"Your Majesty, please rescind your decree. Our Holy Church believes in God and is founded on mercy, which is why it has stood firm for thousands of years and can be preserved for ten thousand years. This is all because our Holy Lord Church has acted in the right direction. Such an act of slaughter is unprecedented in our Holy Church for a thousand years. Your Majesty's cruelty and inhumanity are truly undermining the foundation of our Church!"
"Your Majesty, it's not too late to stop now. The orthodoxy and glory of our Holy Church can still be preserved. If you continue to be obstinate, the reputation of our Holy Church will surely be overturned and reversed, and we will be branded as a heretical cult, making it difficult for us to have any chance of succession in the future!"
With the Eye of Holiness, the only remaining cardinal and Archbishop Duoxia earnestly and sorrowfully pleaded with His Majesty Adam, who sat regally on the magnificent wooden chair, to retract his order to massacre, lest the once holy and great image of the Church be completely overturned.
Of the six cardinals, five died, and the remaining one survived because he had no ulterior motives and focused solely on the Church.
If he had been careful and continued living that way, he might have lived longer and become the only cardinal to die of old age during His Holiness Adam's reign.
But now, even at the risk of being beheaded by His Holiness Adam, he still stepped forward to persuade Adam to retract his decision, in order to safeguard the holiness and honor of the Church.
Two old men buzzed around Adam like flies, making Adam frown and grow impatient.
However, Adam was able to tolerate the two elders who were wholeheartedly devoted to the Church, and refrained from sending them to Heaven in a cruel manner.
"Your Majesty, retract your order! Reckless killing will only push my Holy Church to the other side of humanity. If you continue killing..." Archbishop Duoxia knelt before His Majesty Adam with a sorrowful expression, kowtowing repeatedly to show his unwavering love for the Church.
It was indeed strange for a pale-faced, blood-red Vampire who lived by drinking blood to utter such words of religious devotion, but Adam did not doubt his loyalty to the Church.
But unfortunately, it wasn't loyalty to Adam.
Perhaps if the Holy Knight weren't here, the first thing Duoxia would have done would have been to rush over and behead Adam to ensure the survival of the Church.
Even so, this was still for the sake of the Church, so His Majesty Adam did not care about their thoughts.
But I still can't stand their incessant chatter.
"Enough!" His Majesty Adam shouted angrily, his gaze sweeping over Archbishop Duoxia and the Cardinal.
He then coldly snorted, "My Papal State has been established for over a thousand years. Throughout these years, every dynasty and every pope has never failed to send troops abroad and slaughter the royal families of the surrounding empires!"
Why are these lords and kings impossible to eradicate completely, and why do they regenerate like weeds within fifty years after each massacre?
Ultimately, the root of these feudal states lies in their population, in the serfs of those lords, large and small! As long as their serfs are not eliminated, no matter how many kings and lords are killed, there will always be a continuous stream of people rising to power, gathering resources, becoming new lords, new kings, and then eyeing our Papal State with covetous intent!
Although past popes were ruthless and slaughtered royalty and lords of all ranks, the foundations of their vassal states remained intact, and the existence of serfs enabled them to recover quickly. This was the true source of cholera!
Therefore, I slaughtered their people and destroyed their foundations, leaving these royal families and lords with lands uncultivated and territories devoid of soldiers, making it difficult for them to recover for two hundred years. This is truly beneficial to my Papal State in every way!
His Majesty Adam had eyes like a vulture, which, combined with his gaunt face, made him look sinister.
There were more things left unsaid.
These vassal kingdoms are like wildfires, constantly resurfacing and posing a significant threat. It's only because the current Papal State is powerful that they haven't been able to conquer them.
Whenever the Papal State encounter any problems, these lords will make a comeback, hoping to completely destroy the Papal State.
The immediate reaction of the Boya Empire to its machinations following the annihilation of the Holy Judgment Order is a classic example of this.
Therefore, in order to make the Holy See more tolerant of mistakes in the future, to make the stable situation last longer, and to make the suppression of the divine corpse more secure, he naturally had to raise the butcher's knife and weaken the foundation of these kings and lords, so that they would not be able to recover or become a force to be reckoned with for a hundred years!
In this way, future popes could use a small force to defeat it whenever it showed signs of recovery, thus silencing the Southern Continent and preventing the various lords, large and small, from causing any trouble.
In other words, Adam is going to fight all the wars that future popes will have to fight in this generation!
As for whether future popes, free from external threats, will indulge in pleasure and ultimately perish due to internal strife?
Hmph, all the popes in history were chosen by the previous pope, and they were all chosen based on merit, not on the hereditary system of the feudal states, which allows both the good and the bad to sit in this highest position.
Moreover, if a pope were to fail to be vigilant and allow the Church to decline, then the Church's demise would be the end of it all!
Adam, in the end, must broaden his horizons beyond the boundaries of the Church in order to truly ensure the maximum safety of the divine corpse.
In this way, he will be able to free up his hands to deal with the internal situation of the Papal State.
Vampire are now rampant and uncontrollable within the Papal State. Even though the profession of Vampire hunter has emerged, the Vampire capable of reproduction no longer hunt themselves, but instead use the weaker Vampire they transform to go out and find food.
This makes eradicating the source of Vampire extremely difficult.
If these New-Type Vampire with their extraordinary reproductive abilities are not controlled, they will surely become a major threat to the Papal State in the future! In addition, Norton and Abraham of Lino City have both fled and their whereabouts are currently unknown.
In Adam's eyes, these alien races, who possessed the power to touch God, were the real threat!
He must quell the external situation as soon as possible, and then launch a powerful attack on these Vampire!
The imperial city of the Boya Empire.
Inside the vast imperial castle.
Yalian II sat upright on a golden wooden chair, calmly looking at the front-line report in his hands.
' The Papal State, ignoring all warnings, continue their rampage, having already captured three cities and slaughtered 110,000 people! We implore His Holiness the Yalian Emperor for assistance...'
Yalian II looked at the report in his hand and didn't take it seriously. A mere 110,000 men were not worth his attention. Besides, the Papal State and the Boya Empire were separated by towering mountains, and he would need to transport troops by sea to mobilize them. This was the reason why the Boya Empire and the Papal State had been able to coexist peacefully for so many years.
He might have some concerns if the Pope sent Holy Knight to slaughter the royal families of the smaller nations.
However, if they are just ordinary knights and soldiers, then he has no reason to worry at all.
He put down the frontline report in his hand, and then picked up the information transmitted back by the intelligence agency next to him.
The Papal State are suffering from a large-scale cholera outbreak caused by a New-Type Vampire. These New-Type Vampire reproduce far more rapidly than their Vampire, but have far more weaknesses. Their ability to spread is astonishing; those infected gain immortality. However, the Papal State employ unique methods: images of God Church religious artifacts are highly effective against these New-Type Vampire. Currently, cities throughout the Papal State are extensively painting murals on their walls to combat the Vampire invasion. There are currently no rumors of the Pope becoming Vampire...
The newly established institution, ' The Eye of Holiness, ' founded by Pope Adam, appears to be conducting large-scale research on New-Type Werewolf. The constant howling of wolves within the institution, coupled with highly suspicious external resource allocation—primarily raw meat and blood—and the heavy workload of the Holy See blacksmiths, producing mostly circular implements filled with spikes, suggestive of restraint collars. All evidence points to the Eye of Holiness system researching New-Type Werewolf captured by the Church in the Holy Lord City. However, due to the disappearance of Archbishop Duoxia, specific information remains uncertain...
There has been no progress yet regarding the fundamentals of training Holy Knight.