Pioneering

The Western Continent, the Kingdom of Minggliena.

On the edge of the great forest to the east of Anathem lived a poor, unemployed woodcutter, with his wife and two children.

His son's name was Hansel, and his daughter's name was Gretel.

Their family was originally poor and lacked food and drink. Fortunately, the nobles bought all kinds of machines from Yasha and set up factories, which allowed them to eat for two and a half years.

However, the good times don't last long. In the past year, the West Continent has been in turmoil. Small countries have fallen, and kingdoms have been forced to merge. Conspiracies and schemes have been used.

The war broke the peace, and also broke the relatively liberal Western Continent market.

There are 36 old kingdoms plus a newly-emerged Anason Kingdom. Now there are only [-] great kingdoms left in the entire Western Continent, including the Anason Kingdom, the Minggliena Kingdom, and the Morde Kingdom...there are five of them. The obvious strength is the most prominent, already approaching the size of the empire's territory.

Of course, it is still slightly inferior to the Asshai Kingdom in the Northern Continent.

The Kingdom of Yashai can now be called a half-step empire of great perfection!

However, the victory of the expansion of the Kingdom of Mingglena does not mean that ordinary people can benefit. On the contrary, the external market has been lost, and the internal market has fallen into a vicious situation of "insufficient demand-factory layoffs and production reduction-more people are unemployed-insufficient demand..." in the loop.

The woodcutter's family lost a job in the lumberyard due to this terrible deflationary cycle, and had to be "forest thieves" who sneaked around.

Yes, the family of woodcutters who can't pay the "forest tax" to the nobles, if they are caught, they will be taken to the most dangerous mining area to open mines, and they will do five years of hard labor to repay the debt owed to the nobles.

This is because the Kingdom of Minggliena imitated Yasha and did a lot of improvement measures, so that the "Civil Code of Minggliena" was established, and the crime of poaching and deforestation of the nobles was confirmed, and it was no longer a noble habit in the past. Method—Usually, the lords are more inclined to hang this troublemaker directly.

However, the upper-class nobles of the Kingdom of Mingglena and the wealthy merchants supported by the nobles gained a lot of wealth during the expansion, and fell into a certain degree of inflation.

Inflation at the top and deflation at the bottom.

Although the Kingdom of Minglena is tyrannical, its people are suffering.

In the face of the "black swan" of war, the woodcutter's family couldn't even get enough bread every day.

That night, the woodcutter, who was tossing and turning with worry, lay on the bed with a lot of headaches. He sighed and groaned.

Finally he said to his wife: "What should we do! What should we do? Another war tax will be apportioned to the market next month, and various commodities will probably rise again.

None of us have anything to eat, so what are we going to do to support those two poor children? "

"Listen to me, the boy's father," replied his wife, "we'll take the children out early tomorrow morning into the deep woods, and build a fire for them there, and give them each a small Bread, and then we'll pretend to do our work and leave them there alone.

They don't know the way and can't go home, so we don't have to support them anymore. "

"No, my wife," said the woodcutter in shock, "I can't do this. How can I have the heart to leave my child in the jungle to feed the wild beasts!"

"Hey," said the woodcutter's wife, "although I am not the children's biological mother, I have raised them for seven or eight years, so how can I be willing?
But if this is not the case, the four of us will all starve to death with the little firewood and prey you sneak into the forest every day!Two deaths are better than four!

In this world, under the leadership of Tortolok (the protector of death, one-third of Hades), go to Hamda (Pluto, one-third of Hades), the kingdom of the dead, It might not be a good thing to enjoy the eternal peace brought by Theranos (lord of the underworld, one-third of the god of the underworld).

If we hadn't died, the children wouldn't be able to live, so what if we let the children live?Why don't I want to go to the destination of fate? "

In the kingdom that originally believed in the god of the underworld, after several years of war, everyone's spirits have some problems.

It is manifested as the grand goal of the increasingly fanatical high society in the kingdom of Minggliena, to inspire the rise and revival of Minggliena, and to spread the belief in the god of the gods to every corner of the Western Continent.

And the ordinary people of the lower class became more and more depressed and decadent. Not only were there fewer and fewer newborns, but the cheap contraceptive TT produced by Yasha was selling well, and there were also large-scale groups going to the country of the dead.

In contrast, the woodcutter's wife's proposal to abandon the child in order to survive already appears to be a very positive desire to survive.

The woodcutter was silent.

Sometimes, silence means consent.

At that time, the two children were too hungry to fall asleep, and they happened to hear the whole conversation between the stepmother and their father.

After hearing her stepmother's advice to her father, her daughter Gretel cried sadly and said to Hansel: "Brother, what should we do? Now we are all finished."

"Shut up, Gretel," Hansel comforted, "don't worry, I'll find a solution."

After the two adults fell asleep, he put on his small coat, opened the back door and sneaked out of the room.

The moon was shining brightly at this time, and the bright moonlight made the white pebbles in the open space in front of the house shine like pieces of silver coins.

Hansel crouched down and stuffed his coat pockets with white stones as best he could.Then he went back to the house and said to Gretel, "Don't worry, sister, just sleep well, and the gods will be with us."

With that, he went back to his little bed to sleep.

Just after dawn, before the sun had risen above the horizon, the woman woke up the two children, "Get up, get up, you two slobs!"

She shouted: "We are going into the mountains to cut firewood."

As she spoke, she gave a small piece of bread to a child and warned them: "This is your lunch, don't eat it early, because you will never get anything again."

Gretel took the bread and hid it under her apron, for Hansel's pockets were now full of white stones.

Then, the whole family headed towards the forest.

Hansel always stopped and looked back at his home after walking for a while, and stopped and looked back at his home after walking for a while.

When his father saw him, he said: "Hansel, why are you always looking back? Focus on walking your way."

"Oh, father," replied Hansel, "I am looking at my white cat, who is sitting high on the roof, and wants to say 'goodbye' to me!"

"That's not your cat, fool," said the stepmother, "that's the morning sun on the chimney."

In fact, Hansel was not really looking at the kitten. He quietly took out the white stones from his pocket and threw them one by one on the road as he walked.

When they reached the depths of the forest, the woodcutter said to them, "Hey, boys, go and get some firewood, and I'll make a fire for you."

Hansel and Gretel picked up many dead sticks and piled them up as high as a hill.

When the dead branches were lit and the flames had grown high, the stepmother said to them:
"Lie down by the fire, you two, and stay still, while your father and I go to the woods to chop wood. We'll come and fetch you home as soon as we're done."

So Hansel and Gretel sat by the fire and waited for their parents to finish their work before coming to fetch them.

By noon they had eaten their own morsel of bread.

Because they could always hear the bang, bang of the ax cutting down the tree, they believed that their father was nearby.In fact, what they heard was not the sound of an ax at all, but the sound of a dead branch tied to a small tree hitting the trunk under the wind.

Sitting for a long time, the siblings were so tired that the upper and lower eyelids started fighting.

It didn't take long for the two of them to fall asleep, and when they woke up from their dreams, it was already dark night.

Gretel cried out in fear, and said, "Now we can't find our way out of the forest!"

"Don't worry," Hansel reassured her, "when the moon comes out, we will soon find our way out of the forest."

Soon, when a full moon rose, Hansel took his sister by the hand, and walked along the path led by the white stones that shone like silver coins on the ground in the moonlight.

They walked all night, and arrived at their father's door just before dawn.

They knocked on the door, and it was their stepmother who answered it.

When she opened the door and saw Hansel and Gretel, she said, "Why have you been sleeping in the forest for so long? We thought you didn't want to go home!"

Seeing the children, the father was overjoyed and cruelly abandoned the two children, which made him feel very uncomfortable.

The family struggled to live together again.

But not long after, something worse happened.

In the past, the Asshai merchants who could always bring cheap and affordable goods to the commoners of the Kingdom of Minggrenna announced that because the Fritz Empire and the Hero Empire in the middle mainland declared war on their country, the flow of many materials was blocked. In China, it may be difficult to resume operations before the state of war ends.

"Damn mainlanders!"

"Damn war, bloody nobles!"

"It's over, it's over, God of the Underworld, is this you calling your people?"

"Death, everyone will die!"

Not only did the minds of the people at the bottom become more and more wrong, but the prices of commodities in the market also rose along with the trend, becoming: inflation at the upper level, inflation at the bottom, and stagflation at the bottom.

One night, the two children heard their stepmother say to their father again: "The head of the house has eaten up all that can be eaten, and only half of the bread is left. What do you think will happen in the future?
If you still want to pass on the blood of the Segein family, we still have to lighten the burden and throw away the two children!
If the child is gone, it can be regenerated. If we all starve to death together... this time we can take them deeper and further into the forest so that they can never find their way back.

Only in this way can the Saigeyin family have a chance of survival. "

Hearing that his wife said again that he would abandon the child, the woodcutter was very sad.But if there is one, there are two, just like women's clothing only has the first time and countless times, the woodcutter still acquiesced.

However, the children heard all of their conversation.

After his parents fell asleep, Hansel got up from the bed again, and wanted to slip out the door, like last time, to go outside to pick up some pebbles, but this time he found that there were no pebbles to use this time.

Anything that can be sold for a little money has long been picked up and sold by the wolf-like unemployed.Stones can also be sold for a certain price. The woodcutter has long ago exchanged all the nearby stones for bread to fill the stomachs of the family.

He had a new idea in his heart, and comforted Gretel: "Don't cry, sister, don't worry, sleep well. Hades won't like little devils like us."

Early in the morning, the stepmother pulled the children out of bed.She gave them each a loaf of bread, much smaller than the previous one.

On the way to the forest Hansel crumbled his bread in his pocket, and stopped now and then to scatter the crumbs on the road.

"Hansel, why are you dawdling behind watching?" His father asked him seeing that he was always lagging behind.

"I'm looking at the pigeon. It's standing on the roof and 'cuckling'. If it can be shot down, everyone can see a little bit of meat." Hansel replied.

"You idiot," cried his stepmother, "that's not a pigeon, it's the morning sun on the chimney."

But Hansel sprinkled his crumbs little by little along the way.

The stepmother led them away for a long time, and they came to a forest they had never been to.

As before, a big fire was built again, and the stepmother said to them again: "Stay here, children, and sleep if you are sleepy, we will go far away to cut wood and finish the work." We'll come get you."

At noon Gretel shared her bread with Hansel, for Hansel's bread had been scattered on the road.

Then, to reduce energy loss, the two of them fell asleep again.Until midnight, no one came to pick up the two poor children.

It was pitch black when they woke up.

Hansel comforted his sister and said, "As soon as the moon rises, we will see the crumbs I scattered on the ground, and it will show us the way home."

But when the silver moon rose, they could not find a crumb of bread on the ground.

Too many unemployed and hungry people flooded into the forest, and the animals in the forest were also in bad luck. The life of the birds was also difficult. Someone sprinkled bread crumbs, how could they not eat it?

Hansel was also a little anxious, but he still comforted his sister and said, "We will definitely find the way, Gretel."

"Brother, what should we do? Once the bloody moon rises, we will be eaten by monsters in the night!" The fear of the bloody moon is engraved in everyone's heart.

"It's okay, it's okay, don't be afraid, we will survive, we will survive." Hansel, who was not very old at all, pretended to be strong, and reluctantly turned his head and smiled at his sister.

The two brothers and sisters searched and searched in the forest, scurrying in panic amidst the frightening howls of wild animals at night, carefully avoiding and searching.

Soon, the brother and sister, who had been malnourished for a long time and had only eaten a little bread for another day, were so hungry that they were dizzy. Except for a few sour green berries found on the ground, they could not find anything to eat.

There are no unemployed and hungry people who can eat. The nearby lords can't catch "forest thieves".

They were deep in the jungle, lost, tired and hungry, and could barely move.

At this time, the silver moon has fallen into the sky, the blood moon is about to rise, and many creatures hidden in the darkness are about to become active.If they can't get help, they will definitely die.

Just then they saw a bird of great beauty, all white, standing on a branch and singing, and it sang very sweetly.

The brothers and sisters stopped involuntarily and listened to it sing.

After it finished singing, it spread its wings and flew in front of them, as if beckoning them to follow it.

So they followed it along until they came to the front of a hut, and the bird landed on the roof of the hut.

Only then did they realize that the hut was actually made of fragrant bread, with thick cakes on the roof, and bright candy blocks on the windows.

There is a sign on the fence in front of the Candy House - Zhubi the Witch's House. (end of this chapter)