Since Meng Chao had just saved them and his body size was similar to theirs, he did not feel as oppressive as the Minotaurs or Boars, so the four children were relatively calm.
However, Meng Chao noticed that the children did not finish the high-calorie food he had just given them. Each of them had a handful of it.
They couldn't even speak clearly, even the youngest children were like this.
"We … we want to leave some for Fish Bone and the others."
The child with the colorful conch pendant around his neck said hesitantly, as if he was afraid that Meng Chao would take back the cheese and candy.
Meng Chao thought about it and took off a leather bag from his waist. He brought out a large piece of high-calorie food mixed with honey and condensed milk, which was compressed into a milk brick, and crushed it in his palm. Then, he wrapped the crumbs in a few leaves and sent them to the children.
This was one of the spoils of war he had gotten from the ten unlucky totem warriors.
Being generous with other people's money was always a very pleasant thing.
The four children were all stunned.
They had never met anyone who was so nice to them for no reason.
"Sir, you …"
The big child with the colorful conch pendant pinched his chest a few times. The hard milk brick crumbs wrapped in leaves were still there.
This made him gather his courage and observe Meng Chao for a long time. Then, he asked Meng Chao carefully, "Are you the messenger sent by the Rat God?"
"Rat God?"
Meng Chao thought of something.
In the memory fragments of his previous life, countless dazzling streams of information tumbled madly in his mind.
He cocked his eyebrows and asked, "You know the Great Horned Rat God?"
When the words "Great Horned Rat God" came out of his mouth, the eyes of the four children lit up.
"It's really … really the messenger of the Rat God!"
"No wonder he saved us!"
"Uncle, they didn't lie. The messenger of the Rat God really came to save us!"
They hugged each other and cried tears of joy.
Then, they circled around Meng Chao and sang a strange ballad.
"The bravest Great Horned Rat!"
"The most powerful Great Horned Rat!"
"The most powerful Great Horned Rat!"
Meng Chao felt dizzy.
He could only smile bitterly and shout for them to stop.
"Listen, children —"
Meng Chao rolled his eyes and said, "The Rat God will definitely save all the rat people, but it won't be easy to save all of you from Black Corner City. Tell me, in Black Corner City, oh, let's talk about the area around you, are there many people who believe in the Rat God?"
The children did not doubt him and nodded. "Yes, everyone believes that the Horned Rat God will definitely descend to Turanze and save all the rat people!"
"It's like this …"
Meng Chao looked pensive. "Then, where did you hear about the Horned Rat God?"
"It's Milord who said it!"
The children said. "When we crawled into the innermost parts of those dark and smelly pipes and were so smelly that we felt like vomiting our guts out, the Milord would comfort us and tell us to endure for a few more days. The Horned Rat God's messenger will save all of us.
"Sometimes, the Milord will gather together and talk about the Horned Rat God. We don't really understand what they're talking about, but we know that the Horned Rat God is very powerful. No one in Turanze or the Land of Holy Light is his opponent. In this Glory Era, the Horned Rat God will definitely descend to the world and lead all the rat people to obtain supreme glory. That must be it, right?"
The rat children looked at Meng Chao expectantly.
Their words were a little hard to pronounce. It was clear that it was not their own language. They had heard it in a secret meeting among the adult rat people, and they were just parrots.
"Of course, glory belongs to the Horned Rat God, and victory belongs to all the rat people."
Meng Chao used the words that the believers of the Horned Rat God often said to dispel the children's final wariness. He continued asking, "Then, which Milord told you these things?"
The children shook their heads.
"We don't know," they said.
"The Milord will only run into the deepest tunnels at night when they're the most tired and talk about the Horned Rat God. When they talk, they wear masks."
"I see. Thank you for telling me these things."
Meng Chao smiled and nodded. He used his gaze to encourage the children to continue speaking.
He asked a few more questions in a roundabout manner.
The high-grade orcs from the era of the ancient clans did not have a strong sense of secrecy.
The children who grew up in the rat people's villages did not learn to hide their beliefs.
And the warriors of the ancient clans did not treat the primitive beliefs that were popular among the rat people seriously.
Hence, Meng Chao soon confirmed that there were a lot of believers of the Rat God in the slums and all of Black Corner City.
Besides, as the Bloody Hooves Army gradually took shape and plundered all the resources within a circular area of hundreds of kilometers, countless old, weak, sick, and disabled people died quietly around their burning homes. The warriors of the ancient clans squeezed the rat people to their limits.
The rat people, whose numbers were one hundred times that of the warriors, were like springs that had been compressed to their limits, and they were about to unleash their strongest force.
This was something Meng Chao could guess based on the children's words and the adults' increasingly frequent secret meetings.
Meng Chao's original plan was to save the children from Cailuo Village.
When he noticed that there was still such a great force hidden in Black Corner City, it was like a volcano that was about to erupt. His mind raced, and he felt that there was a need for him to adjust his plan for the hailstorm.
He ordered the four children to hide the high-calorie food scraps and continue hiding there for a while. Once the adults showed up one after another and order was restored, they would go out to look for their companions.
He also promised the children that he would definitely return.
Meng Chao sank into the darkness again and quietly left the slums.
He activated Walking Corpse and lowered his breathing, heartbeat, and body temperature to the minimum.
He was like a shadow that was as thin as a cicada's wing. He stuck close to the wall and moved stealthily in the darkness.
He carefully avoided the clansmen, who were controlled by dopamine and endorphins and could not free themselves from the murderous vortex. They fought like they were playing video games.
With a gaze that was as sharp as a scalpel, Meng Chao observed the grand and mighty city in front of him.
The moment he stepped out of Blood Skull Coliseum and saw the entirety of Black Corner City, Meng Chao found it unbelievable.
How could a barbaric civilization made up of clansmen build such a grand city that could accommodate millions of people?
Then, he saw the true face of the Turan civilization.
He saw the clansmen destroy the outer shell of the black buildings while fighting without a care for the world, revealing a large number of broken walls under the mottled and peeling outer walls.
It was only then that Meng Chao realized that the current high-grade orcs did not "build" the city.
They only "inherited" the city, and they were like wastrels who did not feel any pain for selling their father's land. They continued ruining the city.
Black Corner City must have been ten times larger than it was now millions of years ago.
Meng Chao saw that the buildings that were as tall as palaces were just ruins left behind after the skyscrapers built by the Turan civilization collapsed millions of years ago.
He did not find any traces of an advanced civilization on the ruins, such as reinforced concrete or glass walls.
It was because the current high-grade orcs dug out a lot of mud that was rich in minerals and trace elements from the banks of the Turan River. They moved them to Black Corner City and carefully smeared them on the ruins.
After being exposed to the scorching sun, a layer of black shell was pasted over the broken ancient building.
At first glance, the black buildings were like mountains that rose and fell continuously. They were built in rows and rows of cubes and cubes.
This feeling of using the most primitive technology to build the most glorious city would usually make those who did not know about it sigh with emotion and even worship it.
But once Meng Chao understood that the current high-grade orcs were just wastrels and paper-makers, he could not help but think that it was hilarious and lamentable.
However, this was not the time to laugh at the high-grade orcs.
Dragon Citizens did not have the right to laugh at the high-grade orcs since they might fall into the abyss of destruction one after the other.
Soon, Meng Chao looked away from the black outer shell of mud and the ancient ruins that were revealed.
He focused on searching for all information related to the Big-horned Rat God in his previous life's memory fragments.
It was just like how since ancient times, regardless of whether it was Earth or the Other World, all the races who were oppressed and had nowhere else to go would think of a savior.
In the Turan civilization, the rat people had been oppressed by the warriors for millions of years, and they had their own god who could bring about ultimate salvation.
Of course, the Turan civilization did not have the concept of a god. Instead, they strengthened their worship of their ancestors to the max.
Hence, the Big-horned Rat God the rat people worshiped was not a real god. Instead, all the rat people worshiped him as their common ancestor spirit.
It was said that millions of years ago, during the war that caused all the rat people to be labeled as cowards, lowly, and shameful.
When the entire frontline that the Ratmen were in charge of completely collapsed, almost all of the Ratmen had fled.
Only one Ratman Warrior, who was born with a strange appearance and had a head full of thick, long, and curved horns that were intertwined with each other and were extremely sharp, went against the current and single-handedly resisted the enemy's unstoppable torrent.
This Ratman Warrior's heroic feat naturally could not stop the collapse of the entire battlefront.
However, it ignited a glimmer of hope for the rat men and even the rat people who were destined to suffer for thousands of years.
Many rat people firmly believed that they would use thousands of years to atone for their ancestors' cowardice.
After tens of millions of years of atonement, the heroic spirit of the Horned Rat Warrior of the past would reappear in the world and lead all the rat people in Turanze and even the Land of Holy Light to regain the glory that they had lost for tens of millions of years. They would create a sixth clan besides the five major clans of Gold, Blood Hoof, Thunder, Dark Moon, and Divine Wood — a clan that belonged to all the rat people!
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