Riding and Slashing

Chapter 235 The Council of Priests

"Alyssa, your tongue style is unusual... and your accent doesn't look like someone from the continent of Pendor. Are you from the continent of Amala?"

Of course, the lord saw the forked tongue and heard her distinctive accent. It seems that even within the Snake Cult, Alyssa belongs to a special category.

So even though time is running out now, he still intends to ask clearly.

Alisa looks like she came from the headquarters of the Snake Cult. Maybe she can bring some information or enlightenment.

"You guessed my accent right, hiss... I used to be a priestess of the Snake Cult... note the 'was'! They told me I was born in the Bacchus Empire, but all my memories are... in In the Religion. Hiss... I have apostate and will never join again. I saw your subordinates fighting against the Religion, and now the Religion is chasing me, so I must find a powerful leader Follow, more people will always hiss... More power.!"

Alisa is really awkward when she speaks, and she will make a 'hissing' sound from time to time, which is very uncomfortable to hear.

Obviously, she should have been educated to speak like this since she was a child, and she didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with speaking like this...

Moreover, after the tip of her tongue is split in two, it will be more difficult to speak. It seems that it will be difficult for her to change this speaking style in her life.

"The god religion... huh... apostate? You are the priestess of the Snake Cult Temple in Amara? Why do you want to leave the Snake Cult?"

The lord noticed Alisa's wording - the religion.

"I really shouldn't poison my competitors. If I knew in advance that I would be exiled to the continent of Pendor, hiss...but the goddess of mercy will know that I only do this to make life easier for those who follow the true god. Better... hiss!"

Alyssa's words were a little jumpy, but they could still be understood. It seemed that she had used some disgraceful means in the competition among the priestesses within the Snake Cult.

"Goddess of Mercy? Wait... What are you competing with those so-called competitors you mentioned?"

The lord was a little surprised. He realized that this former priestess probably had a very high status in Amala's Snake Cult base camp!

Moreover, Alyssa's so-called apostasy is probably just a rebellion against the current ruler of the Snake Cult - she still believes in Aziz Dahaka, and calls her the goddess of mercy...

"All priestesses want to be the messengers of the goddess, and only the high priest can convey the will of the goddess... Hiss... But the current god religion is completely deceived by incompetent people who weave lies! Hiss... the god religion is no longer It is a beautiful paradise, and the kingdom of God is full of wailing!"

Alisa is completely undisguised. It seems that her long-term life in the temple has made her very self-confident in communicating with people - she doesn't care whether others can understand or not.

This is the expression of the magic sticks.

But Alisa obviously didn't realize that her way of speaking was difficult for ordinary people to understand.

The living environment in childhood has a deep-rooted influence on people.

No wonder Lisa Dilan asked the lord to communicate with her. It is estimated that it is difficult for Lisa Dilan to understand Alisa's jumping and vague way of speaking...

But the lord understood something.

"What happened to the Snake Worship Cult in Amara Continent...?"

Li Ang heard the meaning of Alisa's words, and guessed that the huge power established by the Snake Worship Cult in the Amala Continent might have some serious problems.

"Hiss... famine!"

Alisa sighed sadly.

"So... the Snake Cult's sudden attack on Pendor this time is actually because of the famine in the Amala Continent?"

Li Ang's comprehension ability was indeed better than most people's. Although Alisa couldn't speak clearly, he still understood.

"Hiss...the current temple will not act according to the will of the goddess at all... Hiss, the gods are no longer the goddess's gods!"

Alisa nodded, and continued to briefly and jumpily talk about the inside story of the Snake Cult that she knew.

A few minutes later, the lord took a deep look at Alyssa, and then looked back in the direction of Emperor Lingang. He understood what was going on.

Alyssa is a priestess trained by the Snake Cult since she was a child. She has been living in the Snake Cult temple on the continent of Amara.

This is the headquarters of the Snake Cult, and it is also the place where the will of the gods is delivered to the Snake Worshipers everywhere.

It is no secret that the Snake Worship Church has taken baby girls from all over the world, especially young noble girls, and sent them to the temple to be trained as priestesses.

Many nobles also joined the Snake Cult because their children were abducted.

Although it is a cult organization, the identity recognition between nobles and commoners among the believers is still deeply rooted. Up to now, abducting noble girls and training them to become priestesses has become the standard procedure of the Snake Worship Cult.

The Snake Cult believes that only a pure maiden can be the carrier of Az Dahaka-this is also consistent with the dark goddess Ereda.

In order to ensure the 'purity' of the priestesses, all priestesses drink special poison continuously from childhood.

This poison will make them very attractive, and it will also make them immune to most diseases, including the red death, but it will also make them poisonous all over their bodies, and their kisses are fatal to ordinary people.

It is precisely because of taking poison since childhood that their life spans are very short, and they often die of no illness in their 30s.

As for the forked tongue - this is a ceremony when becoming a priestess, cutting the tip of the tongue in half, which represents their identity in the Snake Cult.

The sign of the tongue is a trivial matter, it only leads to an accent, but the whole body is poisonous, which means that it is impossible to get love between men and women for a lifetime, so these priestesses can only focus on power when they grow up. scramble on.

In the special environment of the temple, many priestesses learned to fight and fight when they were teenagers, and lying and deceiving were their daily life.

Like Alisa, there are many priestesses who grew up in the temple. Limited by the basic traffic of this era, most priestesses have never left the temple. They can learn to fight for power in the temple full of lies, but they are not at all. They don't know how to govern a huge religious country.

The power of the Snake Cult was originally concentrated on the original high priest. The identity of the high priest was very mysterious and he wore a mask all the time. No one knew what he looked like or who he was.

The high priest has only ruled the Snake Cult for a few decades.

However, in the past few decades, the Snake Cult has developed from nothing to a huge force, and then gradually completely wiped out the powerful old Bacchus Empire in the Amara Continent, and established a religious country covering the entire Amara Continent. And forcing the Maritine Empire, which was split from the Bacchus First Empire, to surrender, it was brilliant for a while.

Obviously, the High Priest was quite a capable ruler, even if his methods were somewhat peculiar.

In the era when the high priest ruled the Snake Worship Cult, the priestesses were just messengers used to spread the word, and servants used to serve the high priest, and their functions were generally similar to those of eunuchs in some feudal dynasties.

But after the death of the high priest, everything changed.

The high priest died so suddenly that he left no will and did not have time to prepare for his death.

So, after some botched scrambles without a teacher, a priestess came to the throne.

After that, the temple of the Snake Cult became a gathering place for conspiracy, and the priestesses suddenly had new targets, and generations of priestesses began to ingest rights that did not belong to them.

From an aristocratic baby girl to a temple priestess, and then to a high priest, this seems to have become a conventional path to superiority, and under the influence of the Senate parliamentary system of the Guacax Empire, another parliamentary system has been formed—— Council of priests.

In view of their short lifespan, they even came up with a four-year general election system...

But the problem is, girls who were kidnapped and trafficked since childhood, then grew up in the temple of the Snake Cult, and have almost never seen the outside world, what can they understand?

They can't even control the army - they don't understand it at all.

It's just that most Snake Worshipers do follow the orders of the temple, and the council built by the priests is indeed the highest authority.

But because the builders of this nondescript power organization have been poisoned since they were young, not only can't contact the opposite sex, they can't even get friends, and they haven't seen the world... Most of the priestesses are a bit perverted.

As a result, under the rule of priests generation after generation, the Snake Cult, which had almost ruled the entire continent of Amala 150 years ago, made little progress in the following 100 years.

Not only that, but also allowed the descendants of the old Bacchus Empire that had already been conquered to re-establish the Ashborn Empire on the ruins. Now, the Ashborn Empire can even fight the Snake Cult...

On the contrary, it was the Snake Worshipers who were sent to the Pendor Continent before, and gradually formed a climate in the New Bacchus Empire.

But the priestesses still regard going to Pendor Continent as a kind of exile, and they still only see the temple in their eyes...

For hundreds of years in a row, the rulers did not know how to govern. In this case, the Snake Cult has not been destroyed. It can only be said that this is the innate advantage of the religious forces... At least the brainwashing ability is really strong, and the acquisition of believers by pyramid schemes is still continuing , although it has continued to deteriorate.

And in the land ruled by the Snake Cult, the lives of the believers are getting worse and worse.

The decree of the Snake Worship Cult is not to eat meat, nor to drink alcohol.

Originally, this was the standard set by the first-generation high priest—he said it was an oracle.

But according to the understanding of the lord, this was probably specially requested by the high priest in order to make up for the aftermath of the war caused by joining the Snake Cult and destroying the ancient empire when he first overthrew the Amara continent.

By not eating meat or drinking alcohol, more land and resources can be used to grow food and vegetables.

After experiencing uninterrupted chaos and wars, the Amara continent was probably completely destroyed by the flames of war. This standard requirement for food can actually feed more people.

But those priestesses who won the rights later obviously didn't understand the reason, they just blindly asked not to allow it - because they were taught since childhood that meat and wine are harmful and cannot be eaten...

If it is just that meat is not allowed, then it is actually not a big problem. After all, the original place of origin of the magic artifacts such as potatoes and corn in the Amara continent, potatoes can provide most of the nutrients for the human body.

The problem is, the priestesses don't know how to encourage farming either...they don't even have the concept.

Among the affairs they can get in touch with, the more attractive ones are obviously those wars and conquests - the conquest of the ancient empire, the conquest of Cato, the conquest of Maritim, the conquest of Pendor, the conquest of everything...

So they kept launching wars, without considering the life and death of the believers at all-anyway, they were supplied with a large amount of vegetables and fruits every day in the temple, and most of them didn't even understand that these foods were to be grown!
As a result, after hundreds of years of continuous 'conquest', the originally rich continent of Amara became dilapidated.

Almost none of the believers are engaged in farming and animal husbandry, and there are countless gold and silver treasures and weapons inherited from the Guacax Empire. However, even the believers are almost unable to support the huge Amara continent.

In today's Amala Continent, in the territory of the Snake Cult, there is no decent farming and animal husbandry... Everything is only considered for fighting.

People from the ancient empire who were good at farming were thinking about how to become warriors of the Snake Cult and improve their status so that they could have enough to eat.

The Gujatu people who were good at animal husbandry were almost completely wiped out, leaving only a group of slaves who raised war horses.

The Maritine Empire, which had a well-developed fishery industry, became a warship production base...

The Snake Worship Cult is actually very rich. They have acquired a huge amount of wealth through continuous conquest, but this wealth has not been used for the lives of the believers.

Almost all resources have been turned into weapons and equipment, or used to decorate the temple—the priestesses are very obsessed with various decorations. Today's Snake Worship Cult even lower-level warriors wear expensive viper equipment. The complicated patterns on the armor cost a huge amount of money.

But those patterns are actually purely decorative, just to be more similar to the viper-this is the aesthetic view of the priestesses.

The original propaganda of 'rebuilding a beautiful heaven' was just a superficial effort. The temple of the Snake Worship Cult was decorated into a huge and magnificent castle, but the believers couldn't even eat.

But this lack of food made the believers even more belligerent—they were all quite willing to invade other places, such as Pendor Continent.

This kind of cult country will always make believers poor and trapped, whether it is intentional or not.

After all, poor and destitute people are more willing to die for the gods.

As for Alisa, she is probably considered to be relatively smart among the priestesses.

She went to some ports to pass on the "Goddess' will" and saw the poor low-level believers. She wanted to absorb power to change this situation.

It's just that she doesn't have much experience in scheming, she naively thought that poisoning the other priestesses would allow her to ascend to the throne...

After a failed poisoning operation, she was exiled to Pendor - not because the High Priest in power had been lenient in not killing her, but to strengthen his control.

The logic of the current high priest is actually not complicated-Alyssa murdered other priestesses is a fact, so she claimed that Alyssa fled Amara with a large army and went to the continent of Pendor after failing to rebel.

This is because the priestesses have never been able to really control the army. The high priest wants to use this method to let these expeditionary forces be completely controlled by herself instead of submitting to the priest council.

Of course, regardless of success or failure, it is impossible for Alisa to return to the temple alive, and a team of Snake Cult warriors has been watching her.

(End of this chapter)