Chapter 162 Universal Tool Man
After receiving the challenge letter, the white-robed priest of the Fiery Sun Church was stunned for a full ten seconds.
"Is this really a letter from Westram?" The white-robed priest shook the letter paper and raised his eyelids to look at the non-commissioned officer who brought the letter in.
The sergeant understood the bishop's reaction very well... He silently placed the thick cowhide envelope in his hand on the priest's desk and poured out a silver badge from the envelope.
The badge is half the size of a palm, with the holy emblem of the Inquisition of the Church of the Fiery Sun on the front and Walton's full name engraved on the back: Ben Ham Walton.
The white-robed priest stared at the holy emblem of the Inquisition and fell silent.
Even the important holy emblem of the Inquisition fell into the hands of others. Obviously, the owner of this letter did control Walton.
In front of other people's subordinates, it was not convenient for the white-robed priest to humiliate Walton, but in his heart, he had already scolded Walton - this reckless fool!
When Walton came to report that Westram was suspected of being involved in the disaster, he had clearly told this reckless man that this was not Kenya but the Rhine, and the owners of this land were the Gold Coin Church and the Rhine Royal Family, and the Fiery Sun Church should not interfere - but this idiot didn't listen at all, and insisted on having his own way, and got himself into trouble!
Since this insane illegitimate son of Charlie Rex was able to deceive the Demon Butcher and stir up trouble under Yang's hands, he is definitely not an easy person to deal with - look, obviously, in addition to the people from the Fiery Sun Church, there were also people from the Innadri City Defense Force who sneaked into Westram at the same time, but Charlie Rex cleverly went to the Fiery Sun Church first!
The white-robed priest has been stationed in the Rhine Kingdom, a pagan country that is not a suburb of the Fiery Sun Church, for more than ten years. He knows very well how to grasp his own position - yes, the Twelve Knights of the Inquisition of the Fiery Sun Church alone are enough to flatten any small country, but in a foreign land thousands of kilometers away from the Kenyan Empire, they cannot count on reinforcements from the Holy Land!
Over the years, the white-robed priest never sought trouble for himself, nor did he have any friction with the local church, because he understood very well the inconvenience of fighting at home or away. The Gold Coin Church's Innadri Church might not be as powerful as the Fiery Sun Church he presided over, but they could get endless support from the Holy Land of the Gold Coin Lady, which was only a few hundred kilometers away in a straight line. The combat power he lost was getting smaller and smaller, so he was just looking for trouble when he had nothing to do.
The white-robed priest folded the letter expressionlessly and put it back into the envelope together with the holy emblem of Walton's Inquisition.
No matter how dissatisfied he was, he was still the bishop of the Fiery Sun Church. If something happened to the Knights of the Inquisition, he had to be responsible for cleaning it up.
"Charlie Rex chose us between the City Defense Army and the Knights of the Inquisition... Captain Roy, what do you think this illegitimate boy is planning?" The white-robed priest put the envelope into his drawer and asked the sergeant standing in front of the table as if nothing had happened.
Captain Roy was able to temporarily take over the position of head of the group with the support of the white-robed priest. In front of the bishop, he was very respectful: "Charlie Rex's biggest enemy is the Bartles family, but he chose to attack us first. I think maybe this Charlie Rex is not confident and lacks the courage to challenge the Bartles family, so he came to us for training first - maybe he thinks that the lack of a commander is the most disadvantageous factor for us, which will greatly reduce our combat effectiveness."
The white-robed priest nodded with satisfaction, tapped the table with his fingers, and said in a long tone: "Major Walton is indeed an excellent commander... If he can change his reckless temper."
Captain Roy kept his mouth shut and did not agree - after all, Major Walton was his immediate superior.
The white-robed priest was just testing the other party. Seeing that Roy refused to express his opinion, he did not continue to speak. Instead, he said, "Charlie Rex is not a formal noble. He has no family knights and no army. Westram only has a militia of just over 200 people and less than 50 former city defense soldiers who defected to Rex."
"In addition, there are several followers of Yang serving Rex... However, these people are not famous strong men. From the intelligence sent back by Walton earlier, the most famous one among them, 'Razor' Hal, is just a bandit leader of Sorenson."
"With only this little military force on paper, it's obviously not enough to give Charlie Rex the courage to challenge the Knights." After a pause, the white-robed priest narrowed his eyes and said in a deep voice, "Obviously, Charlie Rex has a backup plan - the most likely possibility is that he has somehow successfully deceived the Nightmare Butcher again and borrowed Yang's undead army."
"The enemy you will face on the battlefield is most likely Yang's undead."
Captain Roy asked hurriedly, "Your Excellency, will the Nightmare Butcher himself go into battle?"
This time, the white-robed priest was silent for a long time...
Before Captain Roy could hold back his questioning, the Bishop of the Blazing Sun Church reluctantly said, "Don't worry, the Nightmare Butcher has committed many evil deeds, but breaking a contract is not one of them."
Captain Roy was stunned for a moment, and then he suddenly remembered what happened when the Nightmare Butcher came to ask for "peace talks" -
Captain Roy, the deputy commander of the Knights, was also present when Walton and the Bishop negotiated with the Nightmare Butcher.
The Nightmare Butcher did say in person that within the Innadri territory, he would show his utmost sincerity in expressing his willingness for peace with the Church of the Fiery Sun - even if other Inquisition Knights who were unaware of the situation attacked him, he would guarantee the lives of these people.
Captain Roy felt like something was wrong with this world...
The white-robed priest didn't want to say too much on this issue, so he waved his hand and said, "Go and prepare for the battle. Let that bastard learn a lesson."
Captain Roy quickly said goodbye.
After coming out of the Fiery Sun Church, Captain Roy got on a carriage driven by his personal soldiers and returned to the Knights' concentrated base.
As the carriage drove, Captain Roy kept frowning and thinking.
The captain was still very young, less than thirty years old. Before becoming Walton's deputy and serving as deputy commander, he had worked as a night watchman somewhere in the northern part of the Kenyan Empire for several years.
All officers of the army affiliated with the church must be from the Night's Watch. This is an unwritten rule of all churches. There are too many unknown dangers in this world, and officers without Night's Watch experience cannot be trusted.
Of course... no matter how perfect the rules are, there will always be loopholes. After all, rules are always downward, not upward.
Walton, whose family fell into poverty, has reached his current position by sticking to his job as a night watchman for nearly twenty years at great risk; while Captain Roy, whose family name is still glorious, worked as a night watchman in a small town in the north near the holy land for only three years before he successfully transferred to the team of priests.
Captain Roy, who took a shortcut, was very clear about the gap between himself and Walton. He never thought of taking advantage of Walton's failure to replace the other.
He would not respond to the bishop's hint... Anyway, he could still get a chance to rise with the support of his family if he waited a few more years, so there was no need to rush.
Captain Roy was puzzled by the attitude of a high-ranking priest like His Excellency the Bishop towards the Nightmare Butcher.
After confirming that Captain Walton had lost contact with Westham, His Eminence summoned all non-commissioned officers without hesitation to inform them of the situation and prepare for war. Upon receiving the challenge from Charles Rex, His Eminence made it clear that all he had to do was defeat the illegitimate son, Charles Rex.
His Eminence the Bishop is afraid of the Nightmare Butcher, but does not take Charlie Rex seriously; His Eminence the Bishop firmly believes that the Nightmare Butcher will take his promise seriously and fulfill it, and will not interfere in the conflict between the Knights, Westram, and Charlie Rex.
In other words, His Eminence believes that the Nightmare Butcher is a trustworthy and "trustworthy" person.
This was a huge shock to Captain Roy's worldview - after all, when their Knights set out from the Kenyan Empire to hunt down the Nightmare Butcher all over the continent, all the information he received was about how evil, rampant, and cruel this black magician was, and that he must be eliminated to prevent future troubles!
The more Captain Roy thought about it, the more difficult it became for him to understand.
"What kind of person is the Nightmare Butcher?" Captain Roy, who has been carrying out the mission of hunting down the Nightmare Butcher for several years, thought about this question seriously and attentively for the first time.
While Captain Roy was lost in thought, dozens of kilometers away in Westham, Captain Roy's superior, Major Walton, was also thinking about similar questions.
Captain Walton, who was captured, enjoyed the same treatment as Wagner - Hal thought he was more dangerous than Wagner and could not be kept in the guardhouse, so he threw him into the big house where Yang lived.
Young, the busy man, was often away, and the only two "roommates" that Captain Walton could see every day were Wagner Pitt and "Charlie Rex".
Walton, who had been stripped of his weapons and changed into a cotton and linen pullover and brown trousers, had just finished trimming the overgrown garden when "Charlie Rex" came in from the gate with a lunch box and waved to Walton: "Walton, the water pipe at our neighbor Mrs. Marshall's house is broken. Take Wagner's tool box and go over to take a look."
Walton wiped the sweat off his forehead and silently walked to the storage room in the corner of the yard to find the toolbox left by his predecessor Wagner Pete.
As Walton was walking out with his toolbox, "Charlie Rex" came into the living room and called out to him from the window: "Come back for lunch when you're done."
"Yes, monk." Walton responded dryly and turned to go out...
It was not until he became a prisoner that Walton realized that the "Charlie Rex" he thought of was actually a monk from the Prosperity Church who Yang had casually found to serve as a front.
Considering the Nightmare Butcher's usual reckless style of doing things, this guy is indeed capable of doing something like even asking a local lord to just find someone to "show off"!
The real Charlie Rex did exist, but he was a decent young man who followed Yang's lead and had no ambition in his eyes. When his captor Hal took him to the town hall that night and saw the "real thing", Walton almost vomited blood in his heart...
Walton, who had received an aristocratic elite education, felt depressed for the first few days, but after slowly coming to his senses, he sorted out a lot of information.
First of all, Yang didn't take the Bartles family seriously at all - he didn't care whether the Bartles family knew who the real Charlie Rex was.
Secondly, Yang did not think that the Fiery Sun Church stationed in Innadri would become a stumbling block for him... There was already clear evidence of this, as the bishop who presided over the local Fiery Sun Church did not want to take care of Westram's affairs at all.
Combining the two, Walton could guess with his knees that sooner or later Yang would plot against Innadelli and the territory that the Bartles family had run for a hundred years!
Walton's reaction to this was...he felt that the Bishop was right.
He shouldn't have gotten involved in this mess. The conflict between the Gold Coin Church and Yang, and the dispute between the Bartles family and Charlie Rex, were none of his business as an outsider!
Unfortunately, by the time he realized that Charlie Rex was just a puppet that Yang had casually helped put in place, and that Yang's will had always been the driving force behind all of Westram's changes, it was already too late...
The "neighbor Mrs. Marshall's house" mentioned by Brother Lowell was actually several houses away from the big house.
But this is not important... During the few days , all the families around the big house became neighbors who came to him for help.
The residents of the town did not have a centralized water supply system like that of big cities. Most of the water pipes installed in the houses were actually just to pump water from their own or their neighbors' wells for domestic use. Mrs. Marshall's well was connected to water pipes from several households, and those who pumped water from her house paid her family for water use on a weekly basis.
Walton had come to fix the water pipe a few days ago. Mrs. Marshall recognized him. When she saw him come in, she pointed to the spider-web-like network of water pipes above the well in her yard and said, "Please help me check here, sir. There seems to be something wrong with the pipes here. Little Jenny's faucet doesn't work."
Walton nodded, walked over resignedly, squatted down and checked the pipe...
Walton had never been a plumber, but the water pipes in Westham were not difficult to repair - the water pipes used by the residents here were not iron pipes like those Walton had seen elsewhere, but a strange material that he had never seen before, which looked like rubber; the various components of these pipes made of strange materials could be disassembled and assembled, could be arranged freely, and were very easy to install.
Walton, who had rich life experience, was shocked by the unique material and ingenious design of the water pipe. He was puzzled that the townspeople, who were generally not well-off, could afford such a good water pipe.
When he tried to inquire about their origins, the townspeople did not hide anything at all - these water pipes, which saved most families from the trouble of fetching water every day, were sold openly in the market by Mr. Rex at the request of the clerks of the town hall. Not only were they cheap, but the clerks of the town hall would also come to help guide the installation.
The townspeople's praise for Rex before he was imprisoned... Walton would only think that Rex used some improper means to deceive the townspeople.
After knowing that the real Charlie Rex was just Yang's puppet and mouthpiece, and confirming that the root cause of all the changes in Westram was Yang - Walton's mood was extremely complicated.
"What on earth does this guy Yang want to do?"
This was the question that kept running through Walton's mind as he troubleshooted the plumbing problem.
While Walton struggles to piece together his shattered worldview, his predecessor, Lieutenant Wagner Pitt, who has been freed from his role as the all-purpose tool man in the big house, is in despair.
"This is Exile Town, the birthplace of the undead... well, you can think of it as the hometown of the undead."
With his hands behind his back, Yang Qiu calmly said to Wagner, who had been frozen since he came out of the underground teleportation point in the town hall of Exile Town, "You can see that we have some new undead friends. They are not used to fighting yet, but we don't have much time to wait for our undead friends to grow slowly through monster hunting. As you know, Rex's declaration of war should have been delivered to the priests of the Church of the Blazing Sun by now."
Wagner Pitt: "..."
