Priest Innocent was in a small stone room, with a mountain of parchments in front of him, and only a young man was transcribing for him.

After several months of continuous study, the Innocent priest learned more than 100 words, was able to bargain with the White Pigeon Chamber on paper, and was able to negotiate a few words with the local priest in simple Chanda. The Eastern Church was left with a large number of unprocessed title deeds and mandates, and many notarial deeds that had reached their expiration dates, but no one had renewed them.

There is not much left of the Eastern Church"".

Many of the icons were sealed in huge wooden chests, covered with rags and broken bowls, and on one side were heaps of tools and weapons, guarded only by a group of old men, who were not afraid of soldiers or robbers, but only of the afterlife. While the people were desecrating themselves, the old men stood by and did their best to protect the books and some icons. The people of the Western Church came and demanded these great works of art so that they could be 'kept safe,' but the old men did not trust the Burkes and sent them away. The eastern clergy who had destroyed the icons also came and sternly admonished the old men, reminding them that they had made a great mistake in idolatry, but the old men did not care.

The old man occupies a stone pagoda in the city that used to observe the fire, and prays silently in it, rejecting all calls from the world. These old people felt that they could not do anything about the chaos, so they prepared enough food and water, closed themselves, and when the food and water were exhausted, if there was no change outside, they would accept the arrangement of death.

Of course, if one or two old people are still concerned about life in the city, they should have noticed a difference: the desperate revelry has come to an end in recent days. The citizens were driven back to their homes, and only a few dozen homeless people were still wandering around, even if they were thrown into warehouses and confined for a few days, once they were released. Or will immediately find wine to get themselves drunk.

But order is slowly being restored. The looting and chaos in the streets is gone, but what is happening in the little corners of the city is unknown.

Yesterday, a light boat docked on the docks, and several Creelians looked horrified and found their shops in the city. A few hours later, the shop's chamber of commerce tried to ask for help from the city's new owners, the Vicchiavaran coalition forces. Their request was simple. In the past, it was nothing at all: two empty cargo ships. At the time of the boom of the wharf, any trader on the wharf could help them connect with two ships in an afternoon, which were well stocked with grain, and the sailors were vigorous and ready to set off at any time.

But now. It is not easy to assemble such a ship. There are many of these boats on the docks, but before they set sail, they had to hire the craftsmen of Salander to repair the holes in the bottom of the ship with a silt called asphalt, after all, it had been too long since the last ship was repaired. The difficulty was to find two ships of sailors, which was not easy. Any organization about shipping has collapsed, and now shipping has become a private solicitation business for sailors. Either they carry passengers themselves. Or crowds of people waiting at the ferry crossing, extorting passengers from the ferry at extremely high prices. It is no longer possible to carry out the voyage with the same order and strict division of labor. Captains and large ships, grain officers and storekeepers, soldiers at anchorages to catch smugglers and navigators on the waterways, drug vendors and lonely shipgirls, all these things that were vital to the voyage had vanished.

Perhaps the price of the shop was high enough, or perhaps for some other reason, the Count quickly arranged for soldiers to act as sailors and left the silent dock with the Creelians. Several exhausted sailors, tormented by the wine, stared blankly at the departing ship, as if to judge whether it was a hallucination.

Life in the past was more like a dream than it is now: thousands of residents once lived in a huge, stinking city, and almost everyone had something to do. Young girls can safely cross the city and meet their lovers privately; Sailors always find girls when they need them; Booksellers will bring the latest books from Rhodok, Swadia or Burke, covering every corner of what mankind already knows; The caravans of the Salanders and the cargo ships of the Vycians brought new and exotic goods to the city; Trafficked women are exposed in the city square, and the city guard executes the criminals on the spot, and gives them citizenship and corresponding protection; The clergy of the Eastern and Western Churches would fight because a young girl from the Eastern Church had converted to the faith of her Western Church husband because of love; The peddlers were magical magicians, who made fish out of wood, gems out of stone, wheat grains into pomegranates, flax off off as silk, they made delicious fish pies out of mud and rotten gills, they made wonderful ointments for all ills out of maggots and butterfly chrysalis, and they recruited many destitute painters to paint a picture of Lech's affair with Empress Svadia, and hinted that the children of the young empress of Haraus were somewhat similar to Emperor Frederick.

It must have been a dream, for none of these wonderful things were gone now, and no one dared to say that they would return. At the time of possession, people were always dissatisfied and chattered, but now, each of these things is God's gift, and it is indescribably beautiful.

Innocent was surrounded by a small church court, a monk who acted as an interpreter, a young Burke who was in charge of the dossier, and an apothecary. This apothecary was a courtier of Count Kalinin, and was ordered by Kalinin to assist the Innocent priests in their affairs. The pharmacist was kicked out of the Earl's court for two reasons, the first was that he repeatedly offended the Earl, because the Count was always reluctant to purchase more medicinal herbs and hire more physicians, so that soldiers who could have recovered were amputated and even died; The second reason is that Innocent lacks a person who knows how to heal, there was originally a Rhodoc woman who was responsible for helping him make potions, but this woman suddenly left him some time ago, no matter how to keep it, Innocent priest now needs such an assistant.

Innocent is in a difficult situation.

During the assault on White Harbor, a decent priest defected to the Earl, who contacted many of his old friends and asked them to come and fill the Earl's inner court. At this point, the advantages of the nobility were revealed: the Innocent priests might be able to stir up the peasants, or spread rumors. At the same time, it is also very well informed. However, the noble-born clergy were able to directly introduce local nobles to the earl, and the support of these nobles was crucial for the rural areas where the count could not intervene.

Since the Count took over the city, more than a dozen knights and two barons have officially written from the surrounding villages to express their loyalty to the Count. The area under the actual control of the Count. It already includes a vast area between the city of Lesser East Lake and Varankov.

A few days ago, the city council, at the behest of the Count, had begun preparations to convene and to elect a new prince of the city. The city council nominated six candidates, including the earl, and the city nobles were asked to choose their future leaders at the next meeting as they wished, fairly and ziyou.

When the city nobles agreed to convene a city council, the count expelled the remaining five nobles. One of them was found to be a embezzler. He carried eleven sacks of wheat and a ham during the most difficult period of the siege, and though he had been an enemy in the siege, a noble count could not tolerate such a man remaining in the city; One is suspected of killing his own son because they are in love with the same black woman; A man was accused of being a beast and was responsible for the strange death of sixteen ewes in the city, and for a while, all the products of the sheep in Xiaodonghu City were unsalable. can only be sold at a low price to people in Dadonghu City, who are not well-informed; Two others intended to lead their families to participate in the mutiny. Six Varan soldiers testified that they heard the two families singing Burke songs in their homes, singing the praises of Lech. In a word. Each of the five nobles committed some crime, which made the city judge unbearable, and the court sentenced them to be driven out of the city.

After the verdict, the city judge's mysteriously missing son miraculously returned home. The fourteen-year-old boy was in a trance, saying that he had spent the happiest time with several girls in the past two days by Baron Yuri, and that this sweet memory was remembered by the boy for the rest of his life, and that he had been the most loyal follower of the Romanov family ever since.

At the same time, the Count had announced the two main agenda items for the next city council, the first was to elect a new prince, and the second was to suspend the city council indefinitely. The Count did not need a city council to dictate him, and he was ready to appoint himself a lifelong ducái prince to rule over a city that had lost its order, as the ancient Zen people had done.

In contrast to the strong backlash of the urban aristocracy, the lords reacted calmly: the land-owning lords had always been dull and indifferent to the affairs of the city. The lords were disgusted by the lords for their lack of long-standing ancestry, affluence and ostentation, and their aversion to force in favor of mercenaries. So the count easily got the support of the lords. On the streets of Little East Lake City, half of the soldiers patrolled were the Earl's Vicchian and Valan's men, and the other half were the new local lord's men. This can be seen in their coats of arms. In the west, dragon flags and flowers were often the dominant part of the coat of arms, and many of the counts brought from the west used these motifs by vassals and knights, while in the east, the nobles generally preferred to use the eagle and wolf flags. Probably never before has the coat of arms of a lord's subordinates been so complex, covering so many patterns, from the east to the west, motifs everywhere, can be found among the count's subordinates, and even a few crescent flags of the Salander people, which are newly formed families after the Salander mercenaries who remained in the city pledged allegiance to the earl.

In the midst of his dazzling success, the power of the earl has surpassed that of the ordinary earl: an ordinary earl can recruit more than a thousand soldiers, and he is already among the powerful vassals, and will be encircled and feared by the king, and the earl's strength is already several times that of this.

The power of the earl continued to grow as the local nobles continued to defect. The priest in White Harbor played a big role in this. The fellow was a coward, and the soldiers despised him, and while fighting in the forest, Innocent stood among the soldiers like a saint, while the priest from White Harbor was frightened and cried like a doll, and peed his pants. But the affection of the soldiers could not make the Innocent priest the crown of bishop, and the cowardice of the fellow could not erase the joint nomination of the local nobles: they nominated the priest as the bishop of the small East Lake City, and made it a symbol of the earl's cooperation with the local nobles.

The Count had Yuri tell Innocent about his arrangement the other day.

Innocent Priest will be granted a monastery outside the city of Little East Lake, and he will be banished from the center of power among farmers and thieves. He would spend his life listening to the country clergy, the dangers, the peasants, the temptations, the fears of hell; He would write letters from place to place begging the lords to donate generously so that the broken roof could be repaired; He will become obscure and become an abbot hated by the natives; After decades of training, he will become the Varankov priest: bald, obese, fond of tiny girls, with a sweet tooth and a hate to travel.

The Earl is very characteristic of the appointment of his courtiers: before the appointment, the Count will always let Yuri release the news and tell his subordinates his opinion. The rumor of this would spread widely, and everyone knew the Count's general idea. The Count would then ask for their opinions before a feast began. If any objection was raised, the Count would leave him after the banquet and discuss the matter with him alone, whether by danger or by promise, and he would certainly accept the Count's opinion before the man left. Then, on a more formal occasion, the Count would formally present his opinion for the first time, and his subordinates would at once agree and approve the arrangement, without slip-up, without error, without incident.

Innocent pondered over the pile of parchments, and outside the window came the shouting of the bishop of the Western Church as he was dragged away by the Valan soldiers, but the man was no longer worried. The enemies that Innocent now faced were the aristocratic clergy who were united, and Innocent didn't have many opportunities, but they were by no means impossible.

The Count's arrangement, Innocent pondered over and over what Yuri had told him.

Yuri knew that this kind of request was more difficult to accept, and Innocent became the bishop, which was the cry of almost all the Valan soldiers, and this call made the earl dare not send Innocent away directly, so he could only privately ask Innocent to give up the bishop election himself.

"I beg your understanding." Yuri said to Innocent.

"Of course," Innocent replied to Yuri after thinking for a moment, "I obey the Count's arrangement, and I will leave the city at a later date. ”

Yuri was a little surprised by Innocent's cooperation. Yuri knew what kind of person was sitting across from him.

"Tom," said Yuri, "the Count can actually meet some of your requests." ”

"Really?" Innocent stood up and said, "Then my only request is that you please address me Innocent on any future occasion." Innocent walked to the window and looked at the city spread out in front of the window with great interest, the city was like a finely carved stone slab, full of stories between people, full of struggles between people, "Forget the name Tom, forget the person Tom." ”