Chapter 340: Escape
A week later.
The troops reached the designated villages and started investigating it. They found the peculiarity as soon as they sneaked into the village.
There are a lot of people who are wearing white robes and even the village guards who are responsible for keeping a watch at the entrance are doing the same.
The whole village seemed eerily silent as the only people who are roaming around are the white-robed people. The troops sneaked into the village at night, in order to not alert anyone and it turned out to be a great thing.
Because at night they witnessed something that blew their minds away. A fifty-year-old man who is a complete commoner entered a newly built large house and came out wearing a white robe. But this time, his body is releasing spiritual energy waves and at the same time absorbing the spiritual energy frantically.
Apart from that the rest of the normal cultivators are in a dazed state lying around in their houses. Some of them are killed, some of them hypnotized and some of them are completely tied up with restrictions in place.
The situation is the same in almost all the villages and in every place, there is a person who is wearing a white mask who is feeding pills to these commoners.
The Captains of the teams knew that situation is anything but good. They immediately left the village and informed Arc about the situation.
Arc suddenly felt his head go numb. He was feeling relieved that the crime rates in the villages have been reduced completely but it seemed that something major is going on behind his back and he doesn't know what it is.
"Capture the leaders of all twenty-one villages. I need all of them alive. As for the rest, try to arrest them and release the normal cultivators.
If they dared to resist, cripple their cultivations. There is no such thing as becoming an overnight cultivator and if there is something like that it is definitely not a good thing.
There seemed to be someone hatching a huge plan behind our backs.
After arresting them, place them in isolation, don't even let them talk within themselves.
Bring back the leaders as fast as you can."
With those orders, the very next night, the troops took action and arrested the leaders. They put the rest of them in captivity and completely sealed their senses within the village. The troops were left behind to monitor them and the leaders were escorted by the Nascent stage cultivators.
The communication towers are also unlocked.
Arc who was supposed to go to the thunder god temple two days later didn't even think of going until he investigated this matter.
While he was waiting, something else is unfolding on the other side of the world.
In this week, the activities of the church were escalated to a new height within the eastern continent.
And slowly, the people are reaching out to every door and advocating the church of guide. They are preaching equality, fairness, impartiality which will be only granted once they joined the church.
The trio felt extremely vary. From what the healer said, Sam's health will get better in around three months.
So, they have to be wary for the next three months. But these church followers are making too much of a ruckus.
Watt sent the only shadow mice that he had in the beast pouch. It was sent to Watt when Sam infiltrated the beast faction. He sent the shadow mouse to the streets where the church followers campaigning door to door so that they could understand the situation.
When the mouse entered the house, it saw that the church members who are wearing the white robes walked inside directly without knocking.
The one in the front, held the commoner by his neck and forced a pill inside his mouth.
There are two more people inside the house, one of them is a lady who seemed to be in her forties and a son who just awakened barely.
They seemed to be having a feast at his awakening.
But the intruders made it completely hard for them to even smile. They forced the same type pf pill in the lady's mouth and forced a completely different pill in the boys' mouth.
After the three of them fainted, they even left a statement.
"It is hard to explain the situation to the ignorant. So, we took it upon ourselves to show you the correct way.
The 'Guide' is the only one who can lead us to a true and fair world. Please forgive us."
The mouse didn't leave the house immediately, instead, it stayed till the three of them woke up.
The first to wake up is the couple. After waking up, they seemed to be in a daze but soon left the house.
After that, the boy also woke up and he also seemed to be in a daze.
He mumbled something incoherently, about why he was there are why is he is wearing those clothes and what his name is.
He seemed to have completely lost his memory.
The next morning, the mouse returned to Watt, who got the gist of the information through Falck's translation.
He suddenly felt chills, he didn't know how the whole church worked, and they couldn't understand, how it prospered so quickly, but now it made sense.
They are forcing their numbers to grow and for some weird reason, they are not targeting cultivators, their only target being commoner people.
He suddenly thought of something, all the grand realm cultivators he sensed in this city previously are now wearing white robes.
Which means, they all belonged to the church. He connected the dots and immediately felt chills run down his spine.
He doesn't know what exactly is going on, but he does know something big is about to happen and it is not safe to stay here anymore.
He explained the situation to Philip and Jack and the trio decided to move to the imperial capital the same day.
They made their arrangements and started moving discreetly at night.
But to their surprise, all the city gates are completely blocked.
The city guards vanished and all that stood there in their place are people in white robes.
They too noticed the trio's movements and stopped them at the last gate.
"We need to go to the Imperial capital immediately. Our friend is not feeling well and we have to take him to the healer as fast we can, can you please give way."
Philip said in an extremely worried tone. Watt and Jack exchanged a glance as Watt tied Sam to his back and took out Silver wind immediately.
The two of them took out methane grenades in both their hands and blasted straight at the four people that are blocking them.
They took out the beasts from their beast pouches and made their way into the sky.
Watt looked below, only to find out that the four people who are in the middle of the explosion and got all their bodies blasted away were recovering rapidly, their skeleton was completely intact and only the flesh seemed to have been affected by the blast.
They still had a smile on their face as they wore another pair of white robes. They didn't seem to have any beasts on them, but two of them are running towards them.
"While two of our fellow believers follow them and teach them the correct way of truth, we shall calm down the chaos caused by them within the city.
There is only a week till the big day and we shall be finishing the spread of faith by that time.
The two people are running behind as they flew, they didn't even wear any footwear as they made long and strong strides.
They are using nothing but pure physical force like brutes.
They didn't take any turn or diversion while chasing.
They crashed into rocks, boulders, and even trees.
The trio led them deep into forests and this turned out useless as they started using the trees as their footing to jump and even sometimes to try to reach their height.
The trio is attacking rapidly from the front and some attacks are even cleanly landed which led them to observe something.
The bodies of these people are different.
The spiritual energy waves coming from them are giving off the same vibes as that of a Grand realm cultivator at peak.
They cannot use any form of elemental attacks and could only rely on physical force. They couldn't even control the absorption of the spiritual energy of manipulating it at their free will.
In fact, they seemed quite oblivious of everything that regarded spiritual energy.
They are completely brainwashed and they don't seem to have any form of sanity left, their words are calm, but they are utter nonsense.
Last but not least, their extremely peculiar healing ability.
As long as their skeletons are intact and completely joined, they seemed to have no problem with healing no matter how serious their injuries are.