"I'm not the pope. His Holiness has..." Isabella was about to deny, but Agatha patted her on the shoulder and stopped her.
"The mission is more important. His Majesty won't mind."
Isabella instantly understood the meaning behind the seemingly unrelated words. She also knew that this method was more convenient, but for a king who valued power, this was indeed a dangerous signal.
Thinking of what she had seen and heard in Neverwinter, she hesitated for a moment and then took back her words. "What do you mean by saving you? Where are the Judgement Warriors and the priests? "
"They ran away!"
"No, some of them were called away by the Holy City!"
"We committed a crime and killed the priest..."
"That's not her fault!"
"No food, no clothes... no supplies for two whole months. Have we been abandoned?"
"What nonsense are you talking about? Isn't His Holiness here?"
Suddenly there was a lot of people talking at the same time.
"Be quiet!" Isabella said impatiently. "One person is enough." She glanced at the crowd and pointed to the nun who was the leader. "You first. Stand up and talk."
"Yes, Your Holiness." The nun respectfully touched her head to the ground and then struggled to get up. "The last news I received from Hermes was more than a month ago..."
An hour later, Isabella finally had a general understanding of what had happened here.
Since the battle in Coldwind Ridge, the supply of the cloister had been going from bad to worse. At first, the amount of food was reduced, but later, the number of meals was reduced by half. Since the three courtyards were closed, the news came from outside, so the order was relatively stable. The clergy and the Judgement Warriors who were stationed there encouraged everyone to pray hard and get through this difficult time with a strong attitude. They also said that the situation would get better soon.
But it was not true.
The so-called last news was that the church had transferred all the Judgement Army and priests away one and a half months ago.
The nuns did not know what order they had received. They only knew that the believers who had not been transferred away came out of the hall with ashen faces, as if they had lost their souls.
After that, the cloister became a place of disaster.
According to the principle of automatic replacement, they appointed themselves as the new priests, but they no longer led the people in prayer, nor were they willing to follow the strict rules set by their predecessors. Not only did they enjoy the small amount of food in the warehouse without restraint, but they also further reduced the orphans' meals.
When the nun went to negotiate with them, she learned of an earth-shattering news, which was the collapse of the Hermes Cathedral.
The Church was on the brink of death.
In order to fight the enemy to the death, the higher-ups decided to abandon the old Holy City and transfer all the official personnel back to the plateau. The final order left to the monastery was to defend themselves against the invading enemies and dedicate their lives to God until the very last moment.
Although these changes sounded unbelievable, the fact that the passage connecting to the Reflection Church was sealed seemed to prove their theory.
Faced with this bad news, the nuns were divided into two groups. Some of them were completely disappointed and joined the "new priests", while the others were hesitant and did not know what to do. According to the leading nun, the Church was so powerful in the past that they hardly needed to think, and they had never considered their own fate … Because of this, the news almost completely threw them into chaos, as if the world they knew in the past suddenly collapsed.
What broke the situation was that the new priests became even more aggressive.
They were originally low-level believers, and their status in the cloister was only a little higher than that of the nuns. Usually, they were responsible for assisting the manager in managing the affairs of the cloister, and it was almost impossible for them to be promoted. The truly capable people would not be assigned to this place. Now that they had finally tasted the sweetness of power and lost the supervision of the higher-ups, things naturally got out of hand.
For example, the "blessing" of the choir and the teachers' class.
In fact, this kind of thing itself was illegal, but the management of the cloister in the Holy City was not strict, so there were often big figures with special hobbies who came here to enjoy themselves. This was not a secret in the courtyard. It was not until the escape of the Extraordinary that the Church strengthened the supervision in this area.
But now, they had no worries.
The "blessing" changed from a single person to a forced obedience of the whole class, and even evolved into a trade of body for food. This not only completely violated the law of the Church, but also pushed the hesitant nuns to the side of the orphans.
Although these girls of different ages were all from the Four Kingdoms, they were taught to read and read books, and learned to sing and sing. After a long time, they were not without feelings. Coupled with the orders given by the Church, the nuns began to resist the instructions of the new priests, and secretly took out the food from the warehouse to distribute to the starving children.
But no matter how much they scrimped, they could not make food out of thin air. The food in the warehouse was getting less and less, and the priests also noticed the nuns' "betrayal", and conflicts broke out. When they smuggled food, they caught and executed two nuns on the spot. This was intended to frighten the crowd, but it aroused the uneasiness of the rest of the nuns. After some planning and coordination, the leaders launched a counterattack one night. The priests, who were indulging in pleasure, were caught off guard. The orphans, who had an absolute advantage in numbers, worked together and captured them all.
Not only that, but the leaders also contacted the other two cloisters through the tunnel and used the same method to deal with the ugly believers.
Just when everyone tried to select a representative to cross the high wall of the courtyard and report the plight here to Hermes, the army of the Kingdom of Dawn appeared on the border of the old Holy City.
Since they had been abandoned, there was no other way but to resist. Everyone knew that once the enemy attacked the cloisters, even if they did not resist, they would not end well, so the scene that Isabella saw at the beginning.
…
After listening to the statement of the nun, Isabella had a lot of doubts in her heart.
She had also heard about the bad habits in the cloisters, and it was not surprising that the incompetent quickly became corrupt after obtaining power. What surprised her was the order announced by the Church.
To fight the enemy to the death? If so, it was impossible for them to abandon the outer wall and neglect the surveillance of the mountain trail. What was the difference between this and surrendering the first line of defense?
Even if the Holy City was really short of manpower to the extent that they could not even take care of the Cloud Ladder, it was impossible for them to say "abandon the old Holy City".
Because most people did not know the secrets of the Church, but she knew clearly that neither the New Holy City on the plateau nor the old city at the foot of the mountain was the core of the Church. There was only one real core of the church, which was the Pivotal Mechanism hidden deep underground. Whether it was the mining of God's Stones, the research on Sigil of Magic Stones, or the transformation ceremony of the God's Punishment Army, they were all carried out in this secret mechanism which had been built 400 years ago.
There was a secret passage leading to the Pivotal Temple in the old Holy City, and even the main exit. How could such an important position be abandoned so easily?
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