Cthulhu Gonfalon

Sui Xiong felt that for a god, a church was not only a tool for preaching; it was also an embodiment of his ideas.

Perhaps, from a strategic point of view and proceeding from practical interests, a god should encourage or at least acquiesce to a variety of ideas, as well as different factions to co-exist within his church. And gods who owned very powerful churches, like the God of War, Wenner, and the Goddess of Wealth, Manissy, all did as such. But Sui Xiong did not want such a church.

What he wanted was a church that was relatively purer and full of vitality and fighting spirit. In his church, everyone might have different ideas, but their fundamental life philosophy and goal would basically remain consistently alike.

He knew that what he had in mind might be a little too idealistic and unrealistic. To establish such an organization, even if he had the support of a real god, it still wouldn’t be easy. He felt that if it was because he did not have enough conditions, then he could forget about it. But since he was a powerful god who could know what his followers were thinking, he could always empower the clergymen according to the degree to which their ideas conformed to his. Then there would be no reason for him to carry out his ideas.

It was true that doing so would reduce the number of devoted followers and the number of clergymen. But as the saying went, “Troops are valued for their quality, not their number,” so just one high-level clergyman could be much more powerful than 100 low-level clergymen put together. A temple presided by an outstanding bishop would be much more valuable than ten altars manned by capricious leaders.

At least, that was what he thought.

So after careful consideration, a few days later, he proceeded to issue another divination, urging his followers, especially those who were clergymen, to study their teachings well enough to find the contrast between their own teachings and life. This way, they could reflect on whether they had the tendency towards secularization or vulgarization, and thereafter purify their minds.

For those clergymen who “clung onto their desires in the mortal world,” he did not criticize them, but instead, he set up a new department within his church and got them more engaged in dealing with society and with the matters that required softer and more flexible approaches.

In this regard, he received a lot of support and suggestions from the God of Law, Law Brans.

The God of Law, Law Brans, was often called the “Master of Justice.” He was not the master god of a god system, so technically speaking, he could not be called “Master So-and-so,” but the things that he had done, especially for the Sacred Warriors under his command, had won him such prestige.

The Sacred Warriors under the God of Law consisted of a group of rigid fuddy-duddies. They respected and protected the dignity of the law and would do everything to maintain the regular order of society. Under most situations, they protected the small and weak, limited the powerful and authoritative, and maintained order in favor of the lower to middle classes. But if necessary, they would attack those people who resisted violently in order to help the rulers maintain social order.

If the “Nine Great Camps” system was used to evaluate this, the Sacred Warriors of the God of Law would most likely belong to the two camps of the Order of Good and the Order of Neutrality. More would fall under the former, but there would still be many falling under the latter.

Unlike churches such as those of the Goddess of Wealth and the God of War, the system that the Church of the God of Law was much purer. From bishops to priests to Sacred Warriors, they strictly observed and adhered to the teachings of the God of Law, even the slightest detail on a specific operation would require a temporary prayer to obtain a consultation.

Such an inflexible and unprogressive approach naturally greatly reduced the efficiency of work, so much so that the clergymen of the God of Law were often derided for being “blockheads,” having “heads full of stones,” and so on. But there was no denying that such a stubborn, to the extent of being rigid, style had earned them the trust of the society as a whole. Everyone knew that the clergymen of the God of Law were absolutely disciplined—even if there was a rule that they did not agree with, they would only choose to leave or persuade the relevant rule-maker. They would never make a move to fight against the rules.

With such a reputation, even in the most chaotic areas, these rigid clergymen of the God of Law were still positively welcomed. Even the evil lords showed a friendly attitude towards these masters who maintained order and upheld the rules.

The key to everything here lay in the “purity of the organization.”

Among the gods, there were also others who did place greater emphasis on the purity of their churches as compared to the God of Law. But wanting to grasp the concept of “moderation” judiciously in order to turn it into a power to boost organizational strength, all while not hindering the degree of organizational development—no one could have done it better than the God of Law.

This was the reason why Sui Xiong naturally thought of asking the God of Law for advice when he wanted to start off the internal rectification of his church’s work style so that he could improve the organization’s purity.

The God of Law was very happy that Sui Xiong had approached him with inquiries and shared with him many experiences. He also sent a few clergymen who had made outstandingly meritorious contributions throughout the history of educational development of the church to help Sui Xiong. There were even two who were his Holy Spirits.

With the help of this group of experts, Sui Xiong was able to quickly organize and come up with a series of documents and plans. Then he launched a large-scale retraining system of clergymen throughout the Church of the Void Mask. He came up with a very long schedule, which he listed his plans for the coming two to three years. During this period, he would be recalling all the clergymen back to the main temple of Void City and send them for retraining.

The first to receive training would be those clergymen deployed to the Mifata Federation to preach. Under the influence of their preaching work, these clergymen were on the friendliest terms with the lords and aristocrats, or rather, they were under the influence of upper-class society. Sui Xiong gathered them, and through the analysis of social development, he recalled the struggles between the upper-class socialites and lower-class civilians which startled them all. They came to realize their mistakes and thus, redefined their standpoints.

Among them, there were of course some who had already changed their minds and no longer felt that development and progress must follow a bottom-up approach and find foothold from people of the lower and middle class. For these people, Sui Xiong did not harshly reprimand them. Instead, he decided to give them a good lesson.

He might not be some historian, but he had seen many debates on the Internet and naturally understood that such a concept was in fact, quite marketable—it was nothing more than the so-called “reformism.”

In the Earth’s network society, reformism was quite popular. Because for areas with reasonable ease of access to the Internet, their economic conditions would generally be not too bad, social contradictions were relatively less intense, so “improvement” was naturally more popular than “struggle.”

And in this world, the clergymen inclined towards the direction of improvement were mostly from rich families. The people they usually preached to and kept in contact with, were those who had comparatively better-living conditions, or they usually preached in places where the lords were relatively more liberal, so they felt that social contradictions were somewhat moderate. This led the clergymen to feel that, so long as they promoted open-mindedness within the upper-class society, they would be able to propel the development and progress of the entire society.

One of the lessons that Sui Xiong put them through was to station them at areas where the lords were not so liberal-minded and where the influence of the Church of the Void Mask was weaker. This way, they could experience for themselves how naive and ludicrous the idea of “improvement” was.

To make progress through improvement? Of course, it was possible. The premise was that they must first be able to force those in power to the point where they had to accept improvement.

Relying only on publicity to persuade others on the idea of achieving progress through improvement—how could there be something so good in this world!