The Great Arcanist Who Traveled Through the World of American Variety Shows.

Chapter 632: Three Sects Merge
After destroying the surrounding countries, the Western Roman Empire restored its original territory, and Richard's reputation grew.

By this time, monotheism had completely lost any advantages.

The Vatican was still in that great hall, and everyone gathered here once again.

"The Visigothic Kingdom has been destroyed and our plan has failed," said a cardinal.

"What do we do next?"

After the Visigothic Kingdom established monotheism as its state religion, monotheism invested a large amount of resources into the Visigothic Kingdom. Missionaries, food, craftsmen and other materials were transported to the Visigothic Kingdom in large quantities.

It can be said that the rapid development of the Visigothic Kingdom in the past two years was entirely supported by monotheism.

Originally, everyone thought that it would be acceptable for monotheism to flourish during the Visigothic period, and then rely on the Visigothic Kingdom as a base to develop in all directions, while also responding to the Roman Church.

By then, monotheism will certainly be able to suppress polytheism again.

However, when monotheism was developing in full swing, the Roman Empire suddenly took action and directly destroyed the Visigothic Kingdom, and the rapidly growing monotheism was directly interrupted.

Moreover, because of Richard, the Monotheism originally wanted to take a gamble, but ended up suffering a crushing defeat once again.

After conquering the Visigothic Kingdom, Richard directly ordered the abolition of monotheism as the state religion and promoted freedom of religious belief.

At the same time, he cooperated with the equal distribution of land and the release of slaves order, successfully regaining the hearts of the people of the entire Visigothic Kingdom. It can be said that the monotheistic religion's investment in the Visigothic Kingdom, which cost a lot of manpower and material resources, was directly bankrupted by him.

The failure of the Visigothic Kingdom directly consumed a large amount of wealth accumulated by monotheism. At this time, even if monotheism was given another opportunity to invest, they would not be able to come up with much money.

It can be said that monotheism now has not much room to go.

"Recently, according to the letters sent back by missionaries, our missionary work in the Visigothic Kingdom has been a complete failure. The polytheists have used farming techniques and tools to spread their religion in the Visigothic Kingdom."

"Many of our Lord's original believers have been pulled over by them. If this continues, all our investments in the Visigothic Kingdom will be wasted," said another cardinal.

"Is there any way to meet His Majesty?" asked one of the cardinals.

"It's useless. We have requested several times, but His Majesty did not agree. He only promised religious freedom and would not suppress monotheism."

"He did not suppress monotheism, but he has been strongly supporting polytheism. This behavior is unfair to us!" said the cardinal angrily.

"The money, food and supplies are in his hands. They are all his. He can give them to anyone he wants! Can we force him to support us?" said the Pope sitting in the main seat in a deep voice.

"If this continues, we won't be able to compete with polytheism." Another bishop nearby sighed.

"Now we have to make a choice. Should we temporarily reconcile with the other two sects and deal with polytheism together?"

"Must we compromise with heresy?"

"Things no longer allow us to hesitate!" everyone in the group said.

In fact, they knew very well that they had another choice, which was to assassinate Richard, just like they had used the Spear of Longinus to kill the last apostate Roman emperor.

However, after experiencing the assassination of the emperor last time, the polytheistic priests were extremely wary of the monotheistic religions. They could not get close to Richard at all now, let alone assassinate him.

As for the Spear of Longinus, this holy object is not so easy to use. Once the assassination fails, what awaits the Monotheistic Church will be the suppression of a powerful empire.

Monotheism is likely to return to the underground religious model of several hundred years ago, which they cannot accept.

Finally, after some discussion, the monotheists decided to reconcile with the other two sects first and then work together to deal with the polytheists.

The Arian sect also suffered heavy losses during this period. You should know that there were many Arian believers in the Gaul province and the Germanic people before, but after Richard's reforms, the Arian faith in Gaul had basically disappeared.

Faith among the Germanic peoples was also badly damaged, and the situation in northern Italy and the Balkans was equally grim.

Plague and war caused heavy casualties here. In addition, polytheistic priests went into the plague area to preach and controlled the plague in one fell swoop, which directly gained them huge prestige. Polytheistic beliefs developed rapidly, while monotheistic beliefs were rapidly declining.

Polytheism was already able to confront Arianism head-on here, and it was still developing rapidly.

Under such circumstances, the position of Arianism became precarious. If they continued to be hostile to the Roman Church, it might not be long before they were replaced by polytheism.

The foundation of the Arian sect was not as strong as that of the Roman Catholic Church, so they naturally saw the crisis. In the end, the Arian sect agreed to reconcile with the Roman Catholic Church.

The two sides reached a temporary reconciliation and said that they would temporarily put aside the controversial religious issues between the two sides. Their first goal was to deal with polytheism. After completing the reconciliation with the Arian sect, the cardinals of the Roman Church went to Byzantium without stopping, expressing their desire to temporarily reconcile with the Gnostic sect.

The Gnostics also had a hard time. After the revival of polytheism in Greece, Greece basically became the territory of polytheism again.

Gnosticism is only practiced in parts of the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor, while other regions such as Egypt and Jerusalem have multiple religions.

If polytheism had not caused trouble in Greece, the Gnosticism and Byzantium would have united and would have quickly taken advantage of the division and decline of the Hunnic Empire to reunite Asia Minor and the Balkan Peninsula, and then suppressed Egypt and Jerusalem.

Historically, the Byzantine Empire continued to exist for thousands of years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and reached its peak in the next two hundred years.

The Byzantine Empire recovered more than 80% of the territory of the Roman Empire and almost made the Mediterranean its inland sea again.

Eventually, however, Byzantium declined again and fell in the 15th century.

The situation in Byzantium was not good at the moment, and the Western Roman Empire was ready to attack. Under these circumstances, the Gnostics finally decided to reconcile with the Arianism and the Roman Catholic Church to jointly fight against polytheism.

Under pressure from polytheism and Richard, the three monotheistic sects completed reconciliation at an unprecedented speed and decided to support Byzantium together to resist Richard.

Richard was fully aware of these little moves of the Monotheism. Although he could not use powerful magical powers, he could use his mental power.

His mental power had already left mental marks on these people, so as long as he wanted, he could know their situation at any time.

Therefore, after seeing the signs of cooperation among the three sects, Richard was alerted immediately.

"It seems that the polytheistic priests are doing a great job, and the monotheistic priests are totally unable to do anything about it!" Richard chuckled when he saw that the monotheistic priests had begun to cooperate.

"But do you think cooperation is enough?" Richard smiled.

Whether it was Arianism or Gnosticism, they were basically promoted secretly by Richard. He was able to push these two sects to compete with the Roman Catholic Church for faith and split the church, and naturally he could also destroy these two sects.

In fact, the rise of Arianism and Gnosticism was entirely due to these two saints.

The strength of these two saints far exceeds that of saints from other sects. As long as these two saints are gone, the power of Arianism and Gnosticism will inevitably plummet.

The Arian sect is okay, after all, it has some foundation, but the Gnostic sect is almost a collection of small sects, and by then it will become a mess.

Without Arianism and Gnosticism, the strength of monotheism would inevitably be greatly reduced.

As for whether the Roman Church would be happy about the disappearance of these two heretical sects, Li Ce felt that they might not have time to celebrate.

It is not easy for monotheism to integrate after a split, and more importantly, polytheism will not give it time to integrate.

Richard had left a mark on the two saints. As long as he activated the mark, the power of the holy objects in their bodies would be instantly stripped away.

They will simply become ordinary people.

After destroying the Visigothic Kingdom, Richard began to transfer his troops to the Balkan Peninsula. This time he did not send a large number of troops, but let the Extraordinary Knight lead a legion to fight.

The situation in the Balkan Peninsula is somewhat complicated. There are Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans, Macedonians and several other ethnic groups.

If Richard intervenes directly here, it is very likely to alert these countries and then unite to fight. At that time, the Byzantine Empire will also come out to support them. It will inevitably take a lot of time to pacify this place.

So Richard only had a small army at the beginning, and his banner was to help small countries restore their rule and help them expel the Huns and Byzantines.

This approach initially attracted the attention of many small countries, but when they saw that Richard did not occupy the territory here, the surrounding countries felt relieved.

Richard then began to dispatch his navy to attack the Greek peninsula.

On the Greek peninsula, polytheism has already gained an absolute advantage. With the cooperation of polytheism, this military operation was smooth sailing, and even a large-scale war did not occur.

Richard's fleet easily captured the Greek peninsula.

At the same time, Richard once again promoted the Equal Field Distribution Order and the Slave Release Order, and declared religious freedom. The entire Greek peninsula was conquered by this order.

Of course, after announcing these orders, Richard asked the polytheists to modify the doctrines of some sects here, and at the same time completely cut off the belief in several gods such as Zeus, and changed it to a polytheistic religion with Athena as the main god.

(End of this chapter)