Yao Cheng.
A black-robed man slowly emerged from the shrine, his body was slim and completely covered by a wide black cloth.
Directly in front of him stood the tall grey idol.
The god’s face was blurred, and he remained seated in front of the stone table, as if he was looking down on the thousands of living beings at his feet.
Below the idol stood a man clad in a red cloak.
She wore a white-covered helmet with two curved antlers. The strange helmet looked like bone, or marble or alabaster, with a smooth surface that reflected cold light under the campfire.
Inside the eye holes of the helmet were a pair of sharp, indifferent red eyes.
“Yes?” The red-eyed apostle said.
The cloaked figure lifted his hood, revealing a white bone skull inside.
Fellows opened and closed his upper and lower jaws and said with some restraint, “Miss Sarina, Salt City is in complete disarray. The slave traders have transformed that city beyond recognition ……”
“So?”
Sarina was unconcerned, “That’s the mortals’ business, as long as they still believe in Lord Yao God and offer their faith. Even if they kill and bleed to death, it’s all irrelevant to us.”
“I’m just …… afraid that things will get worse.”
The skeleton man raised his words carefully, “You see, a second sun has appeared in the sky, and that event is very strange in itself. And with a portion of the citizens mutating, there’s no way to be sure if orcs are mixed in, or if they’ve turned into orcs ……”
“Both Lord Yao God and Lord White God have yet to return to this world.”
“I wonder if you could step in and straighten these things out? Population and faith are both parts of the world that God-sama cares about ……”
The female tyrant looked disdainfully at the skeleton man in front of her, “You’re teaching me things?”
“Don’t dare, don’t dare!”
“Then shut up.”
Sarina said in an almost reprimanding tone, “Remember. We serve only the Lord Gods, mortals are not our concern.”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the snowman?” Sarina asked.
“I don’t know where it is either …… Jimmy’s always running all over the world …… I’ll head back then.”
Fellows sighed and turned to leave the temple.
Suddenly, Sarina’s voice came from behind her.
“When it really comes down to it, I’ll step in.”
Phyllus let his heart drop a little.
This tyrant was very difficult to deal with, after all, the other party was an honourable demigod. She had condescended to become an apostle also because Yao Shen was powerful enough.
Phyllus missed Miss Isabel, as well as Blood Knight Nevid.
It took loss to realise what you once had.
The previous Chief Apostle, Miss Isabel, was gentle and approachable, and the Blood Knight, Nevid, was silent but reliable.
Lord God, when will you return ……
After leaving the temple, Fellows drove the Skeleton King Armadillo all the way from underground right outside Salt City. Wrapping his cloak tightly around him, he stepped through the streets and observed silently.
The city was a different place now.
Many people on the streets had chains around their necks; they were slaves. Slavers and slave traders beside them waved their whips from time to time, beating these numb-looking humanoid possessions.
Twenty years ago, after YC Mayor Shang Li was killed in a shipwreck, the merchants took control of the regime, and they censored a series of policies in Salt City.
Of these, the two most important were two.
One is the abolition of the system of mayoral administration in Salt Lake City and its replacement by a citizens’ council, which decides on the administration of the city as a whole.
The second is to legalise the slave trade.
The Citizens’ Council was nothing more than a front, the vast majority of which were merchants and the Salt Clan. The Salt Clan was the most powerful of the city’s humans because of their transcendent lineage and blood ties to Commander Salt Gale and ascetic council elder Salt Long.
The merchants and Salt Clan control the Citizens’ Council and have launched a whole programme around the slave trade.
First, they demanded that every citizen pay taxes, and everyone had to bear the expenses of building and maintaining the city.
Taxes varied by profession, with merchants paying the least, scholars the next, and peasants the most.
A large number of peasants thus fled Yancheng and went to Yaocheng in the east to resettle and farm there.
Yao City was different from Salt City in that the Temple Society did not force everyone to pay taxes.
However, because of the strong theological atmosphere, the citizens over there would donate a sum of money to the temple every year, and the Temple Guild would keep the temple neat and solemn and maintain the various expenses of this holy city. This is also an unwritten custom over there.
Once the tax policy was introduced, the crowd tendencies of the two cities were further evident.
While the citizens of Yao City are mostly farmers, hunters, fishermen and scholars, the citizens of YC are mostly merchants, artisans and wealthy people from all walks of life.
In the long run, YC will have a severe shortage of labourers.
So the legalisation of slaves was introduced in response.
Slaves could quickly replenish the labour gap in all sectors of the city.
Slaves are allowed to be bought and sold in Salt Lake City, and free citizens are allowed to sell themselves into slavery. Slaves come mainly from natives and islanders of heretical faiths overseas, criminals, and debtors.
Slaves began to gain popularity in Salt City as a universal commodity, and the cultural ethos of the city as a whole quickly shifted.
The wealthy purchased large numbers of slaves. These slaves could not only clean, carry goods, plant crops, and act as guards, but they could also be beaten and scolded at will.
And since slaves were private property, just like livestock, slave owners didn’t have to pay extra maintenance.
Therefore, the mass exodus of peasants did not make Salt Lake City less manpower. Slave traders came in with large numbers of slaves and sold them to the rich, and this cheap labour made up for the city’s vacancies.
Fellows witnessed the changes.
He had always suspected that Mayor Merchant Lee’s death had escaped them.
Unfortunately, there was a lack of evidence.
The merchants also never bring up the subject, as if it’s some sort of taboo, as if the person of Shangri-La never existed.
Another key figure was Commander Saltgren.
It’s hard for Fellows to say what’s wrong with him.
Saltgale still patrolled with the corrupters, day in and day out, never slacking off.
Unless a transcendent force invades or causes chaos in the city, Saltgale never intervenes in conflicts within the human community.
The slaves themselves were not a problem.
It was the slaves and the second sun that worried Fellows, perhaps creating a chain reaction.
Suddenly, a panicked voice came to his ears.
“The sun is out, quick, get back!”
“Gosh, why is it so early today!”
The people on the street were in chaos at this time, and they fled towards their respective houses in a desperate manner, leaving the street in a mess.
Fellows looked up.
It was only white bones, but that didn’t stop it from looking at the world with the fire of faith. This was the power that the gods had given to the apostles.
In the sky, behind the originally normal golden sun, another sun suddenly slowly emerged.
The second sun was like a shadow of the former, pitch-black in colour.
It slowly moved and moved out from behind the sun, releasing black shadows that spread out in all directions towards the sky, as if a black crack had appeared in the entire dome of the sky.
The appearance of the black sun was accompanied by a wisp of black mist in the air, and the entire world became dim.
By the corner, a wild dog lying on the ground suddenly arched its body. Its fur bulged all over its body, and it grew a circle in size, and the sound of clacking and interlocking bones came out from its body.
A black substance that looked like blood filaments appeared in its eyes, and saliva flowed from its mouth as it searched left and right for prey.
The frenzied wild dog looked to the roof of the house not far away, where a half-grown child with a missing shoe was.
The boy’s face was ashen with fear, but his body froze and shivered for some reason. He watched as the canine monster flew and reappeared, the sharp teeth in its mouth coming closer and closer, the stench of decay rushing into his nostrils.
However, in the next second, the fierce canine monster that lunged at him head-on was grabbed by a bone claw poking out from the ground, and gently pinched. The canine monster instantly collapsed limply to the ground.
Fellows picked up a shoe on the ground and handed it to the child.
“Go home.”
The child took the shoes and scrambled to put them on his feet.
“Thank you! Even though I don’t have a home ……”
“Can you tell me your name? I would like to, at least, remember your name.” The child mustered up the courage to say.
“Just someone who happened to be passing by.”
Fellows’ hood suddenly shook in the wind, revealing the hideous skull face within.
The child’s eyes widened and his face showed joy, “It’s you! Lord Phileus, the King of White Bones!”
Fellus hurriedly pulled up his hood, “You’re looking at me wrong, I’m just a pure passerby. Move along.”
“Yes, thank you, Lord Fellows!”
The child peeked back as he ran.
Fellows sighed.
What am I doing here?
Initially, he only wanted to investigate the relationship between the second sun and the beastisation. This way, when Lord Yao Shen returned, he himself could take a small credit.
The apostles under Lord Yao God’s command were all too strong, putting a lot of pressure on Phyllus. He himself was becoming more and more marginalised, and had to think of some ways to gain the attention of the gods.
What he didn’t expect was that because he had killed quite a few bestialised monsters in the course of his investigations, he had been praised by the people from all over the world, and he had also gained the elegant name of the King of White Bones, and his fame was getting louder and louder.
Nowadays, when he found civilians being attacked by monsters, Fellows always couldn’t help but strike.
One wrong step, one wrong step …… Now there is no turning back.
The skeleton man looked to the sky.
Lord Yao Shen, please forgive my vanity and weakness.
……
The other pole of the world.
The snowman runs wildly through an ice field, his snowball body rolling frantically on the ground, his red fluffy hat on his head blowing backwards in the wind.
Behind it was a group of ice trolls running in stride, using entire trees as weapons and swinging them wildly from side to side, eager to smash the tiny snowman in front of them to smithereens.
Jimmy yelled, “Stop chasing, stop chasing!”
“A dragon egg is just a dragon egg, it’s not like you guys laid the egg, can’t you go find another one! This is a gift to Lord God!”
The ice and snow giants in the back stormed, and the large trees in their hands were thrown towards the small snowman in front.
