Night hung low, and the salty tang of the tide spread through the Taino seaside village. The children who had once played beneath the coconut groves no longer appeared. The smoke from the tribespeople's cookfires had gone out, and the fishermen's Fishing Boats lay moored by the shore, rotting. The Taino village of a full thousand people seemed to have been destroyed by some invisible curse, so quiet it made one's blood run cold.
"Main God! Is this... the Demon's plague?"
Six Caravels were anchored by the shore, yet no warriors went ashore. Xiu Maoying frowned as he looked at the deathly still village, a deep sense of ill omen rising in his heart. Red-hair captain Chabo, too, had lost his usual smile. He lifted the Divine Eye Lens and carefully studied the scene inside the village for a while, and his expression sank completely.
"High Priest Owl! This village is dead! Just a month ago, when we came here last, it was full of people everywhere! Now all I can see are corpses!"
As he spoke, Chabo handed the Divine Eye Lens to Xiu Maoying and pointed toward a small slope outside the village.
"High Priest, look! There's a huge stretch of graves over there, and many corpses that haven't been buried!"
Xiu Maoying took the Divine Eye Lens and focused his gaze. The brutal scene of death abruptly appeared before his eyes.
The Taino actually had always had two ways of burial. Ordinary tribespeople would have pits dug for them and be covered over, while greatly respected chiefs (cacique) and priests (bohique) would be arranged lying on their sides or seated, then placed upon a high, wind-blown altar to be deliberately dried or naturally mummified.
And now, as he looked, within the stone-piled Altars on the small slope