Chapter 36: The Church of Certain Death

  It's too weird, the whole thing has a weird taste...

  "Bastards! All of you, stop!" Leon saw me coming over and immediately jumped out of the bushes with a loud shout, fortunately it wasn't "Demacia".

  I quickly came back to my senses, now was not a good time to be distracted. I spurred my horse and leapt into the midst of the priests and noble ladies, both sides were startled and retreated a considerable distance. I dismounted and sneered: "Let me see, a whole cart full of spoils of war, is this robbery? When did the Church of Constantinople start moonlighting as thieves and robbers? Or are thieves and robbers originally just a group of priests?"

  The leading priest was furious: "Brothers, I see that guy is possessed by an evil spirit, his body has been occupied by the devil, and he's lost his mind! Catch him now! And him too!"

  The five priests who were originally going to snatch the noble lady's brooch and the seven priests who were guarding the carriage nearby rushed over as soon as they heard, four went to Leon's place, and the remaining eight all came to me, was it because I'm more handsome than Leon? Or did I start a group tease?

  "Take them down!" I blurted out a crude phrase I'd learned from Old Man Xi, which was meant for Leon's ears, telling him to go all out.

  As soon as the words came out, I quickly approached the priest who was rushing forward the fastest. Seeing me getting close, he immediately felt something was wrong and hastily swung the stick in his hand to strike me on the head. I caught sight of the empty space exposed by his raised hands, clenched my five fingers together, and threw a punch at his soft abdomen.

  A slap with hatred couldn't knock out a person's teeth, but a punch could make someone temporarily lose the ability to fight back. A muffled grunt, and the priest immediately covered his stomach and retreated several steps. As he bent down to clutch his belly, I grabbed his hair and threw him out, slamming into another person. The two of them fell to the ground, and it was only then that the other six people finally reacted - we were playing for real!

  "Attack the clergy! Desecrate the church! Seize them! Throw them all into prison!!!"

  Two monks approached, narrowly avoiding two clubs that were smashed down. I lifted my foot and stepped on one of the clubs, which made the monk lose his grip and let go of it. As soon as he raised his eyelids, the sole of my boot was already on his face. The other one retreated a few steps, and after four more people came to support him, he charged forward with a fierce cry. Five people attacked together, making it difficult for me not to pay some price. I'm not Superman or those super agents who can break through human physical limits in zero-point-zero seconds. Of course, this is not an excuse for getting hit on the arm; fighting a group, especially one against five, will inevitably lead to some suffering. As long as the return is greater than the cost, it's enough.

  With a blow to the arm, I managed to get close to my target and then took out one of his arms. The wails of agony immediately rose to the sky, and the group of priests who had been indulging in gluttony at the church were momentarily stunned by their numerical advantage. After a round of fierce attacks from me, six people successively suffered a bitter defeat, and their arrogance was instantly subdued. Later, hearing one of them writhing on the ground in agony, the remaining six were intimidated. At this time, Leon also achieved results on his side, with a priest lying on the ground, his arm twisted in an eerie posture, wailing sounds rising and falling. This time, the remaining priests did not dare to launch another attack for a while.

  At the main gate, a dignitary dressed as a bishop walked out first. He must have heard the commotion outside and came out to investigate. His eyes scanned the scene, taking in the group of disheveled priests, and immediately his eyes widened in anger: "Who dares to obstruct the Church's justice here!!! Are you trying to rebel?! Don't you know that opposing the Church is opposing Prince Sefano himself?!"

  "Bishop, be careful! They may not be human! We just moved things here and they came out to blaspheme the church! I suspect they are possessed by evil spirits! By the evil rituals that may have been summoned in this building! Look at how many of our people they've hurt, it's not normal! There must be a demon, Satan has given them terrible powers!"

  "The bishop at the entrance shouted, 'What?! There really are unclean things! And there are still fish that have escaped the net, everyone come out! Come and capture those two who are possessed by evil spirits!!'"

  "A bunch of lunatics!" I kicked open the priest under my foot, shook my numb left hand, and was bitten by the dog raised by my own family. What a stroke of bad luck!

  The odds changed to 24-2 after that archbishop's loud shout. If Maurice were here, I'd just crush him directly, but now it's Leon next to me, so I can only change my approach. I gestured to Leon with a few fingers, meaning I'll create chaos and he'll control the archbishop.

  Lion nodded, so the rest of the matter was left to me. I felt a bit nervous, one against ten, I had tried it before, but one against twenty was a bit too difficult. I hoped that Leon could control the archbishop before I got beaten into a pig's head.

  A loud clatter of horse hooves came from outside the path, and upon hearing this sudden noise, I instinctively shifted positions so that I could see both the exit of the path and the group of priests. Hastily scanning the group of priests, I turned my head again to look at the exit of the path, where the Constantinople City Master, Konstantinos, galloped out on horseback, followed by more than fifty guards bearing the imperial crest of the Palaiologos family.

  He dismounted with an unpleasant expression, and the bishop opposite him immediately shouted: "Your Excellency, be careful! The guy next to you may be possessed by a demon! Get away quickly, don't let him hurt you!"

  In some sense, the bishop was right after all.

  The City Prefect of Constantinople looked at me with a mixture of shock and incredulity in his eyes, then nodded slightly to me, and revealed a very cruel and ferocious smile to the well-meaning bishop who had reminded him: "Does the Bishop mean that Nikephoros of the house of Theophano is possessed by an evil spirit?"

  "Sacrilege!!" The guards shouted, some of them drawing their pistols and pointing at the clergymen not far away, while the rest dismounted and drew their lances, indicating that these clergymen should drop their clubs and stand aside.

  "Your Highness, forgive me for being late. Your guard Leon sent someone to call us and we came immediately, but if you have suffered even the slightest injury, it is our fault!"

  "That monk over there, the one in black robes, the one with clean clothes, yes, that's the one, seize him and keep a close eye on him!" I instructed the official. "They've already moved out all the things from the entire building, and they even dared to reach out and snatch the brooches off those noble young ladies' chests."

  "Leon, just give me a simple explanation."

  "Elysia Club seems to be the club that Miss Penivis took over from a former noble lady several years ago. But I'm not quite sure how they got involved with the Saint Spirit Institute's bunch of lunatics. You asked me to keep an eye on Miss Penivis, and today I had Crian watching her here, soon saw a large group of people from the Saint Spirit Institute coming and going. The commotion was huge, it looks like this matter is getting bigger and bigger, so I sent Crian to you." Leon said.

  "It doesn't matter how they got involved anymore. Hmph, those psychos are really a bunch of shameless people who take advantage of every opportunity!" I snorted coldly.

  "Your Highness, Caesar has always been on good terms with the church. In the future, our House of Seofano will also...". Leon didn't finish his sentence, he seemed a bit uneasy. The unfinished sentence by Leon was clear to me: in the future, if our House of Seofano is going to usurp the throne, we must gain the support of the church!

  I walked up the steps with a bad look on my face. The bishop in front of the door was sweating profusely, his face twitching constantly, and he kept swallowing saliva.

  I sneered, "What a mighty bishop! I didn't know that in the church, even an ordinary bishop has the ability to easily identify evil demons. Tell me, next time we meet, will I see you summoning angels from the Bible?"

  "I didn't dare, I didn't dare... Your Highness, I also only heard one-sided words from others. At that time, as soon as I heard that an evil demon was coming to harm the human world, I became flustered and failed to follow the teachings of our Lord to carefully distinguish between good and evil before issuing orders." The bishop's words were very glib.

  I snorted in anger, grabbed his collar and asked in a low, menacing tone: "What's the meaning of your subordinates taking away the brooches from those noble ladies? How do you plan to explain this? Don't you know that they are nobles?! Their fathers serve the empire with honor! And yet your priests dare to lay hands on them and insult a group of nobles?! Do you know what consequences this will bring?!"

  If it's said that these noble ladies have done something forbidden by the church, and the nobles are to blame for it, then the priests recklessly taking action against these noble ladies, snatching personal items from their chests, is extremely unreasonable on the part of the church! The parents of these noble ladies may be forced to make concessions due to the prestige of the Saofano family, but they will not tolerate the church riding roughshod over them. It's highly likely that a fierce conflict will erupt between the two sides... and this is exactly what the Saofano family does not want to see happen. Because both parties involved in the conflict are our supporters... it will be extremely troublesome and difficult to handle, and if we're not careful, there may be a situation where neither side comes out on top.

  The bishop turned pale with fright, his lips trembling as he said: "I didn't! I didn't order him to do this! Our original plan was just to come here and move things away!!!! Really, Your Highness, we were only here to carry out an exorcism! Because someone reported that there was Satan worship and blasphemy going on here!!!"

  "Nonsense! We didn't!"

  "Bloodthirsty!"

  "Slander! Sheer slander!!"

  The noble ladies with puffed cheeks and wide eyes were all over the stairs, having received powerful reinforcements, or perhaps because they had suffered too many grievances, their tempers also flared up.

  The bishop, seeing the situation getting worse and worse, shouted loudly: "There is clear evidence in the book! It's written in black ink on white paper! Your Highnesses, you can see for yourselves! Come on, bring me that poisonous book that harms people's souls!"

  A black box was brought up, the bishop opened the lid of the box, carefully lifted the white cloth wrapped on top, took out the book inside and said: "What's recorded inside is all treacherous words! Look, the first page! This opening, Satan, how should we treat a newborn baby!!! This baby is clearly Jesus Christ!!! You see, they actually want to treat that baby so cruelly!"

  "That's just an exaggeration to describe the devil's wickedness and cruelty!" A noble lady explained from the steps below.

  "And here, look again! In the story, on the day Jesus Christ was born, Satan possessed a mortal, guess what his name is? Schwart! A German name, but do you know what it means? Victor! They actually had the audacity to call Satan the Victor! They dared to think that sin would triumph over Christ! Great Lord!!! Blasphemy! Naked blasphemy!!!"

  "It's the devil who thinks victory belongs to himself, so he names himself the victor! How embarrassing for you as a bishop, can't even see through this implication!"

  I raised an eyebrow, isn't my name also a winner...

  "Look, it's written above, in the passage where one of them mentions the atrocities of Caligula, the Roman emperor. He says: 'Today I am unknown, but if someday I want to leave my name in history, I will declare war on God! Hahaha, with swords raised high and the sound of slaughter shaking the heavens, today he is king, tomorrow I can be king too!' Oh Jesus Christ above, forgive me for uttering these treasonous words, they are actually fantasizing about overthrowing the kingdom!!!"

  "That's Satan! Not us!!! We're just filling out a character image! Is it wrong to write stories too? What about those who carve statues and paint pictures of ancient Greek and Roman gods?" A noble lady argued back!

  "A white horse, a white robe, black hair, and gray eyes! This is your image!" The bishop added with embellishment: "This book has been printed in over a hundred copies! With a total of more than 200,000 words!"

  I suddenly raised my head, and in the next second, my fierce gaze swept across those noble ladies below the steps. Those noble ladies who were still full of momentum and pressing on just a moment ago instantly wilted.

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