Wasteland: My items are infinitely upgraded.

Chapter 249: The Scorching Sun Siege War, the Scorching Sun Priest

After hearing the Knight Commander's words, the other knight captains and trainee Templar Knights looked at each other in confusion.

Several old knights who were over 500 years old had their eyes flashing, as they had heard about the important strike that the Knight Commander mentioned.

That was a special operation that happened six hundred years ago. It was so large in scale and scale that even a third-level bishop led the operation in person to prevent any changes.

The intensity of this action was comparable to the city-destroying battle at that time.

It's comparable to a national war.

Therefore, it was also recorded and became a major event in the six thousand years after the birth of the god.

Later generations called it the Battle of the Scorching Sun.

It was a devastating attack launched by the three holy cities of the Holy See against the Cult of the Fiery Sun in the wasteland.

The entire process lasted ten years, from 6440 to 6450, during which more than members of the Knights Templar participated, and third-level bishops participated more than ten times.

The scale of the war was several times more intense than another great papal war that took place a hundred years later.

That is the attack of the Holy Spring Cult on the City of Savior.

The cause of the Fiery Sun Encirclement and Suppression War was that the evil followers of the Fiery Sun Cult spread their faith in several holy cities of the Vatican and secretly recruited followers.

At its peak, nearly 5% of the lower-class people were bewitched by the cultists and became believers of the Cult of the Fiery Sun. They voluntarily absorbed the energy of the Fiery Sun Curse, burying curse bombs in their bodies that could explode at any time.

Don't underestimate this 5%, it may seem small, but the population of the Holy City is as high as one million, at least around one million. The one million here refers to the people in various districts of the Holy City who have boarded the mobile city.

Equivalent to the superiors and servants on the Oasis battleship.

According to the ratio of ten to one, there are at least six to seven million, or even tens of millions, of people around the entire holy city.

Among them, there are about two to three million permanent residents driving cars outside the city, and the remaining four to five million are the lowest-level survivors, just like the barbarians near the oasis.

There is neither a fixed place to stay nor a means of transportation.

They can only live near the holy city, picking up leftovers and garbage discarded by the upper class, and barely making ends meet.

Or they sell themselves into slavery in exchange for a small foothold in a cage and a barely surviving life below the poverty line.

This is a huge lower-class population.

Due to limited and scarce resources, half of the survivors are destined to go hungry. Otherwise, if the upper-level evolvers are not full, especially the third-level bishops, it will be an even more terrifying thing.

The lower-level people will just starve, and it won't cause much trouble. But if the high-level evolvers are starving to death, they will definitely use any means to plunder food, and then the entire settlement will be in chaos.

Therefore, keeping more than half of the survivors in a state of not starving to death is the most effective way to activate the enthusiasm of the people below and plunder and collect resources to the greatest extent possible.

However, such a high-pressure system will also provide opportunities for external forces to take advantage of it.

People always become more determined when they are in desperate situations. Ambitious people will firmly believe that they can change their fate, while the vast majority of ordinary people will seek spiritual sustenance and become dependent on illusory beliefs.

They hope that the existence they believe in can one day pull them out of suffering.

The Holy Spring Church actually did a very good job in this regard. The spread of the faith in the Lord of the Holy Spring brought spiritual comfort to the lower-class people, who accounted for more than half of the population.

At the same time, the church will distribute welfare from time to time.

This includes free food aid and free water to prevent large-scale starvation among the lower-class people.

But this can only maintain overall stability and alleviate the food crisis, but cannot solve the fundamental problem.

Although the Holy See will not want to solve it.

In this situation, the elimination rate of the bottom level is actually much higher than that of other levels. They live in dire straits all the time. If they don't have one or two meals, they will be eliminated directly, die, or become food for others.

The lower-class marginalized people who have extremely poor risk resistance need a sense of security even more.

Especially the sense of security that the church cannot give them.

In order to survive, these people don't care about what will happen in the future.

When the cultists of the Fiery Sun Cult came here, they only needed one or two full meals to win over people's hearts and make these dying people at the bottom of society work for them regardless of everything.

Five percent, multiplied by the five million bottom population, is a full 250,000!
After absorbing the energy of the scorching sun curse, this group of people will experience a slight increase in their enhancement level within a short period of time. The enhanced cells and evolved flesh and blood in their bodies will also be stimulated when the scorching sun energy invades, and will burst out with their ultimate potential.

In this way, even if the enhanced strength of these lower-level populations is only in the early or middle stages, and most of them are in the early stages, with the temporary blessing of the scorching sun curse, they are enough to rival the late-stage enhanced people in an explosive state.

Some people can even die together with the first-stage early evolvers when they spontaneously combust and "ascend".

Some of the "gifted" believers have genes that are highly compatible with the Fiery Sun energy, and can be incorporated into the Fiery Sun Cult to be cultivated as seeds.

Gathering fresh blood for the cult is also one of the purposes of this group of cultists lurking in the holy city to develop believers.

There are as many as 200,000 believers gathered near a holy city. Among them, only 10,000 diehard believers can cause a catastrophe among the millions of people.

The trigger for the incident was at the end of the year 6440, when the Holy City, after a year of rest and development, was ready to set off to complete a -kilometer journey that would take two months.

But at this critical moment, the cultists of the Fiery Sun Cult began to gather the wild people and permanent residents outside the city and launched an attack on the warships in the urban area.

They released the energy of the Curse of the Scorching Sun, burning themselves at the cost of their lives, just to slow down the Holy City's progress.

In fact, this action is meaningless, because the Holy City cannot be successfully stopped and halted because of the flesh and blood of these lower-class people.

The established migration process will definitely start on time and move forward at high speed.

The purpose of the Fiery Sun Cult doing this is naturally not to block the major holy cities, but to take advantage of the advancement of the Holy See to kill as many lives as possible.

Especially for species like humans, who have very strong vitality and spirit.

It is simply the best nourishment.

The large-scale deaths, coupled with the approach of the Fiery Sun Forbidden Zone, are enough to attract the attention of the evil spirits in the Forbidden Zone, thus endangering the safety of the global migration route.

In addition, the large amount of spontaneous combustion and the spread of the energy of the scorching sun curse can not only collect a large amount of ashes to delay the outbreak of the curse in the cultists themselves, but also enhance their understanding and tolerance of the curse energy, thereby releasing a stronger curse power.

At the same time, the death of a large number of lower-class people would not only shake the foundation of the Holy City's rule, but also undermine the credibility and majesty of the Holy See...

After this round of changes, all the major holy cities suffered varying degrees of damage, and there were three holy cities that suffered severe damage and lost millions of people.

The Holy City of Storms, to which Oasis Town now belongs, was located within it. Back then, due to its small size, the Holy City of Storms could support far fewer Third-Rank Bishops and Templar Knights than other larger, more historic holy cities...

Therefore, under the impact of the cultists, they suffered heavy losses and had to introduce external assistance, such as the Hunting Guild, Life Farm and other loose organizations, in order to quickly recover to the level before the heavy damage.

This also led to a gradual decline in the Holy See's control over the Holy City of Storms over a period of time thereafter.

After this battle, the prestige of the Holy Spring Church in the wilderness was greatly reduced. Many local forces, especially the town-level forces under the control of the church, and small and medium-sized settlements, broke out in rebellion, and the lower classes rose up.

To remedy the precarious situation and re-establish their own powerful rule, the three most severely damaged Holy Cities took the lead, and the other Holy Cities also sent several Templar teams to assist...

Form a knight legion of over a thousand people!

Led by three third-rank bishops and ten Grand Knights Templar, they launched an attack on the Cult of the Fiery Sun, intending to wipe it out in one fell swoop.

Even if it cannot be eradicated completely, at least the foundation of this large force must be destroyed, making it difficult for it to recover within a thousand years.

Thus, the ten-year-long scorching sun encirclement campaign began.

The Knight Commander at that time was just a formal knight who had just entered the middle stage of the second level. He served as the captain of a team composed of four early stage second level knights.

Responsible for the army's advance.

The stronger Knight Captains of level 26 and elite Templar Knights of the late second stage were formed into vanguard teams, responsible for searching for the headquarters of the Cult of the Fiery Sun in the wasteland.

After searching for half a year, they successfully found the altar where the Fiery Sun Cult gathered in a deserted area where few people lived.

Located between the Holy Spring Cult and the Southern Kings Alliance, near 30 degrees north latitude.

The High Priest of the Fiery Sun, who is now besieging the Knight Commander and others, had already entered this realm early on and became one of the strongest beings below the third-level king.

Moreover, he was still in his prime, yet he led his followers to complete the feat of attacking the major holy cities of the Holy Spring Sect. In the future, he had great hope of being promoted to a powerful angel of the Fiery Sun.

This is the title given to a third-tier bishop in the Blazing Sun Cult. The term "divine messenger" signifies that such a being has touched the very essence of the Blazing Sun God...

He is already able to completely integrate the energy of the scorching sun, so he doesn't have to worry about the curse of spontaneous combustion caused by the explosion of divine power. At the same time, his strength is increased exponentially.

The most important thing is that the third-level Fiery Sun God's Envoy, like the third-level Yang Evil that naturally condensed in the Fiery Sun Forbidden Zone, can walk freely in the Fiery Sun Forbidden Zone.

It is equivalent to a living evil.

Wherever it goes, countless lives will become nutrients for the scorching sun, turning into floating white smoke and water vapor.

At that time, the high priest was at the peak of his career and was only one step away from being promoted to a third-level divine envoy.

Unfortunately, he encountered retaliation from the Holy Spring Cult. Just when he was about to be promoted in the headquarters, he encountered the scorching sun encirclement battle...

Nearly a thousand Knights Templar and three third-level bishops launched a surprise attack and general assault on the headquarters where there was only one third-level envoy of God!

The final result was that not only was the high priest's precious promotion and transformation interrupted, but he was also forced to flee with serious injuries.

What's worse is that in the following nine years, the Holy See has been cracking down on the remnants of the Cult of the Fiery Sun, constantly sending teams of Knights Templar to hunt them down and issuing related bounty missions.

The Knight Commander also accomplished a feat in the subsequent pursuit:
That was to kill the successor trained by the high priest, a mid-second-order Fiery Sun Priest.

That battle was led by three elite knights in the late second stage. They worked together to hold back the high priest and find opportunities for their other subordinate companions.

At that time, the high priest was seriously injured in the general attack, which damaged his origin. He could only barely suppress the restless scorching sun curse energy in his body. There was no hope of him being promoted to the third-level divine envoy in this lifetime.

So they turned to training successors.

After lurking in various settlements and searching for many years, he finally found a being with a very high affinity with the energy of the scorching sun. He used all his resources to push it to the middle stage of the second stage.

Within a hundred years, this successor will also make an attack on the realm of the third-level divine envoy, just like the high priest did in the past.

However, at this critical moment...

The great knight acted decisively to end the life of the heir, detonating the curse of the scorching sun in his body, and letting the high priest see his own heir burn to death in front of his own eyes.

In this battle, the high priest tried his best, overdrawing his energy and vitality, and finally escaped.

But it disappeared from sight since then.

The Vatican has already believed that he was seriously injured and may have died at the hands of the curse in his body.

But what was unexpected was that the gifted high priest not only did not die, but recovered after concentrating on healing his wounds and is still alive today.

What’s more important is that after years of hardship, the high priest has now successfully led his cultists to raid and surround the knights’ squadron, and is about to complete his revenge.

At this moment, above the ruins of the ancient Zhengzhou city, the followers of the Fiery Sun Cult, wearing yellow-gray robes, are scattered in all corners, searching and exploring the movements underground.

A second-level early stage priest walked towards the leading high priest and said:

"There's no sign of activity in the sewers, and no flicker of the flame of life can be sensed..."

"These Templar Knights have most likely fled to the ruins of a refuge deep underground. It never sees the sun, and we'd be at a disadvantage if we went in and fought."

Under the high priest's hood, there was a very old face. Not only were his hair gray, but his limbs were also shriveled like a mummy.

He was so skinny and thin that he looked as if a strong wind could blow him into the air.

But it was this emaciated existence that made the cultists present respectful and the members of the Knights Templar extremely vigilant.

As a second-order evolver, the High Priest's evolutionary level of twenty-nine is enough to live for about a thousand years. He still has a little over a hundred years left to live...

It was just that the continuous injuries and overdraft of vitality six hundred years ago accelerated his aging.

But now, the high priest, who was about to reach the end of his life, had flames bursting out of his eyes.

Other early and middle stage Sun Priests could not feel the beating fire of life in the knight's body, but he instinctively locked onto the target direction.

The Templars' vigorous vitality is like an oasis in a barren wasteland, which has great appeal to dying people.

At the same time, the high priest will never forget the aura and feelings of the other party even after his death.

"They're right under that foundation. Send servants with gunpowder to blow down the structure inside!"

The high priest pointed to a pile of broken walls and ruins and spoke hoarsely.

(End of this chapter)