Chapter 349 — The Exiled Heretics

The refugees rose, and the ship's master scrambled nervously to his feet, bowing again and again before Gao Yang: "Begging your pardon, sir, they're from the Holy Spirit Plains."

"That's no short road..." Gao Qi furrowed his brow. "What is this 'exiled heretics' business about?"

"That's putting it far too seriously, my lord," the ship's master said hastily. "These people—someone in their local church was practicing black arts, and they were afraid of being dragged into it, so they didn't dare stay in their hometown and ran..."

Gao Yan nodded, looked at the shivering people, and pointed at one of them: "You. Tell me what happened."

"I... we didn't do anything. Those priests said we were the... the minions of heretics, seized our hou... houses, and drove us out..." The one Gao Yang had picked was a sturdy man who looked honest and simple. He stammered as he spoke—whether from nervousness before a great noble or simply his nature, it was hard to tell. "They're arresting people everywhere back there, bu... burning people, it's too... too..."

"Oh, you stop talking, stammering like that, you'll foul the lord's ears!" A woman beside him cut him off. Her face was full of tension, and she bowed repeatedly to Gao Yang. "My lord, we're all honest common folk, we farm or run small businesses at home..."

"Who decided you were minions of heretics?" Gao Yang cut straight through these people who could not even describe their own situation clearly, and asked a direct question. "Which church's priests? On what grounds did they make that judgment?"

"The... the priests of the Daylight Church," said a man in a woolen coat. "Last winter, several households in the city were abducted by heretics, and their bodies weren't found for days. Later the priests and knights of the Daylight Church found the heretics hiding in the city, and after burning the Shadowmancers to death, they began searching the whole city... They said only the Holy Light could tell heretics apart from ordinary people, so everyone believed what they said."

As Gao Cen listened, his brow slowly knit.

Amber sidled up to him, straining on tiptoe to whisper: "Hey, hey, let me tell you, taking these people in is probably going to cause trouble..."

Gao Yang's face was expressionless: "Trouble?"

"The clerics of the Daylight sect are all incredibly hard to deal with," Amber muttered. "And their noses are sharper than a dog's, and they love tying everything to 'evil' and 'heresy' and the like. If you take in people the Daylight sect drove out, they might just make a fuss over it."

"That kind of trouble doesn't matter," Gao Lan said flatly. "The Daylight Church has its inquisition, and I have mine. In the Cecil Territory, things go by Cecil's rules. Screen these people according to the standard procedure. Call Pi Yun in too, and see whether there's truly any black-art reaction on them. If there's no problem, send them into the buffer camp."

Gao Yang did not believe in the "heretic judgments" of the Daylight Church, especially not after hearing these people's story. But neither would he blindly trust these refugees out of mere doubt toward the Daylight Church, so he would confirm their identities before letting them into the city. Pi Yun could detect the aura of the corrupted druids' divine arts. So far, the little old man's judgment had been quite accurate. He could confirm whether these people were followers of the Society of All Things Ending, and if they were Sleepers...

Then it was even simpler. Gao Yang would go online and check whether there were any strangers in his vicinity.

As for the Children of the Storm... Gao Yang saw no need to worry. Those fellows had withdrawn entirely from land, and were presently locked in fierce battle with the salted-fish spirits of the deep sea.

And if they were not members of those three great dark cults, the remaining ragtag heretics could hardly slip past the cross-questioning and observation procedures in the buffer camp.