The scheming empress starts by conquering men

Legend has it?

Seeing the new characters she wrote and hearing her peculiar explanation, the old woman stared at her with a complicated expression.

It seems that I can't understand why there are so many strange ideas in her head, and she even makes excuses like...legend?

How could she not know where this legend came from? It was clearly her own brilliant idea, yet she insisted on saying it was a legend.

She had read thousands of books and traveled thousands of miles, but she had never heard of such a thing.

When I think of the documents on the bamboo slips, I have to say, they are so vivid.

The old woman smiled, nodded, and turned away, her voice low and hoarse.

"That's quite fitting. It's exactly as you said."

"A long, long time ago, Gushu Village was a nameless graveyard. I don't know when this towering tree grew out of nowhere. No one cared about it, and no one knew about it."

"Until one day, a nobleman passed by here injured and was thought to have died in a foreign land."

"Coincidentally, the nobleman slept under the locust tree for a night, and his injuries were inexplicably healed."

"From that day on, the nobleman believed that the tree was a sacred tree. The whole family moved here, offered sacrifices and worshipped it, and named it the sacred tree. They were afraid that outsiders would know that there was a sacred tree here, so they called this place the Ancient Tree Village."

"I thought everything would go smoothly and bless the tribe, but the good times didn't last long. Young women in Gushu Village died young for unknown reasons, and men inexplicably became unlucky with their wives after they got married."

"The news spread from one person to ten, and from ten to a hundred. Everyone thought that the sacred tree was angry and wanted to sacrifice young girls and boys in their twenties."

"After that, the first living sacrifice was conducted in Gushu Village. It was the daughter of the clan leader and his sister's son. At that time, they were the only ones in their twenties."

"Even if you are extremely reluctant, you still have to reach the stage of sacrifice in the end."

"After the sacrifice, the ancient tree village was filled with joy and laughter. Not only did the girls not die young, but they were healthy and free from disease and disaster after they were born. Not only did the men not bring bad luck to their wives after they got married, but they were blessed with good fortune and luck for their wives."

"Everyone attributed all this to the sacred tree, but happy times are always short-lived. Twenty years later, the same thing happened again, causing his wife to die young."

"So everyone performed a living sacrifice again, and they found the pattern. From then on, they performed a sacrifice every twenty years."

"People are greedy, they want to live a life of luxury, but are unwilling to make sacrifices. Even if they agree to sacrifice verbally, they are opposed to it in their hearts."

The old woman sighed and shook her head, lamenting the greed of the world.

Shaodian Sishui was speechless.

Well, she didn’t understand or comprehend the ancients’ thoughts.

After all, everything is possible in this kind of world, not to mention sacrificing living people to trees. Even welcoming a bride and sending off a bride require sacrificing living people, let alone an ancient tree.

However, she had a question.

"How did you know about this long, long time ago?"

"And twenty years ago, were you also nearly sacrificed? How did you survive?"

The old woman turned and looked at her, a hint of admiration in her eyes.

"You are very smart. You can guess from a few words that I was almost sacrificed alive."

"As for this long, long time ago..." She paused and thought for a moment; "Of course, the locust tree told me during the sacrifice."

Shaodian Sishui's eyes suddenly became dark, and he narrowed his eyes and stared at her.

“Can a locust tree speak?”

Does she believe this?

The novels she wrote are about feminism, not fantasy. Do you think she is a three-year-old child?

The old woman laughed in a low voice, "Whether you believe it or not, this locust tree does have spirituality, but its spirituality will only bring endless disasters to people."

After she finished speaking, she staggered towards the bookshelf beside her, opened the secret compartment in front of Shaodian Si Shui, and took out a bamboo slip woven with yellow and thick wooden strips.

She held the bamboo slips in her hand, walked towards Shaodian Sishui, and handed them to her.

"Take a look, and you'll understand."

Shaodian Sishui took the bamboo slips. The writing on it was very old, with some traces of being worn away by time, and was also covered with dried dust.

It records the origin of the village and what happened before and after the first sacrifice.

Anyone who is sick or injured will be well the next day as long as they go to the sacred tree and sleep there.

Shaodian Sishui paused slightly when he saw this and looked at his body and legs.

The old woman saw what she was thinking and chuckled; "Don't worry, you have never been cured by the ancient tree."

Shaodian Sishui certainly knew that she had been saved by the sacred tree, and she just had a brain short circuit just now, which made her look at herself.

She wondered, "Can that tree really save people?"

The old woman looked indifferent and said coldly, "Twenty years ago, I fell off a cliff with wounds all over my body and landed under this locust tree. I thought I was going to die, but I slept here all night."

Shaodian Sishui's eyes lit up instantly, and she stared at the old woman, waiting for her next words.

The old woman's face, full of burnt wrinkles, seemed to move, with sadness and memories.

"Indeed, I have no more injuries on my body. Even the injuries that were so severe that the bones were visible and incurable could be healed overnight..."

The old woman recalled what happened twenty years ago, and brought Shaodian Sishui's thoughts back to twenty years ago.

Shaodian Sishui stood under the locust tree, looking at this ancient locust tree that required fifty or sixty people to hug.

It’s so thick, it must be a spirit, right?

Moreover, the body of this ancient tree, including its branches and leaves, looks like the back of a man's hand, with thick, bulging green and red blood vessels visible on it, as if blood is flowing in the tree.

She stood nearby, looking up at the locust tree without daring to breathe, her heart filled with shock and fear.

I have lived for two lifetimes and have seen all kinds of ancient trees.

The Xuanyuan Cypress in the Yellow Emperor Temple in Shaanxi has a history of 5,000 years.

The Second General Cypress at Songyang Academy in Henan Province has a history of 4,500 years.

The Alishan Sacred Tree in Taiwan has a history of 2,300 years.

There are too many to list, including the Emperor Tree in Beijing, the Chumei tree in Zhanghua Temple, the ancient ginkgo tree in Shandong, the ancient banyan tree in Tianma River in Guangdong, the Phoenix pine and the Welcoming pine in Anhui.

She had never seen such a spectacular and stunning ancient tree. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this tree had stood for ten thousand years.

With a plop, a heavy object flew down from the sky, fell on the tree, and then landed next to the ancient tree.

Shaodian Sishui came back to his senses and the scene changed.

She saw the woman's face, it was Chang Youpo, but her appearance was not Chang Youpo's, but her own.

She had never seen Chang Youpo's face when she was young, but as Chang Youpo described it vividly, she actually imagined what she looked like.

She looked at Chang Youpo, who was curled up beside the ancient tree with wounds all over her body. After a few breaths, Shaodian Si Shui heard breathing sounds, which were very loud, so loud that it sounded like a low gasp in your ear.

It also seemed as if the sound came from inside the locust tree.

Just as she was listening intently, the branches of the locust tree moved, and those branches had thick blood vessels on them.

It seemed to have eyes and inserted directly into the old woman's body.

Shaodian Sishui took a step back in fear, his whole body shuddered and his back stiffened.

She looked at the twigs of varying thicknesses, which were wrapping the old woman into a thick cocoon bit by bit.

Then she saw that the branches seemed like tubes, sucking her blood.