"What!"
"How could that be?!"
Hunter and Grisha cried out in alarm.
The Silent Temple, the true ruler of the White Crow Duchy, had established this theocratic nation north of the Canary Mountains.
Every person of the Northern Territory, from birth to death, was inseparable from the Silent Temple.
After the White Calamity, the Silent Temple had also worked to save its people from the White Crow Duchy. It had confronted the local lords in the Northern Territory for a time, only to ultimately abandon all its followers and head for the Empire.
That was also the fundamental reason Nora had broken with the Silent Temple.
"How is that possible? Didn't they already go to the Empire? Didn't they abandon us? Why would they come back?"
Grisha shouted. His voice held anger, confusion, and a hint of... grievance.
The Temple had always been the support of the White Crow people, and it had never abandoned its believers. Back when they faced the Empress's armies, the Temple priests had always charged ahead while protecting their followers behind them, using their own flesh and blood to force the Royal Army back to the negotiating table.
But in the end, they had abandoned their believers.
Nora stared fixedly at the distant figures. She could not make sense of the emotions surging within her. Those people had once been her companions, her mentors, her support—yet in the end, she alone had remained to resist.
"No, something's wrong!" Nora suddenly said. "Those are Burier insignias. Vilen, Ivan, Zoya, Gleb—they're all Transcendents! Nearly a hundred Transcendents?!"
Transcendents were the Church's most valuable assets. Isaac had previously concluded that the Candlelight Society attached immense importance to the Northern Territory precisely because it had sent a full thirty Transcendents here.
That was almost all the Transcendents the Candlelight