Chapter 47 Chapter 47 I have offended the Lord, the One Favored by God.
Western part of the parish of Rotherham.
Huangshan City is located east of the Cangyan Mountains. It is named after the brass-colored fir trees that are scattered throughout the city. The city is built on a natural pass and is surrounded by faded sandstone walls.
Because it is located on the leeward slope of the mountains, the city is shrouded in gray-yellow mist all year round.
The streets in the city are narrow, rugged and sparsely decorated. The only magnificent building is the castle of the Gawler family.
A gray stone fortress built on a cliff overlooks the entire city.
It has been more than five hundred years since the previous earl obtained the title and was granted this place as a fiefdom. During this period, the Gawler family has ruled this place for generations.
“…But it ends today.”
Someone stood on the steps, overlooking the square littered with corpses.
He was tall, wearing a half-armored battle robe with a cloak embroidered with sword blades and cross flames.
The long feathers on the helmet fluttered like a banner, and a few strands of crimson curls flowed below, like burning threads of fire.
He stared at the broken armor and corpses.
——Private soldiers raised by the Gawler family.
Unlike the city defense troops who were loyal to the empire, these people only obeyed the orders of the Earl and his relatives.
There aren't many of them, but they are all elite, and the worst are only level two fighters.
These people could slaughter villages and towns like chopping melons and vegetables - and they did do just that.
But if it is against the Holy See's Paladins, it is completely inadequate.
This brief fight ended before dawn, lasting only about ten minutes from beginning to end.
The fountain was overflowing with dark red blood, with fragments of a flag embroidered with the family crest floating in it, and a fishy smell filled the air.
Corpses were scattered all over the place, stretching from the square garden all the way to the main building entrance. Their limbs were twisted, and their faces were frozen in the terror and astonishment of death.
Several servants were trembling as they carried the corpse. The iron hooks made a teeth-grinding friction sound as they dragged across the ground. Occasionally, crows swooped down and pecked at the undried blood.
Around the fountain in the center of the square, there were piles of various evidences of crimes found in the castle, boxes of account books and contract scrolls, as well as various prohibited magical materials, colorful bottles and jars stacked together, various minerals with a faint glow, and powdered organs and branches from magical beasts and magical plants were placed in special containers. Some were labeled, while others were not, but judging from their quality, they were all extremely valuable.
Some magicians have to save up for several years to buy one or two of them.
This figure is an unimaginable price for ordinary people.
The production area of some materials is limited to the southern continent, and it is an area controlled by the Eternal Night Cult. It is almost impossible for mages in the northern continent to obtain them.
Some can be replaced, but some are unique, making mages willing to spend a lot of money and even violate the ban of the Church to get them.
"...You really have a way of making money, don't you?"
The red-haired man in military uniform walked leisurely to the main gate of the castle. Next to the collapsed pillars, a man and a woman lay on the ground, their bodies already cold.
Both of them were magicians, their gorgeous robes were torn, and the gems on the tops of the staffs in their hands were broken.
There were also some corpses lying next to them, all of them were warriors of high rank.
These people are the Earl's guards.
"grown ups."
A paladin walked over quickly and handed over a long scroll that listed various crimes in a clear and orderly manner.
The red-haired man took it and glanced at it. "Clean it up and put up the notice outside. Write it plainly and don't use words with complicated spelling that most people can't understand."
He casually tossed the scroll back. "Judging from the look of this place, most of the locals probably have a pretty limited vocabulary."
"You're right," another paladin nodded, "Books here are extremely expensive, and there are few schools."
"Tsk, how does this lord become such a hero, Lord Earl——"
The red-haired man turned and looked towards the castle entrance.
There was a man kneeling on the ground, his hair disheveled, his face pale and his expression somewhat dejected.
Her limbs were bound by golden light chains, her wrists and ankles were pierced by light arrows, her heavy black and purple skirt was torn, and bloodstains were congealed between the lace patterns.
"Oh, I forgot, your family has been fond of doing this kind of thing since your father and grandmother."
The red-haired man curled his lips, "It's just that you are more greedy than them all."
"Ha," the man laughed breathlessly. "Don't waste your time on this nonsense, my Lords. This was a trap from the start, wasn't it?"
She didn't wait for anyone's answer and continued, "My youngest son died in your hands because you discovered the mark on his body—"
The paladins were silent.
The red-haired man still looked at her with a smile, neither denying nor admitting it, but rather as if he had tacitly agreed.
"If I'm wrong, your identities are definitely not ordinary Paladin captains—"
The Earl suddenly raised his head and stared at him, then looked at the other two paladins. "So, can you let me die knowing who betrayed me?"
She was certain that there was a traitor among her, otherwise why would the Vatican suddenly investigate their family?
They had indeed done many things that violated the Vatican's ban, but they had also covered them up accordingly, and ordinary inspections would definitely not reveal any clues.
The Vatican must have obtained certain information and made great efforts to uncover the truth.
"...Your Excellency," the red-haired man said with amusement, "In your territory, seventeen towns and fifty-eight villages have reported disappearances, with the number of victims exceeding three digits. Oh, and although this is a total of over the past twenty years, you're colluding with pagans and allowing believers of false gods to use civilians as sacrifices in your territory. This is quite outrageous. Honestly, your grandmother and father at least just handed the criminals over to them. You're doing it so obviously, do you really think no one knows?"
Of the crimes listed on the scroll, this one is the most serious.
The Cult of Eternal Night worships the God of Darkness and also venerates the Seven Gods of Sin under his command, but these seven also have their own organizations of believers.
The worshippers of the God of Jealousy formed many sects, one of which, called the Broken Face, was the largest, most fanatical and extreme.
They firmly believe that only by destroying the beauty of the world can they please the Lord God - it is said that when he was a human, he once killed his brother with a hammer because he was jealous of his appearance.
This group of believers traveled through remote villages and artistic cities, performing bloody sacrifices in the name of "purifying vanity."
In the southern continent, they would even enter the royal court, but in the northern continent, they only dared to operate in remote places.
They select handsome young people, mostly men, as sacrifices, and most of them die painfully during the ceremony.
The Earl stared at him with a frown. "Someone must have tipped you off."
The red-haired man raised his eyebrows slightly. "It's just that your men are too arrogant. Someone just killed your son, but your followers insisted on saying it was done by heretics. Who would talk about heresy all the time? Unless you often hang out with heretics."
He paused. "And with the instructions of the God-Favored One, in that situation, her words are almost equivalent to divine laws. We must take them seriously. Otherwise, someone like you wouldn't be worth my personal visit."
The count looked at him and suddenly burst into laughter, "Hahahahahahaha you finally told the truth!"
Her beautiful face quickly turned ferocious. "In Jinpo City, it won't be difficult to find out the identity of the newly appeared God-favored One. I will definitely kill this person—"
She knew her son's temperament very well, and he must have provoked someone he shouldn't have.
It would have been fine if he had killed any other civilian, but he had offended the one favored by the gods and died at their hands. Now it seems that there are only a few suspects.
The Count clenched his hands violently.
Beneath her tattered sleeves, a purple poisonous mist was entwined around her forearms.
The golden light locks on her body suddenly shattered and turned into light spots floating in the sky.
The Count bent his fingers and made a strange gesture, and the ground below him suddenly cracked.
Countless sticky black liquids gushed out, condensed and gathered in the air, and turned into a monster about four or five meters tall.
It stood among the ruins like a dirty altar, with several human skeletons pressed together to form the outline of a whole body.
The ulna and radius were stacked into twisted shoulder armor, and dozens of spinal ribs were like coiled snakes, winding and supporting the deformed upper body.
The bones were connected by various sarcoma lumps, and purple blood vessels pulsated between the lumps of flesh.
The monster's body surface was covered with a layer of translucent dark red membrane, like the fascia exposed after being skinned, wrapping the wriggling black liquid inside.
The liquid seeped out from between the bones, making a corrosive hiss as it dripped onto the ground, burning black pits in the stone slabs.
"...Demon?! No, that's not—"
"No! That's the Sacred Bone Golem!"
Several painful human faces were embedded in the monster's head, wriggling constantly. Sometimes they overlapped, with cheeks merging into each other, and sometimes they split apart, with sticky flesh and bones shattered and bleeding.
The eyes above the head were two dark red blood balls, with mirror-reversed prayers suspended inside them. The originally sacred words were wriggling like maggots.
Those faces suddenly opened their mouths.
A terrifying pressure spread out in all directions, and the paladins who were about to draw their swords were crushed to the ground one after another.
They first heard a cry.
——Like a newborn baby, but the tone was extremely stretched, as if a rusty wire was scraping from the eardrum to the depths of the brain.
Then the crying split into countless overlapping screams, like terrified roars, or desperate shouts. All the sounds squeezed into the ear canal at the same time, like a group of insects and ants gnawing at the nerves in the skull.
The paladins trembled on the ground, their pupils lost focus, their sanity completely collapsed, and blood flowed from their ears.
The air seemed to be twisting, like the rippling surface of a lake, and countless faces, some scarred and some bloody, emerged from the twisting ripples.
They were either skinned, or had their bones cut open, or were covered with scars, with their mouth muscles twitching and making all kinds of strange noises.
The paladins huddled together, their heads filled with chaotic visions.
All kinds of dark and negative emotions burst in the spiritual world like insect eggs, flowing out memories that do not belong to oneself.
They are blamed, belittled, compared to others, and then become jealous, hateful, and want to kill anyone who is better than themselves.
“…”
Only the red-haired man and his two men were still standing, but they seemed unable to move.
——Holy Bone Golem.
It is made from the skeletons of the clergy of the Holy See, so it has a strong resistance to light power. It is one of the dark summons that most clergy are most reluctant to face.
The production process of this thing is extremely complicated. The original technology came from the Eternal Night Cult, and later the Dark God learned it from the organizations of the gods' believers.
Its body is so strong that it is said that magic below the eighth level cannot destroy it.
The Earl clapped his hands and stood up, "...kill them."
The golems around her began to tremble, and the human faces roared in unison, shaking off their limbs made up of various leg bones and rushing towards the paladins in front of them.
The next second, a slender and light sword swept across the sky.
The morning light flowed like a golden river on the sword's spine. The friction between the sword blade and the air produced sparks, leaving a burning light trail in the air.
In the face of this overbearing force, the golem's hard body was as brittle as paper, and the sword's edge cut into the membrane without hindrance, tearing apart the tumor and bones.
The flying broken bones were like pale raindrops.
Pus, blood and minced flesh gushed out together, forming a bloody mist.
The Count looked at this scene in disbelief and immediately tried to cast a spell to escape.
A gust of sword wind suddenly came and directly cut off her legs and half of her right arm.
She screamed and fell in a pool of blood.
The sword rotated like a vortex of wind, and the golem's twisted limbs kept twitching, but it could not break free from this fatal stranglehold.
Like minced meat.
The powdered organs and rotten flesh mixed into a dark red paste.
When the rapier was pulled out with a trail of blood, the monster had turned into blood mud on the ground.
"I was actually waiting for your next move, but I didn't expect it to be like this. It's really disappointing."
The red-haired man shook off the blood stains on the sword, and the sword body kept buzzing, as if it was still savoring the swift strangulation.
"I dare to tell you about the God's Favored One just to make sure you can't escape."
He casually inserted the rapier and put it back into the scabbard at his subordinate's waist.
"Although it is indeed very noisy," the red-haired man rubbed his ears, "By the way—"
Apparently, he had easily dealt with the terrifying monster without even using his own weapon. He spoke in a steady tone without even a hint of breathing.
"...I only took action so that they could rest in peace." He lowered his eyes to look at the blood on the ground. "As for you, Your Excellency, you are not worthy."
The red-haired man raised his leg and used his combat boots to pick up the broken arm on the ground. The purple lines on it gathered and intertwined, forming a broken half-mirror pattern.
The light was gone, but the image remained on the blood-spattered skin.
"Not even one favored by God—"
He crushed the arm with one foot, bone fragments and bloody mud spilling out from the sole of his boot. "Kill him."
The paladin next to him slowly drew his sword, "Aren't you sending him to the Inquisition?"
"No!"
The Count roared, "Kill me! Kill me now!"
An indescribable fear appeared on her face. "I will never go..."
The red-haired man looked at her with interest. "Going to the courtroom? Actually, Qin Jing would definitely be happy to play with you. As far as I know, he just got beaten up. Hahahahahaha——"
He laughed a few times. "Your family is really interesting. You're afraid of your little secret being discovered, so you chose to stay away from the center of power in the empire. As a result, you don't even know me. This is too tragic."
The two paladins next to them looked at each other.
The Grand Inquisitor was beaten?
The red-haired man ignored his men's reactions and continued, "Your Excellency, you've been dealing with the Facebreaker's servants for a long time. You've toiled for over twenty years, and all you've earned is a small fortune. That's a huge loss."
"Wait, isn't it a Blessed One?" another Paladin asked, "Then how did you summon the golem? Isn't this type of summoning only—"
The red-haired man shook his head slightly. "No, or perhaps I'm a candidate. There are some selection ceremonies among the followers of the God of Jealousy. Those who pass have the opportunity to meet him. If you only pass a part of the assessment, you can still gain some power, although it's meaningless. Humph, at most you can be considered a heretic, a relatively inferior one at that."
After saying that, he turned and walked aside.
The paladin nodded, twisted the sword in his hand, and looked at the earl lying in a pool of blood.
The latter was crawling on the ground dragging his broken legs.
The Paladin lowered his eyes and looked at her. "How strange! You still want to seek revenge? You've killed so many people's children, and you still have the nerve to act like this? Are your children the only ones who are human?"
The Earl gave a weak sneer. "What do the lives of those untouchables mean? You don't have to pretend. Are you really enforcing justice? Even if you haven't found these evidences, if I have offended the Lord of God's Favor, you will fabricate some crime against me—"
"Then I'm curious," the Paladin sneered. "How did you offend the God-Favored One? Because she killed your son, and you want revenge on her? Why would she kill your son? Oh, so the young earl doesn't even dare to accept a duel that isn't a fight to the death, and insists on hiring someone to kill his rival. Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, rotten trees really bear rotten fruit..."
The paladin next to him looked puzzled. "What the hell?"
"By order of His Excellency the Archbishop," the sword-wielding Paladin casually remarked, "someone has captured and interrogated the Earl's followers. Guess what? The Earl is planning to hire someone to kill that gentleman, all because of a simple entrance exam. Judging by the results, their magical prowess is roughly equal, yet he didn't even dare to fight. What a coward."
As she spoke, she couldn't help but look at the Earl. "Oh, by the way, we've already killed your eldest son. You let him escape through the tunnel, right? And I heard that your youngest son died in great pain. The divine punishment brought down by the God's Blessed One was—"
The Count roared and collided with her sword.
The colleague next to him was furious. "Why do you keep talking so much nonsense? It's endless."
"I just don't like this kind of noble scum." The Paladin drew his sword and shook off the blood. "You write the report."
"Why?" the colleague said speechlessly, "You killed him. Besides, most of the nobles are like this, they just don't have such courage."
"Who said that? My lord is very kind. She funded a primary school for us so we could study and practice martial arts. The talented ones could even learn magic. During the celebration, my brothers and I went to her house to help in the kitchen, and she even gave me little cakes to eat."
"...Those are the minority. Besides, I don't write the report. You do it."
"I've already killed someone, shouldn't you be the one writing this? If I have to do everything, then what are you doing here?"
"Fuck," her colleague grabbed her arm. "I led the charge all the way in. I personally broke through the gate's defensive magic array. I also sent people to block the exit and capture the Earl's eldest son. Now it seems I did nothing? Let's go find the Legion Commander and ask for justice—"
The two started arguing and pushing each other, then pulling and tugging as they moved forward.
The red-haired man was standing a little further away, looking at the castle. When he saw the two of them coming, he quickly waved his hand.
"I don't care who writes the report," he silently took two steps back, "don't ask me, it's not my job to read it anyway. I suggest you just deal with it. Zhan En never criticizes others on these matters."
The air around them was already filled with a strong smell of decay and rust, but these people were used to it and had no intention of leaving in a hurry.
The two paladins exchanged glances and realized that their superior really didn't want to get involved in these matters, so they didn't dare to speak up.
"Your Excellency, the Legion Commander!"
Someone hurried over from a distance, stopped a few steps below, and quickly saluted the other two. "Captains, Excellencies—"
"How's it going?" the red-haired man asked casually, "Is everything settled?"
"Yes," the visitor bowed his head and said, "Those who accepted bribes in the temple have confessed."
Even though Huangshan City is not a strategic location and is somewhat barren, it is still a legitimate city, and naturally there are personnel from the Vatican Temple stationed there.
Earl Gawler condoned the followers of the God of Jealousy to cause trouble, and naturally bribed the clergy in the local temple - at least those in charge.
Of course they didn't know the whole truth, otherwise they wouldn't dare to make a deal with her even if they had ten thousand guts.
They just thought that she was doing business with some heretical wizards from the southern continent and reselling banned magical materials at high prices.
And many of the lords on the border had done this kind of thing.
As for the villages and towns below, not every one of them has a temple of the Holy See or clergy stationed there, so many things cannot be reported to the higher authorities at all.
"This is beyond my jurisdiction," the red-haired man shook his head. "Send it directly to the Inquisition. I won't handle it. This will prevent the Chief Inquisitor from getting skeptical and thinking that I'm plotting something with them..."
The others all looked at their noses and pretended not to hear what was said.
After the clergyman who delivered the message left, the two captains looked at each other and winked at each other to signal the other to speak first.
"…I'm still here," the red-haired man glanced at them, "or should I pretend I'm blind?"
"Well, can I ask another question?" one of them couldn't help but ask, "You just said someone beat up the Grand Inquisitor?"
"yes."
The man casually took off his helmet, revealing flaming crimson curls and a pair of pointed ears covered with short reddish-brown hair on top of his head.
He reached out and stroked his ears, and the animal ears trembled in the wind.
"She's an interesting lady."
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