Punishment, Family Business, and the Essence
The nights in Nagaril are very dark, and the stars are exceptionally bright. Unlike the Bayer Federation, where colorful neon lights obscure the original sky at night.
The brilliant starry sky is reflected on the curtain of the night sky. When people look at the starry sky, they will inevitably be attracted and amazed by it!
Asier looked out the clear glass window at the peaceful night, but his mind was in turmoil.
Ultimately, they are different; the civilized world and the barbaric world are ultimately different!
He had actually prepared himself mentally before he came back, but he was still careless.
The Nagaril in his memory seemed to have vanished; his memories of the past had become hazy, and most of what he remembered was happy—finding joy in hardship.
The joy that arises from suffering makes people remember it longer, so his memories of his hometown are mostly positive and cheerful, as if his memory deliberately erased those less pleasant facts.
During his years living in the Federal, he has gradually adapted to being a civilized person in a civilized world. Although the Federal has its share of unpleasant things and overt and covert discrimination, it is still a civilized country.
They used the law to protect all the weak and restrain the strong. Even if people were rotten to the core, they at least maintained a facade of nobility.
He has begun to adapt, even though it may not be an ideal country.
But here in Nagaril, nothing seems to have progressed; the barbarity remains barbaric.
The police officers who wield sticks to beat and drive away passersby, just to make it easy for the cars of the powerful and wealthy to pass, are actually not doing their job of protecting the people.
To expand his yard, he demolished other people's houses and evicted them, then boasted about it as gossip. What kind of heartless person could do such a thing? Just because he habitually said "thank you," his father and elder brother believed that his elder brother's wife was seducing him, and that night they forced that poor woman to offer herself to satisfy the brother's lust...
It's terrifying, it's barbaric! When a person has begun to learn and become accustomed to sitting at a table covered with a tablecloth, serving food with exquisite utensils, and enjoying carefully prepared food with fine tableware, it becomes very difficult for him to accept a life of eating raw meat and drinking blood.
He felt nauseous at the sight of bloody chunks of flesh, at the sight of corpses, and even at the thought of putting food in his mouth.
Asier fell asleep at some point, and no one woke him up the next day. He slept until almost eleven o'clock before getting up.
In Nagaril, apart from a few people who have jobs in factories, most people work as day laborers or farmers. Overall, the pace of life is not fast. As long as you are not afraid of going hungry, it is not impossible to sleep until noon or even afternoon.
The stench of rancidity and body odor in Asier's nostrils throbbed again after he got up. He changed his clothes and felt that he smelled the same way. When he came out of the bedroom, went downstairs, and stood at the door, his expression froze.
His elder brother's wife had been hung from a tree in the yard by someone, and Asier's brothers were watching nearby. His elder brother was whipping the poor woman.
Each lash was loud, and the woman silently endured it. She bit her lip tightly, and blood seeped from it. Her eyes were unfocused, as if she might faint at any moment.
Asier's mother and the wives of his other brothers knelt to the side, witnessing the entire ritualistic punishment.
When the last lash was delivered, Asier's elder brother put away the whip and casually handed it to his younger brother beside him. He glanced coldly at the woman hanging there and untied the ropes binding her hands.
The woman collapsed to the ground. A few seconds later, she forced herself to sit up and knelt before her elder brother, Asier. She placed her hands on the ground with the backs of her hands down and her palms up. She kissed her husband's toes and finally pressed her forehead against the ground.
This is a standard procedure for confessing one's wrongdoings, but it is only for women. Asier's elder brother shrugged his shoulders; his arms and shoulders were a little sore from whipping himself. When he turned around, he saw Asier.
His indifferent face was instantly filled with a smile, a genuine smile that Asier recognized because it had appeared on his own face before.
"My brother, are you sleeping well?" He walked up to Asier, opened his arms and hugged Asier warmly, but the hug did not bring Asier any warmth.
Asier's expression faltered for a second or two before he reacted, "Very good. When I'm out, I always think about home. It feels good to be back..."
His brother nodded noncommittally, "Home is definitely the best. This is your home, and you still have us..." he said, putting his arm around Asier's shoulder as they walked into the house.
As we walked, he said, "Let's have lunch first. After lunch, I'll take you to see our factory. Maybe you'll be interested in these things."
This question did indeed catch Asier's attention. He hadn't expected that his father and his brothers, who had hardly any formal education, would own a factory. His profession made him somewhat sensitive, and he casually asked, "What kind of business does the factory run?"
"Recycling and processing!" As the two walked into the hall, Asier's elder brother said proudly, "We've pulled some strings. This business isn't easy, and we've spent a lot of money on it..."
During his explanation, Asier finally understood that the money he had sent back over the years had not been saved or spent on food, drink, and entertainment.
When some people possess certain characteristics or qualifications, others will come knocking on their door to make money for them.
Since Asier's father started showing off his son's status as a "foreigner," he gradually gained some local fame, and some people started approaching him.
No society can operate exactly as planned by the rule-makers. There will always be some outliers, and there are such people in Nagaril, who are like opportunists.
They are dissatisfied with the status quo and want to change their situation. Without violating the rules of Nagaril, they will do everything they can to make money and improve their status.
The group that found Asier's father was a nobody, but they had their eye on a business opportunity and wanted Asier's father to help them.
They can enjoy half of the business's revenue without Asier's father having to pay extra!
Asier's father agreed without much thought, at least he could guarantee that even if the other party was a fraudster, he wouldn't lose anything.
This deal will be recovered.
Every year, religious activities produce a large number of "Goldware." These Goldware are not actually made entirely of gold. Some are covered with a layer of gold, while others are simply gold ground into fine powder and mixed with some lacquer, then brushed onto the surface of some vessels.
The former is often the style of the wealthy, while the latter is the choice of people from slightly better-off families. There are actually further distinctions within this.
The number of coats of gold paint applied also represented different family statuses. The "Goldware" offered to the gods by the most ordinary families were not only small, but also only had one coat of gold paint.
Families that are better off will offer larger "Goldware" as offerings, and the gold paint will be applied several to dozens of times.
Those gold-plated "Goldware" are easy to handle; you can just peel off the outermost layer of gold. But those gold pieces that are made into gold lacquer and brushed onto the surface of the vessel are not so easy to deal with.
These things aren't exactly cheap, but they're not exactly expensive either.
In addition, the recycling process is very complicated, so the major temples do not handle these things themselves. Instead, they pack these "Goldware" and send them to recycling factories to process them.
Although they are called factories, they are actually just small workshops.
In the past, people recycled gold paint by crushing and grinding it into powder, then filtering out the purest gold powder from the bottom layer through natural stratification, and then recasting it into Gold Ingot after calcination.
These problems are now easier to solve. With the development of foreign technology, some chemical substances are gradually appearing in Nagaril.
Using a chemical reagent that is banned for civilian use and abuse in many countries around the world, the chemical components in the gold paint can be easily broken down, causing the gold to sink to the bottom.
Upon hearing this, Asier's expression turned somewhat serious. After quickly finishing his meal, he and his elder brother drove to the factory.
Even from more than a hundred meters away from the factory, a pungent smell could be detected. When the two parked their car in the yard and watched the workers handling various chemicals without any protective measures, Asier was deeply moved.
The numb faces of the people seemed to show no emotional fluctuations. They didn't even care about their festering or deformed hands; they just kept repeating their work.
As Asier heart suddenly felt as if something had gripped it.
His brother seemed oblivious to the change in Asier's expression, continuing to enthusiastically introduce everything around him. He even took Asier to his office, introduced Asier to the other people there, and opened the safe for him.
The safe contained neatly arranged gold bars in square boxes. Though called gold bars, they were actually gold sheets, each only about half a centimeter thick and the size of a palm, radiating a heart-pounding luster.
"Look, this is our business!" The boastful tone revealed absolutely no reverence for life from the man before him.
A country that is both familiar and unfamiliar.
A group of people who are both familiar and unfamiliar.
The only constant might be the pursuit of profit!