After Abraham took over the Southern Continent and began its development, the entire Southern Continent was under absolute control.
In the past, the Pale God wouldn't care so much about you or make so many demands on you. As long as you didn't sin, He basically wouldn't have much of a mind to manage you. As for individual performance, workload, and work standards, those were all set by the factory and the local Pale Church.
In the past, the management was also constantly monitored by that Pale God Norton. Not only did they dare not embezzle, but they even tried to set standards that were humane, so as not to make them too complicated and cause a large number of people to be unable to complete them, thus ruining their own political achievements.
So, although the people of the Southern Continent were also forced to work, they were actually doing relatively well.
But Abraham was different.
The ruins of the Southern Continent mean that this group of people, and even the next group, will have to make arduous efforts to restore its former prosperity.
Therefore, Abraham set exceptionally high standards for those below him, and compared to the Pale God, he had one major shortcoming: he lacked the power to oversee the entire Southern Continent. As a result, his rule gradually became distorted.
Overly authoritarian rule does not lead to the continued obedience of subordinates, but rather to endless lies.
When power reaches its zenith, it doesn't bring absolute authority, but rather a towering wall of lies!
It's unclear when exactly, but the words Abraham heard gradually transformed into unanimous hymns of praise, and all he could see were embellished and revised reports.
Social problems and the contradictions among the people were selectively concealed, and all his subordinates began to use various means to cover up all the problems.
His excessive force and concentration of power led to a massive power struggle across the entire Southern Continent.
The bureaucratic class, represented by officials at all levels, confronts Abraham, a ruthless dictator.
They protected each other, covered for each other, and exonerated each other. Even when Abraham, with his Prince strength, flew to any territory in the Southern Continent to hear the people's voices, he only heard cheers and praises, without any complaints of grief and indignation.
Because the bureaucratic system brought by officials at all levels has become integrated, if these people dare to speak out about any problems, even if the local officials are arrested and removed from office, the next officials or even officials in the surrounding areas will carry out a certain purge as a form of punishment.
If they didn't speak up, the whole family could still barely survive, living a life of humility.
If they tell, then the whole family will have no choice but to wait for death, and even the entire village will face trial.
Thus, as time passed, the Uncrowned King Abraham gradually began to live in a highly closed-off world.
Abraham was fully aware of this, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Such a high degree of information isolation and false praise made Abraham increasingly sensitive and suspicious of everything around him.
He struggles to distinguish between sincerity and pretense, between good and bad people around him, and between accurate and inaccurate information.
This extreme insecurity led him to doubt everyone around him, including Elizabeth, who was also Prince.
Only those who sit in the throne can truly understand how arduous that position is.
This isolation is not only reflected in politics, but also extends to his personal life.
The servants cleaning beside him might be someone else's eyes and ears. The driver might be someone else's surveillance. Even when he occasionally goes shopping, the people passing by are all actors arranged by others. Even his newly acquired concubine is a spy carefully selected by others.
Under the vast net of power, Abraham found himself in the same predicament as the Pale God of the past!
Besieged on all sides, abandoned by all!
This miserable situation forced Abraham to become increasingly suspicious, and even caused some mental problems to begin to appear.
However, he was so suspicious that he dared not see a psychologist.
Because he feared that even his psychologist was a pawn sent by someone else!
This scene seemed familiar, just like something out of the past.
Only now did Abraham realize the difficulty of being in the presence of His Majesty.
Therefore, it was the thirty-third year of Maria.
The development of the Southern Continent has finally gotten on track, and the new generation of young people has grown up and matured, giving the Southern Continent a certain degree of resilience.
In the winter of the thirty-third year of Maria's reign, Abraham, the long-suffering Uncrowned King, launched a nationwide purge.
It consolidated military and security power, bringing together all armed forces that could threaten the people. It then granted the people immense power to expose and prosecute, allowing them to use their status as ordinary citizens to hold former high-ranking officials accountable. This enabled them to settle scores and grievances, while also effectively eliminating the corrupt officials and bureaucratic system that had been united in the past.
This cleanup was nothing short of devastating.
This was a nationwide celebration, but it was also a manifestation of the expansion and collapse of power.
The arbitrary granting of power means that, from the very beginning, that power is destined to eventually spiral out of control.
In just two years, the cleaning process started to change.
The high-ranking officials who committed wrongdoings in the past have indeed received their just deserts, but what follows is the rampant spread of human jealousy and the exploitation of such power by those with ulterior motives for personal gain.
The poor and envious begin to use this power of judgment to target those who are better off, trying to drag their entire families down into the mire, or even into Hell.
Those with clever minds began to mobilize the masses in concert to arbitrarily conduct trials and profit from them.
This massive purge, which was supposed to cleanse the bureaucratic system of corruption, abuse of power, and collusion, ultimately devolved into a horrific outcome of embezzlement, robbery, abuse of power, and collusion among the people.
The old bureaucrats were purged, but new bureaucrats were born; the old high walls were destroyed, but endless poor people were mixed in, and a new high wall was built.
Even the people he so desperately wanted to purge, whom he feared would be harmed, became the new ones who hurt him at the last moment!
Abraham's later years were lonely because human nature was far uglier than he had imagined.
This outcome made Abraham realize the truth at that moment.
So, when Your Majesty was in power, that was truly a time of peace and prosperity...
From the fortieth year of Maria, Abraham began to live alone in a small villa on an island in the middle of Lake Pal in the Southern Continent, no longer easily receiving outsiders, nor easily being sought out by anyone.
He fell into a state of utter loneliness and isolation.
Maria in her forty-third year.
With his vision completely obscured, Abraham was assassinated in his mansion.
The assassin somehow acquired a finely crafted siege ballista and placed it directly opposite the entrance to Abraham's residence.
The next day, just as he opened the door to go out, a silver siege crossbow bolt pierced his chest, the impact even shattering the door and pinning his body to the living room wall.
The only two Vampire Prince, Elizabeth, also mysteriously disappeared that night, her whereabouts unknown.
Such a dramatic change shocked the entire Holy Empire!
The Great Purge was abruptly halted, and Alexander, a confidant of the Uncrowned King Abraham, was appointed to the throne in a time of crisis, becoming the Pope.
From the time he ascended the throne, he was completely different from both Norton and Abraham in the past.
Perhaps due to the psychological trauma inflicted by Norton or Abraham, instead of using Vampire as slaves as Abraham or Norton had in the past, he relaxed their working hours, slightly alleviating their Vampire lives.
Apart from that, he merely consolidated his military power, while selecting other personnel to nominally lead the country's politics, culture, and development.
A few years later, the government relaxed its policies on Vampire again, allowing Vampire to live like normal people, which greatly improved Vampire lives.
A few years later, due to the Vampire's physical structure and inherent durability, a small department was established within the Holy Empire's national institutions specifically for these blood-sucking monsters to run errands and perform manual labor.
Because this department offered no personal gain and consisted mainly of menial tasks and errands that other officials were unwilling to do, it did not face particularly strong opposition.
A few years later...