Crocodile Island, as a guest of the Eternal Sect, offered up a significant gift.

The clash of royal and divine powers, striking without shattering.

Aran is not all Duguli; as the capital of the Cast Province and the repository of collected treasures and cultural heritage from various countries, it has formed an art capital, its economy consistently ranked in the top ten.

What status does Paris of Napoloon hold, and what status does Duguli hold?

This nation is like layered milk tea; the upper and lower layers are not the same flavor.

Under the Military Government, the funding for health care and education is quite limited, creating a vast cultural gap.

Intelligentsia can indeed contribute significantly, but the illiterate are countless; those with some specialized training are rare animals, usually forced into school by their elders if conditions are slightly better, yet they are not suited for it, nor is there a paved path for them—better to drop out and head to the adventurer guild for a few bottles; knowledge has been monopolized.

The influence of the Royal Court may be greatly amplified, but local minor nobles might just as well be illiterate, deciding on a whim during criminal governance.

Most people live by selling their labor; some in towns far from traffic hubs, which are the most widespread locales—such as Galen's hometown—struggle just to get by. Surely, Black Sword Netherflame isn't going down to the countryside to deliver a color TV to you, right?

Don't expect the Emperor's troops to care about the good of the common people; wronged or mistreated, disturbing the Military Master's drinking mood, not being killed with one strike is already mercy.

At times like these, the Holy Personnel of the Eternal Sect are needed, ready to help you solve your problems and act as official guardians.

In this tug of war, Aran reached a state of equilibrium, the country's most blank but also most crucial area, in the cultural field, controlled by the Pope.

In Aran, where military and police walk with impunity, the reverence for the Emperor is more often fear, the one who casually slays Dragons, the killer of the old Aran King to thank all under heaven, a man more dreadful than the Chief of Secret Department—who has the courage not to fear him?

And for the new big brother of religion on the Western Continent, the reverence for the Pope is more respect—although strictly within the realm of the Aran National Church's state operations; barbarians, keep away. Bloody heretics, come to Aran to beg? Foreign lands are like horse urine, while Aran is the national cellar, soft on the palate, smooth down the throat.

Without the Eternal Sect, the Emperor would be able to excessively tax and expand madly, accelerating the domination of the Western Continent, the path to becoming king.

But the consequence of such an act would be internal looseness, shaky foundations.

It is only by using each other that they stand as today's unshakeable leader of the continent, rapidly rising yet with a foundation as solid as rock, the Heavenly Soldiers devastating in all directions.

However, in the power struggle, two heroes cannot coexist; a tiger's toss and a dragon's grip, one must be wounded.

After more than twenty years of standoff, contradictions have gradually become irreconcilable and out of control. Major incidents are not a trifling matter; the emphasis is on fighting without breaking, contending without injuring.

We must fight, but when to fight, where to fight, and who to call upon.

Who loses, who concedes.

The results were already in.

With the Advancement Movement, chaos was sure to follow, seizing the time of heaven.

Mulong Duchy, a foreign land of strangers, providing strategic advantage.

The remnants of the old court, the Eighteenth Formation of the Time Sword, the shadow of disaster from the Aran Army General of Crocodile Island.

One could certainly say it's a favorable climate.

Not only did Crocodile Island leave Zote and his party hanging at the supply station, but there was also a surprise gift.

The local resistance forces of Mulong, blessed by the faith of the Holy True God, were full of madmen; once the troops amass and any point on the front weakens, the Resistance Army would certainly bite into this gap and sabotage the railway.

Not to mention that Crocodile Island deliberately showed weakness to lure the enemy deeper in.

Even Crocodile Island could not help but admire these ignorant people who believed they were impervious to swords and spears after baptism with water steeped in Scriptures—an ignorance bordering on the tragic, willing to use themselves as cannon fodder to destroy the railway.

But Crocodile Island merely slaughtered them like dogs.

What Crocodile Island lacked the least were workers and materials—just reconnect the line, and it's also easier to fish for benefits from Cicero.

Not far to the nearest town, just a few miles away, the supply station was built here to drain the pond to get all the fish.

The stark wilderness, the yellow sand of foreign lands.

The sound of horse hooves fluttering, dozens of brown horses galloping in, dust swirling, the foreigners wielding sound fire, with scimitars at their waists, heads wrapped, feet bound.

The deputy's concern was not unfounded; this mission was fraught with difficulties, enemies from both within and abroad pressing in.

Eager to establish authority and show his methods, Zote, out to gain the trust of his subordinates, only brought along a few civilian Priests.

The pampered Priests, who had never seen such a display before, turned and fled; fortunately, they hadn't gone far, able to run back within seven or eight minutes to allow the people inside the train with the Time Sword to handle them.

Hearts pounding wildly, a matter of life and death, they had never run so fast in their lives.

Their brains crashing, they even neglected the fact that humans can't outrun horses.

He didn't pay any attention to the situation behind him and couldn't hear the neighing of the horses that was diminishing, along with the increasingly faint Mulong war cries that had come to a halt.

He ran desperately, having forgotten the time.

A Priest hurried back to the train, exhausted, his legs trembling, and he collapsed on the ground, gasping for air.

The Time Sword on standby inside the train had also noticed the commotion early on.

Upon hearing the message, the deputy hand hadn't expected the mission to fail before it had even begun. The self-important Commander thought too highly of himself, taking only a handful of civil officials and charging ahead of his troops. He hadn't returned; could he already be lying dead out there?

Damn, this train was the only way back to Aran, and aside from alongside the railway, nowhere was safe; they could be intercepted and killed by the local citizens at any moment.

The Time Sword's Eighteenth Formation, along with Zote, numbered thirty-one men. Though few in number, each was a match for a hundred, blessed with miracles, masters of swordsmanship, and some had even undergone the scorching throat and cutting tongue ritual as children, dedicating their lifetimes to the Eternal and Time Dragon.

There were also more than ten train carriages of heavy, canned goods meant for conquering Mulong.

"Let's leave some people here and go take a look."

The deputy hand dared not dawdle; he took ten Time Swords, draped in white robes and wearing gold-dragon plated helmets, and the heavily armored number thirty Heavy Priest in jet-black iron plate armor, and marched toward the scene of the incident.

A few minutes later.

When the deputy hand arrived at the scene, bodies and horses were strewn everywhere; blood pooled into lakes, and the Gobi was submerged in a fresh red.

Zote had left without carrying any weapons, using only a scimitar captured from the hands of the Resistance Army.

He was a man who only used a blade.

In this world, there was nothing that a blade could not cut through.

The only consideration was whether the blade was fast enough.

Of the dozens of horses, only a little more than ten remained, and the heads of the others lay on the ground, the cuts as smooth as mirror surfaces.

Among all the people, only one was left alive; the rest's heads were rolling on the ground.

The deputy hand had just arrived as the battle ended; one head seemed to have been freshly severed, its eyes blinking, then freezing.

Each living thing bore only one wound—a neat, plate-like cross-section on their necks that was still bubbling out blood, so vividly alive.

Not a single strike had been anything less than fatal.

It was merely a harvest, like the sweep of a sickle through a field of wheat, and nothing more.

Not only the deputy hand but even the Time Swords beneath their helmets were astonished. Human strength has its limits; even an Aran Army General, when outmatched and exhausted, could only await execution.

This operation's Commander was no ordinary man.

The only survivor was a young man lying on the ground, with Zote pressing the blade to his throat, tears flowing from his eyes.

Their explosives were just rudimentary barrels of black powder, strapped to packhorses, and because this young man lagged behind under the burden of a heavy load, he escaped the fate of being harvested.

Zote pondered for a moment, the opportunity he had painstakingly negotiated with his former subordinate Marcus, had to be cautiously taken step by step.

There had to be room for maneuver in this affair; it was not to be a total massacre.

"In the town we are going to visit, you will tie your comrades' severed heads with ropes and hang them beneath the town gates, and then I will spare the lives of everyone in that town.

Otherwise, I will start a purge under the pretext of inspecting the Resistance Army and massacre everyone here.

Furthermore,

you can convert to the Church Court."

Zote set down the scimitar but made a point to cut the youth's skin slightly, letting a bit of blood, which was for the best.

The deputy hand knew that they had come to forcefully establish churches, but wasn't this overdoing it?

"There's no need to display the heads; we are here to assimilate, not to conquer,"

the deputy hand suggested.

"How else will you know whether they are simply pretending to obey you while secretly following their own will? The Church Court is rich enough to rival countries, and we can compensate for what was taken away by Crocodile Island."

There were some things Zote would never say out loud.

The Aran people believed in the Dragon Lord because the Church provided them with benefits.

How many truly served the Dragon Lord?

Power was indeed fascinating. Slaves were fervently devoted to the whip that kept them in ignorance, even though it was but charity plundered from others.

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