Dark clouds hung overhead, blotting out the sun. In the old little temple, bricks and stones lay broken; moss gnawed at the shadowed places, and bloodstains mottled the gloom. In several low corners of the temple, thick grease and sticky blood had gathered together, the heavy reek of blood almost suffocating. Human bones scraped clean, severed fingers fallen in fragments, hair tangled black and red—these had piled up like little hills, yet were "kitchen scraps" too difficult to deal with.
At the center of the temple was a dim shrine. The idol within had long since vanished, as if someone did not want the gods to see anything that happened in this temple. And the area where the idol had once stood counted as the only place in the entire temple that was somewhat clean, without bloodstains.
Eagle Warrior Balda wore a grave expression, his eyes deep as he watched the middle-aged captive before him, whose face was dead and still—the quartermaster of White Snake City, Aohui. He waited in silence until Quartermaster Aohui slowly opened his mouth, his voice low, using the same Nahua Language to tell the hair-raising truth of the city.
".The priests used the festival as their pretext. Each time, they chose two hundred of the old and weak, saying they were human offerings to be sacrificed to the Cloud Snake God. The offerings were decapitated, skinned, and deboned. One person yielded thirty or forty jin of meat, enough to feed one warrior for a month. As for the kitchen-scrap broth made from the organs, it was divided among the Militia to keep them alive."
"There were originally fifteen thousand people in the city, with one year of stored grain. Three months ago, the civilians and warriors all ran out of food, with close to ten