Chapter 305: Chapter 305: Continuous Surprises

Translator: 549690339

The mission to hunt down Lin Zhen was not an easy one. After the five Holy See hunting squads entered the Ancient God City, besides one squad being responsible for intercepting the entrance, the other four squads went into the second layer.

Each team had two Star Realm experts, including a Star List expert. With such a lineup, killing Lin Zhen was definitely not a problem.

Two teams headed to the South Pole area, and two teams headed to the North Pole area. When they entered, these four teams claimed that they would be able to capture Lin Zhen within half a month.

However, an entire month has now passed, and they haven’t even found Lin Zhen’s shadow.

Obviously, Lin Zhen has some kind of special evasion method. After many searches, the Holy See finally discovered that Lin Zhen had once obtained a compass as a prize in the War God’s Knockout.

The compass could reflect a person’s Star Power and Dantian energy intensity. Whenever someone approached, their strength would be displayed on the compass.

After learning about this, the Holy See immediately responded by spending a huge sum of money to purchase five compasses and sent them to the five hunting squads.

With these compasses, the hunting squads should be able to cover the entire second layer of the Ancient God City in no time, and Lin Zhen’s capture would seem inevitable.

There has never been a halt in the global debate on whether Lin Zhen is good or bad, even in Hua Xia, or in Ice City.

The followers of the Gods Clan were too numerous. There were still tens of millions of believers in Ice City. These believers were mainly those who had visited Sofia Cathedral before. Now that Great Divine Sect’s Allen was leading the team to pursue Lin Zhen in the Ancient God City, it caused a great controversy in Ice City.

After all, these people were not part of an organization, unlike the Gods Clan, which is collective and disciplined. So even though the majority of Ice City residents supported Lin Zhen, they could not take the upper hand in public opinion.

Initially, when the Gods Clan began pursuing Lin Zhen into the Ancient God

City, their believers remained clamorous on the internet, claiming that Lin Zhen could not hold out for more than a few days before he would be captured and punished. Many people even suggested various ingenious methods of torture for Lin Zhen.

Such posts were numerous, and the arrogance of the Gods Clan was immense.

Adding to that, the church’s propaganda accused Lin Zhen of countless crimes, and world opinion gradually shifted in favor of the Holy See.

However, in the past month, the Gods Clan’s pursuit of Lin Zhen had been stalled, giving hope to many of his supporters, who criticized the Holy See on the internet.

A day or two without progress was fine, even ten days without progress was acceptable, but a month without progress led to doubts within the church’s ranks.

While many still didn’t dare to criticize Pope Yan Huang, they could at least criticize the incompetent hunting squads.

But who sent those hunting squads? Of course, it was Yan Huang who sent them, so the criticisms were essentially directed at Yan Huang.

In addition to the criticisms from those who didn’t believe in the Gods Clan, Yan Huang gradually started to feel the pressure.

For some unknown reason, his teacher, Laricus, had no news ever since leaving the church, and according to the report from the squad guarding the entrance, Laricus never entered the Ancient God City.

Despite firmly believing that Laricus wouldn’t betray him, Yan Huang still couldn’t sleep or eat well.

Finally, after a month had passed, a follower of the church reported some news to Yan Huang.

“Your Majesty, the target has been identified, and we can take action at any time.”

“Good, take action immediately. Lin Zhen’s whereabouts are unknown right now, but we need to do something to put pressure on him. If we can lure Lin Zhen out sooner than later, it will still be beneficial for our Gods Clan.

Otherwise, the current situation is a bit passive for us.”

“Yes, Your Majesty, we will take action immediately.”

In the following days, the Holy See once again shocked the world with their actions.

First, under the leadership of three golden-robed elders, 300 church members launched a surprise attack on a building in Ice City.

This building belonged to the Ice City Marriott Group, but Li Wanfeng and Zhao Siqing, the couple who managed the company, usually didn’t go there. Instead, it was the personal property of Li Wanfeng’s father, Li Yao.

After a battle, the church members successfully killed Li Yao, the only Star Realm expert in the Marriott Group, and suffered the loss of seven quasi-Star Realm experts.

After killing Li Yao, they found two people in the building.

Lin Zhen’s parents, Lin Liye and Li Qin, who were both Seventh-level Warriors, were captured by the church and taken to Constantinople.

Because the incident occurred suddenly, by the time the news was exposed, Lin Liye and his wife had already arrived in Constantinople.

After capturing Lin Zhen’s parents, this news was immediately announced to the whole world. Even Yan Huang deliberately let this message reach the Ancient God City, believing that as long as Lin Zhen heard about this matter, he would definitely not be able to resist walking into the trap.

This matter caused a huge uproar, as many Martial Artists from Hua Xia came forward to criticize the church’s actions. It was a rule that the conflict between Martial Artists should not involve family members, and the church’s actions undoubtedly violated this rule.

If this was done by an individual, he would definitely not meet a good end, but the church is different.

The church not only has strong Martial Force but also has nearly half of the world’s believers. No matter what criticism is made, it can’t have any effect, and it can only cause a large-scale verbal war worldwide.

The situation in Hua Xia was similar, with those supporting Lin Zhen and the believers engaging in endless verbal battles, even leading to several brawls and some people losing their lives over this issue.

The day after Lin Zhen’s parents were abducted, several explosive news items emerged again.

The first was Yan Huang announcing that the Gods Clan could only have one

Saintess. He declared that he would abolish the Saintesses of the United States, European Union, African Union, Sand Russia, India, and Brazil, leaving only one Saintess, Su Mingyue from Hua Xia.

This move was undoubtedly intended to establish Su Mingyue as the future queen.

However, almost at the same time Yan Huang issued the order, Divine Sect Saintess Su Mingyue announced her withdrawal from the church and would no longer serve as a Saintess, completely severing her ties with the church.

Additionally, An Ning, the young lady of the An family, also solemnly announced that all believers of Gods Clan would be removed from the An Group, and the primary criterion for employing people in the An family was that they could not be believers of the Star Sky Divine Teaching.

These three pieces of news appeared almost simultaneously, stirring up the world once again.

As the world’s largest financial group, nearly one-fiftieth of the world’s population is working for the An family. The resulting turmoil from this announcement would be immense.

Moreover, the announcement by Saintess Su Mingyue was a slap in the face to Yan Huang, who wanted to marry her.

Before the order to appoint Su Mingyue as the only Saintess of the church had completely died down, news of her leaving the church had already arrived.

Not to mention, Su Mingyue’s admirers were spread all over the world, even accounting for one-tenth of the Gods Clan. So when Su Mingyue announced her departure from the church, countless believers around the world wept.

Many people took to the streets to plead with Su Mingyue to stay, but she had made up her mind and vowed never to remain in the church again.

She said: “My brothers and sisters of the Gods Clan, please forgive Ming Yue’s willfulness. In fact, I began to doubt the existence of the True God of the Stars three years ago. When I encountered danger and almost died, my prayers had no effect. No one could understand my despair at that time. My pursuit and faith were so vulnerable in the face of cruel reality.”

“At that time, I met Lin Zhen. He saved me. He is a very individualistic person.

He said that he never believed in the True God of the Stars and that the True

God would not save anyone.”

“I doubted it, but I was familiar with the history of the Divine Teaching. Apart from the unusual events that took place on God Transformation Day, the True God of the Stars was nothing more than our imagination.”

“However, I haven’t left the church yet. After all, many of our doctrines are good. But until now, the appearance of the Vatican has greatly disappointed me. They declared Lin Zhen a heretic, but I wasn’t involved in their fights, although I wished to help the one I love deeply, but after all, I am still part of the Gods Clan.”

“Until yesterday’s incident, he even sent people to arrest Lin Zhen’s parents, which is undoubtedly unacceptable. How can such a person represent the Deity on earth and rule over half of the world’s population?”

“If he is truly the Holy Son, the spokesman of the Deity, then such a religious clan is not worth believing in. From now on, Ming Yue is no longer part of the church, and I choose to be with the one I love forever.”

Su Mingyue and An Ning’s decisions sparked a massive worldwide wave of people leaving the Gods Clan.

Many people wanted to join the An Group and had to leave the church. Many people who admired Su Mingyue also followed suit and left the church.

According to incomplete statistics, the number of church believers originally accounted for about 50% of the world’s population, but since the Lin Zhen incident, the number has dropped to 45% within a month.

With An Ning and Su Mingyue’s actions, within three days, the number of church believers dropped to 38%!

That is to say, because of Lin Zhen and his two girlfriends, the number of followers of the Gods Clan has almost decreased by a quarter!

Especially in Hua Xia, the number of church believers decreased sharply. Furthermore, many people took to the streets to protest the church’s actions, demanding that Yan Huang apologize and release Lin Zhen’s parents.

Unexpectedly, the situation escalated to this point, and Yan Huang was somewhat caught off guard. However, he would never apologize and began to use various channels to continue enumerating Lin Zhen’s crimes in the hope of restoring the church’s reputation.

Some extremist believers also continued to desperately defend Yan Huang, and many confrontations and even group fights occurred on the streets of Hua Xia.

Just when the situation was deadlocked, a major incident occurred in Ice City.

The king of the mutated beasts roaming the Greater Khingan Range, a giant Siberian tiger called the Enemy of Ten Thousand, broke through the limits of land creatures and reached SS-level!

After the Enemy of Ten Thousand advanced, it led countless Quasi-SS Class, S-level advanced mutated beasts, as well as several billion low-level mutated beasts, in a fierce attack on Ice City!