Chapter 233: The Council of Priests
"Alyssa, your tongue shape is unusual... and your accent doesn't sound like someone from Pendor. Are you from Amara?"
Of course, the lord saw the forked tongue and heard her unique accent. It seemed that Alyssa was a person of special status even within the Snake Cult.
Therefore, even though time is tight, he still plans to get to the bottom of it.
Alyssa looks like she is from the Snake Cult headquarters. Maybe she can bring some information or revelations.
"You guessed my accent right, hiss... I used to be a priestess of the Snake Cult... Note that it's 'once'! They told me that I was born in the Bacchus Empire, but all my memories are... in the Divine Cult. Hiss... I have already apostatized and will never join again. I saw your men fighting with the Divine Cult, and now the cult is hunting me, so I must find a powerful leader to follow, because in numbers there is always more hiss... strength!"
Alyssa's speech was indeed awkward, and she would make a hissing sound from time to time, which was very uncomfortable to hear.
It was obvious that she had been taught to speak like this since she was a child, and she herself did not seem to think there was anything wrong with speaking like this...
Moreover, it would be more difficult to speak after the tip of the tongue was split into two halves. It seems that it would be difficult for her to change this speaking style in her lifetime.
"The Cult of God... huh... apostasy? You are a priestess of the Snake Cult Temple in the Amala Continent? Why did you want to leave the Snake Cult?"
The lord noticed Alyssa's wording - divine religion.
"I really shouldn't have poisoned my rival if I had known that I would be miserably exiled to the continent of Pendor. Hiss... But the merciful goddess will know that I did this only to make life a little better for those who follow the true God... Hiss!"
Alyssa's words were a little jumpy, but people could still understand her. It seemed that she had used some dishonorable means in the competition among the priestesses within the Snake Cult.
"Merciful goddess? Wait...what are you and those so-called competitors you mentioned competing for?"
The lord was a little surprised. He realized that this former priestess probably held a very high position in the Snake Cult's headquarters in Amara!
Moreover, Elisa's so-called apostasy was probably just a rebellion against the current Snake Cult rulers - she still believed in Azi Dahaka and called her a benevolent goddess...
"All priestesses want to be the goddess's messenger. Only the high priest can convey the goddess's will...hiss...but now the God's Church has been completely deceived by incompetent people who weave lies! Hiss...The God's Church is no longer a beautiful paradise. The kingdom of God is full of wailing!"
Alyssa, on the other hand, did not hide her feelings at all. It seemed that her long life in the temple had made her very self-centered in terms of communicating with others - she did not care at all whether others could understand her or not.
This is the way the charlatans express themselves.
But Alyssa obviously didn't realize that her way of speaking was difficult for ordinary people to understand.
The influence of the living environment in childhood on a person is deeply rooted.
No wonder Lisadilan asked the Lord himself to communicate with her. It was probably difficult for Lisadilan to understand Alyssa's jumping and ambiguous way of speaking...
But the lord did understand some things.
"What happened to the Snake Cult in the Amara Continent?"
From what Alyssa said, Li Ang estimated that the huge force built up by the Snake Cult in the Amala continent might have some big problems.
"Hiss...Famine!"
Alyssa sighed somewhat sadly.
"So... the sudden attack of the Snake Cult on Pendor this time was actually due to the famine in the continent of Amaran?"
Leon's ability to understand is indeed better than most people. Although Alyssa spoke unclearly, he still understood.
“Hiss… The current temple will not act according to the will of the goddess… Hiss, the cult is no longer the cult of the goddess!”
Alyssa nodded and continued to briefly and jumpily talk about some of the inside stories of the Snake Cult that she knew.
A few minutes later, the lord looked at Alyssa deeply, then looked back in the direction of Dilingang Port. He understood what was going on.
Alyssa is a priestess trained by the Snake Cult since childhood. She has been living in the Snake Cult Temple on the continent of Amara.
This is the headquarters of the Snake Cult and also the place where the will of the gods is conveyed to snake worshippers everywhere.
It was no secret that the Snake Church captured baby girls from all over the country, especially young noble girls, and sent them to the temple to be trained as priestesses.
Many nobles joined the Snake Cult because their children were abducted.
Although it is a cult organization, the identity recognition between nobles and commoners is still deeply rooted among the believers. Up to now, kidnapping and trafficking little noble girls and training them to become priestesses has become a standard procedure of the Snake Cult.
The Snake Cult believes that only pure girls can become the carrier of Azi Dahaka - this is also consistent with the dark goddess Erida.
In order to ensure the "purity" of the priestesses, all priestesses will continue to drink special poison from an early age.
This poison will make their appearance extremely seductive and will prevent them from contracting most diseases, including the Red Death, but it will also make their entire body poisonous, and their kiss will be fatal to ordinary people.
It is precisely because they have been taking poison since childhood that their lifespans are very short, often dying in their thirties.
As for the forked tongue - this is a ritual when becoming a priestess , the tip of the tongue is cut in half, which represents their identity within the Snake Cult.
The mark on the tongue is a small matter, it will only cause the person to speak with an accent, but the poisonous body means that one will never be able to obtain love from men or women in their entire lives, so when these priestesses grow up, they can only focus all their attention on the struggle for power.
In the special environment of the temple, many priestesses learned to oppress and fight in their teens, and lies and deception were their daily lives.
There are many priestesses who grew up in the temple like Elisa. Limited by the basic transportation of that era, most priestesses have never left the vicinity of the temple. They can learn to fight for power in the temple full of lies, but they have no idea how to govern a huge religious country.
The power of the Snake Cult was originally concentrated in the hands of the first high priest. The identity of the high priest was very mysterious and he always wore a mask. No one knew what he looked like or who he was.
The high priest ruled the Snake Cult for only a few decades.
But in the past few decades, the Snake Cult has grown from nothing into a huge force, and then gradually completely destroyed the powerful old Bacchus Empire of the Amala continent, established a religious state covering the entire Amala continent, and forced the Maritim Empire, which had split from the First Bacchus Empire, to surrender, and it was extremely glorious for a time.
It was clear that the high priest was a fairly capable ruler, even if his methods were somewhat eccentric.
During the time when the high priest ruled the Snake Cult, the priestesses were merely messengers used to pass messages and servants to serve the high priest. Their role was roughly similar to that of eunuchs in some feudal dynasties.
But after the death of this high priest, everything changed.
The high priest died suddenly. He left no will and had no time to prepare for his funeral.
So, after a clumsy struggle without any guidance, a priestess came to power.
After this, the temple of the Snake Cult became a gathering place for conspiracy. The priestesses suddenly had new goals, and generation after generation of priestesses began to seize rights that did not originally belong to them.
From a noble baby girl to a temple priestess, and then to the high priest, this seemed to have become an unwritten way to rise to power. Moreover, under the influence of the Senate parliamentary system of the Cubax Empire, another parliamentary system was formed - a parliament composed of priestesses.
Given their short life span, they even came up with a four-year election system...
But the problem is, what can girls who were abducted since childhood, grew up in the Snake Cult temple, and almost never saw the outside world understand?
They can't even control the army - they don't understand anything at all.
It’s just that most snake worshippers do obey the orders of the temple, and the council formed by the priests is indeed the highest authority.
But the people who make up this weird power structure have been taking poison since childhood, so not only can they not have contact with the opposite sex, they can't even make friends. In addition, they have never seen the world... Most of the priestesses have some perverted personalities.
Thus, under the rule of generation after generation of priests, the Snake Cult, which had almost ruled the entire Amala continent one hundred and fifty years ago, made almost no progress in the following one hundred years.
Not only that, but the descendants of the conquered Old Bacchus Empire rebuilt the Ash Empire on the ruins. Now, the Ash Empire can even fight the Snake Cult with great success...
On the contrary, the snake worshippers who were previously sent to the continent of Pendor gradually gained influence in the New Bacchus Empire.
But the priestesses still regarded going to Pendor as an exile, and they could only see the temple...
For hundreds of years, the rulers did not know how to govern, and yet the Snake Cult has not been destroyed under such circumstances. We can only say that this is an innate advantage of religious forces... At least the brainwashing ability is indeed strong, and the MLM-style recruitment of believers is still continuing, although it has been getting worse.
In the land ruled by the Snake Cult, the lives of the believers are becoming increasingly miserable.
Snake worshipers do not eat meat and do not allow drinking alcohol.
Originally this was the standard set by the first generation of high priests - he said it was an oracle.
But according to the Lord's understanding, this was probably a special request made by the high priest when he first subverted the Amala continent in order to make up for the aftermath of the war caused by joining the Snake Cult and destroying the ancient empire.
Not eating meat and not drinking alcohol can allow more land and resources to be used to grow grains and vegetables.
After experiencing continuous chaos and wars, the continent of Amalra was probably completely destroyed by war. This standard requirement for food can actually feed more people.
But the priestesses who later seized power obviously did not understand the reason behind this. They just blindly demanded that it not be allowed - because they had been taught since childhood that meat and wine were harmful and could not be consumed...
If you are just not allowed to eat meat, then that is actually not a big problem. After all, Amara is the original origin of potatoes and corn, these magical artifacts, and potatoes can provide most of the nutrients for the human body.
But the problem is that the priestesses don't know how to encourage farming...they don't even have the concept.
Of all the things they could touch, the more attractive ones were obviously those of war and conquest—conquering the ancient empire, conquering Gato, conquering Meritin, conquering Pendor, conquering everything…
So they kept launching wars without considering the lives of the believers - anyway, they were in the temple and had a large supply of vegetables and fruits every day, and most of them didn't even understand how these foods were grown!
As a result, after hundreds of years of continuous "conquests", the once prosperous continent of Amalra became desolate.
Almost no believers were engaged in farming and animal husbandry. They had countless gold, silver, treasures, weapons and equipment inherited from the Cubax Empire, but the vast continent of Amara could hardly support even the believers.
In today's Amara continent, in the territory of the Snake Cult, there is no decent farming or animal husbandry... everything is only considered for fighting.
The people of the ancient empire who were good at farming were all thinking about how to become Snake Cult warriors to improve their status so that they could have enough food.
The ancient Gatu people, who were skilled in animal husbandry, were almost completely destroyed, leaving only a group of slaves who raised war horses.
The Meritin Empire, which originally had a developed fishing industry, became a warship production base...
The Snake Cult was actually very rich. They had acquired a huge amount of wealth through their constant conquests, but this wealth was not used for the lives of their believers.
Almost all resources were turned into weapons and equipment, or used to decorate temples - the priestesses were obsessed with all kinds of decorations, and now even the grassroots warriors of the Snake Cult wear expensive viper equipment. The complicated patterns on the armor alone cost a huge amount of money.
But those patterns are actually purely decorative, just to make it more similar to a viper - this is the aesthetic view of the priestess.
The original propaganda of "rebuilding a beautiful paradise" was just a superficial effort. The temple of the Snake Cult was decorated into a huge and magnificent castle, but the believers could not even get food to eat.
But this food shortage made the believers even more warlike - they were all quite happy to invade other places, such as the continent of Pendor.
This kind of cult state will always make its believers suffer from poverty and hardship, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
After all, poor people are more willing to die for the gods.
And Alyssa is probably the one with relatively more brains among the priestesses.
She went to some ports to spread the "will of the goddess" and saw the plight of the lower-class believers. She wanted to gain power to change this situation.
However, she had no experience in political intrigue, and she naively thought that she could take the throne by poisoning other priestesses...
After a failed poisoning attempt, she was exiled to the continent of Pendor - not because the high priest in power was magnanimous and did not kill her, but to strengthen control.
The logic of the current high priest is actually not complicated - it is a fact that Elisa murdered other priestesses, so she claimed that after Elisa's rebellion failed, she fled Amara with a large army to the continent of Pendor.
This is because the priestesses have never been able to truly control the army. The high priest wants to use this method to allow these expeditionary forces to be completely controlled by her rather than obeying the Priest Council.
Of course, no matter success or failure, Alyssa would not be able to return to the temple alive, as a team of Snake Cult warriors were keeping an eye on her.
