Chapter 12: The Experiment Exposed
“After our defeat, Saint George was detained, and at that time, everyone, including my family, thought it was all over. Little did we know…”
Little did we know, this was just the beginning.
A beginning that would plunge the Holy Church into a “darkest hour” disaster that had been brewing for millennia.
In April of AD 1188, shortly after the pilgrimage day in the Holy City, the “funeral ceremony” of the human hero Silvya was still making waves across the Western Continent, creating a positive public image to counteract the negative whispers surrounding the Williams Family. People began to regain their confidence in Pope Angel. Just as this outcome was taking shape…
On the eve of the May Festival that year, in Rabeli Valley, north of Ethanbel Royal City, a massive landslide exposed the Church’s secret “human experiments” to the public eye.
“Clearly, this was a man-made conspiracy to completely bring down the Church.”
The Knights Commander said to me with a tone of certainty, “I bet only Saint George could pull off something like this. This is retaliation, utterly ruthless revenge. The Williams Family has already crumbled, their stray dogs can somehow organize such a massive network of personnel. They must have a ton of flowing dark money—money we can’t find…”
That “landslide” incident, while not minor in itself, wasn’t some colossal earth-shattering event. After all, there had been accidents in “clinics” before where patients had escaped. The Church had enough experience handling such matters and should have been able to cover it up quickly. However, under the influence of some mysterious forces—mostly the lackeys of the Williams Family—rumors began spreading among the upper noble classes of the Kingdom, and then over the next six months, it spiraled out of control, spreading to taverns of all sizes throughout the Western Continent.
At first, the Church tried to suppress it with all their might, sending members of the Knowledge Association to patrol taverns at night. Those caught spreading rumors would be interrogated overnight, and by the next day, they’d face tongue removal for heresy, burned at the stakes for public display. Eventually, even knights got involved in these operations, but they quickly discovered that the vast majority of the “criminals” they apprehended were just ordinary civilians, with no ties to the Williams Family. Their words were merely drunken ramblings, releasing pent-up emotions.
And the more they suppressed, the harder it became to contain. Instead, it only stirred up more dissatisfaction among the people. The Church’s actions began to appear absurd in the eyes of common folk, and the more they focused on it, the more the rumors seemed true.
One day, when the people’s hatred outweighed their fear, and everyone around them was convinced of the situation, the countdown to the Church’s doom began.
“But looking back now, perhaps the countdown had already started moving quietly before that…”
The suppression efforts abruptly halted later, not solely because the higher-ups of the Temple Church began to realize they had fallen into Saint George’s cunning scheme.
In fact, the bigger reason was that soon after, they found themselves without the resources or finances to deal with the situation seriously.
According to the Knights Commander, and in my own understanding at that time, the Holy City Council was actually working on new measures. They planned to use the same old trick, like how they marketed my “d*ath” back in February to shift the public’s gaze. The Church wanted to fabricate another super hot event, stamping it as the “headline” in the Church Gazette, ready to distribute widely—the event had already been decided, and they had even thought up the title: “Sword Saint Ryan Destroys Heretic City! Graceful Scale Knights’ Hooves Sound in the Eastern Continent, Slaying the Heretic Leader, and the Truth of the Cult Declares its Doom! Peaceful Times Shall Finally Arrive!”
They would set this day as a new holiday, calling on all countries to prepare celebrations and engage in a continent-wide carnival—”God’s people” are easy to fool; as long as they feel immense comfort, those old, low-probability “discomforts” that threaten them will soon be forgotten.
However, this plan ultimately died before it even took off.
The main reason it couldn’t be implemented was that even before the Sword Saint could bring back good news from the Eastern Continent, they hadn’t even officially settled on who would lead the campaign to eradicate the heretic stronghold. Suddenly, the Church’s Gazette office located in Abedoria’s Holy City was raided overnight.
And the attackers could only be insiders from the Gazette office.
That night, the Holy City erupted in a shocking explosion, a glorious golden light shot into the sky. Almost the entire street—a street where the priests working for the Church Gazette lived—was wiped clean, including the largest printing workshop in the Western Continent. As a result, the Gazette’s entire workforce, except for the perpetrator of the explosion, could not escape the disaster.
Those responsible soon found themselves captured by the jail officers rushing over. After some torture-filled interrogations, they discovered it was merely a draft cleric. The extreme reason for his actions? He was guilt-ridden after hearing about the Church’s experiments. Wanting to voice his outrage through his position, he was continually suppressed by the upper-ups. In despair, he felt such an institution only facilitated the lies of the corrupt and misled the masses, and in a moment of anger, he committed an irreversible act.
Well…
Ridiculously, those underground jail officers, known for their skill in torture and meticulous planning, didn’t doubt the story at all and hastily closed the case claiming “personal extreme actions.”
This infuriated Pope Angel.
He slammed the table at the council meeting, roaring to have a thorough investigation into how such a powerful explosive ball, capable of obliterating an entire street, was obtained by a mere draft cleric. However, two months later, the jail gave their response: they couldn’t find the source, and the culprit had committed s*icide in his cell. Based on the current intelligence, it was likely the work of Saint George.
“Of course!”
The Knights Commander said, glaring furiously, “Even a fool would know this is Saint George’s dirty work. He’s hated the Gazette office for ages, but at that time, he was still in jail. The Holy City’s lockdown is tight; there’s no way such a powerful explosive could have fallen into the hands of outsiders or the black market. It HAD to have been obtained through Church channels, and there are only a handful of people in the entire Temple Church capable of making that kind of thing! Who’s helping Saint George? Who dares to help Saint George?!”
“That slippery Simon, sitting in the position of jailor, just collecting a paycheck with a scary face! He only knows how to line his pockets! Who does he dare to investigate? He doesn’t want to offend anyone! He just wracks his brain to fool the Pope!”
From the mouth of the Knights Commander, that jailor named “Simon” was practically the embodiment of evil; he might as well have been wearing the same pants as Saint George—only because there wasn’t any evidence. Unintentionally, I discovered that this guy actually seemed quite straightforward; without evidence, even in front of me, he wouldn’t casually smear someone’s reputation—yet Simon dared to mislead the Pope because, by then, the council was already on shaky ground. No matter how angry the Pope was, he wouldn’t make things more chaotic. He couldn’t punish any of the higher-ups in the Temple.
Everyone was scrambling to deal with two pressing issues.
One was that after the rumors spread far and wide, let alone the Church’s drastically diminished credibility in the Western Continent, there were already different factions organizing protests. Compared to this, the families and devout believers within the Church and even the Knights, like the Commander, had channels to verify the facts, unlike ordinary folks’ baseless rumors.
And since matters had escalated to this point, for these people to uncover the truth was actually quite easy—they had members with the ability to mobilize, or some of them were already members of the “Owl.”
Thus, they quickly discovered that back when Saint George was still in charge of the Currency Exchange, there were indeed people within the Church who’d been channeling a hefty amount of annual tax and donation money into unclear destinations through private operations.
And this shady business was going on nearly under everyone’s noses.
Where did that money go?
Was it really being used for the so-called “experiments”?
But what were the formats and purposes of these experiments?
Who was behind the scenes, engaging in such deranged activities?
And it seemed they had been at it for many years, indeed.
The last trail they could trace the money to was only a vague concept labeled “improvement of medical technology and herbal studies.” However, whether these endeavors were legitimate, or if such a massive amount of money was truly required annually, many prominent clerics knew well in their hearts.
And after verification, they found all these trails ultimately led to the highest authority within the Holy Church—the Pope himself.
Thus—
Both overt and covert pressure, inquiries, all came crashing down upon the Temple Church.
Meanwhile, the second issue, the more severe one, was that the “Chain of Divine Lock,” which shackled the rampaging Mother Deity, was on the verge of collapse. The ancient deity’s remains were developing irreparable cracks, and the divine power it held began leaking out. The filthy body attempted to break free from the seals more frequently, and Pope Angel and council members began visiting the depths of the jail more and more frequently, staying longer each time…
This was something the Knights Commander only figured out months later, but back then, some high-ranking church officials in the Holy City had gradually sensed something amiss.
Faced with the immense pressure of these two matters and countless arrows of questioning, Pope Angel was finding it hard to bear; he had no choice but to start revealing the truth to those clergy who might actually be able to help.
Among them were the Commander of the Fourth Knights Order and his family.
