Chapter 202: Open the Door! Your Takeout is Here!

“Church of Truth, God of Truth… which guy is stirring up trouble again…”

By the crackling bonfire, the black-haired girl slowly rubbed her hands together, soaking in the warmth. After some thought, she turned to look at a nearby young cultist tied up and drooping his head.

“Issac, right? How many people did you guys manage to sneak in this time?”

The cultist, his head covered in large bumps, answered honestly.

“Heroine… I’m just a slightly higher-ranking grassroots officer, just here to cause some trouble, I don’t know any confidential info. The higher-ups, like the archbishop three levels above me, are in charge of that, and that’s all I know…”

“Hmph, is that so ~”

With a noncommittal laugh, Vilyric didn’t force him to speak, instead changing the topic.

“Then how many cultists does the Church of Truth have now, and what regions are you active in? What oracle did you receive from the God of Truth?”

“Uh…”

“Spill it! You want another beating?!”

Seeing the cultist being uncooperative, Miss Le Qiao Qiao, in charge of the interrogation, swiftly drew her dagger and pretended to slice it across the cultist’s neck. The sharp chill didn’t cut his skin, but it did make him shrink back in fear.

Of course, this was probably just a show; even if she was given more courage, Miss Thief, who feared blood and wouldn’t even dare to kill a chicken, still wouldn’t be able to take a life.

Reaching this level of intimidation was merely bluster, fueled by the anger from Isaac almost costing her life.

But clearly, the cultist couldn’t know that, so…

“Yikes! Lady! Easy there, the knife doesn’t have eyes! I’ll talk, I’ll talk…”

Though he was a high-ranking cultist, Isaac didn’t seem to value his faith more than his life. After a few threats from Miss Le Qiao Qiao with her dagger, he hurriedly begged for mercy, not daring to play any more tricks.

“Our Church of Truth has some influence in every country, but our main force is still centralized in Dongyuanzhi Kingdom, existing as a small sect. I’m not very clear on the specifics… But I heard from an archbishop I know that we seem to have developed nearly ten thousand believers scattered all over the world.”

“However, most of them are just superficial believers; the actual power the church can mobilize, well, it’s probably just us descendants who came from the original voyage fleet, at most a thousand of us.”

“As for the content of the oracle from the God of Truth, that’s not really a secret. Our Church of Truth has always enforced principles of knowledge and faith being fair, just, and open, so the vast majority of core believers are qualified to access various ancient texts.”

At this point, Isaac thought carefully for a moment.

“Actually, the God of Truth didn’t instruct us to do anything specific. They just hinted that sometime after the 1000th year of the Four Holy Era, countries on Lingyin Fairy Island and in the Ancient Spirit Realm will have to engage in a death struggle against a colossal force, causing massive turmoil. If we can use this opportunity to weaken their influence, the Church of Truth will have a chance to spread its ideas and develop more believers.”

“Oh… so it’s looting while the fire burns, huh?”

The Priestess chuckled disdainfully, her gaze drifting back to the warm red flames in front of her, as if talking to herself.

“I mean, haven’t you thought about the chain reactions your actions might cause? If the Ancient Spirit Realm really collapses, won’t your Church of Truth perish along with it?”

“Uh, Heroine… I’m just a somewhat higher-ranked believer, merely following orders; how could someone like me know how they consider it…”

“Hmph…”

Vilyric pouted and stopped paying attention to him.

This Church of Truth isn’t fully aligned with the forces of destruction, nor do they plan to help the fairy island. They’re just gambling that the Ancient Spirit Realm can survive this calamity, planning to adjust their strategies based on conditions, aiming to seize benefits amidst the chaos while ensuring their ship carrying all of them doesn’t completely sink.

Evil Demons possess the destructive power to ruin entire civilizations, while the Church of Truth merely wants to expand their influence by developing more believers. Alternatively, from another angle, the God of Truth seeks to gather more faith.

If that’s the case, it seems the God of Truth isn’t quite the absolute adversary to the Ancient Spirit Realm and isn’t in league with the Evil Demons; at the very least, their stances aren’t entirely aligned.

However, the God of Truth… I don’t think I’ve heard of such a deity before. Could it be they are just another fraud? It’d be nice if I could confirm this with Xi Fu Lin.

Never mind.

Realizing that the other party wasn’t part of the forces she initially thought, Miss Vilyric quickly lost interest in Isaac.

Glancing again at the scar-faced guy tied up like a zongzi not far away — they seemed to be hired muscle by the Church of Truth to make up for a manpower shortage — the black-haired girl nudged the likewise temporary worker, Miss Thief, with her mouth and made a gesture.

“Got it! Leave it to me, boss!”

Having witnessed the Priestess’ skills and strength, Le Qiao Qiao, noticeably more enthusiastic than at the start, nodded eagerly, took out two prepared bottles, and doused them with a light silver liquid on Isaac and the mountain bandit leader.

Silver light immediately wrapped around the two of them, causing their figures to vanish from the girls’ sight.

Well, all done.

Vilyric had already left a brief note on the mountain bandit leader, explaining the situation. As long as the officials of Qiguo in charge of cleaning up afterward weren’t incompetent, they would surely deduce the circumstances from their battered and tied up appearances.

The Church of Truth is merely a bunch of fish wanting to profit from the turmoil; they could sort out their own headaches during further investigations. Miss Vilyric didn’t care about those trivial matters.

A night passed, and soon it was the next day.

With the support of those kind-hearted individuals who came to contribute funds last night, the Priestess and the others found their pockets suddenly getting fuller.

From the group of assassins including Isaac, they found over three hundred crystal gems. It’s clear that before attacking Vilyric’s camp, this group had already eliminated a lot of participants. Whether those guys were dead or alive remains unknown.

With ample resources for food supplies and Vilyric’s demonstrated power, Le Qiao Qiao naturally became completely devoted to the Priestess.

Before long, the duo formed a small team and found a spring in the forest, decisively setting up a temporary camp there. During the day, they loitered around and cleaned up the few minor Evil Demons roaming in the forest due to the accumulation of negative energy — a bit of public service.

At night, they lit a bonfire, cooked meals, and deliberately created a lively scene to attract more kind-hearted souls.

It turned out that occupying a water source had a very noticeable advantage. Even though Miss Vilyric was merely squatting in one place and hadn’t put any effort into exploring the deeper forest, all sorts of characters kept showing up nearby without giving her a moment’s rest.

Of course, it might also be due to nearly 300,000 participants flooding into the forest, which spread out the density a bit too much.

All in all, over four days, she and Le Qiao Qiao encountered at least a dozen waves of varied individuals.

Among them were some who were quite polite, peace-loving, and understood the rules of taking turns, not intending to engage in violent clashes, simply hoping to get some water from them or even trading resources for some clean water to sustain their life in the wilderness.

In such cases, Vilyric wouldn’t be aggressive; she usually just let them draw water and leave.

After all, this spring wasn’t small; the two of them wouldn’t use much anyway, and it was a resource they obtained for free, so giving people roses would leave their hands fragrant.

However, in reality, polite people were still in the minority, especially in this environment purposely crafted by the authorities with the law of the jungle. Those self-assured strong ones were clearly more inclined to resort to brute force for grabbing.

And every one of those individuals, without exception, were kindly seen off by Miss Vilyric out of the forest, while she cheerfully accepted all their crystal gems.

I must say, these kinds of people seem quite plump ~

   

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