The mission to capture Lin Zhen was not that easy to complete. After the Vatican's five hunting squads entered the City of Ancient Gods, aside from one squad that was responsible for intercepting them at the entrance, the other four squads all entered the second level.
Each squad had two Star Realm experts, and one of them was even a Stars Ranking expert. With such a lineup, killing Lin Zhen would definitely not be a problem.
Two squads headed to the South Pole, and the other two squads headed to the North Pole. When they entered, these four squads claimed that they would capture Lin Zhen within half a month.
However, after spending an entire month, they did not even find Lin Zhen's shadow.
It was obvious that Lin Zhen had a special way of avoiding them. After many searches, the Vatican finally found out that Lin Zhen had received a compass among the prizes from the War God Arena.
The compass could reflect a person's Star Power and Dantian Qi strength. Whenever someone approached, their strength would be displayed on the compass.
After receiving this news, the Vatican immediately reacted. They spent a huge amount of money to purchase five compasses and sent them to each of the five hunting squads.
With these compasses, the hunting squads would not take long to search the entire second level of the City of Ancient Gods. They believed that Lin Zhen would not be able to escape this calamity.
*****
The world's discussion on whether Lin Zhen was good or bad had never stopped. It was the same in Huaxia, and it was the same in Bingcheng.
The number of followers of the Church was too large. There were still tens of millions of followers of the Church in Bingcheng. Most of these followers had been to the Church of Sophia. Now that the Church of Sophia's Grand Master Allen had personally led a team to the City of Ancient Gods to hunt down Lin Zhen, it caused a huge debate in Bingcheng.
Many non-believers of the Church of Huaxia supported Lin Zhen, but this kind of support was not on a large scale.
After all, these people were not an organization. They were not like the Church, which was organized and disciplined. So, although Lin Zhen had the most supporters in Bing City, he did not have the upper hand in public opinion.
In the beginning, when the God Sect was chasing Lin Zhen into the City of Ancient God, many followers of the God Sect were still clamoring on the internet. They said that Lin Zhen would be captured and executed by the God Sect in a few days. Many people even arranged all kinds of torture methods for Lin Zhen.
Such posts were too numerous to mention. The Divine Sect was extremely arrogant.
On top of that, the Holy See had been constantly spreading the news, assigning countless crimes to Lin Zhen. The public opinion of the world was gradually leaning towards the Holy See.
However, in the past month, there had been no progress in the Church's pursuit of Lin Zhen. This made many people who supported Lin Zhen see hope and criticize the Church on the Internet.
It was fine if there was no progress for one or two days, or even eight to ten days. However, there was no progress for a month. There were voices of doubt within the Church.
Although many people didn't dare to criticize Pope Yan Huang, it was still okay to criticize those good-for-nothing hunting squads.
But who sent those pursuit teams? Of course, they were all sent by Yan Huang. In fact, this was a disguised criticism of Yan Huang.
In addition to the criticism of the non-believers, Yan Huang was gradually unable to take it.
For some reason, his teacher, Larex, had not been heard from after leaving the Church. According to the report of the team guarding the entrance, Larex had not even entered the City of Ancient God.
Although Yan Huang firmly believed that Larex would not betray him, he still could not sleep and eat in peace.
It was not until a month later that a follower of the Church came to report to Yan Huang.
"Your Majesty, the target has been locked. We can act at any time."
"Good, act immediately. Now that Lin Zhen is nowhere to be found, we need to do something to put pressure on him. If we can lure Lin Zhen out sooner, it will be very beneficial for the Church. Otherwise, we will be in a passive position."
"Yes, Your Majesty. We will act immediately."
*****
In the next few days, the Church finally did something that caused an uproar in the world.
First, under the lead of three golden-robed elders, three hundred members of the Church attacked a building in Bingcheng.
This building belonged to the Bingcheng Wanhao Group. However, Li Wanfeng and Zhao Siqing of the Wanhao Group would not normally come here. It was the private property of Li Wanfeng's father, Li Yao.
After a series of battles, the Holy See finally managed to kill the only Star Realm expert of the Wanhao Group, Li Yao, despite losing seven Star Realm experts.
After killing Li Yao, they found two people in this building.
Lin Zhen's father, Lin Liye, and mother, Li Qin, were both Level 7 Warriors. They were brought back to Constantinople by the Church.
Because of the suddenness of the incident, Lin Liye and his wife were already in Constantinople by the time the news was spread.
After capturing Lin Zhen's parents, the news was immediately announced to the world. Yan Huang even instructed him to let the news spread to the City of Ancient Gods. He believed that as long as Lin Zhen heard about this, he would definitely walk right into the trap.
This incident caused a huge uproar. Many warriors in Huaxia stood out to criticize the Holy See's actions. The Holy See's actions had undoubtedly broken this rule.
If it was someone else who did this, they would definitely not have a good ending. However, the Church was different.
Not only did the Church have a powerful military force, they also had close to half of the world's believers. No matter how they criticized them, it did not have any effect. It only caused a large-scale war of words in the world.
The situation in Huaxia was not much different. The people who supported Lin Zhen and the believers did not stop their war of words. It even caused many fights. Some people even lost their lives because of this.
On the second day after Lin Zhen's parents were taken away, a few explosive pieces of news appeared.
The first was Yan Huang's announcement that the Church could only have one Saintess. He announced that the Saintesses of America, the European Union, the African Union, Russia, India, and Brazil would be abolished. Only one Saintess would remain, which was Huaxia's Su Mingyue.
This was undoubtedly announcing that Su Mingyue would be the Empress.
However, almost at the same time as Yan Huang's announcement, Su Mingyue, the Saintess of the Church of the Gods, announced that she would no longer be the Saintess of the Church.
An Ning, the eldest daughter of the An Group, also announced that all the believers of the Church of the Gods would be expelled from the An Group. The first criterion of the An Group was that the person must not be a believer of the Church of the Stars.
The three announcements appeared almost at the same time, which immediately caused a stir in the world.
The An Group was the largest financial group in the world. Almost one in fifty people in the world worked for the An Group, which was quite a high proportion. One could imagine how big of a storm it would cause.
The announcement of Su Mingyue, the Saintess of the Church of the Gods, was like a slap to the face for Yan Huang, who wanted to marry her.
Before the announcement of the appointment of Su Mingyue as the only Saintess of the Church of the Gods, the news of Su Mingyue's withdrawal from the Church of the Gods came.
Su Mingyue's admirers were all over the world, accounting for one in ten of the Church of the Gods. Therefore, when Su Mingyue announced her withdrawal from the Church of the Gods, countless believers of the Church of the Gods all over the world cried.
Many people walked on the streets, hoping that Su Mingyue would stay. However, Su Mingyue had made up her mind. She swore that she would not stay in the Church of the Gods.
She said, "Brothers and sisters of the Church of the Gods, please forgive me for my stubbornness. In fact, three years ago, I began to doubt the existence of the True God of the Stars. When I was in danger and almost died, my prayers were in vain. No one could understand how desperate I felt at that time. My pursuit and belief were so vulnerable in the face of the cruel reality.
"At that time, I met Lin Zhen. He was the one who saved me. He was a very unique person. He said that he never believed in the True God of the Stars and that the True God would not save anyone.
"I had my suspicions, but I was familiar with the history of the Church of the Gods. Other than the unusual things that happened on the Day of the Gods' Change, the True God of the Stars was nothing more than a figment of our imagination.
"However, I did not withdraw from the Church of the Gods. After all, many of our teachings are good. However, the appearance of the Church of the Gods has disappointed me. He declared Lin Zhen a heretic. Everyone knows about this. I did not participate in their battle. Although I want to help the person I love, I am still a member of the Church of the Gods.
"Then, yesterday's incident happened. He actually sent people to capture Lin Zhen's parents. This is undoubtedly unacceptable. How can such a person walk in the place of the Gods and rule over half the world's population?
"If he is really the Holy Son and the representative of the Gods, then it is fine if we don't believe in such a Church of the Gods. From now on, Mingyue is no longer a member of the Church of the Gods. I choose to be with the person I love forever."
Su Mingyue and An Ning's decision set off a wave of large-scale withdrawal from the Church of the Gods all over the world.
Many people who wanted to work for the An Group had to withdraw from the Church of the Gods. Many people who liked Su Mingyue also withdrew from the Church of the Gods.
According to incomplete statistics, the number of followers of the Church of the Gods was originally about 50% of the world's population. However, after the incident with Lin Zhen, the number of followers dropped to 45% in the past month.
After the incident with An Ning and Su Mingyue, the number of followers of the Church of the Gods had dropped to 38% in just three days!
In other words, because of Lin Zhen and his two girlfriends, the number of followers of the Church of the Gods had dropped by almost a quarter!
Especially in China, the number of followers of the Church of the Gods had dropped sharply. Many people went to the streets to protest against the Church of the Gods. They demanded that Yan Huang apologize to Lin Zhen and release Lin Zhen's parents.
Yan Huang did not expect things to turn out this way. He was also caught off guard. However, it was impossible for him to apologize. He began to spread the news through various channels and continued to list Lin Zhen's crimes, hoping to restore the reputation of the Church of the Gods.
Some extreme followers also continued to defend Yan Huang. On the streets of China, there were many confrontations and even gang fights.
Just when things were in a stalemate, something big happened in Bing City.
The king of the mutated beasts in the Khingan Mountains, a huge Siberian Tiger called the Bane of Ten Thousand Men, had broken through the limit of land creatures and reached SS level!
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