"You came?"
"I came."
"You shouldn't have come."
"...Tsk, which version of that dialogue is this? Just say what you have to say."
When one stepped onto the battlefield and the opponent suddenly started prattling on, it was obvious there was something behind their words.
Li Fan paused. Never good with words to begin with, he had been thrown off his prepared lines. After considering it for a moment, he decided there was no point overthinking it. He had never been good at fieldwork or negotiations anyway; he just needed to relay the message.
"We just received word from headquarters. Originally, our plan was to eliminate you or take you back with us."
As a True God Church, the Maiden of the Forest Church held considerable power in the Eastern Kingdom. That company which had previously clashed with Lu PingAn had merely been one of its subordinate enterprises.
And due to Lady Lin's "extreme survivalism," her church was riddled with factions. As Big Cat had once put it, "In their company, which branch is the main headquarters? Whichever one is biggest and strongest."
Its internal evaluation system had long been about more than mere KPIs. "Performance" directly concerned life and death, and even more directly affected the allocation of resources, talented personnel, and even the ranking of divine "blessings" within the organization.
Various organizations and factions all fought for the status of "Church Headquarters," because it allowed them to obtain more.
This classic Law of the Jungle had led to several changes in the "headquarters," but it had also brought rapid growth to the Forest Goddess Church.
Among the New Gods of the same generation, she was among the fastest to rise, drawing all sorts of envy, jealousy, and hatred from Big Cat.
"...The headquarters has received word and thinks