Chapter 337: Daybreak: The Darkest Hour Has Passed
Before seeing the painting “Crossing the Sea,” Everly had imagined the scene like this: under the colonists’ massacre, the Carib people split into two groups. One group remained steadfast in their homeland and was eventually killed by the colonists, while the other crossed the vast ocean, traversed the broad strait, and came to the North American continent in an attempt to establish a new home there.
However, the scene depicted in the painting was completely different from what Everly had imagined.
Several centuries ago, this group of Carib people in the forest had crossed the sea aboard the colonists’ ships.
They seemed to have reached some kind of agreement with the colonists of that time. No sooner had they set foot on the land than they became embroiled in a battle with an indigenous tribe with yellowish-brown skin that lived along the coast, and they defeated the tribe through overwhelming superiority.
The indigenous tribe was slaughtered until only the elderly, the weak, and the infirm remained. Faced with a powerful enemy, they were forced to abandon their homeland and become displaced.
The Carib people seized the indigenous tribe’s land, cut off the heads of its men, ate their bodies, took their wives and daughters by force, and sat upon the victims’ corpses as they indulged themselves, singing and reveling night after night.
The white-skinned colonists visited the Carib people’s temporary camp and traded cloth, iron pots, soap, and other goods for the heads of the indigenous people, as well as the land beneath their feet.
After eating and drinking their fill, the Carib people, urged on by the white colonists, once again launched attacks against other tribes on the continent.
The rest of the paintings essentially repeated the same sequence over and over again.
The Carib people were fierce, warlike, and powerful. Egged on by the colonists, they fought their way north and south, raiding everywhere they went, and nearly conquered the entire Dalifer Peninsula.
All the colonists had to do was follow behind the Carib people, wait until the fighting was over, and then offer them a few worthless trinkets in exchange. Without losing a single soldier, they could eliminate those troublesome natives and obtain the vast stretches of land they had dreamed of.
Of course, the Carib people were not the only ones who had a guardian deity. Some of the larger indigenous tribes with longer traditions also had gods they worshipped.
However, before the colonists arrived, the indigenous tribes had generally maintained long periods of peaceful coexistence, and large-scale conflicts were rare. As a result, the gods of these native tribes often took on creative divine roles such as creation, harvest, and fertility. In terms of sheer combat power, they were no match for Oseiwa.
Thus, after a series of battles, it was usually the Carib people who emerged victorious in the end.
They became the sharpest blade in the colonists’ hands, at one point striking such terror into the indigenous people living in the surrounding regions that they fled at the mere mention of them.
After destroying an unknown number of tribes, the Carib people finally encountered the Winton people as they pushed farther inland.
The reason it could be confirmed that they were the Winton people was that the painting had depicted the Winton tribe’s totem pole with a few simple strokes. Its design was almost identical to the one Everly had seen in Tunumo Village. In addition, beside the altar of this new tribe grew a towering banyan tree, with a slumbering giant greenish-blue serpent coiled around its branches. These two details also matched the characteristics of the Winton people.
The Carib people and the Winton people began a long war.
At first, the Carib people had the upper hand. Later, after the Winton people prayed day and night, the giant serpent slithered down from the banyan tree and joined the battle.
Compared with the green serpent Everly had seen tonight, the giant serpent in the painting was vastly larger. A single sweep of its tail could crush large numbers of Carib people into bloody pulp.
Faced with unprecedentedly heavy losses, the Carib people resolutely decided to summon their supreme god.
After returning to their camp, they held a grand sacrificial ceremony. The human sacrifices they offered were piled up to a height of four or five meters.
Oseiwa answered the call of his followers and intervened in this battle, one that concerned their very survival and dignity.
Everly had already learned what happened next from the tapestry at the back:
Oseiwa and the giant serpent each led their followers into battle. The giant serpent was no match for Oseiwa’s power and perished on the battlefield, becoming the belt around Oseiwa’s waist. The Winton people were driven back, and the Carib people seized the newly conquered territory. Not long afterward, for reasons unknown, their alliance with the colonists fell apart. The two sides turned against each other and fought fiercely, forcing the Carib people into the jungle, where they clung to life beneath a barrier sustained by the giant serpent’s skin…
“Incredible. These Carib people were actually brought to North America by Spanish colonists!” Sophia exclaimed in shock after looking over the tapestry at the very front.
Her words completed the final piece of the puzzle.
At the very beginning, after discovering the cannibals, the colonists really had intended to kill the Carib people and eliminate these “pests of civilization.”
However, after actually fighting them, they discovered that the red-skinned natives were extremely difficult to deal with. Wiping them out would inevitably result in heavy casualties for the colonial forces. Moreover, there were numerous indigenous tribes scattered along the coast of the Caribbean. If they had to slaughter every single tribe themselves, the cost would be staggering.
So the cunning colonists changed their approach. Instead, they traded cloth and other goods to the Carib people in exchange for the heads of indigenous people. The Carib people became enamored with the gifts the colonists gave them. In order to obtain more novel and useful supplies, they turned their blades against other natives and began a campaign of slaughter.
In just a few short years, the entire Caribbean region had been “cleansed.”
The vast lands had lost their owners and were naturally taken over by the colonists. Having tasted the benefits of this peculiar form of cooperation, the colonists went a step further. They divided the Carib people into several groups and transported them by ship to several neighboring continents, where they could continue to “make themselves useful.” Even the Aztecs, far away on the Yucatán Peninsula, had once suffered attacks from them.
“In the beginning, the colonists used slogans like ‘civilization purifying savagery’ and ‘eliminating cannibalistic beasts’ to justify their acts of genocide. And now, the paintings on these tapestries prove to us that the so-called ‘elimination of cannibalistic beasts’ was nothing more than a staggering lie fabricated to claim the moral high ground. The truth is, they not only did not oppose the cannibals, but instead bribed these barbarians and waged proxy wars through them, reducing the achievements of civilizations that had accumulated over thousands of years in the Americas to ashes… Without a doubt, if these paintings were made public, they would send shockwaves through the historical community.”
Everly asked, “Then will you publish this discovery?”
“Yes, of course I will…” Sophia gently touched the tapestry before her with her fingertips, her eyes filled with sincerity and resolve. “Someone has to expose the ‘evil’ of the past. Someone has to remember the blood and tears that once soaked this land. We remember because we hope tragedies like these will never happen again. That is the meaning of learning about and studying human history.”
“Rumble…”
As if in response to the heroine’s words, a familiar rumbling suddenly came from the distance. Everly and Sophia exchanged a glance, temporarily setting aside the heavy subject as they walked outside together and looked toward the source of the sound.
Unbeknownst to them, the darkest hour of the night had already passed, and a faint band of pale light had appeared along the horizon. In the dim morning glow, a helicopter with flashing red lights was rapidly approaching the vast clearing in the forest.
“Hey! Hey—! Over here! We’re over here!”
By the rocky shore in the distance, the survivors jumped and waved frantically, repeatedly shouting themselves hoarse.
“Quick, let’s go too!” Sophia took a flare from her waist and forcefully pressed it into Everly’s hands. She then raised another flare and ran ahead to the altar, firing it into the sky.
Seeing this, Everly ignited the second flare as well.
“Whoosh—BANG!”
The two successive bursts of fire completely dispelled the darkness around them. A few minutes later, the helicopter’s rotors churned up fierce winds as it landed steadily atop the once-sacred Carib altar.
……
Successfully finding survivors should have been something worth celebrating and boasting about in front of the media cameras. However, the rescue team had not only lost a helicopter during the operation, but had also discovered a large number of horribly dismembered corpses in the Carib settlement.
Just before dawn, new information arrived: another helicopter had found the wreckage of the passenger plane that had crashed several kilometers away. Strangely, more than one helicopter had flown past that area during the day, yet not a single one had noticed anything unusual.
And so, the incident suddenly shifted from a simple plane crash into something terrifying and bizarre.
Daring not to reveal even a shred of information to the media, the rescue helicopter immediately flew the eleven survivors out of the forest and secretly headed for the nearest hospital.
Medical personnel, police officers, and investigators from the Dalifer State SAI branch had already been waiting there. As soon as the survivors landed, the medical staff took them away. Those who were injured received treatment, while those without obvious injuries underwent a series of examinations.
Throughout the examinations, the police and SAI investigators remained by their side. Only after confirming that they were physically unharmed did they begin questioning them individually.
Everly adapted to everything without difficulty.
There were simply too many survivors, so Everly had no way to persuade them to keep her secret—and there was nothing particularly necessary to hide anyway. She cooperated fully, recounting everything she had experienced in the forest, including the grudge between the Winton people and the Carib people.
The only time Everly lied was when she was asked about the origin of the bracelet. She did not want to cause trouble for the Winton people of Tunumo Village because of it.
“Remia gave me the bracelet.” Facing the SAI investigator’s questions, Everly did not bat an eye as she smoothly delivered the lie she had prepared long ago. “Remia Wood is currently employed at SAI headquarters and is a senior investigator. For various reasons, she once invited me to join SAI and gave me this bracelet for self-defense. However, she didn’t know the bracelet’s origins beforehand, so when it suddenly fell to the ground, transformed into a gray-white monster, and fought Oseiwa, I was genuinely shocked.”
“You actually know Remia!” The investigator clearly knew who Remia was. Upon hearing that Everly was acquainted with her, he was so surprised that he practically jumped out of his chair.
Everly had already been in contact with Remia on the way there. She remained completely composed, showing no trace of panic, and even suggested that the investigator contact Remia to confirm it.
The investigator hesitated for a moment before taking out his phone and stepping away for a while. Everly had no idea what Remia said to him, but when he returned, she could clearly sense that his attitude had become much friendlier.
Everly took the opportunity to make a request, hoping the investigator could deal with the few survivors who had been eyeing her suspiciously.
“After I demonstrated the bracelet’s power, I could clearly feel them constantly sneaking glances at my wrist. I don’t really have much ability to protect myself at the moment, so I’m worried they might try to hurt me because of it. Is there anything you can do to help me?”
“Of course. That’s easy. Leave it to me!” The investigator patted his chest and readily agreed.
Everly had no idea what he later did with those survivors.
After finishing her questioning, she was quickly granted permission to leave the hospital and boarded a long-distance bus bound for Miant City.
She had somewhere urgent to be. She had a port to catch, after all!