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Chapter 447: Violating Heavenly Laws

Yan Daoxin scratched his head in confusion and asked Lu Qing, "As far as you know, is the Brahma Kingdom a place with strict etiquette where women are not allowed to show their faces in public and can only be confined to the inner quarters?"

Lu Qing looked at him with amusement: "Have you ever heard of places with strict social norms where people firmly believe in witchcraft and sorcery?"

“Oh, that makes sense…” Yan Daoxin suddenly realized, “That is indeed unreasonable.”

"The people of Brahma are supposed to be very discreet and unpredictable, but when we entered the city, we found that everyone looked tense and didn't want to say much. It felt like something was wrong that made them pretend to be calm, but were actually very frightened inside."

Furthermore, there are no young women to be seen here, and even the things that women like are not openly sold... It's hard to tell if something is wrong in this area, or if something is amiss throughout the entire Brahma Kingdom. "Zhu Yu concluded.

“This is just a county town we just passed through the pass. It’s not a big place, let alone a prosperous one. We can’t be sure what we see.” Lu Qing didn’t rush to make a judgment. After thinking for a moment, he said, “Let’s rest here today and set off for the capital tomorrow.”

By observing the conditions along the way to the capital, we can roughly figure out the situation.

None of them had any objections. After all, they were new to the place and were not sure what the situation was like outside. So they didn't go out for dinner and just ate some vegetarian noodles at the inn before going back to rest.

The night passed, and although the small inn was not very nice and was quite simple, it was quite peaceful.

Zhu Yu'an slept soundly through the night and woke up refreshed the next morning. However, this good mood from a good night's sleep only lasted until they went downstairs for breakfast.

The only breakfast served at the inn was a kind of flatbread that looked black, very rough, and extremely dry, with some black specks mixed in that I couldn't tell what they were.

Besides that, there was only "crystal clear" porridge—a bowl of clear rice water with a few grains of rice floating in it.

“This…” Zhu Yu was somewhat surprised and looked at Lu Qing.

Although she didn't say it explicitly, there was a clear sense of doubt in her eyes.

Logically speaking, the fact that the Brahma Kingdom so arrogantly and openly encroached on the neighboring Lan Kingdom's land should, to some extent, indicate its strong national power.

But even if a border county town is far from the capital, it's understandable that it's not very prosperous. But why is it that the food is like that of someone suffering from famine?
The vegetarian noodles the night before were truly vegetarian, and the noodles weren't made from pure white flour. Zhu Yu didn't think much of it at the time, assuming it might be a specialty of the Brahma Land, and that's how vegetarian noodles are here. Little did she expect that this morning's breakfast would be even more outrageous.

"Waiter," Lu Qing gestured to the waiter beside her, "Don't you have anything else to eat?"

"Hmm," the waiter nodded readily, "Sir, that's all. And it's not that we don't have anything else; if you go out and find a stall, it'll be pretty much the same stuff. Besides, it's only because you're guests from out of town that you get to eat breakfast; we locals don't even eat breakfast."

"Why is that?" Zhu Yu asked hurriedly, somewhat puzzled.

"There's not enough grain. A lot of land has been requisitioned to grow medicinal herbs, so we have to be careful with our food." The young shop assistant looked to be only sixteen or seventeen years old, so he didn't seem as worried as the others. However, when he talked about the food shortage, he was very natural, as if he didn't think it was a problem at all.

It seems that the food shortage in the Brahma Kingdom is not a recent phenomenon; it has been going on for quite some time. Zhu Yu pondered silently to himself.

Since that was the case, there was no point in saying more. The group forced themselves to eat the thick, throat-scratching flatbreads soaked in rice porridge that was barely thicker than water. They went outside for a walk and found that the situation outside was indeed similar to what the young waiter had described. The whole county town seemed lifeless. There was no shortage of pedestrians on the streets, but everyone looked depressed and didn't want to talk. So the county town had little to do with prosperity and liveliness.

The five people made a decisive decision not to linger any longer. They went back to the inn to pack their things and then set off to continue their journey.

The landscape of the Brahma Kingdom is unlike any other place. If the Jin Kingdom is centrally located, flat and stable, with all kinds of plains and mountains, the Jie Kingdom is flat and vast, with endless plains as its main feature, the Shuo Kingdom is full of towering mountains, and the Lan Kingdom is full of lakes and marshes, then the landscape of the Brahma Kingdom is much more unpredictable.

Half of this area is excessively humid and hot. Although there is no shortage of water, unlike the neighboring Lan region, this area is mostly swampy and generates a lot of miasma due to the humid heat.

It was precisely in these miasma-filled woodlands and swamps that so many exotic flowers and herbs grew, and the witch doctors and medicines of the Brahma Kingdom were nurtured.

On the other half of the land of Brahma, the scene is completely different—there are many strange peaks and dangerous ravines, and next to the towering cliffs may be bottomless canyons.

There are two towering mountains right on the border between the two kingdoms of Brahma and Kelp, forming a natural barrier between them. Because of these two mountains, it has been rare for Brahma people to try to cross the mountains to Kelp over the years, and Kelp has never launched any form of invasion against Brahma.

For many years, the two places have kept to themselves and avoided interfering with each other.

Lu Qing and Zhu Yu traveled towards the capital. Because they had to avoid some dangerous areas, they could only take the official road. As they went around, the distance between them increased. However, the towns and villages they passed through were all similar to the county town that was close to the pass.

In fact, saying they were largely the same seems a bit inaccurate. The closer they got to the capital, the more pronounced the lifeless and fearful atmosphere became. When they were only two or three days away from the capital, even Yan Daoxin, who rarely felt nervous, became tense and lost his usual relaxed demeanor.

"Along this way, I really haven't seen a single young woman or wife." Walking on the deserted official road, he sighed to Lu Qing and Zhu Yu, "If outsiders didn't know the situation, they would probably think I was some kind of bandit who wanted to kidnap a wife to take to the mountain."

However, ever since Zhu Yu mentioned this matter in that county town, I have been paying attention to these things all the way. Everywhere I go, I can't see any women going out, nor can I see any vendors selling rouge, face powder, hairpins, or other jewelry.

The women of Brahma… have they all violated the heavenly laws?!