The Shepherds Are Dense – Chapter 1203

Chapter 1200
Eivass: So you are also…
Unexpectedly, this city didn’t give Eivass a bad impression.
If you were to describe this city with one word… then the keyword is, unexpectedly, “Civilization.”
In this barbaric and sinful desert, there is such a peaceful and tranquil city, which indeed changed Eivass’s opinion of Adeler.
He didn’t let personal animosity toward Adeler, his enemy, create a prejudice, disliking everything about him. The relaxed, peaceful, and natural way of life of the people clearly indicated their comfort.
That was definitely not the sense of happiness a “feudal monarch” with great ambition could bring to people. Nor was it something a fanatic, who purely tried to brainwash people into worshipping him like a god, could achieve.
Both Eivass and Sharky possessed extraordinary beauty, and they were not wearing the attire of the Anxi people. Instead, they were wearing the priest robes of the Church of the Nine Pillars God and Avalon-style long skirts. They looked like outsiders who had not been in Anxi for long.
However, the local residents here were still quite friendly towards them — they didn’t try to commit any crimes against them, nor did they flock to hawk things to them, nor did they simply bypass them.
Eivass and Sharky did not kneel or pray to Adeler’s statue… but there was no meddlesome person in the city who rushed out to demand that they obey the city’s rules.
They were neither timid nor malicious; neither fawning nor exclusionary. They would just cast a curious glance when passing by… This precisely indicated their strong sense of self-confidence.
They walked leisurely through the city, street by street. They encountered quite a few people along the way, and their density was definitely more than “three hundred Free People.”
Clearly, many slaves were mixed among them. They were all owned slaves, not “unowned slaves” living underground… It was just that from their appearance, Eivass could not accurately distinguish who was the master and who was the slave.
And on the streets, many giant bronze dishes were placed. Their diameter was about three to four meters, and their height was only half the height of an adult human.
Inside them were some fragrant foods — baked naan, stewed chickpeas, stewed lamb. Each bronze dish contained one type of food. There were also some small bronze dishes with honey and salt. Many people gathered around, putting food into their bags or eating it directly with their hands.
Besides humans, Eivass also saw other races here.
Dwarves stood on stone stools, eating lamb with baked naan in large mouthfuls. Harpies were focused on eating meat, their mouths greasy. Lizardmen and Snake People did not like to eat with others gathered around; instead, they packed small portions of meat and chickpeas mixed together to take away.
Eivass even saw Elves — an Elf woman in a white gossamer dress was slowly eating stewed chickpeas with a spoon, spoonful by spoonful.
People kept bringing buckets and buckets of food, and it took two people to pour the food from the giant buckets into the bronze dishes — what surprised Eivass the most was that those buckets were made of a kind of lightweight stainless steel!
For a moment, he felt as if he had returned to his previous life, to the cafeteria at his unit or school.
Heaven City’s iron smelting technology was probably much better than Avalon’s and Iris Flower’s.
Although Star Antinomy’s technological level was much higher than this, its civil popularization was even lower — because the investors of alchemists eagerly hoped to see them bring them income, so these civilian technologies with poorer profit margins were not very popular.
They preferred luxury goods that the nobles were willing to pay a high price for — for example, the cars running everywhere on the streets of Star Antinomy, the mechanical puppets that were very human-like and could act autonomously, lifelike and flying jewel birds, anti-theft and monitoring systems that could defend manors… or high-quality building and clothing materials. As for innovations in metal, the Royal Alchemical Association was more inclined towards the military industry, and all the high-quality metals developed were kept as secret techniques.
And for the nobles, because tableware made of gold and silver could replace stainless steel tableware and show wealth, this “cheap metal” was not welcomed by investors.
Eivass had seen similar technologies in many places in Star Antinomy, but perhaps due to cost issues, it had never been popularized among the people.
As a result, the first time he saw ordinary people using such a level of civilian technology on a large scale was in the slave-owning Ancient Kingdom of Anxi…
Eivass suddenly felt a bit unable to hold back.
The taste of these foods was indeed very fragrant, so much so that Eivass went up to take some and symbolically fed Sharky — Sharky had a large appetite, and this amount of nutrition was definitely not enough.
She could now eat at least one cow a day… And compared to her supersonic flight ability, which was like a fighter jet, this energy conversion efficiency was already heaven-defying.
However, after she transformed into human form, she entered an energy-saving state… Her appetite would decrease significantly. She usually maintained this state in the carriage to save food consumption.
And thanks to Alistair’s transformation, Leviathan gained a new ability — the ability to draw power from blood, just like the Children of the Moon. Before flying to Heaven City, Eivass had simply nourished Sharky once with his own blood.
The Path Power drawn from Eivass’s blood was much higher than these foods. That was the purest, most efficient energy source.
The only thing that made Eivass somewhat uncomfortable was that the color of these foods was too vibrant.
The lamb was all vividly red without exception — that was acceptable, imagine it was stir-fried to develop a sugar color, it was quite good-looking.
But the beans were bright green.
They were chickpeas and broad beans that were stewed until they were soft and mushy, with dill, mint, and honey added. The taste made Eivass’s expression quite subtle, and the color was a fluorescent green that reminded Eivass of apple-flavored Mistic. This bizarrely colored paste would remind people of Indian food.
As for the color of the baked naan, it was more bizarre.
It was neither brown, nor golden, nor white… It was purple, looking as if it were made from purple sweet potatoes. It could also be said to be grape-flavored Mistic.
The cheese was blueberry jam blue, the salt was pink, and the honey was an extraordinarily bright golden-orange color — thus returning to the classic orange flavor.
This was Adeler’s method to detect if any slaves secretly consumed the free food. He added a special, indigestible pigment to the food, and these pigments would be clearly marked in the feces.
All these foods were glowing!
Not the kind of glowing like in *Little Chef’s Contest*, but a strong fluorescence. It was so bright that Eivass even suspected there might be some radioactive material in it. After Sharky ate it, she opened her mouth, and even her tongue turned bright red.
Eivass suddenly remembered that he had eaten a type of candy when he was a child. After eating it, it would discolor the tongue like this.
Thinking about it, he felt a bit nostalgic…
At this moment, the crowd in the distance suddenly became noisy.
Eivass heard the rather excited Anxi language, mixed with dialects from various regions, from afar. Eivass couldn’t understand Anxi very well, so he didn’t understand what they were saying. He only vaguely understood words like “Adeler,” “Lord,” and “Praise” from the words he could understand.
… Adeler is here?
Eivass frowned slightly but wasn’t surprised. After all, the Lord’s eyes and ears must be spread throughout the city, and there were Ritualists and astrologers responsible for surveillance.
But Eivass himself had no intention of hiding. He hadn’t even asked Isabel to disguise himself with illusions, only concealing the overly conspicuous antlers on his head.
And at this moment, Eivass suddenly noticed something —
Sharky suddenly squeezed Eivass’s hand, meaning she sensed a fleeting hostility. The Path of Love had a much stronger instinctive sense for this than the Path of Devotion and the Transcendent Path. Just like how Children of the Moon could sense enemies who intended to harm them in advance.
Eivass followed Sharky’s gaze but unexpectedly found that it was not one of the Lord’s people.
It was a boy who looked about seventeen or eighteen years old. He wore a straw hat that covered most of his face, and held a clay pot full of water in both hands.
His gaze swept past Eivass, then looked in the direction where Adeler was arriving.
The crowd surrounding Adeler slowly moved towards this side. Some people stood and jogged along with the crowd. Others immediately knelt on the ground, continuously bowing and kowtowing devoutly.
Eight tall, solemn trolls were carrying a huge sedan chair together. It was made of pure gold and lapis lazuli, decorated with a large number of rubies and ambers. The sedan body was carved with a rather abstract mural, and the sedan door was inscribed with protective runes.
In front were two elves, a man and a woman, dressed in ceremonial attire, solemnly shaking their staffs. There were copper bells at the top of the staffs, emitting mysterious sounds. Behind them were four Snake People priests, who clapped or stomped their feet in unison every three steps, emitting a uniform, song-like praise.
Adeler sat on a cushioned throne — his appearance was exactly the same as the statue, even with a touch more divine aura. That was the “incense and faith” accumulated from being worshipped and sacrificed to by people for a long time while alive.
Everyone parted and knelt in unison. Eivass and Leviathan, who stood motionlessly in place, were immediately exposed and became extremely conspicuous.
Eivass had no intention of hiding his identity, and simply raised his head to carefully observe Adeler.
And at this moment, Eivass’s pupils slightly narrowed.
He suddenly noticed the decoration behind Adeler’s throne.
It was a huge pure gold ring, looking like a halo floating behind a god. It emitted a dazzling brilliance under the morning sun.
But Eivass clearly realized that it was not as simple as a ring.
— He saw the carvings on the ring.
It was an Ouroboros.
It was the symbol of the Ring Heavenly Envoy, his “Ouroboros Ring”!
And a more familiar feeling came with the hymns sung by the Snake People priests —
“You shall celebrate my death, you shall sing of my divinity. You shall hold festivals, you shall raise your scepters…”
Eivass remembered clearly.
— That was a hymn from the *Shepherd’s Secret Manual*.