Mystery: Mr. Witch and Ms. Hunter

Chapter 218: Sin Eater Rayleigh

Adele and Vinata naturally could not hear the little drama in Sophie's heart, and soon they reached the core area where the Cassowary Party members were densely populated.

This is the industrial center of the entire Indo Port, with thick steam pipes laid underground. Although the forced start of the steam equipment has caused too much damage to the pipes due to the low temperature, most of the steam pipes are not in working condition, but looking at the towering steam towers around, you can imagine the spectacular scene when they are all started at the same time.

However, they will no longer start.

After Feysac was defeated, Feysac and Loen signed many unequal treaties, including the closure of some steam factories and the cancellation of some industrial zones. This caused many workers in the industrial zones to lose their properties, families, and even their jobs.

A large number of unemployed workers had nothing to do and no way to make a living, so it was natural for them to become gangsters.

In a war, no one with a normal mind would want their country to lose, regardless of whether they are the aggressor or not. This has nothing to do with justice or not, it is a common human problem.

There is a saying circulating in the aristocratic circles of Loen: We should treat the Feysac people with a conciliatory policy, so that they can realize the atrocities committed by the invading army. In the words of Emperor Roselle, this is called "facing history squarely."

Regardless of the means, Adele sneered at their purpose. The minds of the people of Feysac were not that complicated, and they did not go around in circles like the nobles when it came to making a living. If they won the war, they would make money, but if they lost the war, they would lose their house, their job, or even their life. Would they admit that they made the wrong choice? At most, they would just regret why they did not win.

"There's something going on ahead, in the alley next to it."

Vinata suddenly stopped and pointed to the alley where the discordant noise came from. Adele immediately broke free from her wild thoughts, pressed the gun bag under her arm to make sure that the revolver could be pulled out normally, then picked up her cane and walked carefully into the alley. Sophie followed closely behind her, and Vinata followed behind.

At the end of the alley were seven or eight men who looked like thugs and official gangsters. They surrounded a thin boy and seemed to be blackmailing him.

The boy was dressed like a part-time chimney sweep, a job often performed by thin boys whose bodies allow them to easily get into the chimney and clean the coal dust from the chimney walls.

Adele cleared her throat and shouted to the thugs, "Gentlemen, please stop your violence and let the poor child go."

This shout drew the attention of those people to Adele and her companions. However, Adele and her companions did not wear the Esco family emblems on their chests after all, so their appearance alone could hardly pose any deterrent to them.

"Of course, ma'am." The thug closest to Adele came over with a grin, "Because we have a better target."

After saying that, he reached out and grabbed Adele's shoulder. "We think you can get more money from your pockets."

"Oh my god." Adele said with a headache, "Honestly, I don't recommend you do this."

“But we want to do it.”

Behind that guy, several sturdy men stood up, and the remaining few still surrounded the boy.

"Well, since that's what you asked for." Adele sighed helplessly, then spun her body suddenly, and the hem of her windbreaker slashed across the eyes of the person standing in front like a spinning blade.

"Indo Port welcomes you to visit us next time!"

The gangster screamed and stepped back, but the first thing he saw with tearful eyes was the flash of fire from the double-barreled shotgun in Sophie's hand under her fluttering windbreaker.

Propelled by gunpowder, hundreds of tiny bullets swept across the entire alley in an instant. The man standing in the front was blasted back, and dozens of bullets pierced his heart, lungs and bones. Even though they often inhaled some hallucinogens, the severe pain was enough to make him sober up.

The people nearby were not spared either. The bullets injured three or four people in succession. The seriously injured one fell to the ground and died, while the less seriously injured one lay on the ground and rolled over screaming in pain.

Perhaps they didn't expect Sophie to dare to shoot directly, so the people inside reacted slowly. Although they were not injured because of the human body, they were unable to draw their weapons in time. Adele had already drawn her gun while waving her clothes to block her view, and fired three shots, hitting their right shoulders and making them faint from the pain.

Adele, holding a smoking revolver, stepped over the corpses of the past and future on the ground and came to the boy.

He was about the same age as Sophie, but life had left a deeper mark on him than on Sophie. When he saw Adele coming over, he coughed loudly, making a sound like an old bellows, before he could even say thank you.

"Chronic asthma..." This word flashed through Adele's mind. This is a common symptom among residents in industrial or former industrial areas, especially among chimney sweepers like them.

"Thank you, kind lady." The little boy recovered from his violent coughing after a while and bowed to Adele gratefully. "If it weren't for you, my father would have gone hungry again today."

"It's just a small favor." Adele nodded. "What's your name? What happened to your father?"

"My name is Rayleigh, ma'am." The boy said in a dry voice, "My father used to be a sin-eater of the Church of the God of War. He specialized in eating the sins of people after they died. I recently took over his job."

"Eat... sins?" Sophie asked a little confused. She was unfamiliar with this profession and had never heard of anything like it.

"Many churches have similar sayings, that is, after a person dies, they place food and drinks on the body and ask a special sin-eater to eat them, so that the person can go to the kingdom of God without any worries."

Adele explained to Sophie, "Although the Church of Storms may not have similar sayings... In fact, except for the Church of Storms, the Church of the Eternal Sun, and the Church of the God of Knowledge and Wisdom, other churches have more or less atonement rituals related to eating, and for some reason these three churches also deliberately avoid concepts such as swallowing in their scriptures."

Although it sounds like this job is not a big deal as long as you overcome the mental discomfort, and you can get paid for free food and drinks, but in a world with extraordinary powers, people's resentment after death will dissipate from the bodies of the deceased to a certain extent, and eventually gather on the food that symbolizes original sin, and be eaten by the sin-eaters to reduce the probability of the deceased turning into a corpse or giving rise to resentful spirits.

Although these methods would cause the resentment to concentrate in the body of the Sin-Eater, it was at least much better than letting the invisible resentment spread throughout the entire city, so the church also acquiesced in the existence of these professions.

The sin-eaters and morning workers in these two chapters are both professions that appeared during the Industrial Revolution. I think they have a sense of ritual and the times, so I took them to enrich the background setting.
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(End of this chapter)