Chapter Eighty-Three: Gray and Emperor Ira

In Emperor Ira's declaration of war, King Nagayama accounted for three successful labors, so whose credit is the remaining seventy percent?

The time goes back to the 56th year of the new calendar, and the capital of the Ira Empire, Ding'an Castle. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

Twenty years have passed since Gray left the Leiting-Saktin Academy of Magic. For the first ten years, Gray just traveled casually, going wherever he wanted, robbing a few gangs of robbers when he ran out of money, and entangled him. The father and son had almost the same idea when they had no money, but unlike Meier, Gray did not start to fight the outlaws because he was robbed, but when he saw that others were robbed, he helped each other and solved the problem of entanglement by the way while saving people. It was only after that that Gray turned to the outlaws as a walking purse.

Later, Gray meets a vegetarian Irayokai, with whom he has lived for five years. During these five years, Gray learned a lot from him and believed in the great god of enlightenment. Ira Youkai felt that there was nothing left to teach Gray, so he left a letter for Gray and left silently.

Ira Yokai explains the reason for his departure, hoping that Gray will understand life and shape his faith in the future of his travels. In this way, Gray, who had lived in seclusion with Irayokai for five years, returned to the world. The change in thinking has also changed Gray's perspective on the world.

He put aside his identity as a Lytin magician and took the initiative to endure hardships with the poor, experience their lives, and help them. He even worked as a slave under the Tugu people for two months, eventually helping hundreds of slaves escape.

Of the hundreds of escaped slaves, fifteen were willing to follow Gray, and these fifteen were Gray's original team. With a following, Gray wanted to do something bigger. At first, his goal was to change a city, and he happened to be in Ding'an City at the time.

As the capital of the Ira Empire, Ding'an Castle had a permanent population of nearly two million. On the hill outside Jo'an Castle is the largest shrine in the Ira world, the Ira Shrine, which was founded by the first shrine maidens, and all Ira Shrines originated here.

Every year, the people of Dingan donate tens of thousands of Ira coins to the Covenant Shrine, and the Imperial Family also provides 20,000 Ira coins to the shrine every year. The contract shrine doesn't do anything with the money, and the shrine maidens only care about pleasure, spending money like flowing water, but they don't want to spend even a penny of Ira's money to do good deeds. They also falsely spread oracles, and since the priests of the palace also had the ability to ask oracles, they bribed the priests of the palace with a lot of money to let them do things for themselves. When the royal family and officials received false oracles, they could only honestly follow the words of the shrine maidens.

In Ding'an City, shrine maidens became synonymous with wealth and power. In this era of low productivity, men are the main labor force, so people in this era like to have boys. However, the people of Ding'an Castle are proud to have daughters, because only girls can be elected to the contract shrine.

As long as she enters the contract shrine, this girl will not only have no worries about food and clothing in the future, but also become the backstage of her family. Wealthy families would always donate money with their daughters in their arms, because doing so would greatly increase the probability of their daughters being elected to the shrine. Since most of the girls who were selected to the shrine were not suitable to be shrine maidens, the quality of the shrine maidens at the contract shrine was getting worse and worse. By the year Gray came to Ding'an City, the witches and war witches here were already weak, and the shrine maidens couldn't even use their abilities, and the average lifespan of witches was less than forty years old.

On the third day of Gray's arrival in Ding'an City, two princes were beheaded on the street for the false oracles of the shrine maiden. The Great Shrine Maiden of the Contract Shrine fell in love with these two princes and wanted them to go to the shrine to sleep for her. The two princes did not comply, so the great witch fabricated an oracle, saying that the two princes had offended the great god of the world, and the great god of the world wanted to kill them, and then the old emperor beheaded his two sons on the street.

These two princes have an excellent reputation among the people, so their deaths have aroused strong dissatisfaction among the people. The great witch of the contract shrine was afraid that the people would rise up and make trouble, so she fabricated an oracle and asked the old emperor to impose martial law on the whole city. The mediocre old emperor obeyed the orders of the great witch and enforced martial law throughout the city.

Under the deterrence of the army, the people could only stay at home, and outsiders could only stay in the inn. Gray learned the whole story from the innkeeper's mouth, but the innkeeper didn't know that the Great Witch had taken a fancy to the two princes, but only said that the two princes were killed because of the oracle that the Great Witch begged for, and the martial law was also because of the oracle.

Because he was too angry, the innkeeper casually said, "It's better not to believe this enlightened god." His words made Gray doubt his beliefs, and he prayed day and night during the period of martial law, wondering if the god had ever had such an oracle.

The god of revelation did not respond to him, but moved him to go to the contract shrine after the end of martial law. Gray is handsome, and as soon as he enters the shrine, he is stopped by several shrine maidens. They openly said that they had taken a fancy to Gray and wanted to take him to the temple of self-reflection to do something unacceptable. Gray immediately refused, broke through the shrine maidens' barriers, and fled the shrine.

The shrine maiden of the contract shrine made Gray wanted by the sheriff of Ding'an Castle, and Gray became a wanted criminal. He did not leave Ding'an City with his entourage, but returned to the contract shrine alone, wanting to wash the shrine in blood, but there were too many shrine maidens in the shrine, and Gray only killed a few hundred people as best he could.

The shrine maidens scattered and fled to the palace to take refuge. Gray felt that if he didn't leave, he and his followers would have to die in Ding'an City, so he planned to leave here with his followers.

On the day he left Ding'an City, they were caught up by a prince with several of his followers, who was the current Emperor Ira. The two princes who were killed were his older brothers of the same father and mother, and before the brothers were killed, they often gathered secretly to discuss plans to destroy the contract shrine.

The death of the two brothers made his hatred for the contract shrine reach the extreme. He knew that he was weak, so he could only lie down and taste his courage, and endure it for the time being. However, the incident of Gray breaking into the shrine and killing the shrine maiden made him change his mind, and he felt that some things should be solved by violent means, otherwise the matter could not be solved. He invited Gray to join him, promising to provide him with asylum.

However, Gray has no intention of becoming someone else's subordinate, and in order to keep Gray, the prince can only make concessions and establish a cooperative relationship with Gray.

Gray asked the prince, "How much are you willing to pay to destroy this group of witches?"

The prince's answer was only one word: everything.

So Gray came up with an idea for the prince. He asked the prince to take the initiative to ask the old emperor for help, led the Imperial Forest Army to hunt him down, and then found a way to master the Imperial Forest Army in his hand, kill the witches with a horse gun, and wash the contract shrine in blood.

The prince accepted Gray's proposal and borrowed 5,000 Imperial Guards from the old emperor to go out of the city to hunt down Gray. The two played hide-and-seek outside Ding'an City for two months, and when the prince completely mastered the army, the two joined forces and killed the contract shrine.

When Gray fled outside the city, there were many people who followed him because they hated what the Covenant Shrine had done. By the time the two of them met, five or six hundred people had gathered around Gray. At this time, the contract shrine has forgotten the fear of being chased and killed by Gray, and has lived a corrupt life of drunkenness and money, without the slightest vigilance.

It wasn't until the two of them surrounded the shrine that the shrine maidens realized the danger and hurriedly sent someone to ask for help from the imperial family. However, all the passages were blocked by the army, and the shrine maidens who went to deliver the message were all captured by the army without exception. The Imperial Guards did not dare to kill the witch, so they sent the witch to Gray.

Gray thought that the shrine maidens of the contract shrine did not have a good thing, and wanted to kill these shrine maidens. However, the shrine maidens say that they are sent on a dangerous mission because they do not want to be in the same league as other shrine maidens. When they see that Gray doesn't believe their words, they ask Gray to find someone to test his body.

Gray asked the prince to find two old women in Ding'an City, and the old women carefully examined the bodies of the witches, indicating that they were all virgins. After this, Gray reluctantly believed them and did not kill them.

Gray asked them if there were any of their companions at the shrine, and the messengers shook their heads and said no. So Gray took his people into the shrine and began to kill the shrine maidens. They killed from evening to dark, from dark to dawn, until the next evening, when all the shrine maidens were killed.

At this time, the news of the siege of the contract shrine by the Imperial Forest Army had reached the ears of the old emperor. The old emperor thought that the prince was going to rebel, so he sent troops to kill the prince. When the army of Ding'an City arrived at the foot of the mountain, they saw that the prince's army and Gray's people were on the mountain, and the prince and Gray stopped in front of them.

When the general with the troops saw that there were only two people on the opposite side, he stopped the advance of the large army, came to the two with his guards, and persuaded them to surrender. But he didn't want the prince to surrender at all, and asked the general if he was willing to follow him. The shogun felt that he had a great advantage, so he said that he was loyal to Emperor Ira and would not be loyal to the prince.

Gray blasted the general's head directly with a magic arrow, and then loudly questioned his guards if they would like to follow the prince. The soldiers of the guard were stupefied, and they nodded their heads for fear that Gray would blow his head up. Gray told them to dismount and swear allegiance to the prince, and the men did so.

After this, the prince asked the Imperial Guards to descend the mountain, and Gray also asked his men to descend the mountain. Without the general's command, the soldiers saw that the enemy army was moving, and they did not know what to do. At this time, the prince stepped forward and shouted to the soldiers. He told the crimes committed by the shrine maidens of the contract shrine one by one, and angrily denounced the old emperor for being incompetent. Since what the prince said was true, the soldiers immediately lost their will to resist, laid down their arms and surrendered, becoming prisoners of the prince.

The prince shouted to the soldiers again, promising that as long as he was on the throne, he would never let the contract shrine ride on the heads of the people again, and would make the life of the people of Ding'an better. So the captives took up arms again and became soldiers of the prince.

The prince led the army and returned to the palace in one go. He asked the general's guards to go back and report that they had been killed by the mutinous Imperial Guards, and now the Imperial Guards wanted to come and plead guilty to the old emperor, hoping that the old emperor would let them in. The old emperor believed them and let the prince's army in.

The first thing the prince did after returning to the palace with his army was to kill the priests who had taken bribes. His army quickly took control of the entire palace, the prince's army was strong, and the royal forest army in the palace felt that the old emperor was gone, and most of them chose to surrender to the prince, and only a few people were willing to fight for the old emperor.

After killing all the priests, the prince led his army to the old emperor's dormitory. I don't know who gave the old emperor a bad idea to let him take the prince's mother hostage, but the old emperor agreed, and immediately sent the Imperial Forest Army to arrest the prince's mother. The old emperor's actions chilled the loyal royal guards, so they also surrendered to the prince and explained the old emperor's conspiracy to him.

Although the prince intended to seize the throne, he did not want to kill the old emperor, but just wanted to force him to abdicate. However, the old emperor's behavior touched his bottom line, and after that, he couldn't control the killing intent in his heart, and rushed into the old emperor's sleeping palace alone, killing the old emperor who was hiding in the corner of the bed and shivering with a sword.

After this, the prince seized the throne. The first thing he did after ascending the throne was to canonize Gray as the Grand Priest of the Ira Empire and let him rebuild the Contract Shrine.

Although the new emperor hated the shrine maidens of the contract shrine, he knew that the Iraya shrine maiden was an indispensable existence for the people of Ira, so he had to rebuild the shrine. Although Gray is a murderous guy and a Leitin, after a period of contact, the new emperor feels that his belief in the great god of the world is more devout than that of the Ira.

However, Gray is the great god of the world who follows the Ira Youkai Letter, and has not received the "Water Ceremony". So the new emperor let Gray go through the motions and receive the water salute, and then canonized him as a great priest.

After this, Gray helped the new emperor rebuild the contract shrine. He re-educated the shrine maidens who had not been killed, and then asked them to select girls of the right age from among the common people, as the first shrine maidens had requested. These girls are sent to the apprenticeship camp, and Gray is unified for basic education, and the training of witch skills can only be handed over to the shrine maidens.

In the first three years of the reconstruction of the contract shrine, there was no great shrine maiden in the shrine, and Gray took over the power of the great shrine maiden. In the fourth year, Gray chose one of the eldest witches and asked her to serve as the great witch. After that, the contract shrine got back on track, and the power of the shrine maidens began to slowly recover.

Later, Gray set out on the journey again, and he chose a hundred of his followers to follow him, leaving the rest to follow Emperor Ira and do things for him. Before leaving, he made a pact with Emperor Ira that the two would work together to change the world and build a perfect kingdom. Emperor Ira declared war on the Taeyong people this time precisely to fulfill his agreement with Gray.