Chapter 469 - 430: The Church Retreats

Chapter 469: Chapter 430: The Church Retreats

Once again, dawn broke, its light shining on the charred ruins of the Lower City District.

The fire was out.

The frenzy had died with the flames, leaving behind only a bone-chilling cold and a field of debris.

The rioters, who had been "dragon slayers" just last night, were now squatting in the shadows of crumbling walls, hugging their knees like a band of orphans abandoned in the wilderness.

They stared at the toppled statues—the very idols they once revered as guardian deities, now reduced to fragments. Many of the heads had rolled into the gutter, still wearing their compassionate smiles.

"What... what have we done?"

Buck sat by a smashed carriage, staring at the boning knife in his hand, which was still dripping blood.

It was the blood of a monk.

Last night, he had thought this blood was a mark of glory.

This morning, it had become the noose that would soon hang his entire family.

"It’s over... It’s all over," an old carpenter with a broken leg trembled nearby. "That’s the Church... They’re messengers of God... We’ve killed God’s servants..."

Fear spread through the crowd.

But more terrifying than the Church’s retaliation was the strange feeling within their own bodies.

COUGH! COUGH! COUGH!

A violent coughing fit erupted from a corner of the crowd. A woman with a sallow complexion clutched her stomach, curled up in pain on the ground. "It hurts... My stomach... Are the worms starting to bite me?"

Her words amplified the crowd’s anxiety.

The nauseating "worms in vinegar water" experiment from yesterday was still fresh in their minds. Without the Church, who would cast out their worms? Who would bless their feverish children? Who would preside over the funerals of the dead?

They had personally smashed their only lifeline.

"It’s all because of that damn leaflet!" someone wailed, breaking down completely. "We should have never read it! If we hadn’t read it, we wouldn’t have known! If we didn’t know, we could have kept on living!"

"And look at us now! God has abandoned us! We’re all going to become food for worms!"

The despair was so thick it seemed to dim the very air.

In this nearly suffocating atmosphere, the crunch of wheels on gravel sounded exceptionally jarring.

The crowd looked up in terror.

If the Church’s Knight Order had returned to kill them, a massacre was all that awaited.

However, what appeared at the street corner was not the silver-armored grim reapers, but a strange procession of carts.

A dozen or so plain flatbed carts, bearing no emblems, were pulled not by towering warhorses, but by the most common drudge horses. The carts carried no swords or spears, only massive iron pots steaming with heat, and what looked like small mountains of... herbs?

A fat man led the way.

Simon wore a dust-covered linen tunic, a friendly smile—the kind peculiar to street-smart peddlers—plastered on his face. In his hand, he held a bronze gong.

CLANG—!

The sound of the gong shook the dazed crowd from their stupor.

"Come one, come all! Have a look!" Simon bellowed, his voice sounding less like he was preaching a sermon and more like he was hawking fresh-baked pies. "The authentic secret recipe from the Southern Lands for codfish burgers! Cures stomachaches, expels worms, calms the nerves, and soothes fright!"

He hopped off the cart, took a wooden ladle, and tapped it against one of the large iron pots.

"Don’t just sit there waiting to die! The Church’s Holy Water is full of worms, but we’ve got herbal soup that kills them! It’s free! No charge!"

Free? Kills worms?

These two words stirred the crowd into motion.

Buck was the first to stand up. He looked at the fat man hesitantly. "Does it... does it really kill the worms?"

"Trying won’t cost you a pound of flesh," Simon said with a sly grin. He grabbed a coarse earthenware bowl from the cart, ladled it full of a dark, murky broth, and handed it over. "If it’s no good after you drink it, I’ll personally compensate you for all that marbled meat on your bones!"

Buck swallowed hard.

’I’m dead either way.’

He snatched the bowl, tilted his head back, and GULP, GULP, chugged it down.

Bitter.

It was so bitter it made the root of his tongue go numb, with a pungent, earthy aftertaste.

"COUGH, COUGH, COUGH!" Buck choked, tears streaming from his eyes.

"That’s the stuff!" Simon clapped him on the back. "Good medicine tastes bitter! Come on, who’s next!"

With Buck having downed the first bowl, more and more people began to gather around.

"Give me a bowl!"

"I want one too!"

The once-deathly-still square of ruins actually began to bustle with life because of a few large pots. The members of the True Origin Sect—ordinary people in grey robes, devoid of any sacred aura—quickly fanned out. Some handed out medicine, some helped bandage wounds, and others distributed black bread.

They didn’t put on lofty airs or perform convoluted prayer rituals. They even haggled for a moment with the old aunties who came for medicine.

"Don’t push, don’t push! You, the elderly lady over there, your legs are weak. Sit here and wait, I’ll bring it over to you!"

"Well now, this young man has skilled hands. He bandages wounds much better than those priests who only know how to chant scriptures!"

And in the very center of the crowd, on a crude, makeshift platform built from scrap wood, stood Selas Aurilian—the same man who had negotiated with Velin on behalf of the True Origin Sect several months ago.

He wore no sacred robes, only simple homespun clothes with sleeves rolled to his elbows, revealing lean yet powerful forearms.

Before him knelt an old man, convulsing ceaselessly.

The old man’s stomach was alarmingly bloated, and something could be seen faintly moving beneath his skin—a side effect of drinking too much "spiked" Holy Water in recent days.

"Father... please save my father..." the old man’s son knelt beside him, his forehead bleeding from kowtowing.

Selas knelt, not shrinking away in disgust like the Church priests of old, but extending his hands and placing them directly on the old man’s cold, squirming belly.

"Do not be afraid."

Selas’s voice carried a power that put people at ease.

He closed his eyes.

There was no chanting of spells, no calling of a god’s name.

He simply mobilized the warm current in his blood—the power of the Aurilian family bloodline, and what the True Origin Sect called the "source of life itself."

FWSHH—

A soft, gentle light emanated from beneath Selas’s palms, not blinding, but much like the warm, rising sun.

The gentle light flowed from his palms, seeping into the old man’s body.

The old man’s convulsions stopped. He felt a warm current envelop the monster ravaging his belly. As if meeting its natural predator, the creature began to flee in a frenzy.

"Out!"

Selas gave a sharp cry. His fingers tapped several acupoints on the old man’s abdomen with extreme speed before he gave a final, forceful push upward.

"BLAARGH!"

The old man opened his mouth and spewed a great gout of black blood.

In the pool of blood, dozens of white worms still twitched feebly.

"This..." The son beside him was dumbstruck.

The surrounding crowd, which had been lining up for medicine, fell silent. All eyes stared at the dead worms on the ground, then shifted to the young man on the stage who hadn’t even broken a sweat.

’Just like that... he’s cured?’

’No burning incense? No donating money? No kowtowing to that headless statue?’

"This is the ’True Origin.’"

Selas stood up, flicking the blood from his hands, his gaze sweeping over the pairs of eyes below—eyes that were shocked, confused, yet filled with hope.

"Where do you think God is?"

He pointed to the toppled holy icon. "In that pile of mud and rubble?"

He then pointed to the soaring spire of the distant Grand Cathedral of Holy Splendor. "In that man-eating den of demons?"

The crowd was silent.

"No."

Selas pressed a hand to his own heart. "God is here."

He stepped down from the platform, grabbed the hand of the still-dazed butcher, Buck, and pressed it against Buck’s own broad chest. "And here."

"The True Origin lies within; the bloodline proves itself."

Selas’s voice echoed across the square. "You do not need to beg God through others, because the power of life already flows in the veins of every single one of you. As long as your heart is true, as long as you return to the origin, every person is their own priest, and every person can save themselves!"

For these common people, so accustomed to kneeling and depending on others, these words were nothing short of a second spiritual earthquake.

But this time, it wasn’t hope that was shattered, but their shackles.

"I... I can do it myself?" Buck murmured, staring at his own palm.

"Of course."

A somewhat hoarse voice came from the side.

The crowd turned to see a bald, middle-aged man walking over, carrying a bucket of medicinal soup.

Someone recognized him.

"Isn’t that... the esteemed Deacon from the Church?"

It was the middle-aged deacon who had tried to maintain order in the chapel yesterday, only to be pushed to the ground. Now, he had cut off his meticulously maintained long hair, shed the white robes that symbolized his authority, and changed into patched-up sackcloth.

He looked even more wretched than the refugees, his face still bearing bruises from the day before.

"Don’t call me ’esteemed’," the middle-aged man said, putting down the bucket. He wiped the sweat from his brow and gave a bitter smile. "The blind deacon of the past is already dead. Now, I am a ’Law Holder’ of the True Origin Sect."

He looked at the faces that had once worshiped him and just yesterday had screamed for his death, his expression complex, yet revealing an unprecedented frankness.

"The Church has fled," he said. "Just a short while ago, the bishops took all the gold and grain and retreated through a secret passage to the fortress outside the city. They want us all to rot and die in here."

An uproar went through the crowd.

"Those animals!"

"How dare they!"

The middle-aged man waved his hand, quelling the crowd’s anger.

"Cursing is useless... It’s good that they’re gone." He pointed to the busy Simon and Selas. "The True Origin Sect is in charge here now. We will teach everyone how to identify poisoned water, how to use herbs to treat illness, and how to... live like human beings."

He skillfully ladled a bowl of the soup and handed it to the woman who had been crying earlier. "Drink this, sister. Once you’ve drunk it and gotten your strength back, we have to rebuild these houses. Not to worship some stone god, but so we can have a place of our own to feel safe."

The woman took the bowl, her tears falling into the soup.

"Thank you... thank you..."

As the first successful cases of "deworming" appeared, the grey-robed figures of the True Origin Sect rapidly filled every capillary of the Lower City District. Under the most primitive directive of "survival," the chaotic ruins began to organize themselves. Debris was cleared, cooking pots were set up, and herbs were distributed. The lofty glow of Divine Arts was gone, replaced by the tangible smell of herbs and the aroma of wheat porridge.

This pragmatic atmosphere didn’t stop there. It spread through the tangled web of alleyways, reaching the still-shaken artisan districts and the bordering middle-class neighborhoods. After all, the worms in one’s belly didn’t distinguish between rich and poor, and with the Church’s withdrawal, these people in grey robes had become their only lifeline.

As the last ray of sunlight retreated from streets littered with medicinal dregs, pulling the city’s silhouette into the ambiguous gloom of night, the aftershocks of this upheaval arrived as intelligence reports on the desk of the puppet master behind the scenes.

「Inside the study of the Silent Villa.」

Dozens of parchments filled with updates were stacked on the desk. Velin casually picked one up. Opposite him sat Selas, who had just rushed back and hadn’t even had time to change his clothes. The young friar smelled of a mixture of dirt, blood, and potent herbs.

"It’s happening even faster than expected, Count." Selas gulped down a large mouthful of water. Though his eyes showed fatigue, they were astonishingly bright. "A whole day of preaching scripture in the past wasn’t as effective as handing out a single bowl of medicinal soup today. Now, half of Zelheim is asking what the ’True Origin’ is. Even the stewards of a few minor nobles came secretly to ask for medicine."

"To a drowning man, whoever offers a plank is the truth."

Velin put down the report in his hand, his fingertips lightly tapping the intelligence brief detailing the Church’s escape route. His gaze was profound. "The Church sells fear, so we will sell ’survival.’ Selas, remember this feeling. This is the new order we want to build—one that doesn’t rely on the ethereal grace of gods, but on the tangible reality of being alive."

Selas took a deep breath and nodded solemnly. "I understand. So, next, as you said, are we preparing to face the Church’s counterattack?"

"Not just a counterattack." Velin looked out the window at the grand cathedral, which had begun to hang blood-red flags. "It’s their final frenzy."