so he died because his vitality was exhausted.
The young barbarian man looked a little sad and said to the two thoughtful people:
"I...go...to inform...the clan members."
After saying that, he laid the old priest flat on his bed and left the tent.
The two did not stop the young barbarian man from leaving. Although the old priest was a barbarian, they regarded him as a friend from the bottom of their hearts. They were also a little sad when the old priest died.
Soon, the barbarian man who had just left entered the tent again with several barbarians.
Looking at the old priest lying soundlessly on the animal skin bed, all the barbarians had sad looks on their faces.
They stepped forward and gently lifted the old priest's body and walked outside the tent.
Bu Xiaotian and Letian also followed, they were going to see off the old priest.
The outside of the tent was full of barbarians, and all the tribesmen came over, with the same sad look on everyone's face.
Several barbarians carried the old priest to the place where they buried the tribesmen in the morning. They placed the old priest on the ground and dug a pit next to it.
The other tribesmen in the tribe were watching. No one spoke, and no one cried. Everything was done in silence, and a sadness filled the hearts of everyone.
Everything that happened next was the same as what they saw in the morning, except that the one lying there became an old priest, and the one singing in a low voice was a young barbarian man.
The old priest passed away and he became the new priest of this small tribe.
Seeing the old priest's body being pecked bit by bit by vultures into a pile of bones, Bu Xiaotian felt very uncomfortable.
But he didn't stop all this. This is the tradition of the tribe. Maybe only in this way can the old priest rest in peace!
The ceremony ended, and in the morning there was a piece of new soil where the dead barbarians were buried.
The people returned to the tribe in silence.
Although they believed that the true God would allow the soul of the old priest to reincarnate in the tribe, they could not help but feel sad.
Today, when the tribe had dinner together, it was much quieter than before.
The young priest whispered to Bu Xiaotian and Letian the old priest's past stories, how he protected them time and time again from the attacks of the beasts, how he taught the young children to capture ferocious beasts, and how he took the trouble to Teach him the method of communicating with the true God...
Amidst the intermittent words of the young priest, Bu Xiaotian and Letian recalled every detail of their interactions with the old priest in the past few days.
In their eyes, the old priest is no longer just a priest of a small barbarian tribe, but a kind and honest elder, a friend who is curious about the outside world and likes to listen to their stories about the outside world.
They suddenly discovered that they didn't even know the old priest's name!
