Chapter 170 What Happened After the Duke Left?

In the city hall, Horn asked someone to bring a glass of refreshing mint water. While waiting for the water, he smiled and said to the core members:

"We are all family here now, you can relax and speak freely. I'll drink some water and take a rest first."

These people are the core power group of the old camp, including Sissi, Chilvis, Jeska, Armand, René, Das...

Anyone who is not injured is basically here.

After that thrilling night, the remaining senior executives began to talk about it.

"Should we change our original four major legions?"

"I think we should rob a group of craftsmen."

"The entire Ibe River area is hoisted with white sails..."

Unlike before, after this period of training, these people's knowledge and experience have far surpassed before.

The lessons Horn and Bonard gave them every day were not in vain. After this battle, compared with the refugees on the periphery, the mentality of these core members of the old camp was relatively inclined towards Horn.

"Your Majesty, now that we have exposed the matter of the Blue Blood Orphan, this is another problem with the Church. How are we going to explain to our brothers in the old camp if you leave and come back?"

"Yes, even though the old brothers didn't say anything, they were all very confused."

"We'll talk about this later." Horn took a sip of the mint water from René and asked Busak, "I asked you to gather the first batch of refugees and their families before the sun sets in the evening. How is it going?"

Busak stood up immediately: "The first batch of reservations is 6000 people. The list and rations have been confirmed. We can set off before the evening."

"Yeah, that's good." Horn nodded. "Don't be too tough, but once you're on the road, you're not allowed to turn back. Do you understand?"

"clear."

"Armand," Horn called to Armand, "Have you finished your investigation?"

Armand took out a few sheets of paper and handed them to Horn, and gave a briefing: "According to what you said, I took Bonnard to observe and question 1000 refugees. About 105 of them held a positive view of us, and 411 held a negative view, complaining that you deceived them and caused them to be..."

"What?" Jeanne's face immediately frowned. "We worked so hard to help them get revenge, and this is their attitude?"

"They are right." Horn sat calmly at the table.

Looking at the people in the meeting room with surprised expressions, Horn rubbed his forehead and stood up. "I just want to discuss the situation of our Salvation Army and unify our thoughts. Let's use this as a starting point."

Standing in front of the table, Horn handed some collected information to Jessica next to him and asked them to pass it around and check it out one by one.

"Let me put it this way. To a certain extent, they followed us to kill the Duke because they were just being carried away by passion and were no different from killing people in the heat of the moment.

They were not fully aware of this and were just carried away at the moment. If the Duke hadn't died, this spirit could have been maintained for a while.

Now that the Duke is dead and their anger has been vented, and the church and the imperial edict are about to arrive, they have regretted their decision. If you ask them to shout "If you are unfair, you will kill the unfair," do you think they will dare to do so?

Of course, the Blue Blood incident was bound to explode sooner or later. They were bound to make trouble sooner or later, but they just wouldn’t make it so violent and become so estranged from the church.”

After ruthlessly shattering the fantasies of these core members, Horn continued to speak to himself:
“If I were Johnny VIII, I would directly cut ties with the Thousand Valley Church, sell Constance, and replace the Thousand Valley Church with a new group of bishops.

While rehabilitating Juanno, the government sent troops to suppress troublemakers and finally exempted the country from taxes for two years.

The army is approaching, the bishop is being replaced, the Pope is backing down, and taxes are being waived. It would be rude to make any more noise.

By then, do you think we will be betrayed by the farmers just like the Duke of Kush did?

Do you remember what you said? Ordinary people cannot see that far, even if this matter is good for them in the long run.

They will never see that if they don't overthrow the church, this will happen endlessly, and then there will be an endless cycle of 'exploitation-riot-concession-forgetfulness'."

Speaking of this, Horn himself couldn't help but feel a little emotional.

The extraordinary power represented a far greater gap between ordinary people and individual knights than in Horn's hometown, where a small number of knights could suppress a large number of farmers.

Then they would inevitably take more brutal measures to stop the peasants' uprising, and after the peasants' uprising, they would clean up the remaining forces more thoroughly, leaving almost no spark.

And because of the emergence of the supernatural, priests can show their divine power in front of people and even actually summon angels to earth. God's authority is even stronger and his control over people's thoughts is even deeper.

Under the pressure from both sides, the upper limit of the farmers' tolerance was so high that even Horn felt a little desperate.

"That's too ungrateful, isn't it?" Sissi couldn't help but say. "It's not their fault. You tripped over a rock, but you don't blame the person who put the rock there, but the rock. Isn't that ridiculous?"

Horn lowered his head, but his voice was heard clearly by everyone in the meeting room.

"Why do they behave in such a bad way? It's because they have a devil in their hearts, an invisible chain locked around their necks.

The military hegemony of the empire and the ideological hegemony of the church, both of which, with the blessing of extraordinary power, became extremely powerful, causing them to fail in almost every struggle.

This established the third hegemony between the empire and the church - the extraordinary hegemony.

Through the first two, they monopolize extraordinary resources, cut off the path to the extraordinary for non-nobles and non-clergy, and forcibly bind the extraordinary to identity at the ideological and social levels. "

During the fasting year, farmers were forbidden to eat meat, but nobles were allowed to eat eggs and fish. The "Frugality Law" was even used to prohibit people other than nobles, monks, gentry and merchants from eating beef and spices.

Isn't all of this because they are afraid that other new extraordinary people will emerge outside of their extraordinary system?

Isn't this the reason for the endless hunt for the secret party?

Because being extraordinary is the guarantee of the hegemony of the first two!

In the eyes of many common people, they are noble knights not because they are extraordinary, but because they are knights that they are noble and extraordinary!
A knight without his extraordinary blessing would still terrify them.

Why did Horn continue to grant the followers of the old camp empty titles without any corresponding benefits, and they were still happy to accept them?

Isn't it because in their ignorant understanding, knights are honored because of their titles, not because of their extraordinary qualities?

This is why many knights dislike mercenaries who can breathe, because mercenaries have extraordinary powers, but their identities are mortals, which is a counter-proof to the existence of knights and priests.

“The Empire needs the Church to lower their governance costs and help them obtain sufficient resources to maintain their transcendence.

The Church needed the Empire to maintain its economic and intellectual supremacy."

As if he was thinking and speaking at the same time, Horn walked slowly around the table in the conference room.

“Among all the people in the Thousand River Valley, no, we can expand it to the entire imperial system. All the lower classes of the empire have demons in their hearts.

Even if the empire and the church exploit and betray them, they will still subconsciously rely on and follow the church.

Because this has been a practice for thousands of years, in their eyes the empire and the church represent victory and correctness.

From a psychological perspective, it is a taboo for them to confront the empire and the church.

Therefore, most of the time, they don't stand on our side. Even if they have to join us, they will think about recruiting us.

It is easy for us to kill knights and destroy churches, but it is difficult to kill the devil in their hearts.

Their uprising was more of a strike and protest than an uprising.

It's a little better in Cassia County with Juano's banner. Look at us. Thomas and his group before were either forced to do so or wanted to become nobles.

No one ever said that I joined the uprising in order to overthrow the church."

As Horn walked around, the expressions on the faces of these Salvation Army leaders became more and more solemn, and some even began to fall into long contemplation.

"The Duke is right in a way, they have no cohesion.

When I say that blue blood can inspire their cohesion, it is because of the Duke's banner that this cohesion can be sustained.

Now that the Duke has fallen, the banner is gone, and the flag of the Salvation Army is not enough to convince them.

So they were happy, scared, and confused. They were happy that they finally got rid of their anger, scared of the devil in their hearts and in front of them, and confused about whether the Salvation Army could lead them to resist the church.

After finishing this long paragraph, Horn let out a breath of frustration and sat back in his chair:
"They are on our side physically, but their hearts are with the church. They are different from our old camp. They do not identify with us and do not regard the church and the empire as real enemies.

They will not support us unless we can break the three hegemonies of the nobles and monks.

But the problem is that if we don’t break the three major hegemonies, they won’t support us, and if they don’t support us, we won’t be able to break the three major hegemonies.”

Horn picked up the mint water on the table and took a sip to moisten his dry throat.

After a long silence, Jeanne asked solemnly, "What should we do? Is there no other solution?"

(End of this chapter)