Chapter 496 — Sunlight Shines Upon Frostgate
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
"It is indeed an atrocity—or rather, an act of violence. Any great change, any change that involves the replacement of order and the restructuring of society's rules, is inevitably accompanied by violence; in a thousand years of history there has never been an exception," said the robed old man standing behind the two young men, Godwin Orlando, now the most renowned scholar of the Southern Region, in a calm tone. This scholar, who had spent most of his life studying history and grammar, saw the matter before him clearly, and as a traditional scholar he felt it his duty to pass these lessons to the few apprentices he trusted most. "The difference is that the changes that have appeared in history were all changes within the same stratum—one lord attacking another lord, one royal attacking another royal. However great the scale, the alteration to the social order was slight, usually no more than a few decrees or a few claims to titles; it was more like a handover of power, cleverly disguised. What is happening here today is a violent upheaval of the lower orders against the upper—though our lord is behind it, the change itself has been carried out by the masses, and its results are all the more astonishing: it has destroyed an old order outright."
"When the old order collapses, a void appears, and so a new order must fill it in time. That is what you told us last time, mentor."
"Quite so—but that is a matter for our lord and the new High Pastor to worry about," Godwin Orlando smiled placidly. "All we need do now is record this moment..."
Seeing his apprentices fall into thoughtful silence and then set busily to work again, Godwin Orlando nodded slightly. Then he drew out the notebook he carried with him, thought for a moment, and wrote:
In the 737th year of Ansu, the 30th of Frostmonth, the Day of Souls, tens of thousands from the northern parts of the Southern Region stormed the Yaoxiao Cathedral; the faith of the God of Holy Light has been overturned, and the authority of "God" shall hereafter be brought down to earth...
Godwin Orlando hesitated, lifted his pen, crossed out the words "the faith of the God of Holy Light," and replaced them with "the rules of faith."
……
In Holyfrost Perch, in the Yaoxiao Cathedral, within the Great Hall of Radiance, the bishops were reporting to Pope Saint Ivan III the news from the eastern plains.
Ever since the crusaders of the Yaochen Church had broken the rules and entered this Ansu civil war on the side of the Kingdom's army, the scales of war—already beginning to tilt—had recovered a delicate balance.
The Eastern Legion, which had swept all before it, storming Solin Fortress and more than ten fortresses great and small in succession, and pushing smoothly to the Great Wood Pass, was finally checked just as it was about to enter the central reaches of the Holy Spirit Plain. Buoyed in morale and possessed of extraordinary battlefield recovery, the Kingdom's soldiers, supported by the Holy Light, formed a wall of men and broke the Eastern Legion's unbroken record of victory before the Great Wood Pass. At the cost of several thousand soldiers' lives, Count Solin, commander of the Kingdom's army, succeeded in beating back the Eastern Legion and drove the line thirty li eastward—pushing the front back to a "safe distance" far from the heart of the Holy Spirit Plain, where it was forced once more into stalemate.
For Harvest Day had passed—the Kingdom's army had missed its last chance to retake the eastern grain lands, and the grain grown in Solin Fortress and the broad fertile fields around it had fallen into the hands of the Eastern rebels.
Bellies filled and morale restored, the Eastern Legion once again planted its feet firmly on the Holy Spirit Plain.