"Antonius... was poisoned some time ago, and then Snake Worship Cult's people took control of him..."
Kairos turned around and looked at Emperor Marius with dull eyes, his voice was extremely low.
Emperor Marius's eyes widened. "You mean... your son joined Snake Worship Cult?"
"No!... It is impossible for Antonius or myself to join Snake Worship Cult, although we have indeed encountered bribery many times over the years... He was controlled by Snake Worship Cult's people with poison! I have to rescue him!"
Kairos said incoherently.
"Let me be clear... what is going on? What does this have to do with these corpses?"
Emperor Marius obviously didn't understand. He looked at the terrifying scene in the altar and forced himself to speak more calmly.
"This is a conspiracy... I know this is a conspiracy, but I can't give up my eldest son..."
Kairos finally began to tell what he had experienced.
This matter still has to start a few months ago.
After Kairos took over Buyulin Village, he put his eldest son Antonius in charge of handling Buyulin Village's Red Death, and he helped Li Ang arrange food After the ship, he went to Siyuan City - he followed Li Ang's suggestion and personally handed Livius's IOU to Emperor Marius, so Livius was transferred to Shield Wind Fortress.
There is nothing wrong with these things in themselves. The only problem is that since then, Kairos has not been able to return to Imperial Port and has almost lost contact with his family.
Because Kairos has been ordered to exterminate the rebels of Sheila Yuzas since then, and there are many spies among his Shadow Legion who have tipped off the rebels.
In order to track down the spies and prevent the army's whereabouts from being exposed to the rebels, he banned the army from going out and did not send anyone out.
This made it impossible for anyone to know the whereabouts of his troops, and he was unable to contact his family - not even Emperor Marius could contact him at that time.
The war is fierce and dangerous. Kairos acts cautiously to ensure that the army is not ambushed for the sake of national security. This is also due to the sense of responsibility as a marshal.
However, because he has not been home for a long time and has not contacted his family, the things he encountered at home were not properly handled - or in other words, they were handled in a series of abnormal ways.
Snake Worship Cult has been infiltrating Imperial Port before. Many people know this, and Kairos certainly knows it well.
In fact, if Kairos had not been under control, Snake Worship Cult might have infiltrated the army.
However, although Imperial Port's Snake Worship Cult disciples failed to add sand to the army, they achieved many results in the homes of the nobles.
Especially those aristocratic families who often stay away from home - such as Kairos's family.
Kairos has not returned home for a long time, and no news has been sent back. Although this lonely woman knows that Kairos has a mission, she still cannot help but think about it.
Kairos's son Antonius, after completing the blockade task of Buyulin Village, went out for a play, but was poisoned when he returned home.
This was not an accident, nor was Antonius accidentally infected with Red Death. He was attacked.
Moreover, the reason for this attack seems to have something to do with the carriage that Li Ang sold to Kairos.
Since Kairos was going to fight outside, this luxury carriage was naturally used by Antonius for a period of time - it was the same with every young man. When his father bought a luxury car, of course he wanted to have fun with it for a few days.
So after finishing the business assigned by his father, he fooled around in this luxury carriage for a while, but as soon as he returned to Imperial Port, he was hit by a poisonous sting.
In fact, the person who instigated the servant to shoot the sting was none other than Antonius's mother, Lady Aras.
That is, Kairos's wife, a fifty-year-old lonely middle-aged and elderly woman.
Kairos got back a luxury carriage with a special style before, and did not tell Lady Aras the origin of the carriage at all - it was something traded from the enemy Li Ang, and the transaction also involved food, Kairos did not intend to tell anyone.
But the problem is that this carriage was previously ridden by Amy and Sarah, and it was sold in a hurry. Of course, it would inevitably leave some smell of young women - especially Sarah, who usually uses a lot of spices...
As a result, Lady Aras had some misunderstandings - Kairos was a famous handsome boy when he was young. He was very popular among aristocratic women in the Bacchus Empire. Even at this age, he is still quite charming...
With Bax's style, it is completely normal for a noble noble to have several lovers secretly.
Lady Aras is getting older after all, and the wrinkles on his face can no longer be smoothed out with an iron. Naturally, he has no confidence in his own charm, and some servants with ulterior motives are encouraging him...
So after seeing the carriage, he decided that Kairos had a new love.
Later, a "loyal" servant said that the possible "mistress" should be dealt with...
So, Lady Aras found a poisonous needle and asked the servant to find an opportunity to use the poisonous needle to attack any woman who appeared in the carriage when the luxury car returned to Imperial Port.
In Lady Aras's opinion, this poisonous needle should have been nailed to Kairos's lover's neck...
But the problem is that Kairos did not take this carriage to Siyuan City. The person who took this carriage out to fool around was her son - Antonius. Such a young unmarried man went out to hang out with friends in a luxury car. This is indeed a very normal social behavior.
Since the curtains of this carriage were transformed into masks by Leon, Antonius hung the gauze used by the Bacchus Empire on the windows. People can be clearly seen from outside the carriage, but they cannot tell who is in the carriage.
As a result, Antonius took this luxury car back to Imperial Port and was beaten...
In fact, Antonius did bring the girl back. As a result, the girl in the car was fine, but Antonius was hit by a dart - the servant was obviously aiming at Antonius...
In fact, being hit by the poisonous needle shouldn't be a big problem. The wound was not big, and the toxin on the needle was not fatal.
It will only cause the skin to swell, peel and ulcerate, producing a foul odor, but there will be no sequelae after healing - this is a characteristic of many highly infectious toxins. Even rusty needles soaked in feces can do this. The poisonous needles that Alas can find are naturally not rare things.
This is just the jealousy of a confused and lonely middle-aged and elderly woman. It is not intended to kill anyone, but just to make a certain mistress temporarily lose her appearance.
But after Antonius was hit by the poisonous needle, he thought it was Snake Worship Cult who infected him with Red Death - he had just dealt with Buyulin Village's Red Death and knew that it was deliberately created by Snake Worship Cult. As the eldest son of Kairos, it was obviously not an incomprehensible situation for him to be targeted by Snake Worship Cult.
So he immediately returned home. After some examination, he found that he had symptoms similar to Red Death - the skin at the wound began to fester and ooze pus, and emitted a foul odor.
Antonius is actually a brave and determined young man. Although he immediately believed that he might die, he did not panic too much and even locked himself in the house for self-isolation.
However, his mother Lady Aras didn't want to lose this son who had a great future - she knew it was not Red Death, but she didn't know how to explain to her son that it was a poisonous needle she asked someone to inject...
The lady could only take some quick remedial measures - she asked the servant who injected the poison needle to suck the poison from her son's wound. In her opinion, the poison would definitely be sucked out.
But no one knows what the 'loyal' servant inhaled on Antonius. Anyway, since then, Antonius has been in a deep sleep, and his symptoms have become more and more serious, and the servant has also disappeared.
Only then did Madam Alas panic.
Since Governor Kairos could not be contacted, Lady Aras was in a panic and had no idea what to do. He hurriedly summoned a large number of doctors of all kinds to come to his home to treat his son, and even used bloodletting therapy from some unreliable doctors.
As a result, by the time the most experienced Radiant Cross Knights doctors arrived, various quack doctors had already treated Antonius, who had mild symptoms, into a critically ill condition.
The doctors of the Radiant Cross finally determined that this was not Red Death, but a poison mixed with various snake venoms, which probably also contained some kind of hallucinogen.
The symptoms caused by these mixed poisons look very similar to Red Death, but they are originally treatable. As long as the composition of the toxins can be determined, they can be solved one by one.
But those quack doctors used to treat the disease randomly, used all kinds of smoke and fire, and used a lot of folk remedies to fight poison with poison. They also gave Antonius a lot of blood. If they didn't kill people on the spot, it was considered that Antonius's health was good enough to withstand the torture...
If Antonius followed his own wishes and stayed in self-isolation in a room without doing anything, simply based on the toxicity of the poisonous needle, he would probably be able to recover on his own after just a few days of sleep...
But at this time, Antonius had been bloodletted and was in critical coma, unable to be consulted. He had been tormented for too long and given too many useless drugs, and any clues that might have been left could no longer be found. As a result, no matter how skilled the detoxification expert was, he could not judge the composition of the poison.
However, Lady Aras didn't want to believe that it was she who killed her son by looking for quack doctors. As a result, the anxious lady expelled Radiant Cross Knights's people and turned around to find a few random priests outside her door.
In other words, he is a magic stick.
Superstitious activities are very popular these days, and the typical thinking of aristocratic women is also like this - since doctors can't do it, let the magicians do it.
In the eyes of these old women, whether it is illness, poisoning, evil, or even stroke, it is the same thing... Anyway, it can be solved by dancing.
If it really doesn't work out, then it's obviously God's will...
This really cannot be blamed on Kairos for marrying a wife carelessly, after all, most old noble women are like this.
Of course, if you are a smart girl like Alina or Amy, you will definitely be able to think of it - why is there a magician waiting at your door at this time?
But Lady Aras's heart was already in a mess. She didn't think about it so much. She only knew a proverb popular in mainland China: 'Sincerity leads to spiritual success'...
Of course, the priest who would take the initiative to appear at the door of a noble at the governor level would not be an ordinary magician. He would be someone from Snake Worship Cult, just pretending to be a priest from the Goddess Damia temple.
But those people are not priestesses like Elisa, but some men.
Using half threats and half deception, these magicians easily made Lady Aras take his whole family to defect to Snake Worship Cult, and then began to 'treat' Antonius.
I don't know what kind of treatment they used. Anyway, Antonius did wake up, but after waking up, he seemed confused and couldn't even speak. He only knew how to obey orders. It seemed that he had even become the puppet of those Snake Worship Cult disciples.
Moreover, green scales like snake skin began to appear on his neck.
But for Lady Aras, at least her son has indeed been 'rescued'.
People from Snake Worship Cult said that it would take some time for treatment to fully recover, so Lady Aras seemed extremely cooperative with those Snake Worship Cult disciples, and even really planned to bring his whole family to believe in Snake Worship Cult.
In the first half of his life, Kairos may have different political views from Emperor Marius, but he never showed mercy when he met Snake Worship Cult's disciples. Unexpectedly, when he was fighting Snake Worship Cult outside to death, his whole family was subsumed by Snake Worship Cult...
The people from Snake Worship Cult went to Kairos's house to cause trouble, of course they had a bigger purpose.
After taking control of Kairos's family, these Snake Worship Cult disciples planned to drive Antonius to lift Imperial Port's defenses and let the Snake Worship Cult army outside the city enter the city.
But this was not successful - let alone Antonius, even Kairos himself could not convey such an order in public.
What's more, Antonius can't even speak now.
Soon after, Kairos's family suddenly left Imperial Port without a trace - because the consul's family "fleeed without fighting", this also caused most of Imperial Port's nobles to flee the place. Fortunately, the pig-raising serf general Ivaillo turned out to defend the city.
A few days ago, when Kairos was in Siyuan City to deal with the devoured people in the city, he met his wife, Ms. Alas, whom he had not seen for a long time.
But his wife didn't come here because she missed him...
Lady Aras made a special trip to Siyuan City to find him. She tried to persuade Kairos to assassinate Emperor Marius!
Incredible Kairos spent a lot of effort to confirm that the fifty-year-old woman in front of him was indeed his wife, and she was conscious and did not talk nonsense...
The reason why Lady Aras tried to let Kairos assassinate Emperor Marius was actually because the magic stick told her that only Emperor Marius's blood could restore Antonius to a normal person.
Otherwise, Antonius's soul will be devoured!
This is probably not a lie. Although Kairos does not know how the devoured ones of Snake Worship Cult were created, he knows that Snake Worship Cult can indeed do this.
After all, he was clearing out those devoured ones in Siyuan City.
Later, a man who looked like a priest brought Kairos to Brettwen and let him witness Antonius on the altar.
At that time, Antonius's face and neck were almost covered with pale green scaly dry shells, and her face was covered with herpes. Those herpes seemed to be gradually transforming into snake skin. Her eyes were open, but they had basically turned into vertical pupils - the whole face looked like a snake.
The Snake Worship Cult messenger pushed Antonius down and sank into the blood pool. Then the scales on Antonius's face that floated up obviously faded a bit, but it didn't take long for it to look like snake skin again.
Later, the Snake Worship Cult messenger told Kairos that only the blood of the king could save his son, and he would seal Antonius in this altar and wait for Kairos to come with Emperor Marius.
Kairos saw with his own eyes that this temple was closed.
After understanding the situation, Kairos was faced with a difficult choice.
The people of Snake Worship Cult must have done it on purpose, in order to assassinate Emperor Marius - originally they should have planned to control Kairos himself, and Antonius suffered for Kairos.
The Old Bacchus Empire of the Amara Continent was originally divided into chaos because of the assassination of the emperor, which gave Snake Worship Cult an opportunity to establish a religious state on the ruins of the Old Bacchus Empire.
And this time, the people from Snake Worship Cult obviously want to repeat the story of that year in the Pande Continent...
The so-called need for the king's blood may be a pure scam, or it may be true, but no matter what, Kairos must let Emperor Marius stay by his side.
"But now, the person on this altar is not Antonius..."
Emperor Marius obviously didn't think his blood could bring the dead back to life. He shook his head and looked at the altar. The man with his chest and abdomen cut open was obviously not Kairos's son.
"Sir Kairos, when you first saw this temple sealed, were there so many corpses here?"
"Li Ang! How did you..."
Suddenly hearing the lord's voice, Emperor Marius and Kairos were startled at the same time.
Kairos was silent for a while, but still gave the answer, "No... There were no corpses in this temple at that time, not a single one... There was only one person, my son Antonius."