The Secret of the Goddess of Fertility
"Say it again, what happened!" Annie rushed forward and grabbed the man's collar, asking incredulously. Annie couldn't calm down after seeing so many people almost die in front of her.
The villager, who had already inhaled excessive smoke, was rendered speechless and began coughing violently after being pulled by Annie.
Sorea quickly pulled Anne away: "Be gentle, he can't breathe."
As time passed, more and more villagers woke up and knelt down before Sorea and Anne, thanking them for saving their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
"Everyone, everyone, please listen to me." Anne, seeing that most of the villagers had woken up, stood up and called out, "Can anyone tell me why this place was burned down by the God-given Knight?"
The villagers looked at each other, none of them speaking.
Anne persisted and repeated it aloud again, but still no one spoke.
Sorea stepped forward and said softly, "Annie, they must have some concerns about not being able to talk about it. Let's investigate ourselves."
“If they won’t speak, I will.” A weak but firm voice rang out from behind Sorea and the other person. A man covered in wounds had just woken up and was forcing himself to speak.
Soraya looked at the man whose wound was still bleeding, stepped forward and used inscriptions to heal his wound. The water-based inscriptions contained healing power. He was lucky to have met Soraya, who had learned healing inscriptions, otherwise the blood flowing from his wounds would have taken his life very soon.
"Good morning, ladies. I am Edward, the gold inscription instructor at the Singley Inscription Academy. I would like to thank you both for your help to me and my village."
Edward felt his wounds gradually healing. He had thought today was the anniversary of their deaths, but he never expected to be saved.
Sorea didn't care about Edward's gratitude; she just wanted to know why the God-given Knight would attack this village. "You just said you could tell me what happened here."
“Yes, madam, but I’d like to know if you’re prepared to be silenced if you overhear secrets?” Edward bowed to Sorea.
Anne scoffed: "Look at my uniform. You should know I'm a member of the Knights. The Knights' motto is to never be afraid."
"I'm not talking about ordinary secrets, but the secrets of the true gods. Do you dare to listen?" Edward asked Anne, but he was looking at Solalia. He knew that Solalia was the one who could truly help them.
Sorea's smile widened: "I know far more about the secrets of the true gods than you do."
When Edward saw Sorea's smile, his heart finally settled down.
“Edward can’t say.” A villager tried to stop Edward from narrating, but Edward interrupted him:
"Whether we speak out or not, we're all going to die anyway. I hope no other village will end up like us."
From Edward's narration, Soraya learned that he had just broken through to the demigod level and returned home from the academy to visit his mother.
"You must have seen it too, right? There are people who can't get enough to eat on the territory of the Shengxi Empire. This fertile land simply can't grow crops." Edward shed tears as he saw the villagers, who were pale and emaciated from hunger.
"It was only then that I heard from my family that the Harvest Church required them to contribute 80 percent of their grain to the Goddess of Abundance every year, while only 20 percent was enough for the villagers to survive. Naturally, they were unwilling to hand it over."
Sorea interrupted Edward: "The Harvest Church has no shortage of food, so how could they do something that would lead to the loss of their faith?"
Edward laughed when he heard Solaya's words: "Ever since Prince Yuan of the Osenia Empire invented fertilizer, people can get more food without praying to the Goddess of Fertility, and the number of believers in the Goddess of Fertility has begun to decrease."
Euan, it's him again, Sorea thought. She was becoming increasingly interested in her brother who had once been mentally challenged.
"Do you still believe in the Goddess of Fertility?" Anne suddenly interjected.
Edward paused for a moment, then smiled wryly and said, "We have been born in the Shengxi Empire. Our faith in the goddess is deeply ingrained in our souls and cannot be abandoned."
"Even though the Church of Harvest treats you this way, you still believe in the Goddess of Abundance even though you harbor resentment, right?" Sorea looked at the villagers in front of her.
The villagers' silence had already given Solaya a definite answer.
“Our village was almost destroyed, and my family almost died. It’s all my fault.” Edward collapsed to his knees. “I was the one who suggested using fertilizer. We were the first village in the Shanxi Empire to use it. We never expected that the harvest tax we didn’t pay would only have resulted in a poor harvest, but after using fertilizer, we ended up with no harvest at all.”
“Why is this your fault? It’s the church’s fault,” Sorea said, helping Edward up and offering her advice.
“They won’t give up. Can the Knights save us?” Edward grabbed Sorea’s arm and looked at her with pleading eyes.
“We’re heading to the Knights’ headquarters right now, you should come with me.” Annie decided to see this through.
“We can’t live in the Knights’ Guild forever after we leave,” a villager objected. “Let’s pay the taxes we owe.”
Sorea sensed their pain, the constant torment they suffered from the conflict between faith and reality.
“An impure faith, a faith tinged with suffering,” Sorea murmured to herself. She suddenly understood why the Harvest Church had suddenly increased taxes, making its people question their faith.
After thinking it through, Solaya increasingly felt that the villagers' suffering stemmed from her, from the faith that Floria had promised to Veldrian.
"Is this a stream?" Sorea interrupted Edward, who was trying to calm the villagers.
Edward led Solalia to a nearly dried-up creek, explaining to her, "There's only this much water left here since the Church of Harvest cursed this place."
Soraya lifted the water from the stream and used it to quickly draw inscriptions and totems in mid-air, eventually forming a huge water curtain.
A furious voice rang out from within the water curtain: "Little girl, you dared to run away from home! You scared my brother and me to death..."
Knowing that Kelly was a chatterbox and wouldn't stop anytime soon, Soria immediately interrupted him: "I'm in a small city in the Shengxi Empire, the closest city to Singri Academy. There are some problems here. How quickly can you send someone over?"
Sorea removed her self-shielding rune so that Kellis could sense her location through the water curtain.
Hearing Solaya's serious voice, Kelly also became solemn: "It's not far from the Knights' headquarters. I'll ask the demigods there to come over as quickly as possible, in about three hours."
Edward's eyes lit up when he heard this; a knight would intervene, and he and the villagers would finally be saved.
Three hours passed quickly among the villagers. Lilith received Solaya's message and soon arrived with the rest of the people.
When Sorea saw Lilith, Lilith, who couldn't ride a horse and was afraid of slowing down the main road, stood on top of Rowan's prison wagon.
Sorea smiled and twitched her lips as she called Lilith to get off.
"Young Miss." The knights arrived and bowed to Sorea.
Fearing that Soraya might be assassinated again, Kelly did not tell the people who sent her her true identity.
Just as the Knights of the Order arrived in the village, the Divine Knights also arrived with their archbishop.
"Is the Knights going against the Church of Harvest and the Goddess of Fertility?" the archbishop asked in his opening remarks.
The Knights had sent six demigods, and with Soraya and the others, there were a total of ten demigods here, giving them confidence in facing the Harvest Church.
"The actions of the Harvest Church violate the agreement signed by several true gods to never harm humanity," Sorea retorted.
"Your status is so high that you would not know that these heretics are masters of sweet talk; you have simply been deceived by them."
The Harvest Church knows Soraya's identity, but they won't reveal it openly. If Soraya's identity is exposed and something happens to her in the Life-Giving Empire, no one can take responsibility.
Anne retorted, "Whether they are heretics is a matter for the Knights to investigate. Are you trying to make me an enemy of the Knights with your actions?"
The God-given Knight and the Knights of the Order faced off, and the disparity in strength led the Harvest Church to abandon their attempt to capture Edward and the villagers.
The villagers will be taken to live elsewhere by the knights. The three demigods will stay behind to escort Soraya and the villagers, while the other three knights will return to report.
With the matter settled, Solaya continued her journey to the Singri Inscription Academy to see her brother, and their group grew even larger.
Soraya had thought that she would be assassinated in the Empire of Life after her identity was exposed, but the Church of Harvest and the Goddess of Fertility made no move, and Soraya left the Empire of Life safely.
The moment she left the Empire of Life, Soraya made an excuse to go into a forest.
"Verdrien, come out." Solaya knew very well that Verdrien would definitely appear on Floria's territory immediately.
"Aya, I'm here."
“Don’t touch any of the faith power that the Goddess of Abundance promised you, and certainly don’t give it to Tarasi,” Soraya said, but she didn’t expect Veldrian to remain silent.
Sorea's face flushed red with anger: "You know there's something wrong with this belief?"
After a period of silence, Veldrian finally spoke: "I have no humans as believers, and my faith power is not enough to share with Tarasi. Don't worry, the faith will first enter my body and will not harm the child."
After listening, Soria just looked at Veldrian coldly: "You never tell me anything. You always think I'm useless. You yourself are already corrupted. You're touching this faith. I don't need to tell you what will happen to you."
Verdryen felt guilty: "Aya, it wasn't me, I didn't, I just didn't want you to worry."
After Sorea finished speaking, she didn't want to see Veldrian anymore: "You can't touch the faith that Abundance gave you. If the child doesn't have enough faith, I will borrow it from my father. You shouldn't follow me like this anymore."
After saying this, Sorea left and returned to the group.
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