Chapter 45: The Priests' Dispute, Shaved Ice and the Magic Shaved Ice Machine

"It is not nonsense," the leading Sun God Church Priest said with a confident face.

The other party coughed loudly to attract the attention of everyone present: "Do not forget, nowadays my God is also a powerful deity capable of traveling outside the planet. After a period of coordination and preparation, my God's Divine Kingdom can now respond to our Priests' prayers remotely and directly descend powerful strength. Whether it is the highly skilled and heroic Sun God warriors, or the flames and bright light descending from the sky, both can thoroughly annihilate those plant monsters."

He spoke with great bravado, without considering whether the deity would even pay attention to the tiny prayers of this small place when every region required the support and help of the Sun God's Divine Kingdom. But the others present were clearly startled, and everyone looked at the Sun God Church Priests in astonishment.

These Priests also confidently puffed out their chests, their gazes meeting those of the people around them with composure.

This confidence unsettled many people's hearts.

Quite a few people present believed the other party's words because of this, and one by one they lowered their heads, pondering what changes this development would bring to the world in the future.

"Even so, we do not agree! Hey, are you not planning to say something?" The Agricultural God Church Priest immediately called out to the Church of the God of Wealth Priest and the Church of the God of the Dead Priest.

The former immediately stood up and followed suit in refuting the wild words of the Sun God Church Priest, while the Church of the God of the Dead Priest was indifferent; in any case, there were not many people in human society who believed in the God of the Dead, and even if there were, they were mostly old people whose faith had never been firm throughout their lives, who, fearing death in their old age, had fearfully sought help from the Church of the God of the Dead.

Because there were not many believers to begin with, they did not care about others changing their faith.

But as for the quarrels between the Priests, naturally, no one could convince anyone else just by talking, so they could only look toward Young Master Bell in the main seat, to see what attitude this actual manager of Sasi County now held.

After this young man deliberated for a moment, he still shook his head at the Sun God Church Priests: "Making tens of thousands of people collectively change their faith is not a decision I can make. Moreover, demanding to hold a ten-thousand-person level grand prayer right from the start carries risks that are simply too great. Although I have heard some news about the great Sun God before, even if everything is as you say, I have never seen His might with my own eyes, so how can I believe you can achieve it?"

"Why not start from a smaller place and join my counterattack plan, and show me your current strength in battle. How about it? If it is truly as you say, then our Sasi Family will naturally consider granting more help to a certain church that is more beneficial to the entire Sasi County."

The Sun God Church Priests were somewhat dissatisfied, but what Bell said was indeed reasonable; if one demanded that people unconditionally believe in their now-increased strength right from the start, who would believe that?

Slowly showing their brand-new strength to others, others would naturally lean toward them.

Furthermore, there was a deeper reason that had not been spoken: for the Sasi Family, which ruled the Northern Sasi County region, preventing any single church under their jurisdiction from becoming too powerful and thereby hindering their rule, and allowing the various forces beneath them to balance each other's power and stand in opposition, was very helpful to the Sasi Family's rule.

For example, Sasi County was originally a purely agricultural region, so naturally, the faith in the Agricultural God was very solid here; for land enfeoffment and tax increases, the Sasi Family had to discuss things with the Agricultural God Church Priests in the town at that time. It was also at that time that the Agricultural God Church spontaneously relocated a group of landless people to the undeveloped areas in the south of Sasi County, establishing a series of church-autonomous villages that were almost semi-detached from Noble rule.

There, they only barely paid the autumn grain tax to the Sasi Family once a year; besides that, they neither paid more taxes nor required protection from the Sasi Family's Knights. Therefore, although it nominally still belonged to the Sasi Family's management and rule, in fact, the Sasi Family had no power to manage that place.

It was not until the last few years, when a large amount of mineral dyes were discovered in the mountains and forests on the edge of Northern Sasi County, that the various Merchant Guilds and trading markets that were organized and flourished brought prosperity to Yemei Town, as well as the Church of the God of Wealth in the town.

At that time, because it was easy for the Merchant Guild to make money, it attracted a group of young people from surrounding villages who did not want to work honestly to join in, which could be considered a heavy blow to the local Agricultural God Church.

Even now, in many places in Yemei Town, the two churches are in a state of latent confrontation.

As for the Sun God Church and the Church of the God of the Dead, the latter does not intervene in the people's faith and only automatically sends Priests with sufficient manpower from other places according to the growth of the regional population, almost never interfering in the rule of the territory, so they are considered churches that are welcomed by all Noble Lords.

And the former, although the Sun God faith is very widespread and the Sun God also has sufficient strength, the Priests under him are often energetic and very active. But except for having some special abilities in defending everyone against darkness and driving away strange monsters at night, they cannot directly intervene in any kind of production or interfere in the people's lives, so their overall influence is still limited.

However, what was unexpected was that today, the Sun God Church Priests would shockingly demand that ten thousand people change their faith to the Sun God.

This greatly offended the other church Priests present.

After all, for those Priests, the number of believers they had often determined their personal accumulation of Divine Power, as well as the corresponding status of the Priests in the church.

If these ten thousand people really changed their faith to the Sun God, then those Agricultural God Priests might as well stop doing anything else and just commit suicide out of shame; they probably wouldn't even have the face to go to the Agricultural God's Divine Kingdom on earth to see the Agricultural God after death.

The Sun God Church Priests finally agreed to join Bell's counterattack plan, but they also had a condition: to give them a separate group of people, and they wanted to go on a separate route; otherwise, if they were mixed with others, how could they highlight the strength of the Sun God Church Priests?

Going on a separate route, the results achieved would naturally be obvious.

After Bell considered it for a while, he still agreed to the other party's request.

Therefore, because the Church of the God of the Dead was busy dealing with the corpses of the deceased people in the town, they could not participate in the counterattack plan. And the Agricultural God Church Priests specifically requested to be on the same route as Jier; after all, Jier seemed to have a good relationship with the Agricultural God Church, so it was normal to be on the same route, and because they were familiar with each other, it would not be easy for problems to arise when paired up.

And the Sun God Church Priests requested to lead troops on a separate route, so that their overwhelming strength would not be obscured by others; although there were risks in acting this way, perhaps it would also give everyone a surprise.

And the Church of the God of Wealth Priests would clearly go with Bell and the others, so it was roughly divided into three routes, which was exactly not much different from the counterattack plan Bell had estimated before.

After carefully considering for a while, Bell proposed that everyone participating in the counterattack plan should go to the family's council hall after the meal to carry out a new round of planning and action arrangements.

So everyone accelerated their eating speed, and after the various main courses, the after-meal soup and dessert fruits were also served one after another.

It was hard for these Sasi family servants; not a drop of rain had fallen this year, and one wondered where they had gotten the fruit. And on this hot summer night, the Sasi family could actually provide everyone with a bowl of icy honey cherry shaved ice, which really surprised Jier very much.

Jier tasted the cherries on the shaved ice and found that they were not fresh cherries, but cherry jam pickled in sugar, but the taste was not bad either. Mixed with the melted honey water and poured over the cold and crispy shaved ice, it was really delicious and refreshing.

Jier had not eaten shaved ice for a while; last winter, when he was hunting Hunter Wolves in the north of Kendall, he often jokingly got some ice cubes and used a Dagger to scrape out a lot of shaved ice for his Hunter partners to eat.

But everyone disliked this stuff that made their stomachs and bellies cold in the middle of winter, and even if Jier found some rare wild Honey to pour on it, not many people liked to eat it. They still preferred to eat hot roasted Potato or a bowl of hot meat soup or something.

"Ah, having a bowl of this in the middle of summer is truly refreshing." Jier finished the whole bowl of shaved ice very quickly and asked the servant for another one, but the other party looked at the Butler in a dilemma, and the Butler looked at Bell; after Bell nodded in agreement, they then served everyone present another bowl of shaved ice in one go.

Later, Jier asked Bell about this and only then did he know that these shaved ice were not stored in their family's ice cellar from winter. The winter in the Southern Province was not that cold, and many times the temperature did not drop to freezing for the whole winter. So the shaved ice they ate was all pure ice cubes generated on the spot by a Magic Tool that one of the family's elders had bought from a Mage in the early years.

That Magic Tool required a certain amount of Magic Power to be consumed each time it was activated; although that Magic Tool was a high-value item with its own Magic Power recovery, its speed of recovering Magic Power was not very fast, and it often took several days to accumulate enough Magic Power to release the freezing Magic once.

One must know that this summer had just begun, and who knew how long this hot weather would last, so Bell was somewhat troubled about whether he needed to activate the Magic Tool a few more times.

After all, making cold drinks for so many people present was far less good than using it for the family members themselves to get through the long summer.

Bell himself also needed to eat shaved ice to cool down.

After everyone had satisfied themselves with another bowl of shaved ice, the dinner ended and they dispersed.

Those who did not participate in the counterattack plan consciously said goodbye and went home, while those who decided to join gathered around Bell, discussing the content of the plan and boasting about their respective skills.

A quarrel soon broke out between the Sun God Church Priests and the other church Priests; the former ridiculed the latter for not having much combat power, and the latter ridiculed the former's proposal for greatly violating the taboos of the Lords. Clearly, they had all successfully poked at each other's sore spots, and after arguing for a few sentences, they all shut their mouths and stopped talking.

And at this time, the Church of the God of the Dead Priests secretly found Bell, pulled him to a place with few people, and discussed something in a very low voice.

Bell showed a very troubled expression, and after a discussion, it was unknown what conditions the Church of the God of the Dead Priests had offered, but he still nodded and agreed to the request.

He called the Butler over, gave a few low instructions, and then took people away.

And Jier saw that the Church of the God of the Dead Priests all looked relieved, and they happily followed the troubled-looking Sasi Family Second Butler toward the back of the restaurant.

"Hey, what did those people want from you just now? You looked so troubled." Jier walked up and asked Bell in a low voice.

While walking at the front of the crowd, leading everyone from the restaurant through a garden to the council hall located in the middle of the building complex, Bell responded to Jier in a super low voice: "Sigh, after they ate the shaved ice, they actually asked to rent the Magic Tool that produces ice cubes from our family."

He had a troubled face, as if he had eaten feces: "I asked them what they wanted to borrow it for, guess how they answered?"

"I won't guess, but it's clearly not a good thing, at least not a good thing for you." Jier snorted and said.

"That's right, they actually wanted to borrow that Magic Tool to use the ice cubes produced to preserve the corpses of the people who had been dead for several days stored in their church's mortuary. They said that using Divine Art to perform Prayer morning and evening consumes a lot of energy, and it has to be repeated every few hours, otherwise the corpses would soon rot and stink in this weather. With ice cubes to lower the temperature of the room where the corpses are stored, they could save a lot of strength and time to do other work and rest."

Bell complained: "But the problem is that our family's thing is used to make ice products for summer cooling, it's for eating! They took it to ice and preserve corpses, it's really too much, I don't want to lend it..."

"But you still lent it, right? What conditions did they offer that could make you agree?" Jier asked.

Bell had a mysterious face: "As for this, it's a secret. By the way, don't tell anyone else about this, this is also a secret."

Jier nodded, indicating he understood: "Don't worry, I know what a secret is; a secret is not only not telling the secret itself, but not even discussing things related to it."

"It is great that you can think this way. We are almost there. Someone, come here! Take out the Sasi County map; yes, the one I have been using recently."

An attendant nearby immediately trotted ahead to enter the council hall, notifying the people inside to turn on the lights and take out the map that Bell needed.

After everyone walked into the council hall, the lighting here made everyone very satisfied.

Especially the young people from the Knight families; it seemed that being able to discuss affairs here just like their fathers already made them feel inexplicably satisfied.

Bell noticed these people's thoughts and said, "Believe me, this will not be your only time coming here. The celebration and public rewards in the near future will also be in this hall. I will personally congratulate you and present generous rewards."

The crowd's morale soared.

"Come! Everyone gather around the map, let us discuss which route everyone is in, and what each team needs to do."

Many people had heard Bell's private plan before, but that plan was only an initial draft after all, far from the situation at this very moment where numerous forces were gathered.

—

Jier was only led back to Caimen Inn in the middle of the night. When he returned, he noticed that there were quite a few people secretly observing him from the windows of the inn facing the courtyard.

He hoped the Dwarfs had not been exposed so easily. Although when he told Bell the news about the Dwarfs before leaving, the other party's mouth had opened in such surprise that it could almost swallow four or five eggs.

But in the end, Bell still understood and absorbed this news, and patted Jier on the shoulder hard: "Jier, you should have told me this news from the very beginning."

Jier gave an awkward laugh: "I didn't have a chance to tell you this privately until you specifically walked out from your hiding spot at the restaurant!"

Bell slapped his forehead: "It's all my fault; seeing that your men were so Refining Qi, I was simply too excited."

At this moment, as soon as Jier walked into the inn courtyard, Xueya Site brought people over immediately.

Jier jumped off his horse, saw the crossbow on Xueya Site's back, and realized something: "What's wrong?"

"Hey, some people want to pick a fight, some people are very curious about us, some people have something wrong with their brains, and some people want to get to know and suck up to us."

He patted the crossbow on his body: "Only by using this thing can those people be made to behave and calm down."

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