Chapter 420 — Questions and Answers
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
He could not help but ask, and Wright, hearing the questions, fell silent for a long time before speaking quietly: "My lord, do you know what the defeated soldiers did after those nobles and Holy Light priests were routed?"
"I can guess well enough," Gaoyang said.
"We passed through a village, on the edge of the Consco region... it had been utterly destroyed," Wright said evenly, his tone seemingly calm, and yet as he spoke, Gaoyang could feel the Holy Light roiling faintly about him. "There were a dozen or so survivors in the village. We spent the night there..."
From Wright's lips, Gaoyang and Amber learned of that night in the Consco territory—learned of the noble stragglers and Church knights driven mad by hunger, learned of the little girl named Emily, learned of the whole process by which Wright had regained the Holy Light.
When Amber had heard Wright's story to the end, even her perpetually carefree, grinning face could not help but show a trace of pity and regret. Frowning, she looked up at Gaoyang's dark expression, then at Wright, and at last could not resist muttering, "Those damned nobles... and that pack of holy frauds..."
No sooner had she said it than she clapped Gaoyang on the arm. "Gaoyang, I don't mean you—you're still different from them."
"I know. You needn't go out of your way to point it out," Gaoyang said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, glancing at Amber before turning his eyes to Wright. "Even though you've regained the Holy Light, you must still have your doubts... otherwise you wouldn't be standing here brooding so long instead of reporting to me."
"I am only thinking about certain things... things I don't know whether I ought to be thinking about," Wright said, his brow indeed furrowing as he gave a faint sigh. Then he looked into Gaoyang's eyes and asked in a tone of uncommon resolve, "My lord, I have a question."
"Ask it."
"Those nobles, those priests and knights—they style themselves the protectors of the people, and in the end they behave worse than bandits. They deserve death, of course; in this war we may kill hundreds, even thousands of nobles and clergy, but... what is it that made such nobles and such clergy? A few hundred years ago—even a few decades ago—they had not sunk to such depths... We destroy them today, but decades or centuries from now, will those who come after us set foot on the same road of corruption?"
Amber stared at Wright's face in disbelief, as though she had never expected such a question to come from him. In her impression, Wright was nothing more than an earnest preacher, a warm-hearted pastor who went about the territory helping anyone in need—she had never imagined that he would suddenly raise such a question upon his return. The question was all but asking whether everything Gaoyang had done was meaningless.
And that question...
Amber could not help glancing at Gaoyang. She thought of the plans he had once described—the proposals for dealing with the old nobility, the laws the territory would have in future—and she too could not resist asking, "Right. You said yourself back then that there's always greed in human nature. Even the civil administration, which looks so orderly and incorruptible now, will inevitably see people corrupted by power as the territory grows and grows richer. If that happens..."
Gaoyang looked at Amber and Wright. The latter's question had not surprised him much.
To reshape and establish a mode of thought is not the work of a single day. Even with new education and new ideas being constantly promoted, even among the innermost circle around him, very few truly understood his thinking—and it was entirely natural that Wright, having seen the battlefield with his own eyes and witnessed the corruption and degradation of the old nobility and the old Church, should voice such doubts.
It had nothing to do with a person's intelligence or insight. It was simply the limitation of the age.