Chapter 400 — The War Is Not Yet Over

In the military zone of the Cecil domain, inside the command headquarters of the Military Intelligence Bureau, Lemont's corpse was quickly delivered before Gao Yang.

The death of this regional bishop of the Southern Diocese was bizarre: apart from some scrapes and grime left from his flight, there was scarcely a single external wound on his body. What had killed him was a kind of "fever" generated from within his skull. The bishop's eye sockets had been burned into two black, gaping holes, the withered, charred skin of his eyes pressed against the sockets of his skull in a manner that turned the stomach, and his brain... seemed to have been burned to ash.

"We found him on a mountain path in the Dark Mountains," Suo Jilin reported what he knew. "He was already dead when we found him—no signs of a struggle anywhere nearby, no residual magical fluctuations. Cause of death, as you can see, his brain burned to ash... but I have never seen any curse or magical effect that looks like this."

Gao Yang crouched down and carefully examined the bishop of the Holy Light. When he reached his hand into Lemont's eye socket, Amber beside him could not help but make a retching sound. "Ugh... you are absolutely disgusting..."

Gao Yang paid Amber no mind. Instead he dabbed up some of the ash and rubbed it lightly between his fingertips; a faint golden glimmer flashed through the ash and vanished.

"It's a lingering echo of the Holy Light, emanating from the brain... This bishop was burned to death by his own Holy Light," Gao Yang said, frowning. "But why?"

Amber began analyzing the matter at random with a thoroughly serious face. "Could it be that because he fled from the battlefield, violating some tenet or other of the Daystar Church, and then once he ran into the mountains he couldn't bear the condemnation of his conscience and died of a conscience explosion?"

Gao Yang glanced up at Amber. "Do you believe that yourself?"

Heidi simply ignored Amber's wild speculation. Standing beside Gao Yang, her expression grave, she asked, "Ancestor, can you tell what happened?"

"I can't. Apart from the cause of death—the backlash of the Holy Light—he left no trace on his body... But it isn't as though I have no ideas at all." Gao Yang clapped his hands and stood up. "The Holy Light backlash burned his brain, which proves the initial loss of control began in the brain. That makes me think of a certain group of people..."

Heidi looked at Gao Yang's expression and suddenly reacted. "The Eternal Slumberers?"

"It seems the Embershadow cultists have not quieted down. In fields we know nothing about, they have been active all along," Gao Yang said in a tone devoid of surprise. Since the shadow of the All Things End Society already lay behind the Ansu civil war, the appearance of the Eternal Slumberers on the Southern Frontier battlefield was hardly unimaginable. He was curious why the Eternal Slumberers would "help" the Cecil people kill an invader, but that did not stop him from continuing with his own affairs. "Send this corpse with the others to the incinerator. Burn it completely clean."

Two soldiers came in and carried Lemont's body away. Amber watched the bishop of the Holy Light being taken off and sighed with feeling, "A regional bishop... dead just like that... You know, this means you and the Daystar Church are now thoroughly at odds."

"Their regional bishop came to the Cecil domain with twelve knights to 'negotiate' with me, demanding that I hand over the civilians in the city. From that moment on, they were as good as declaring war," Gao Yang said indifferently. "And even without today's business, I would sooner or later have come into opposition with them. You should know that the laws the Cecil domain enforces are becoming ever more extreme and expansionist. The Daystar sect could never accept a rule like 'the law of the civil administration stands above the church.'"

Heidi, recalling the battle reports Kamael had sent earlier, suddenly wore a thoughtful look. "Speaking of which... that bishop and the knights he led probably never intended to fight us to the death this time. The bishop's phrasing was that he had come to negotiate with the lord and demand that we hand over the protected 'heretics.' I suspect their original aim was simply to lure you out, Ancestor, and stall you for a time. When the moment came, they would have found some excuse to withdraw, and afterward, following the customs governing friction between church and nobility, they would have covered it all over with gold and silver and some land as compensation. And I imagine, judging by Count Horsman's and the Daystar Church's original plans, that Cecil was meant to be the absolute loser of this war—the Daystar Church was likely waiting for our compensation instead."

Earlier, Heidi had been busy handling intelligence from every quarter, her mind never fully focused on this matter. Now that everything had settled for the moment, she suddenly understood the true purpose of the "Southern Diocese bishop" leading twelve Church knights to the Cecil domain to "negotiate." And Gao Yang's reply only made her expression more peculiar. "That's obvious. Of course they were only here to stall me. Did they really think they could take Xuanque City?"

Heidi did not know what expression to make. "And in the end they all died right here... not even the bishop survived."

"Remember what I said at the beginning?" Gao Yang glanced at Heidi and said unhurriedly. "They could start this war, but once it began, how large it grew was no longer for them to decide."

Heidi pondered that remark while Gao Yang gave her a new order. "Tell Godwin to put out an extra edition. The content: the Blazing Day Church colluded with Count Horsman... No—certain priests colluded with Count Horsman, plotting to raid Xuanyao City, but being overconfident in their own strength and far too weak, they were annihilated to the last man after a single clash with one of our technicians."

Heidi blinked. "...Write it just like that?"

Gao Yang nodded. "Just like that. And publish it across the whole domain—not only within the domain, but have the army carry it with them and distribute it throughout the entire Southern Frontier, so that every literate person in the Southern Frontier has a chance to see it. And remember, you must emphasize that it was 'certain corrupt and degenerate priests who colluded with Count Horsman.'"

Gao Yang had originally wanted to announce that the entire Daystar Church had colluded with Count Horsman and was now an enemy of Cecil, but he knew he could not treat the whole Daystar Church as an enemy—at least not now.

The priestly class of the Daystar Church might be rotting and degenerating, but the faithful of this sect were made up of a vast multitude of ordinary people. Within the Cecil domain alone, roughly a quarter of the population were followers of the Holy Light. These ordinary believers might not hold their faith in and support for the Daystar sect with any great fervor or extremity, but if he suddenly declared the Daystar Church an enemy, it would still be hard to avoid stirring up chaos. So it was best, from the very start of the propaganda, to draw a clear line between the degenerate priests and the ordinary believers.

And there was another point: in this world, religion was not merely a spiritual solace. Their "divine arts" and the gods themselves were all very real—indeed, the two were even components of productivity and of the natural world. Unless the Daystar Church, like those three Embers cults, became utterly twisted and degenerate and lost its footing in the normal social order, he could not make "the faith of the Holy Light" a target for destruction. The only thing he could destroy was those priests.

And only the degenerate, corrupt priests at that. After all, the entire Daystar Church could hardly have only one Lett? Eviken, could it?