Xiang City, Church of the Scales headquarters. White Crow sat upright in her office, holding a document an inch thick that recorded the progress of the Church of the Scales' internal purge.
Over the past few days, the struggle between the Church of the Scales and the Federation had been brought into the open. The local Public Security Bureau and armed forces from nearby cities had frequently organized joint operations, and news of Church of the Scales strongholds being destroyed surfaced almost every day.
Hot-blooded students and all manner of people incited by the Church of the Scales repeatedly launched protest marches, claiming that the Federation's actions were an assault on free will and a grave disregard for the true wishes of its citizens.
These slogan-shouting marches had accomplished very little. Even rumors mixed in among them about the military opening fire on crowds could not spread beyond the city under the strict information blockade, let alone stir up any waves of public opinion.
In the twenty-first century, the disparity between official and civilian technology and armed forces had become too vast to overcome. Bottom-up riots and rebellions always ended in violent suppression, with hopes of success as insubstantial as clouds.
White Crow had never expected to force the Federation into concessions through public pressure. Creating a certain degree of chaos and laying down an obscuring mist to buy time was enough.
Over the years, the followers the Church of the Scales had gathered were both bargaining chips and sacrificial offerings—
In a world where gods and the Eerie Game existed, there were actually many paths one could choose.
After the first stronghold was breached by the Federation, White Crow conducted an internal investigation of the Church of the Scales on the grounds that "important intelligence had been leaked and