"Praise the slaughter, praise the death, praise the war, praise the bloody land."
"Thy name, written in the name of blood, spreads in the depths of hell. The howling north wind is thy blade, and sickness and old age are thy spear. Thou is undefeated, undying, and undying. When we recite thy name, thou shall return to this land once more."
"Great Fredrich, you are the master of all, the end of all things!"
The buzzing noises in the square converged into one, like the moans of a dying patient lingering in everyone's ears. Streams of blood flowed between the mud and the cracks of the stone slabs, like red snakes, wriggling and spreading, dying the ground under everyone's feet crimson.
In the sky above the roofs of different heights, the flames reflected the night sky red. Columns of thick smoke were rising into the sky under the night sky. Sparks floated in the rising hot air above the entire imperial capital, like a river of starry light.
Far away from the square, the archbishop raised his head, lifted his thick cloak with his hands covered in age spots, and looked at the scene piously. He spoke in a low and hoarse voice.
"Thirty years ago in Metz, I dreamed of all of this today. I saw with my own eyes the black flames emerging from the ground, turning this decaying empire into ashes."
The young believers looked at the archbishop with reverence. For those who lived in the darkness, the great purge thirty years ago was a memorable one. In any village in East Metz, countless witches, wizards who practiced black magic, and those who were declared to be heretics were dragged out of their houses every day, either hanged or burned at the stake.
That was the darkest period in East Metz. Although the evil forces were severely suppressed, the local production state was also stagnant. After all, no one could stop dissatisfied people from using the name of the Holy Cathedral to attack dissidents. The end result was that the villages in East Metz were empty, and had not recovered to this day.
Ironically, the merciless slaughter did not stop the spread of darkness. On the contrary, the fear and desolation in the countryside provided the heretics with the soil to survive. In fact, in the decades after the Holy Cathedral's purge, the Holy Cathedral's control over the countryside in East Metz had weakened.
Most of these young people were believers who had developed after that. They had never seen that cruel era, but through word of mouth within the sect, they had a considerable understanding of the horrors of that era. For the older generation of believers who had survived that era, their hearts were full of reverence.
However, compared to the archbishop, the flames of revenge in these young people's hearts were not inferior to the old ones. It was as if only by turning this thousand-year-old imperial capital into ruins could they satisfy their desire to destroy everything in their hearts.
Everyone's eyes were filled with fanaticism.
At the bottom of the square, the Secret Society's believers in black robes walked forward in a row, holding sharp blades in their hands. Every time they came close to a row of kneeling citizens on the ground, they would press down on their necks and pierce their hearts with their blades.
The pain of dying woke the people from their delusions. The dead struggled to turn their heads to see their murderers like livestock being slaughtered. Blood foam gushed out from their mouths, and the light in their eyes dimmed. The believers quickly laid the lifeless corpses flat, allowing the blood to mix with the soil and flow on the square.
However, most of them did not even have the chance to resist. They twitched and fell to the ground. Row after row, they were like lambs being slaughtered. The believers moved quickly. In just a few moments, the back half of the square was left with rows of corpses intertwined with each other.
The air was filled with the thick smell of blood. The blood flowed to the center of the square as if it was summoned by something. The statue of the Knight stood in the center of the square, holding a sword in one hand and looking coldly at the scene.
The light from the surrounding torches cast a huge shadow on its face. It looked like this hero of the past was shrouded in a gloomy aura.
However, the believers in the front row turned a blind eye to everything that was happening. They chanted devoutly. The blood did not reach the knees of the people in front, but they still knocked their heads on the ground and worshiped in fear and trepidation. It was as if there was a voice in their hearts telling them, "I am your master, and I will give you everything, whether it is revenge or eternal life."
The bishop looked at the scene with satisfaction.
The rioting people were gathering in the inner city under the instigation of the Tree Herders. They set everything in sight on fire. Under the fanatical atmosphere, the people gradually lost their minds. They were usually careful to protect their property, but now there was only one thought in their minds.
Loot, burn, and destroy everything!
The scene in front of them was just a reflection of the entire Rushta. In the entire imperial city, there were dozens of such ceremonies in different places. As long as a third of them were successful, they would be able to summon the 'gift' that they had been preparing for a long time.
This was a great gift for the empire that was about to disappear.
It used to be so arrogant that no one thought that the empire built by one of the Four Sages, the Flame King Gretel, would one day come to an end. Even if countless kingdoms and duchies fell and disappeared over the centuries, the Four Great Empires still stood at the peak of civilization. They did not even fade in the slightest.
But by chance, all the coincidences gathered here. It gave them the moment to control and overturn the fate of this behemoth.
He couldn't help but think of his experience in Metz decades ago, the arrogant attitude of the knights and nobles of the Holy Cathedral. The Empire didn't put these people in their eyes at all, allowing them to grow, and then cruelly suppressing them at a certain time.
It was like wheat in the field, but it was not time to harvest.
When the nobles saw their colleagues being hanged, their gazes were no different from looking at wheat that had been cut down. It was the same understatement, and there was even a tinge of appreciation in their gazes.
It was such a gaze that deeply hurt him.
The bishop looked at the direction of the square one last time. He saw a pool of blood gathering in the center of the square. It was so viscous that it looked like a mirror. Many crimson, twisted monsters with wings were struggling in the pool. Thick blood covered their bodies and connected them to the blood pool. They looked like embryos in the womb. They were so ugly that it was nauseating.
He knew that the Son of the Evil God had arrived.
The Disciples of the Black Flame and the Tree Herders were everywhere in Wohnde. They worshipped the power of distortion. It was not Chaos or the demons, but the Evil God. The question of whether the Evil God was a god or not had been debated by scholars for thousands of years. However, these horrible and ugly existences were indeed part of the gods. They were born from the blood of the gods. No one knew who created them, or what kind of intentions they had. However, since the day these horrible and twisted monsters were born, it was as if they were cursed by all the malice and hatred in the world. They were crazy and irrational. They worshipped killing and cold death. They were powerful and strange. It was as if their mere existence made the world uneasy.
Because of this, when the Evil God was born, they were deeply sealed by the gods. Only a few of their descendants were left behind on the earth. They were called the Oracles.
The most famous of these was the Evil God born from the blood of the gods, the Demon Tree Fenlidos. Its descendants, the Golden Demon Tree, were deliberately cultivated by the Tree Herders. They were spread all over the world. That was how the name of the Tree Herders came about.
The followers of the Tree Herders, the Disciples of the Black Flame, worshipped the power of these strange creatures. However, for a long time, they were still very far away from obtaining this power. The weak Oracles seemed to be the limit of the power of mortals. Since the War of the Holy Saints, no one had ever been so close to a true god.
Even if it was an Evil God.
The debate among the scholars seemed to have come to an end in the capital of the Cruz people, Rusta.
He pulled down his cloak again and muttered to himself nervously.
"Beg for mercy, but I won't give you a chance."
There was nothing more delightful than watching an enemy that was once so powerful that it was terrifying groaning in front of him. He wanted to see what kind of expression those insufferably arrogant fellows in the inner city would have when they were about to die.
He casually turned his head and said to the people around him, "Have the people we sent to the Cat and Beard Inn returned?"
The young disciples asked each other this question and soon received a negative answer.
This answer made the bishop frown. It was as if they were so powerful that even the Empire had to kneel down in front of him. How could they make things difficult for him over such a small matter?
This made him very unhappy.
"What, there's no news at all?" His tone became disdainful, containing a strong sense of dissatisfaction.
The disciples shook their heads again.
"The city is in a mess now. Maybe they met with trouble on their way back." Someone in the crowd gave a reasonable explanation.
The bishop thought for a moment and agreed with this explanation. In his opinion, the Dragon Queen's plan had no possibility of failure. He had carefully investigated the people in the inn and knew that the fiancée of the small noble was not capable at all.
Of course, the unexpected factor of the white fog was not within his consideration.
He decided to put this problem aside and said, "The ceremony in the city must be accelerated. The main ceremony is almost finished. There are dozens of ceremonies big and small. Could it be that those idiots can't even finish one-third of the ceremony in the time I set?"
The young disciples looked at each other and did not know why the usually easy-going bishop suddenly became so angry.
But these people were not idiots. Soon, someone suggested, "Maybe we can contact them?"
The bishop thought for a moment and nodded. They rarely contacted each other in private because they were afraid of being discovered by the ubiquitous witches. But tonight, there was no such worry. At this time, the self-righteous Her Majesty Queen could not even take care of herself.
The young disciples immediately took out a communication crystal and carefully connected it. Then, they respectfully handed it to the bishop.
"Whose crystal is this?"
The bishop turned around and asked. The light of the torch cast a thick shadow of the hood on his face. It was as if there was a deep scar hidden under every wrinkle.
"It seems to be Dennis's."
"That's the ceremony on Ninth Street."
The bishop held the crystal in his hand and asked calmly, "Is it Dennis? Please reply if you hear me."
The crystal was silent for a moment.
Then, it lit up slightly, and a voice came from above.
"I hear you, but I'm not Dennis."
The bishop was almost stunned for a moment.
Everyone present was also silent for a moment.
Then, the bishop said in exasperation, "I don't care who you are. Get Dennis to talk to me immediately."
"I'm afraid that's a little difficult." The voice from the crystal replied with some difficulty.
"What's so difficult about that? Where is he?"
The sound of rummaging came from the crystal. Then, the voice replied, "It's like this. I don't know that the corpse at my feet is the person you're talking about. Why don't I send them over and you can identify them one by one?"
The bishop held the communication crystal in his hand. It was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
"Who … … Who are you?"
"Oh, right, I forgot to introduce myself." The voice from the crystal replied, "My name is Brando. I don't care if you know me or not, but you'd better wash your neck and wait for me to kill you."
Thud.
The crystal fell to the ground.
As everyone looked at each other, the bishop could only feel a ball of anger quickly gathering in his chest and burning fiercely. It felt as if he had just obtained unparalleled power. Even the powerful Empire did not dare to touch his edge and had to bow before him, but a group of clowns just had to jump out to test his strength.
He did not care about the other party's name at all. He only subconsciously thought that they were just a group of crazy nobles who wanted to prove themselves in front of Her Majesty the Queen.
He could not help but laugh in anger, "These people really want to be famous. Fine, I'll wash my neck and see how they're going to kill me."
But unfortunately, this group of crazy people only seemed to treat it as a joke and did not really intend to kill him.
But what they did next made the bishop feel even worse than if he were killed.
Under everyone's gaze, in less than a quarter of an hour, the communication crystals on the ground lit up one after another. And every time it lit up, there was an unfamiliar voice announcing himself.
Then, he told them, "Honorable Sir, your subordinate unfortunately died in my hands. But I promise you, there will definitely be a next time."
The bishop's face went from red with anger to green with anger. But after a few times, the faces of the people present began to show signs of turning from black to white.
This was because they realized that in less than half an hour, more than seven ritual grounds were attacked. From the reaction of the crystal, there were no survivors.
It was only now that the bishop realized that the other party was not some crazy young man.
This was definitely a revenge organized by some party after they reacted. Unfortunately, this revenge was so swift and heavy that it almost made him tremble. He could not help but tremble a little as he asked,
"How many people did we lose?"
In fact, he was more concerned about how many ritual grounds were still in operation. For a moment, he almost thought that the organization's meticulous plan had failed in his hands.
… …
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