Chapter 17: Sacrifices for the Divine Tree
The Land of Ancestors had changed beyond recognition.
With productivity soaring and daily life stabilizing, crime had dropped sharply as well. These days, there simply weren't many criminals. Those who did exist were typically confined in proper prisons, handled through established procedures.
That was exactly why the sight ahead felt so wrong.
"So many prison carts…" Hagoromo frowned, eyes locked forward as his thoughts turned heavy. "Are they transporting serious criminals?"
Hamura's expression tightened as well. "Even so… why bring them here?"
This was where the Divine Tree stood.
A holy land of the Land of Ancestors.
In theory, no ordinary person could enter at all. Even high-ranking nobles had to submit repeated petitions, go through layers of approval, and wait for permission that was never guaranteed.
And yet convicts were being hauled in by the cartload.
The brothers exchanged a glance.
Years of moving together, training together, and growing up side by side had forged a tacit understanding between them. A single look was enough.
Without a word, they followed.
They trailed the convoy deeper, step by step, until they reached the core of the holy land.
Only then did they discover something they had never been told.
Within the holy land, there was a sprawling complex of temples.
Inside, several mysterious statues were enshrined. Each one radiated a vast, oppressive chakra aura that made the air feel dense and cold.
"The prisoners have arrived."
At the entrance, the samurai leading the escort spoke in a flat, chilling tone.
"Send these sacrifices up."
As he spoke, the prisoners were dragged down one after another.
By the time they were brought into this place, it was obvious they had already understood what awaited them. Terror twisted across their faces.
"Help! Don't kill me!"
"Let me go! Please…"
They begged the samurai in front of them, voices cracking, faces soaked in fear.
Looking closer, Hagoromo's heart sank.
These weren't hardened old men.
Many were young adults, and some were clearly still teenagers.
"Brother…" Hagoromo's voice dipped, and a trace of pity surfaced in his eyes, as if he couldn't bear to watch what was about to happen.
Hamura shook his head, forcing calm into his tone. "They're criminals."
"This is an execution. It's punishment they earned. There's nothing to argue."
Those transported in prison carts were usually serious offenders.
If they had broken the law, then whatever consequence awaited them was, by the law, deserved.
Even so, Hagoromo and Hamura felt an instinctive discomfort, a faint sting of sympathy they couldn't completely suppress.
They said nothing more.
They simply watched.
Then what happened next shattered every expectation they had.
The leading samurai raised a hand and formed a hand seal.
As his fingers moved, chakra surged out, drawn into something unseen.
And in response, the Divine Tree changed.
A vine slithered down from the tree like a living whip.
It shot forward and coiled around several prisoners.
In the next instant, screams tore through the temple grounds.
The prisoners' bodies shriveled rapidly, flesh collapsing inward as if everything inside them was being sucked out.
Within moments, they were nothing but dried husks, lifeless corpses drained clean.
"How… could this be…"
The brothers, who had been watching from concealment, stepped out without thinking.
Their eyes widened as they stared at the scene, shock written plainly across their faces.
Before, they had braced themselves for an execution.
Beheading. Hanging. Any method of death.
They could have accepted it, even if they disliked it.
But this…
To be drained by the Divine Tree itself, reduced to a corpse in an instant…
It was terrifying in a way that went far beyond simple punishment.
It wasn't just death.
It was consumption.
"How could this be?" Hagoromo's voice trembled with disbelief, his gaze fixed on the tree as if it had betrayed him. "Isn't the Divine Tree a sacred object? Why would it…"
Since childhood, they had been taught the same thing again and again.
The Divine Tree was holy.
The Divine Tree was divine.
But what kind of "divine" thing stole human life like this?
That thought struck like thunder, and questions began to boil up in their minds.
Up ahead, the samurai looked ready to continue.
The brothers did not hesitate.
They surged forward.
"Who's there?"
The lead samurai reacted instantly. His awareness was sharp, his instincts refined. The moment Hagoromo and Hamura moved, he sensed it and began to counter.
But the moment he saw their faces, everything in him froze.
His expression turned pale with shock.
"Lord Hagoromo?"
A samurai trusted to bring prisoners into the core of the Divine Tree's domain was not an ordinary soldier. He was someone close to Yuu, someone considered reliable enough to handle secrets that most people would never even guess existed.
Of course he recognized the brothers.
The will to resist vanished at once. He stopped where he was, standing stiffly, obedient and uneasy.
Hagoromo stepped in front.
His voice was controlled, but the anger beneath it was unmistakable.
"What are you doing?"
"These people are citizens of the Land of Ancestors. What did they do to deserve being sacrificed to the Divine Tree?"
"These are criminals," the samurai replied immediately. "They bear serious sins. They were judged, and they were sent here."
Then he added, as if stating something obvious, something honorable.
"To be sacrificed to the Divine Tree is their highest honor."
Hagoromo's eyes sharpened. "And what about those children?"
"Even underage children are criminals who committed serious crimes?"
He pointed toward a nearby prison cart.
Inside were two children, small enough that they could not possibly be mistaken for adults.
They looked barely ten years old.
If adults being condemned could still be explained as punishment, then these two…
These two did not fit.
"They did not commit crimes themselves," the samurai said after a brief pause, glancing toward the cart. "They were implicated."
"Their former families committed grave crimes. Therefore, the entire family line was condemned as sacrifices."
As if afraid the brothers would doubt him, he quickly reached into his robe, produced a scroll, and offered it to Hagoromo with both hands.
Hagoromo and Hamura took it.
And the moment they read, their brows knitted tighter.
What the samurai said was true.
The unification of the Land of Ancestors had not been long ago.
In truth, it had only been about twenty years.
In those one or two decades, rebellions had never truly disappeared.
There was no avoiding it.
No matter how prosperous an era became, there would always be dissent.
And the Land of Ancestors had not been unified with polite negotiations and kind words.
It had been unified through blades, through armies, through conquest.
The nobles and daimyo families of the fallen nations, along with the losers of power struggles, were all potential seeds of unrest.
Over the past decades, those seeds had sprouted more than once.
Rebellions had erupted repeatedly, and incidents had followed.
And Yuu's punishment for those families was simple.
Total condemnation.
Entire families were sent to death row, designated as sacrifices for the Divine Tree.
By the law of the realm, by the harsh logic of a freshly unified world, there was no "problem" with the procedure.
Even children, if they were born into a condemned bloodline, were still listed on the same death roll.
Hagoromo and Hamura understood that.
They truly did.
But when their eyes met the children's gaze through the bars of the cart, their throats tightened.
In the end…
They couldn't bear it.
.....
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