Chapter 1157 - 181: The Expanding Dawn Church and the Nuns’ Generous, Passionate Spring Ceremony of All Things (Part 4)

Chapter 1157: Chapter 181: The Expanding Dawn Church and the Nuns’ Generous, Passionate Spring Ceremony of All Things (Part 4)

For example, the Spirit of the Watch-Wall: it is a living hedge that can move, a wall of tangled thornvines, caltrops, and honeysuckle. Blurred human faces float upon its surface, with eyes made of hanging poisonous nightshade berries. Its nature is that of a suspicious Guard, bristling with aggression at unfamiliar footsteps, yet gentle as a nursemaid toward the livestock it knows. It demands that humans never trim it completely, insisting that they preserve its "dignity of wilderness", or else it will deliberately let weasels slip into the henhouse.

There is also the Whispering Elder, a giant bee whose wings shimmer with iridescent light, its compound eyes formed from hexagonal honeycomb cells. At its tail it hides not a venomous sting, but a single droplet of golden honey that never falls. When it flies, it scatters pollen like luminous dust.

Its temperament is that of a loquacious orator, passionately fond of imparting horticultural lore, and it snorts in disdain at humanity’s clumsy grafting techniques. It can command the hive to pollinate with perfect precision or drive off pests, doubling the yield of fruit trees and rendering blossoms that never wither.

To sip the golden honey at its tail grants a brief ability to commune with plants, to learn of the crops’ diseases or the soil’s thirst. But it requires humans to recite poetry or agrarian proverbs to it every day; otherwise it will direct the bees to disrupt human prayers at the most solemn tolling of the Church bells.

There is even a Cellar Grandmother, a stooped old crone pieced together from staves of aged oak barrels, her hair flowing as hanging filaments of mold, her skirt hem streaming fumes of wine and vinegar. She walks leaning on a long-handled clay ladle. She is an absolute perfectionist, fanatically strict about methods of preserving food, and loathes the "frivolity" of fresh ingredients.

Her power is to hasten the fermentation of everything in the cellar, making pickled cabbage crisp and ready in three days, and cheese rich with fragrance in a month; or to arrest decay, so that a basket of fresh fruit can sit in the cellar for three years without spoiling.

She demands that each year the first vat of newly brewed liquor be sacrificed for her to "taste"—in truth poured into the cracks between the cellar bricks—or she will sour the mead and breed maggots in the smoked meat.

And in the very center of the grounds stood twenty-eight Nuns, draped in brand-new vestments of emerald green, as though dyed with the first leaves of early spring, solemnly upright. Before them was set one of this year’s most crucial offerings: over three pounds of incomparably precious pearl wheat, resting in a sacred platter carved from a single block of Moonstone, radiant with a warm, jade-like glow. This was the key to granting all this year’s newborns the blessing of the Goddess’s Womb!

The materials for the Blood Sacrifice—those monster and rebel corpses piled like mountains, purified by Divine rites—were laid upon a massive temporary stone dais erected behind the stele, covered in white linen, strewn with freshly picked herbs and wildflowers, briefly veiling the grim killing aura beneath. Twelve Polevik lay quietly prostrate around the dais; their mere presence exuded thick currents of life and earth. Beside them waited a full hundred new-model steel plows forged by Half-Elf Artisans, adorned with streamers and tender branches, poised for the coming spring plowing race.

At Su Li’s command, they would together offer a Divine sacrifice to the Dawn Goddess, and then the entire Territory would be chanting hymns in praise of the Dawn Goddess, everywhere a scene of sanctity. The Divine trembling would ripple outward like invisible waves, and Reya’s gaze would surely turn upon this place.

Since the founding of Flash Spear City within the Territory, this was the first celebration of the Spring Brings Life to All Things festival, destined to far surpass last year’s rite!

"The Lord has arrived!" With the herald’s proclamation, the grounds fell instantly silent, and all eyes converged upon Su Li.

Vandar, as Shepherd Leader, walked to the center of the grounds, raised both arms high, and his resonant voice carried to the four quarters: "In Reya’s name! Spring Brings Life to All Things, and the earth awakens! Let the festival—begin!"

A mellow, ancient melody unfurled, played in chorus by farmers on panpipes woven from new wheat stalks, bone flutes, and hand drums. The twenty-eight Dawn Nuns began to dance anew, their movements more practiced than last year, more suffused with divine grace. Their number doubled, the spirals their dance traced were vaster still, like endless waves of wheat rolling in the wind.

"Master of Life, Mother of fertile soil!"

"Your skirts sweep over frozen ground, and even the icebound river sings for joy!"

"In Reya’s name, the covenant endures forever—the land grants me abundance, and I grant the land reverence and rebirth!"

As the clear, bright chanting rose, the rite neared its climax. The twenty-eight Nuns halted their steps in unison, slender jade-like fingers brushing the ramie sashes at their waists. The green vestments slipped away like falling leaves, and twenty-eight young bodies bathed in Dawn’s light, like the earth’s purest gift, were laid bare without reserve before the devout faithful. The sheen of their skin was like newborn petals beaded with morning dew, their curves gentle as the undulation of hills, their falling tresses like streams of flowing gold. In that moment there was no lust, only the highest hymn and offering to the very source of life.

"Praise the generous Goddess Lea!" The shout of adoration surged like mountains and seas, resounding to the clouds, and the heatwave of faith seemed almost to bring the very air to a boil.