"Whoosh... whoosh..."
The night was pitch black; torrential rain battered the church roof, producing a steady whooshing sound.
A single lamp gave only a bean-sized glow; candles of this era could not cast light very far, so even though several candles stood on a silver lamp on the table, they still could not drive away the surrounding darkness.
"Why hasn't the Boar Empire made its move yet?" An aged voice tinged with anger spoke softly, unable to pierce the rain so others inside the church could hear.
"The king has yet to confirm whether the information is true. The Vatican has been silent. If news of the Holy Inquisition Tribunal's annihilation is a fabricated lie, then taking action now would invite reprisals the royal family could never withstand!"
The classical church room was not small, but it was filled to the brim with bookcases and miscellaneous clutter, leaving only a little empty space for Bishop Doxia’s use.
Bishop Doxia liked reading, especially books that defied orthodoxy.
For example, political works that diverged greatly from contemporary viewpoints, or small-time economists’ rebellious but occasionally insightful treatises. In these times such writings were not called by professional names; they were simply labeled banned books.
Once, a Vatican scholar wrote a banned book called "A Heaven Beyond Heaven." It claimed that God was not singular: the sun and moon were round luminous spheres, and by analogy, perhaps other stars were distant suns and moons—so perhaps in those distant places, at comparable distances from their suns and moons, other worlds existed, each possibly with their own creator deities. The author was beheaded and denied even the mercy of being burned and sent to heaven.
Bishop Doxia loved these fantastical ideas.But that also made his thinking clash completely with the insular Vatican.
He sneered at the Church’s various repressive controls. He endorsed some unorthodox views and believed the Church should not remain static; stagnation only allows rot beneath a façade of strength. Only by reform could the Church stay vibrant and alive.
Most importantly, he did not champion Church rule. He believed the Church’s current paranoid governance would lead to catastrophic consequences.
He thought all regimes were impermanent, like the millennia-old dissolution of the Ancient Divine Noah Empire. Power and politics represent vested interests, and for those interests, they will ultimately be ended by greater force.
Bishop Doxia loved the Church; his loyalty to the holy faith was absolute. Yet precisely because of that love, he did not want the Church to go where he foresaw. So he fiercely opposed the Vatican’s present system.
To free the Church from the labels of violence and vested interest, to allow the holy faith to change while retaining its positive image, Bishop Doxia decided to destroy the institution that symbolized those interests—the Vatican—and rebuild a Church that existed solely for preaching!
It was hard to believe a human could conceive such a plan.
Still, his vision had a discernible prescience. After all, in later European history, churches that confined themselves to theology rather than governance endured and expanded.
But his method... if the Vatican’s collapse was inevitable, he would create the destruction himself to bring about rebirth?
Bishop Doxia, wearing his purple archbishop robes, looked sullen as he stared at the Boar Empire spy kneeling before him.
Hearing the spy’s words, he snorted coldly. "Foolish! Your people already went to verify the Holy Inquisition Tribunal’s destruction long ago. How could they still be unable to confirm it now? I’ll tell you this: the Church has the means to continue training these Holy Knights. If you delay any further, in just a few years the Pope will again raise another order of Holy Knights! Then your century-long plotting will be undone in an instant—you will never recover!"
Bishop Doxia knew the Church could produce Holy Knights, but he did not know how they did it—only that they could.
At the beginning, the Holy Inquisition Tribunal had merely fifty members; over the years it grew to more than seven hundred (each cathedral where a Low Bishop was stationed had two Low Holy Knights), so clearly the Pope held some hidden secret.
If they did not act now, then waiting a bit longer would allow His Holiness the Pope to cultivate a new batch.
Even the lowest tier—one hundred knights assigned to a single execution—would be more than any royal family could withstand.
After all, an army could not be stationed permanently at the palace to guard against the arrival of the Holy Knights.
"So, His Majesty the King brought a proposal, Bishop Doxia. If you cooperate with the operation and simultaneously ignite an uprising within the Papal States, the Boar Empire will capitalize on the victory and completely overthrow the Pope’s rule.
"Your willingness to give up power is admirable, Bishop Doxia. But you still hold significant authority now. Contributing a measure of effort will earn you handsome rewards. Although you do not seek power, His Majesty intends to leave the next papal seat to you."
The Boar Empire spy spoke with extreme deference.
In truth, the reason the Boar Empire had yet to send troops was not that the Vatican lacked news; they were unsure whether this was a ploy between the Vatican and Bishop Doxia.
Bishop Doxia was just too abnormal. His views on power and secular matters made the Boar Emperor uneasy and incredulous.
Bishop Doxia valued humanity and rejected celestial law. He believed the Church’s current control and mechanisms severely damaged human nature; possibilities for reform were ruthlessly crushed by this harsh system, leaving society lifeless and void of vigor.
He believed the Church should truly serve only as a preaching institution, not rule realms with doctrine or brainwash the populace’s thinking.
He was willing to relinquish his current powers so human vitality could return and the Church could pass on peacefully.
Who would believe such ideals? Even now, the Boar Emperor could hardly accept that this was one man’s conviction. Or rather, he simply could not understand what Bishop Doxia’s so-called ideals really meant.
If he could not grasp them, he naturally could not trust them.
If the Holy Inquisition Tribunal had not plainly shattered within Holy Lord City this time, he would have assumed Bishop Doxia was merely a pawn the Vatican used to bait the Boar Empire.
Even then, he still could not understand or believe it.
So they could only ask Bishop Doxia to contribute a little more.
The Church had no normal people!
Rain poured down. Norton, pressed flat atop the roof eaves, was grinning so wide his lips nearly split.
See? He had said it—the tide of fate pressed down on the Papal States. Disaster was inevitable!
He hadn’t expected an archbishop to join the rebellion, though—what a thrill!
Even better: Rino City would soon become Norton’s personal paradise!
Norton held his breath and silently slipped along the roof toward a more secluded part of the church.
He already had a huge gain before the hunt even began; he felt this trip was well worth it.
Now it was hunting time.
Norton’s crimson pupils swept across the cavernous church. Though the rain fell hard, his sense of smell barely diminished; he could still clearly distinguish where people gathered and where they were sparse.
Since Bishop Doxia had so many troubles, Norton decided to make things even more troublesome for him.
After living inside the Church for twenty years, Norton could tell what each hall was used for merely by how many people were inside, even without reading the hall names.
If you wanted to drop a brick and crush someone to death, the confession chamber was, of course, the best place.