Chapter 1454: Chapter 898: Infiltrating the Upper City District

"We don’t say ’God bless’, we say ’Mad Fire above’, got it?"

"Got it, Lord Sect Leader!"

"Very good. Now, suppose you’re walking down the street, and I, as a missionary from one of the Three Great Religions, come up to question you—what are you supposed to say?"

"Mad Fire above."

"Wrong!"

Todd tapped the lectern with the long pointer in his hand, saying through gritted teeth like he hated iron for not becoming steel:

"Don’t be so rigid in your thinking. At a time like that, you say ’God bless’. Do we look like an organization that can openly advertise itself? At least not yet! So keep it low-key, understand?"

"Understood, Lord Sect Leader!"

The little Todd class was filled with his impassioned, rising-and-falling voice as he lectured.

And the Knight standing by the door of the building serving as a classroom watched this scene, couldn’t help sighing, and pushed up his sunglasses that were hiding his now faintly yellow eyes.

Just look at the people in this classroom: a Lord Sect Leader who looks like some half-baked countryside teacher, and a bunch of Mad Fire Believers who probably don’t even have an elementary school diploma. Put this lot together and they’re basically the living definition of the term "rabble."

The Knight still couldn’t believe he’d actually been played by someone like Todd, and now had to take orders from the Mad Fire God Sect—just from the name you can tell it’s a seriously sketchy knockoff Church.

Every time he thought of this, his heart filled up with nothing but resentment and unwillingness.

But right when those emotions of resentment and the like were just beginning to bud inside him, Todd up on the platform suddenly looked his way.

This Lord Sect Leader, who a second ago still had the air of a village teacher, suddenly curled his lips into a sinister smile. He raised two fingers to point at his own eyes, then turned those fingers to point in the Knight’s direction.

The Knight’s whole body jolted tensely at once, and his eyes seemed to feel a faint yet unmistakable burning pain.

He immediately plastered on a fawning smile, bent at the waist toward Todd in a bow of submission, and didn’t dare let even a trace of dissatisfaction show on his face.

The other Mad Fire Believers had noticed this as well, and one after another cast worshipful looks at their Sect Hierarch.

If they weren’t seeing this with their own eyes, no one born in the slum would ever believe that such a noble-born, lofty Knight would actually bow humbly in their direction.

This is the might of the Mad Fire God, yo! This is the Mad Fire we’re going to follow for life!

For Mad Fire Believers who were already at the very bottom of society, just being able to see a Knight bow toward them was enough to make them willing to work themselves to the bone and add bricks and tiles for the Mad Fire God Sect.

The Knight not only didn’t dare show any dissatisfaction on the surface—at this point he didn’t even dare to entertain such thoughts in his heart.

Because Todd would punish him, and when that happened, Mad Fire would blaze out from his eyes with unbearable heat, and that flame would burn his mind more than his flesh, making him wish for death.

No matter how strong a person is, after going through that kind of punishment a few times, they’ll end up with all their temper beaten out of them. It was the most horrifying method of torment the Knight had ever seen in his life.

Todd had even embellished things with a little extra when explaining the Horror of Mad Fire to him, and coupled with the instant he’d been infected by Mad Fire, the Knight had truly witnessed the towering form of the Mad Fire Sun.

So now, aside from a bit of internal grumbling, he no longer dared to betray or break away from the Mad Fire God Sect.

And it wasn’t just the Knight who’d had this experience. Plenty of people from the Free People Church, the Rotter Association, and other Churches that had been taken down by the Mad Fire God Sect had likewise ended up forced to cling to the Mad Fire God Sect. They’d been dragged onto the War Chariot of the Mad Fire God Sect against their will.

At this point someone might ask: if you do things like that, won’t the Mad Fire God Sect end up harboring a huge hidden danger inside?

Todd didn’t care in the least.

Because just two weeks ago, that first batch of people from the Free People Church who were infected by Mad Fire had already shifted from extreme disgust and resistance toward Mad Fire to warmly calling the Mad Fire Believers "brother" and "sister," and had even begun to show a longing devotion for Mad Fire.

As for this phenomenon, Todd’s understanding was that Mad Fire possessed the trait of mental contamination, while the other believers took the more straightforward view that Mad Fire had "converted" this group of heretics.

Wait a second, those two ways of putting it don’t really sound that different, do they.

"Alright, that’s it for today. Go do whatever you’re supposed to be doing."

Todd tapped the lectern, and the believers below all simultaneously made the gesture of covering their eyes with both hands, then noisily rushed out of the classroom.

"The more I look at that gesture, the more abstract it gets..."

The two-hands-covering-the-eyes gesture was a salute Dorian had designed exclusively for Mad Fire Believers. For some reason, this extremely abstract pose was wildly popular among them.

Todd had no solution for it and could only let them fool around.

Wiping the blackboard, he mulled over the future development of the Church.

He had already clenched the entire slum in one hand and refined it in an instant; this area of the Capital that no one cared to even look at had now become the property of the Mad Fire God Sect.

But on the surface, the slum still maintained the same chaotic look as before, as if that fierce Church bloodbath had never happened.

Only the occasional pairs of bright yellow eyes flaring up in the darkness of the deep night showed that something had changed here.

All of this was, of course, to cover things up—to blind the eyes cast in from outside the slum.

Todd had a very clear understanding of the strength of his Divine Teaching. Relying on the power of Mad Fire, they could totally go full-on Musou mode in a Newbie Village like the slum, but once they left the slum, this was the Capital of Scameroon—the very center of the whole Scameroon.