Chapter 351 — Another Visit
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
Looking at the people before him, their faces full of vigilance, wariness, and even hatred, Wright fell briefly silent.
He was not an outstanding preacher—not even an outstanding pastor. He had known that for a very long time.
He was nothing but an orphan picked out of a woodpile, surviving solely by the kindness of the old abbot. For the whole twenty years before his holy light talent awakened, he had been no more than a menial and a servant in the monastery. Unlike those clerics of proper lineage, he had never received a complete theological education, nor was he like those clever, fortunate ones who could learn in a very short time how to face the scheming and infighting of the upper ranks of the clergy.
In the year the old abbot died, he had felt the holy light's calling through his tears. The gift of "spiritual talent" spared him from sinking into the fate of a monastery slave laborer after his protector's death. From that time on, he had shed the coarse burlap of a menial and donned the robes of a cleric—yet in everyone's eyes he remained that crude, lowborn drudge. He received the full education a formal pastor ought to receive, and he carried out every rule of virtue recorded in those sacred texts with a strictness bordering on severity, because the old abbot had once said that those virtues were precisely what most set humans apart from beasts.
But after he had mastered all of it and made it his own code of conduct, he found that he had only grown more distant from the other clerics. The teachings of Mingyao, which he held in such utmost regard, seemed not to matter so much in the eyes of most holy servants of this age...
He knew he was an oddity among clerics. He knew the rules he stubbornly adhered to were already out of step in the eyes of this era's clerics. He knew all about the slander, scheming, and exclusion behind his back—he simply never spoke of it. Because he still believed in one last thing: the holy light, in the end, exists to protect others; the God of Holy Light, in the end, shelters this world; and those who wield the holy light—even if they no longer value the classical virtues and integrity—still at least stand on the side of justice.
So he accepted the church's exclusion calmly; that was the price of being "out of step." He also calmly accepted the mission to preach in the savage southern wilds without any support, because spreading the gospel of the holy light was what he loved most. But he... could not face these people before him with the same calm.
Even at his most failed and most difficult moments of preaching, all he had faced was the numbness of the common folk. But on these people's faces, he saw genuine hatred and hostility.
"I am Wright Eviken, pastor of the Cecil Territory. You may call me Wright," the tall Wright stepped before the crowd and slowly sat down. "I am the only holy light pastor in this land, so you may regard me as the one in charge of the Mingyao church here. As you can see, I have no weapon, no hostility. I have already left the central regions of the Yaochen Church. Now, I only want to know what actually happened on the Holy Spirit Plain."
"You burned down our church!"
A young woman cried out, unable to contain herself, but the man beside her immediately pulled her back.
There were more than twenty people here, and Wright was alone—yet those twenty-odd people were in extreme tension, because they knew the pastor before them was a Transcendent, and the power of a Transcendent was not something ordinary people could contend with. And beyond that, this pastor had those bulging muscles; even without any Transcendent power, the people present would probably not be his match...
And there was something more important still: this pastor was the only cleric in the territory. Did that not mean this pastor had been sent by the lord to "investigate" them?