Chapter 424: More Than One Unlucky Person

"Saito, you've provoked a massive trouble."

At the Hokkaido Prime Minister's Office, Juzo Tsukudera hosted Qi Wu Zongxuan, who had fled here.

"No one wants to provoke trouble; I just had bad luck."

Qi Wu Zongxuan emphasized this point; although he had lost the Osaka Region, it was a defeat not due to military failure.

"Juzo, you have to help me."

He looked at the man before him and said.

"How do you want me to help you?"

"Retake the Osaka Region."

"Sorry, I can't do that. I even have to worry whether my own authority here in Hokkaido will be stripped away by that Holy Son of Heaven over in Tokyo."

Juzo Tsukudera rejected Qi Wu Zongxuan's request. As fellow top brass of the Five Phoenix Society, with the other party having so easily become a stray dog, he would never stake himself to help the other reclaim his rights.

"Tomorrow there's a flight from Hokkaido Airport going abroad. I'll arrange for you to board. If you have a good place to land, you can contact my secretary before then, but if not, then I think the Moscow Safe Zone would be a good place; you can go see the snow scenery there."

Juzo Tsukudera stood up and left. Soon, sounds of things being smashed and thrown came from the reception room, but it changed nothing.

Although they were both top brass of the Five Phoenix Society, their relationship was merely mutual support.

With one side completely disadvantaged, the other being able to do this much was already not bad.

"Send me to the United States. I still have some connections there, and I'll remember this favor of yours. If there's ever a place you need me, I'll definitely repay it."

The next day, Qi Wu Zongxuan had recovered his composure, his gaze revealing a gratitude one couldn't tell was acted or genuine. Gripping Juzo Tsukudera's hand, he bid a solemn farewell to this Prime Minister of Hokkaido.

"You count as an old friend of mine. Off to a foreign land, who knows when we'll meet again. Please take care of yourself as well."

Juzo Tsukudera was also full of deep emotion, gripping the hand of this old rival, old friend, and admonished him.

Qi Wu Zongxuan boarded the plane, but after three hours of flight, he distinctly felt it descending.

"What's going on? Aren't we going to the United States?"

Qi Wu Zongxuan felt something was off, so he summoned a flight attendant on the plane to inquire.

"We are going to the United States, but we have to change planes midway. We're landing now to transfer to another aircraft."

The flight attendant replied.

"Then where is this?"

"The skies above Tokyo."

The hand reaching for a gun stopped, because the flight attendant before him had already drawn a gun, pointing the dark muzzle at him.

"Lord Saito, welcome to your visit to Tokyo."

The plane landed. An elderly man, somewhat aged but looking lean and sharp, was waiting below to receive him.

"Ziheng Xianyi, you and that guy Juzo Tsukudera betrayed the Five Phoenix Society together?"

Qi Wu Zongxuan looked at the guy welcoming him and asked through gritted teeth.

"Correctly speaking, it's not that we betrayed the Five Phoenix Society, but that we, representing the Five Phoenix Society, formally announce our abandonment of you personally."

"You defected to the Holy Son of Heaven?"

"No, the one we defected to is the Scorpion Cult."

The old man pushed up his glasses and answered.

"On the very night the Osaka Region fell, I brought a gift and went to visit the master of the Scorpion Cult. I performed dogeza to express the Five Phoenix Society's apology to Aqua-sama."

"And I informed her that the attack on the Scorpion Cult was your, Qi Wu Zongxuan's, private action, and had absolutely nothing to do with the other members of the Five Phoenix Society."

"What benefits did the Scorpion Cult give you to make you betray your own people?"

"Benefits? There were none. The Scorpion Cult gave us no benefits. It's just... we still want to live, and don't want to be dragged down by you and then killed off."

That night, Broly accepted Hiruko Kagetane's suggestion and personally found an abandoned city to film a persuasive video.

In the video, Broly had the three Major Safety Zones cooperate in arresting Pure Blood Society members; otherwise, they would end up like the abandoned city before him...

Upon seeing the scene of the city being leveled in an instant, the current Prime Ministers of the Sendai Region and Hakata Region, Inoue Shima and Umihoko Masamori, immediately communicated over, expressing their reverence for the Holy Son of Heaven, indicating willingness to obey all directives from the Tokyo Safe Zone.

On the Hokkaido side, Juzo Tsukudera also, after seeing this video, considered his own position and chose to contact Ziheng Xianyi on the Tokyo side.

After the Five Phoenix Society held an internal high-level meeting online, Qi Wu Zongxuan, who had stirred up huge trouble, became a discarded pawn.

And sending the culprit who sparked the Holy War back to Tokyo to hand over to the Scorpion Cult was the Five Phoenix Society's way of expressing sincerity.

"Aqua-sama, this is the loyalty our Five Phoenix Society offers to the Scorpion Cult. From now on we will also spare no effort to capture those Pure Blood Society members hiding among the populace for the Scorpion Cult!"

"Mm, very good. I've seen your loyalty. And our Scorpion Cult isn't a sect that kills indiscriminately without distinguishing right from wrong. We won't do that guilt-by-association routine just because the mastermind behind this bombing attack was once a member of your Five-whatever Society."

Ziheng Xianyi personally came to the door, and through Tenkō Kisara's guardian relationship, kowtowed and apologized to Aqua, presenting fine wine. This still took effect.

The Five Phoenix Society passed the test. The price was having a religious father above their heads from now on. And even with just this, Ziheng Xianyi still had to kneel and kowtow two more times, showing an appearance of tearful gratitude toward the Scorpion Cult, loudly praising Aqua-sama's benevolence.

Of course, Aqua never demanded this person do so. It's just that this person had been somewhat scared by the video of a Saiyan destroying an abandoned city with a single energy bullet.

Aqua looked at this old man Qi Wu Zongxuan, thought of the attack on the Outer District Church two days prior, and loudly announced his public execution outcome.

Matters having come to this, Qi Wu Zongxuan no longer resisted. Before the execution arriving the next day, this man was imprisoned in a detention center.

"What? Staying here, do you have something you want to say to me?"

Looking at Ziheng Xianyi, who hadn't left directly after delivering him to the detention center, Qi Wu Zongxuan let out a cold snort through his nose and asked.

"Saito, your failure certainly has to do with your bad luck, kicking the iron plate that is the Scorpion Cult. But this kind of bad luck is actually caused by your character. You're too stubborn and opinionated, wanting to force everything. In this incident, you actually didn't have the slightest intention of consulting with me."

"Heh, consult with you? Would you have agreed to me assassinating the Holy Son of Heaven, dealing with the Scorpion Cult?"

"I would not."

"What you've always thought about is replacing that old fox Tenkō Chikunojō, becoming the Advisor by the Holy Son of Heaven's side, then pulling the Holy Son into the Five Phoenix Society, wanting that little brat to become the Leader of the Five Phoenix Society!"

"Conquering the world requires force, but ruling the world requires appeasement, and I see that capacity in the Holy Son of Heaven."

"Bullshit capacity. If not for the Scorpion Cult, he'd really deserve death. If I'd known early on that the Scorpion Cult wasn't a tool religion the Holy Son of Heaven put out to manipulate hearts, I never would've provoked the Scorpion Cult."

Qi Wu Zongxuan slapped his own forehead hard. But who could have imagined that a religion that looked like merely a tool for manipulating hearts actually had a real deity-sama inside?

Kicking an ice cream bucket on the road, he ended up kicking a solid concrete pillar painted to look like an ice cream bucket; Saito Zongxuan now only felt pain, truly excruciating pain, yet he still only admitted to being incredibly unlucky, not that his capability was lacking.

"Sometimes, luck is also part of strength, and even if you didn't deal with the Scorpion Cult, as long as you want to deal with the Holy Son of Heaven, your outcome won't change."

"Hm?"

"According to the intelligence I investigated, that Scorpion Cult Judgment Chief boy named Broly was originally looking for a wife, and the Holy Son of Heaven is one of the wives he's looking for."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Just for the sake of an acquaintance, letting you die with a bit more peace of mind."

The next day, before Saito Zongxuan was hanged, he shouted 'unlucky' three times.

However, the unlucky ones weren't just him alone.

Those who joined the Pure Blood Society also had rotten luck.

The armed forces of Japan's Five Great Safe Zones that passed the Scorpion Cult's review, in the following time, began arresting Pure Blood Society Official Members en masse within the Five Great Safe Zones according to the Pure Blood Society's Official Member roster.

'The law does not punish the multitude' — pure nonsense, because these people were arrested not because of any so-called law, but because of the Scorpion Cult's Doctrine.

A terrorist attack kicked off a Holy War, and before eliminating these hostile elements with heretical thoughts, Aqua had no intention of stopping, so every day large numbers of Pure Blood Society members were arrested in the Five Great Safe Zones.

Bang bang bang...

These Pure Blood Society people lined up to accept execution, shot dead via livestream.

And although witnesses had already testified to the Pure Blood Society's atrocities in manufacturing Cursed Children, for Japan where the death penalty was hard to sentence before the disaster, hundreds or thousands of Pure Blood Society members being executed by firing squad daily was still somewhat hard to accept.

Therefore, online public opinion toward the Scorpion Cult began to turn somewhat bad.

Some human rights fighters believed the Scorpion Cult was too barbaric and cruel, that such a barbaric and cruel religion should not appear in a civilized society.

However, when someone asked about the previous Pure Blood Society also being so barbaric in dealing with some Cursed Children, why didn't you stand up and speak out?

These people would answer: because we didn't know about those things before.

And if someone continued to ask: now you know, why still speak for that Pure Blood Society scum?

These human rights fighters would answer: putting facts aside, are Cursed Children without fault?

Even if Cursed Children have no fault, hasn't the Pure Blood Society already accepted enough punishment?

Why does the Scorpion Cult still have to implicate so many people?

Executing people who merely joined the Pure Blood Society but never did bad things to Cursed Children as death row inmates?

Aqua is a Goddess-sama willing to listen to public advice; after seeing this online discourse, she thought for a bit and adjusted the execution standard, announcing publicly: 【Pure Blood Society members who have not committed substantive atrocities against Cursed Children, as long as they can report internal Pure Blood Society members who committed atrocities, can redeem themselves through meritorious service and obtain the Scorpion Cult's forgiveness.】

This was originally a good thing, but the resulting outcome was hard to bear; large numbers of already arrested Pure Blood Society members accused each other, all sorts of rotten deeds surfaced.

What group committed the crime of grabbing Cursed Children, tying them to crosses, pouring gasoline on them, and burning them? What group, to prove the faith in human pure-blood supremacy, fed poisoned food to Cursed Children in the Outer District?

Perpetrators ranged from the elderly down to adolescents.

And some methods were so cruel they were simply devoid of humanity.

However, even so, online there were actually still people whitewashing the Pure Blood Society.

Believing some Pure Blood Society Official Members did such excessive things because the Scorpion Cult hadn't appeared before.

And these people, out of fear of the Gastrea Virus, committed some inappropriate acts against Cursed Children carrying the Gastrea Virus.

Even if someone gave them popular science that as early as ten years ago, when the first batch of Cursed Children were just born, all major Safe Zones had issued announcements informing the public that the Gastrea Virus inside Cursed Children's bodies is stable and won't easily infect Ordinary People.

Those whitewashers would also use ordinary commoners not understanding such announcements, or believing the government's credibility was too low at the time, to explain it away.

In short, it's a single sentence avoiding the important and dwelling on the trivial: admitting some Pure Blood Society Official Members harming Cursed Children in the past was wrong, but believing those Official Members who did excessive things doing so in the past was a forgivable situation.

And believing the Scorpion Cult should magnanimously forgive these ignorant people, and if not forgiving, that's petty, that's lacking magnanimity.

This argument is absurd, but some bystanders were actually persuaded, thinking these online 'rational neutrals' were very right, running to the Scorpion Cult's official website to leave protest statements, hoping the Scorpion Cult would stop the bad behavior of executing those previously forgivable Pure Blood Society members.

Additionally, some called on the masses of the Five Great Safe Zones to protect real-life Pure Blood Society members, not let them be easily arrested by Safe Zone enforcement squads, and called this something every Goddess of Justice, every person with humanity should do.

Enforcement squad operations arresting Pure Blood Society Official Members were thus obstructed, even those already arrested and lining up waiting to be shot saw daily execution numbers decreasing day by day.

This even made Aqua somewhat doubt whether her insistence on maintaining the Holy War was wrong.

And just as Aqua fell into self-doubt over her own decisions, a hearty Customer arrived at the church in Tokyo's Inner City District.

"Aqua-sama, can you resurrect the dead?"

"Yes."

"Then I want to ask you to resurrect my wife."

"Eh?"

"As long as you can resurrect my wife, I am willing to give everything I possess."

"Uh..."

Aqua was somewhat unexpected; the old man who donated fifty million just to see her would say such words after meeting.

"Old sir, wait a moment, is your wife dead?"

"Yes, she died, died twelve years ago in the jaws of Gastrea."

"Ah, died twelve years ago, then does she have a corpse left?"

"No, she was eaten."

"That's regrettable; to resurrect people of This World I need a corpse as a medium, your wife left no corpse, so even if I want to help resurrect, it's fundamentally impossible."

"Is that so?"

Tenkō Chikunojō showed a disappointed expression.

"If you regret donating money, I can refund you, but only half."

Aqua said in a small voice.

"No need, but I want to say, those online opinions saying your Scorpion Cult should stop persecuting Pure Blood Society Official Members, they are right."

Hearing this, Aqua's face changed: "You old thing, you wouldn't be a Pure Blood Society person, would you?"

Tenkō Chikunojō shook his head: "I haven't joined the Pure Blood Society, I just can experience the feelings of those whose beloved relatives and friends were taken by Gastrea."

"Even if twelve years have already passed, as long as I think of my wife who died miserably in the mouths of Gastrea, I will feel extreme disgust towards Gastrea."

"But the ones who killed your wife were Gastrea, what does that have to do with those Cursed Children?"

"There is no relation, but I will still resent, because of my wife's death, I am filled with resentment towards everything related to the Gastrea Virus.

Of course, I haven't harmed Cursed Children, because I know they are important tools for my revenge against Gastrea.

However, I can control the resentment in my heart, that is because I am me, while those ordinary members of the Pure Blood Society who committed excessive acts because of resentment, their behavior is absolutely not wrong, they are merely people whose eyes have been blinded by resentment.

And if Aqua-sama you have no way to change the harm those people once suffered on Gastrea, then please do not accuse them of the heretic behavior that they committed because of resentment, which is now recognized by the Scorpion Cult as a violation of doctrine.

You are not those people, so you cannot experience their pain, nor can you understand the things they would do because of pain."

Tenkō Chikunojō bowed deeply to Aqua, having come with the hope of reviving his wife, yet leaving with the disappointment of being told his wife could not be revived.

The words this staggering old politician left behind before departing were meant to bring mental pressure to this Goddess Aqua, but he had somewhat underestimated Aqua's world-shaking wisdom.

The Scorpion Cult soon sent out a new announcement...

(Chapter End)