The Red Plague began to gather
After a night of fighting, dawn was breaking when the Anointed One rekindled the Main Sacred Flame of the Alvien Kingdom in the city.
The last Tier Fifth Tier Aggregate on the battlefield fell in the Central Square. The White-Gold Holy Blade Knights were using their Sacred Flame to burn through the Pollution Core inside its chest cavity. Meanwhile, the remaining Undead were being cleared out by the White-Gold Sacred Blade several streets away.
At this time, the people who had been hiding underground and in the inner city came out one after another, and the Cleric in charge of the area began to take over the wounded and the quarantine zone.
The Anointed One had barely breathed a sigh of relief when an accompanying bishop approached him with three urgent reports, "The three cities have lost contact."
The Anointed One took the document and read it as he walked. Starting two hours earlier, Sacred Affairs between the three cities had been interrupted one after another, and the Alchemical Carrier Pigeons sent out had also disappeared.
The Anointed One walked to the makeshift map, changed the city he had just saved back to a safe marker, and marked several red danger zones. Now the entire map was red. "Which one is the closest?"
The bishop immediately replied, "One hundred and seventy li to the Southeast."
The Anointed One glanced at the time. "Notify the Knights to replenish their Holy Oil. We will depart in one hour."
Less than half a day after they left the city, the Holy City's messenger team caught up from behind, bringing a newly completed map of the Inland, showing not only the surrounding defenses but also the entire human settlement area.
The Anointed One unfolded a map by the roadside, noticing that the red contamination zone, originally concentrated within the Alvien Kingdom, had spread outwards, merging with several surrounding Kingdom into a vast expanse.
The previously passable green areas have dwindled significantly, with many more now grayed out and marked only with the word "Unknown." The accompanying bishop, crouching on the other side of the map, pointed to a Kingdom Southeast of Wayne: "We could still contact them yesterday, but the trail went cold this morning."
The Anointed One looked up and asked, "Where is the king?"
"They've lost contact; there's no word from the Royal Family Council or the Capital Bishopric either."
The follow-up report was sent out after going through several detours from the local authorities.
After losing contact with the Royal Capital, the Governor and lords in various regions initially awaited orders from the central government. With no new royal decrees arriving within half a day, they could only close off roads and gather their troops to protect their towns.
By the time the Holy City received the news, even regular communication between the major regions had been disrupted.
The Anointed One looked at the area on the map that still retained the complete country name, and finally had the Recorder cross out the original command mark of the Royal Capital.
Most Kingdom were thrown into chaos before the Red Plague even entered on a large scale. Initially, only a few supply routes were cut off, and after northern cities ran out of food, large numbers of residents began to flee south.
Local lords blocked roads to protect their granaries, then detained transport convoys passing through their territories. The Kingdom's army was ordered to take over the granaries, which led to conflicts with Private Knight. This kind of man-made chaos was commonplace. By the time the Red Plague truly approached, the local armies were already on guard against each other.
Because the major secular Kingdom were unreliable, local lords could only send letters to the Holy City and to nearby Church. As a result, the Church were simply unable to handle all these matters, and even if they sent more nobles to their deaths, it would be of no use.
After reading the latest orders, the Anointed One compared them with the actual situation reported by the local authorities three days prior. He then drew a line under the name of the country, marking another city that had been destroyed before his arrival.
Such things happened repeatedly along the way. For example, a city was burned down during a zombie outbreak when they arrived, and only the bishop's body and a few Cleric who were preparing to evacuate were found.
As the White-Gold Holy Blade Knights ventured deeper into the disaster area, the number of normal people on both sides of the road decreased significantly.
At first, you could still encounter groups of people fleeing north, but further on, even refugees became scarce.
A caravan laden with cloth and wine barrels was parked by the roadside, with more than twenty wagons lined up end to end. The livestock were long dead, but no one had moved the goods.
Further into the villages, no smoke rose from the chimneys, and the doors of a few houses remained open. The accompanying Cleric simply placed a pollution marker at the village entrance, instructing the following groups to detour.
Another town's gates were wide open. The Knight went in and searched the main street, but found no living people. The market stalls were still there, several corpses lay by the well, the Holy Temple spire was blackened by the fire, and the Main Sacred Flame had long been extinguished.
The Anointed One did not have enough manpower to stay in every place.
Even after several days of splitting up, the White-Gold Holy Blade Knights, who had originally followed the Anointed One as a whole, had been broken into more than ten teams.
As the bishop recounted the headcount, he said, "If we continue dividing them like this, you won't have enough people around you."
The Anointed One closed the list. "Only in this way can the spread of the plague be resisted on a larger scale."
The bishop nodded; he knew the gravity of the situation and didn't try to persuade him further.
That evening, new reports summarizing the various regions arrived. The Anointed One sat in the abandoned post station reading through them one by one; most were still requests from local kings and nobles for his personal assistance.
When you see the later Kingdom, the story changes; these places are also ravaged by the Red Plague, and death continues to spread.
However, cases of entire cities suddenly losing contact are far less common, and local bishops have even begun to proactively report on quarantine situations and share their experiences.
The accompanying bishop glanced at the map. "These are all the areas the Tear Knight' Southbound Legion passed through."
The Anointed One looked south along the route Shien had taken. The area around that route was also covered with red contamination zones, yet it always maintained stable communication nodes.
News from the southward-bound Tear Knight has become one of the few reports that the Anointed One are willing to pay more attention to these days.
While other places were mostly sending out reports of people going missing, requesting help, and evacuating, Shien was still able to keep sending good news.
The Anointed One has watched Shien grow up over the years, and his high opinion of him has now become even higher.
Now that the entire Inland has lost contact, Shien decisively swung his sword inward to regain control of the situation.
This was something no one expected. After all, some people initially believed that Shien had violated Ancestral Law and should be punished by the Church.
But now, no one questions it anymore.
The Anointed One looked at the route on the map that was still stretching south and thought of his old friend, the retired Yasol.
It seems that my old friend has chosen the right successor.
Just as some good news was finally arriving, Anointed One was preparing to write a letter to encourage Shien, a Cleric in charge of Sacred Affairs communications strode into the post station.
The Anointed One looked up, frowned, and said, "Another urgent report?"
The Cleric placed the communication records of the past two days on the table. "This time it's not a request for help. The cities in the core area of the Alvien Kingdom were sending the highest-level requests for help every day for the past few days, some even three times a day. Since last night, the messages have become less and less frequent."
The Anointed One opened their records and found that several major cities that had previously requested assistance most frequently had fallen silent almost simultaneously—this was not a good sign.