At first, the leaders of the Sun Moon Empire and the Sun Moon Cult were actually one and the same. The emperor of the Sun Moon Empire was also the pope of the Sun Moon Cult. But after an event known in Sun Moon history as the "Blood Moon Coup," the ambitious Sun Moon Cult elder Kong Yao joined forces with the emperor's younger brother, Prince Xu Ziying, the Chosen of Heaven, to overthrow the rule of Xu Yunhai, then emperor of the Sun Moon Empire. Kong Yao and Xu Ziying then became the pope of the Sun Moon Cult and the emperor of the Sun Moon Empire, respectively.
But soon, a series of conflicts over their interests turned the two against each other, and they began to clash. In the end, the pope of the Sun Moon Cult, Kong Yao, emerged victorious. Xu Ziying had been defeated, but his strength remained largely intact, and he still had many supporters. As a result, Kong Yao did not dare take any overly radical measures.
As time went on, however, the emperors of the Sun Moon Empire saw more and more of their powers taken into the hands of successive popes of the Sun Moon Cult. Although the emperor still retained a large portion of his authority, this also marked the point at which the church's divine power officially surpassed imperial power. The Sun Moon Empire gradually entered what came to be known as the "Dark Age."
It was an era steeped in blood and terror. The church and the old nobles of the Conservative Faction joined forces to monopolize power. Countless people who opposed the church, or were falsely accused of opposing it, were imprisoned and slaughtered. Countless ancient texts and collections were burned after being branded "anti-church." Every day, untold numbers of people were put on trial by clergy and religious fanatics, then tortured and cruelly persecuted.
With the people's thoughts shackled, there were few rebels, and they were too scattered to amount to anything. It seemed the church's rule had been firmly secured at last, with no force left to defy it!
The clergy of the time also felt they could rest easy, as if nothing could ever threaten their supreme authority. Little did they know that a rising class would seize the moment during a great revolutionary movement and completely overturn the supremacy of the divine right.
From the year 2695 of the Sun Moon calendar onward, as the Sun Moon Empire's Soul Guidance Technology advanced and knowledge spread across various industries, the empire's productivity began to grow steadily. The resulting economic development ushered in a golden age. In the midst of it, a group of Great Merchants and New Nobility rose to prominence, monopolizing advanced means of production and Soul Guidance Technology and using them to turn a profit.
In both knowledge and thought, these people were far ahead of ordinary commoners, and their ideas were far more open-minded. For years, they had secretly championed the protection of private property and intellectual property rights, opposed the church's efforts to shackle the people's thoughts and its wanton seizure of private property and knowledge, promoted intellectual development and advanced education, and encouraged exploration and innovation in culture, art, and technology.
As time went on, more and more people in the Sun Moon Empire came to believe in and support the ideas they preached. This enlightenment movement came to be known in Sun Moon history as the "Great Liberation of Thought." The class that profited from commercial capital and the means of production had a name everyone knew by heart: the bourgeoisie.
Since their ideas clashed with the conservative traditional values the church had always preached, they naturally faced oppression and punishment from the church's upper ranks.
Unfortunately for the church, its lower clergy were corrupt and foolish. When Great Merchants and members of the New Nobility dazzled them with promises of money and other benefits, the vast majority of clergy turned a blind eye, let things slide, and concealed the truth from their superiors. As a result, the church's upper ranks remained in the dark for a long time.
By the time the church finally realized how serious the problem was, the Great Merchants and New Nobility had already become a force to be reckoned with. What the church found even harder to accept was that the greatest leaders behind this group were none other than the emperor, whom it had kept under close watch, and members of the imperial family who opposed the Sun Moon Cult's rule! Ironically, the imperial family had already secretly built the largest merchant consortium in the Sun Moon Empire—and had been struggling against the church's forces all along!
The church immediately began taking a series of measures: confiscating merchants' property, suppressing commercial activity, smashing their shops, and arresting and trying merchants who opposed the church. But the rising bourgeoisie, made up of Great Merchants, members of the New Nobility, and members of the imperial family who opposed the church, did not sit back and wait for their fate. They, too, began taking a series of measures to counter the church.
The conflict between the two sides intensified without end, and the struggle soon reached a fever pitch. All that remained was one final spark to set off a full-scale, terrifying, bloody war—and that spark arrived soon enough!
August 16, 3758, Sun Moon calendar—a day destined to go down in history! On that day, the Cult Army, led by Archbishop Dylan and Prince Kong Lafa of the Black Moon, attacked and occupied the headquarters of the Nebula Chamber of Commerce in Nebula City. They killed or arrested more than five thousand members of the Nebula Chamber of Commerce, including its vice president. History would remember the incident as the "Nebula City Incident."
Fortunately, the president of the Nebula Chamber of Commerce, Ye Nantian, had not been in Nebula City at the time and escaped the disaster. When Ye Nantian and the other chambers of commerce learned the news, they immediately lodged a stern protest with the Sun Moon Cult! The Sun Moon Cult ignored them entirely. Instead, it ordered all forces supporting the church to lead the Cult Army in a campaign against the protesters and to arrest the Sun Moon Empire's rebels, including the emperor!
The emperor of the Sun Moon Empire, the other Great Merchants, and the New Nobility understood that their relationship with the church had been utterly shattered. They immediately declared war on the Sun Moon Cult and rapidly assembled private guards from the chambers of commerce, recruited mercenaries, regular troops under the New Nobility, and other armed forces loyal to the emperor into the "Royalist Army." They would fight the Cult Army, led by the church. Thus the famed "God-Emperor War" of Sun Moon Empire history erupted in full.
Early in the war, the church and the old nobles controlled most of the Sun Moon Empire's territory. On top of that, the Cult Army commanded more active-duty troops than the Royalist Army, and its troops were far better trained and disciplined than the merchants' militias and mercenaries in the Royalist Army.
As a result, the Cult Army won victory after victory in the early stages of the war, routing the Royalist Army. After the "First Battle of Ming Capital," it even occupied the entire Ming Capital for a time and captured the imperial palace. The emperor and the Royalist Faction's senior leaders had no choice but to flee Ming Capital under the Royalist Army's protection and retreat to Corona City to continue the fight.
The Royalist Army also suffered defeat after defeat on other fronts, and one town after another under its control fell into the Cult Army's hands. The situation took a sharp turn for the worse.
Though the situation grew increasingly dire for the Royalist Army, the New Nobility and Great Merchants, led by the emperor, did not resign themselves to defeat. Instead, they immediately began urging slaves and commoners to take up arms and fight the Cult Army.
To inspire the slaves and commoners to support the Royalist Army, the emperor of the Sun Moon Empire, with the New Nobility and Great Merchants making concessions and offering support, formally proclaimed the Slave Emancipation Act and the Declaration of Civil Rights Act across the empire. The laws sent shockwaves throughout the Sun Moon Continent!
The Slave Emancipation Act declared that from then on, the Sun Moon Empire would officially abolish slavery. All slaves would become commoners of the Sun Moon Empire, entitled to the protection of the law and the right to own private property.
The Declaration of Civil Rights Act went even further, declaring that people of every class in the Sun Moon Empire were equal in personhood, and protecting private property and intellectual property rights. It also stipulated that the people of the Sun Moon Empire could organize their own militias and resistance forces, seize land from the church and the old nobles, and keep all the land they captured. They might even earn government posts or noble titles in the process!
The church and the old nobles had oppressed the Great Merchants and New Nobility and squeezed the common people dry with excessive levies. Most of the Sun Moon Empire's slave and commoner labor force was already in their hands, while the Great Merchants and New Nobility were often troubled by a shortage of industrial labor.
The Great Liberation of Thought had already helped awaken the people's minds. Now that the laws were announced, they immediately won the support of countless slaves and commoners! Militias and slave rebels sprang up everywhere, launching attacks and uprisings behind the church and the old nobles. More and more commoners and slaves also fled the church's and old nobles' control to join the Royalist Army.
As mentioned earlier, more than 99 percent of Soul Masters in the Sun Moon Empire had low- or mid-grade Martial Souls, and their cultivation was limited by the quality of their Martial Souls. As a result, the strength gap between Soul Masters and ordinary people on the Sun Moon Continent was nowhere near as pronounced as it was on the Douluo Continent.
Even though many Soul Masters in the Sun Moon Empire were equipped with Soul Guidance Weapons, the empire's Soul Guidance Weapons had not yet made great strides in development, so their power was limited. Besides, the vast majority of advanced Soul Guidance Weapons were in the hands of the Royalist Army.
More importantly, although ordinary people could not use Soul Guidance Weapons, they could wield the swords, shields, armor, and crossbows supplied by the Royalist Army, all forged with advanced technology and fine materials. They even had some powerful weapons modeled on primitive Soul Gunpowder weapons!
These weapons were generally far better in quality—and produced in far greater quantities—than those issued to the Cult Army, whose means of production lagged behind. So as the war dragged on and spread, the Cult Army found itself increasingly short of strength and unable to hold its ground. The Royalist Army, by contrast, grew in numbers and fought with ever greater courage. Many cities it had once lost were reclaimed.
At last, on September 20, 3768 of the Sun Moon calendar, the Royalist Army completely wiped out the Cult Army's last resistance in the "Second Battle of Ming Capital." The reigning pope of the Sun Moon Cult, Kong Yu, killed himself, and the Cult Army's surviving senior leaders fell into disarray. Thus, after a full decade, the "God-Emperor War" ended in victory for the Royalist Army!
Beyond the flames of war, death, and disaster, the conflict also brought enlightenment, change, and new horizons to the entire Sun Moon Continent!
After the war, in keeping with the mutual promises made before the conflict by the emperor of the Sun Moon Empire, the New Nobility, and the Great Merchants, the empire established a National Congress made up of an upper house and a lower house, along with a supreme court. It curbed the emperor's power, promulgated a new constitution, granted noble titles, and vigorously promoted commerce and industry, education, and the liberation of labor.
At the same time, the New Nobility of the Sun Moon Empire stopped passing local and central government posts down through their families. They sharply cut back the size of their private armies and the grade of their weaponry, paid taxes according to law, and obeyed the central government's administration and orders. After the two sides made mutual concessions, the Sun Moon Empire returned to stability and gradually transformed from an agrarian feudal state into an industrial capitalist state.
To this day, the most powerful chambers of commerce in the Royalist Army, along with their families, have gradually developed into the Ten Great Families of the Sun Moon Empire!
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