Why it never ends

Chapter 1055 Kasyapa

When several people came out of the nursery, students who had finished the first big class in the morning were leaving the classroom, and some fast children were already playing in the playground. A dozen women in long skirts walked to a separate courtyard behind the classroom, which was the school kitchen. They had to start preparing lunch and dinner after the first class, so that the younger students - and the men who were patting their bellies at the school gate and waiting for food - could eat at noon.

The women's long dresses were brightly colored, with patchwork fabrics covering their dark skin, making them look like venomous snakes in the rain forest, but the wide decorative fabrics hanging from their hems and sleeves made their movements seem restrained.

Before starting to work, they took out a long cloth belt around their waists, lifted up the skirts that hung to their ankles, and tied them tightly around their thighs. Then they helped each other to wrap their wide sleeves from the front to the back of their necks, and then tied a slipknot... After such preparations, the women began to work amid laughter.

"Let's find a place to sit for a while." Bo Heng said.

"What are you going to do later?" Hesta asked.

"Uh, eating?"

"Let's go back and eat," Victoria said. Perhaps because she realized that her tone was too harsh, she suddenly laughed again, "It's a good time to take a break."

"Then you guys go back," Welsing said, "I'd like to try the school food here."

The group said goodbye on the spot, and Hesta, Victoria, and Zoe walked back at the same time. Although they didn't talk much along the way, they chose to go back for the same reason. They didn't want to burden these women who were studying like the old men waiting for food at the school gate, nor did they want to help out - after all, that would be equivalent to serving them personally.

It was not yet eleven o'clock when we returned to the settlement, and smoke from cooking was already rising from the open space. As they thought about what they had just seen at school, they also began to notice the lunch workers in the settlement.

Among the locals living here, a small number of them still maintain the ancient sleeping tradition: they fall asleep at dusk every day, wake up about four or five hours later, eat, chat, and then go to sleep again until the sun rises the next day.

They only eat two meals a day, one at noon and one at midnight. The women worked hard to process plant tubers, peeled off the seeds of a plant that was abundant in the area, and then made a fire, poured the juice from the scrubbing and washing into the pot along with some spices, and finally made a translucent sticky mass. These masses have no taste, but the texture is chewy and suitable for eating with any kind of heavy-tasting food.

These people basically do not participate in the community activities of the Devout Youth Front, but because they also receive food and medicine from here, they are responsible for preparing meals at noon and at night.

Hesta first went back to his room to send an email to Pakat, and then followed the smoke to the open-air kitchen of the settlement.

Among the busy figures, Hesta recognized the woman who pointed a gun at Victoria last night. She was sitting on a stone, rubbing a huge gray tuber with a smile, and speaking the local dialect with several people around her.

Hesta walked up to the woman, squatted down beside her without asking any questions, picked up a palm-sized tuber and began to peel it.

The woman frowned, stretched out her foot to hook a small stool and kicked it to Hesta's butt. Hesta thanked her and the two of them worked together.

In the distance, Zoe was about to step forward, but Victoria grabbed her shoulder and said, "Wait a minute."

After a while, Hesta turned around and waved to them.

The woman, still rubbing the tubers in her hands with swift movements, briefly greeted Victoria, and although her glance was brief, Victoria could sense that her earlier hostility had largely subsided.

The woman had a little smile on her face: "She said that you are all Kasyapa practitioners. All three of you?"

Victoria looked confused: "...What walker?"

"It's the 'mercury needle' they use here," said Hesta. "They say 'Kasyapa' means holding light and drinking light, so they can also be called 'Light Holder' and 'Light Drinker' - that's what they call Boheng and Eunice." Zoe and Victoria said "Oh" at the same time.

"It sounds nice," Victoria looked at the woman, "but why is it called this? Your mercury needles glow when they fight?"

The woman stopped what she was doing, looked pious, and answered solemnly, "It is a kind of Buddha."

The four of them quickly processed a whole pot of tubers, and then the woman took them to the kitchen. The four walls here were covered with dense writings. At first glance, they looked like scriptures, but a closer look revealed that they were all kinds of things - poems and songs, some revolutionary articles, the names of the workers here, a curse or apology from one person to another...

The woman searched for a long time and finally found a sentence in one of the places. She pointed it to a few mercury needles and said: Do not do evil, but practice good and purify your mind. This is the teaching of all Buddhas.

Zoe stared for a while, then turned to look at Victoria: "What do you mean?"

"Don't do bad things, do good things, purify your mind, and you are practicing the Buddha's teachings."

"Then how do you define good and bad Buddha?" Hesta asked.

“There are rules,” the woman answered, “but they are very long…”

As she spoke, the woman began to search the wall again. Victoria said, "I think I know something about this. There is a saying in Buddhism: Ten Evils and Ten Virtues—"

"Yes, yes," the woman agreed, "That's it."

"It means, don't kill, don't steal, don't commit adultery—"

"It's not that." The woman suddenly interrupted Victoria. "It's more complicated than that."

"……Yeah?"

The woman's index finger searched along the wall of the kitchen, but she couldn't find what she wanted, so she became more and more anxious. Victoria felt a little sorry for it - how majestic this sister was when she drove people away with a gun last night, and she was completely different from the way she was looking for the content of the commandments on the wall.

"Just give us a rough outline," Victoria said. "How many do you remember?"

“Oh.” The woman slapped the table in annoyance. “Let me think about it… well, we can’t let children drink or gamble. Um… we need to listen patiently to all the brothers and sisters…”

Victoria nodded as she listened—unsurprisingly, religions around the world have expectations of the moral lives of their followers.

"Keep your gun and bullets safe. Never lose your gun or waste bullets—"

"……Um?"

"Don't forget to clean up the battlefield," the woman said, "If you see anyone still breathing, you have to shoot them again."