Records of the Weakest Emperor

Chapter 178: The Secret of the Village of Tulog

"How do you know that I've been looking for that crying voice?"

"You..."

"You've been following me?"

Calvin stared at the person with this smile on his face.

Seeing this smile, the person seemed to be a little bit flustered as it took him quite a while to reply.

"Yes, I did... But I followed you not to cause harm, but to help."

"All right, so you want to help me... Why do you think would I believe your words so easily?" Calvin said with narrowed eyes.

The man replied, "You do not have the obligation to believe me. I am scared of what is out there. I only came out because I was afraid that you'd be walking into your death." The man spoke in a cold tone that when combined with his deformities, it made give off this terrifying vibe that could instantly make anyone who was listening to him shit their pants.

"What bold words..."

But Calvin was unfazed, "You haven't answered my question, yet."

"Are you human?"

"Or are you a monster?"

"Hahaha..." The man bitterly smiled, "I've lost the right to call myself human ever since I turned a blind eye to that incident. But it is not a crime to dream." The man's tone turned melancholic and strange, "I wish to forget the past, but I doubt that my sin can be forgiven. It will always haunt me, making me unable to sleep at night..."

"I followed you because I saw you walking into certain death, and I want to save you." The man said, straight to the point.

He sounded sincere, but Calvin was calling bullshit. He had experienced too many betrayals and plot twists in his previous life that he was now a firm believer of the adage that there was no free lunch in this world. In other words, he was denying the credibility of the man's words.

Calvin sneered, "You followed me to save me?"

The sarcastic tone in his voice was thick and it didn't go unnoticed.

"I am saving myself by saving you. I know that my words are unbelievable, but if you do not escape this village tonight then you will certainly die..." The man didn't want to argue as he lowered his voice and humbled himself. There was this particular tinge of anxiety and fear in his voice as he continued, "That man will return tonight... He always returns here every full moon, and tonight is a full moon."

"He'll return here by daybreak and when he does, it will be all over for you... You'll become a part monster part human, no one will ever accept you since you will be a carrier of diseases. You will be the definition of a curse." The man seemed to have gone mad as his eyes went bloodshot. His pus riddled body trembled as blood dripped out of the innumerable wounds on his body.

A disgusting stench also wafted out of the man's body, but Calvin remained calm and unfazed.

"What do you mean saving me is saving yourself? What does my safety have to do with you? And who is that man?" Calvin asked three questions at once. He was afraid that the man might suddenly lose his consciousness for Calvin could see the early signs of hypoxia from the man's fingers. Something inside his body was depriving him of oxygen, and if these tremors continued.

He might fall unconscious at any moment.

"Hahaha... You sure want to know a lot..." The man bitterly laughed, "If I knew who that man was I would've already told you. All that I know is that he came here ten years ago and from now on. This village wasn't the same anymore. The Village Chief stumbled upon him unconscious on the riverside, and with how charitable and kind our Village Chief washe carried the man over to our village so that he could recover."

"But little did we know that this was the start of our nightmare..."

"That man was just too handsome."

"The women in our village seemed to go into a trance the moment they laid their eyes onto his figure."

"He was too handsome."

"So sinfully handsome that the Village Chief decided to hide him away from the hides of the other villagers while he was recovering."

"But that isolation didn't last long..."

"The winters are harsh for our Village, the smog carried by the textile and matchstick factories in Ashmelion are always blown over to our Village creating harsher winters with snow as black as charcoal. Whenever that snow appeared, we would almost certainly starve since it would bring with it the death of the nearby wild game that we need to survive."

"Fortunately, just as the animals around us adapted to survive by mass migration whenever winter was about to arrive. Our Village also thrived by hunting these games while they were in the middle of their migration. But attacking those beasts mid-migration meant that our hunters would almost certainly face a group of boars, wolves, or even foxes at once."

"Battles would always be fierce, and not a man was clean of blood when they return from their hunt."

"Women would cry for their husbands, while children would cry for their fathers. The elderly would help carry those crippled and dead from the harsh hunt, but all of these changed when the young man spoke up, 'Death is not the end.' He said and with a flick of his hand, those that were crippled had instantly recovered..."

"Even missing limbs reappeared."

"It was as if he was a Prophet send to us by the Goddess..."

"But his kindness wasn't without an exchange. Every time he would heal someone he needed the sacrifice of a virgin. But since we were a village that isolated itself from the outside world. We quickly ran out of sacrifice."

"This was the start of everything..."

The man turned to look at Calvin.

Calvin's eyes widened in shock.

The man's story overlapped with Madame Liz's!

But...

"Are you guys... Are you guys not afraid of sacrificing yourself off to extinction?"

... Calvin just couldn't understand why they would sacrifice life for life.

"Hahaha..." The deformed man bitterly laughed, "We will never run out of sacrifice... We are not supposed to run out of sacrifices. The Village Chief consoled and convinced us all to obey that man's instructions since he and the elders believed that the man was the blessing that their village needed to survive independently from the damned Joselian Kingdom who forced us the natives out of our own land..."

"That man needed the sacrifice of young virgins for his miracles, and we will never run out of them..."

"Aren't you curious as to why we haven't gone extinct and why is there such diversity when it comes to our technology and culture when compared to Ashmelion? You've seen how we built our fence, right? And you've also seen how we have oil lamps over our doors and the fact that we do not have stoves or any fire starters inside our houses as well as the fact that we sleep on stone beds instead of soft mattresses..."

Calvin's pupils constricted the moment he heard what the man had said.

Finally...

At this moment, he had discovered that these bunch of villagers from the Village of Tulog came from the Clan of Sinners!

The Dvalin Clan!

If that was the case, then it made sense for them to never run out of virgins.

It was because similar to the Kyrgyz people from Kyrgyzstan back on Earth...

The Dvalin Clan also practiced the culture of Bride-Kidnappings!

In fact, this was the reason why the Joselian Kingdom condemned them as a Clan of Sinners!

No one knew how the Patriarch of the Dvalin Clan had the balls to be so daring that he kidnapped a Princess of the Joselian Kingdom and impregnated her. When his Majesty discovered what the Dvalin Clan had done, he wanted to kill every member of the clan!

However, out of respect for the contributions of the ancestors of the Dvalin Clan to the establishment of the Joselian Kingdom after the first Cataclysm.

The King decided to exile them to a land so far away that Calvin only heard of their names from books, rumors, and stories.

To think that they would be here...

To think that they would be so close to a city of the Joselian Kingdom!

'The King really did took advantage of the adage that advises on hiding a tree inside a forest!'

Calvin couldn't help but express his astonishment over this discovery.

"From the looks of it, you seem to know who we are..." The man chuckled.

Despite being branded as a sinner, he seemed to be still proud of his clan.

Calvin shook his head, "I do know who you people are now. But I don't think that your story relates to that crying voice that I am looking for."

"You sure are hasty..." The man commented and sighed, "Well I guess, if we are unable to leave here by daybreak we would die anyway. I should just tell you what you need to know."

"Like you already know, we practice the art of bride-kidnapping. Before we were forced away from our native land, we abhorred this idea. But since we are not allowed to go anywhere apart from a few kilometers around the base of the mountain. The elders soon discovered that it would only take us a hundred years before we will go extinct..."

"We had no other choice but to embrace this culture that our ancestors had practiced even before the first Cataclysm."

"Our strategy involved creating fake safe route maps to Laguna from Ashmelion. Then, we would sell these maps to the merchants who would then sell these maps to people who often travel from Ashmelion to Laguna. This plan of ours was successful. Every time a passenger wagon passed through the route that we made in our fake maps, we would stop them... rob them blind, then kidnap the women..."

"It didn't matter whether they were young or old, we would kidnap and impregnate them for the sake of propagating our bloodline. Of course, we do have standards. We won't bother with the too young and too old. They would just be extra mouths to feed if they failed to successfully give us children..."

"Everything was going well for the first few times. If the women refused to obey we would lock them up, beat them up, and sometimes even starve them until they were about to die. Eventually, the women knew their place and learned to listen."

"However, this plan of ours didn't last long..."

"First, people soon discovered that the fake route we made weren't safe. Thus, we were banned by the merchants and even with bribes, they refused to accept our maps..."

"Second, the man's demand for women seemed to be growing as he performed more miracles."

"Lastly, winter was approaching..."

"Fortunately, the man was understanding and he permitted us a hiatus from bride-kidnappings. But this hiatus only happened after the elders begged him that they should stop after the death of that gentle young lass, Stephanie."

"Sigh, she was such a wonderful lass. It was her misfortune to be born in a place like this."

The deformed man took a moment to compose himself.

Calvin's figure trembled.

He seemed to have noticed something stirring within his shadow when the deformed man said something about Stephanie.

'It seems that Stephanie still had to die before these elders knew when to stop. How unfortunate...' Calvin also sighed in his heart as he consoled Stephanie who was hiding in his shadow.

His consoling words seemed to be effective as the stirring stopped.

The deformed man's expression turned abruptly serious as he continued, "We had a hiatus, but it didn't last that long. It only lasted a week before that man seemed to have gone crazy and demanded a woman. Unfortunately, he had already deflowered all the pure women in the village, so there was no one for him to satisfy his carnal desires..."

"What's more, the elders weren't stupid and they were already suspicious of him killing the women whom he bedded. It was because they finally discovered that the deaths of those pure women seemed to have one thing in common."

"It was that they had been deflowered by the young man."

"Furthermore, their manner of deaths were the same. They had been sucked dry out of their blood and essences. Only a hollow husk remained from what was once a beauty."

"When confronted, the man denied all allegations and threatened to leave the village."

"But how could the Village Chief let him leave when he had already recognized the man as the person who would cause the rise of the clan?"

"If he left, then there would truly be nothing left of what was once the strongest clan in the world!"

"An argument ensued and soon a concession was made..."

"The young man was allowed to take one final woman. If she died, the Village Chief and the elders wouldn't allow him to bed any woman anymore."

"Strangely, the man agreed."

"But where were they supposed to find a woman when the village was in the middle of a harsh winter?"

"It was at this time that the Village Chief turned their eyes to another village at the base of this mountain."

"They hatched an ingenious plan..."

"They kidnapped the young lady from a hunter's family. This young lady was stubborn and refused to submit. The Village Chief forced the young lady to write a letter to his family saying that she wants to explore the world by herself and she would never be coming back. But little did we knew that this young lady had a lover..."

"But this young lover of her was ultimately unable to find her as the Village Chief executed his masterful plan."

"We scattered pieces of the young lady's clothing throughout the mountain in order to pretend that the young lady had been devoured by a beast somewhere in the mountain. Our village even pretended to help in the search efforts, and when we 'discovered' those articles of clothing, the search for the young lady was stopped..."

"The plan had succeeded and the man now had a new wife to satisfy him until the end of winter."

"But this young lady was still incredibly stubborn even after suffering several beatings and forced starvation. She managed to escape several times and she was also almost beaten to death every time she escaped. It was only when she got pregnant that she finally stopped running away and all of us thought that this would be the end of her struggle..."

"But when we were finally able to let out a sigh of relief and celebrate the union of the man and that young lady..."

"She hanged herself in front of the wooden platform at the village center."

"Her death was her ultimate display of defiance as well as the beginning of the curse of sleeplessness."