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“There’s only one important matter,” Faith said. “Lavini is dead, but that’s a good thing for the faith. After all, a living god truly has a will, while a dead one does not. I plan to establish a sect with the help of some people who can comprehend divine will. In this way, they will have a relatively clear faith, and with this faith, it will not be difficult to learn that kind of magic that combines totem enhancement with magic.”
"As for the source of the totem enhancement, it's quite simple; there are many monsters over there."
Ronan frowned slightly. "Are you trying to start your own sect?"
“You can say that without a problem,” Faith admitted. “However, I don’t intend to lead this sect. Firstly, I will definitely be with you, and I can’t stay with them forever. Secondly, the living founder is too hateful. If the Holy Son hadn’t died, the Seven Saints Sect would never have truly grown strong, because no one would dare to say what they want in the name of God.”
It must be said that Faith is indeed a professional in the field of religion, and her understanding is very profound.
Falek added, "In another five or six days, this magic will be largely complete, and we can find people to test it."
The two of them have been in charge of researching cultivation methods suitable for the people of the Ship Country. A large amount of information about the people and magic here has been transferred to them, and the progress is very fast.
"What if something goes wrong?" Ronan asked.
"That means his faith wasn't strong enough."
"That means his loyalty wasn't absolute enough."
Faith and Falek spoke at the same time.
No wonder they're a combination of a cult witch and a court empress, a charlatan and a feudal slave owner leader—it's too classic.
“And with the Holy Maiden around, he won’t die unless he dies immediately,” Faith said.
Falek continued, "They won't die. Even if they fail, they'll still be a valuable case study. The height we stand at now is built upon countless bones."
“The Ship Country has hundreds of fixed-term slaves who can contribute to this cause; this is God’s grace,” Faith said, her professionalism as a religious figure evident.
“It is also our kindness,” Falek added.
The laws of the Ship Country are simple and not very complicated. Apart from death, the only options are to become a slave and be assigned to the "territory" of a certain elder, with the only difference being the length of time.
Faith and Falek intended to use slaves for experiments.
"Go find Didi tomorrow morning. Oh, and remember to call Anri and Isaac too," Ronan instructed.
Dinya wouldn't disagree, but the necessary procedures still had to be followed.
What's most important for a secretary? Loyalty. And what's most important for a lover? Loyalty, too.
"As for me, I need to get a good night's sleep until noon. Don't wake me up in the morning."
Ronan said that the past hour had really been quite an ordeal.
Faith smiled slightly. "How about I give you a massage?"
Ronan was slightly surprised. "You have this kind of skill?"
“When I was a child, I performed acrobatics in a circus. When we weren’t performing, we practiced our moves like crazy. How could I not know how to massage?” Faith said. Back then, she and her twin sister would massage each other to relax, cursing the ringmaster and coach as they massaged each other. But now, looking back, those were some of the happiest days in her decades of life.
“I can do that too,” Falek quickly replied. When she entered the palace, the Sultan was already an old man with a sore back and a white beard that almost reached his waist. This massage skill was a stepping stone for her advancement that she had painstakingly practiced.
“Okay, everyone come on over. Falek, you go first. Faith, you can rest a bit more,” Ronan said. For so many years, he had been the one giving massages to others. Finally, someone was giving him one.
Not long after, Ronan fell asleep.
Looking at Ronan's peaceful sleeping face, Faith and Falek were delighted and moved, because it was a sign of their trust in them.
This man gave them something they had never received before.
Chapter 694 Two things are one thing; the king wasn't made for nothing, he accomplished it.
The next morning, Faith and Falek summoned Dinia, Ambrina, and Isabel and told them about their plan to experiment with "sentenced slaves."
Slaves with fixed terms are a good source of material, because in the Land of Ships, those who turn to crime are not usually the ones who win in the internal competition. However, everyone in the Land of Ships has talent, so they are still blank slates. They haven't even learned the special basic cultivation method of the Land of Ships. It is very time for them to learn a new cultivation method.
Dinia basically agreed, but a hint of concern appeared on her face.
Isabel couldn't understand what Dinia was hesitating about.
Ambrina suddenly understood. Although her relationship with Dinia, which had been one of monarch and subject for over twenty years, was rather delicate, and it could even be said that the two harbored their own grievances, Dinia felt that Ambrina was too indulgent towards Ronan and, as a monarch, showed no mercy or magnanimity whatsoever. Anyone who opposed her would be crushed. On the other hand, Ambrina felt that Dinia had too many ideas and opinions. On the one hand, she wanted to reform, and on the other hand, she wanted to avoid certain social problems, causing Ronan to work hard for more than ten years. She was simply a terrible person.
But this doesn't prevent Ambrina from understanding Dinia's thoughts.
"Actually, the two things can be considered one thing. Among these slaves, of course, some were wronged, but there were also bad people. Isn't the goal to establish a new law? It's a good opportunity to clean up wrongful convictions and establish a legal system, giving good people a chance and bad people another chance. This chance is to learn a new cultivation method. If there are problems, it's because their bad habits are hard to change. If there are no problems, it means they have already repented. And since even such bad people can learn well, others will see that the new cultivation method is very good."
"Ambriina said."
She proposed combining the establishment of new regulations and new ideas with the teaching of new cultivation methods to dismantle the old education system, so that the two can complement each other.
He didn't become king for nothing, even after more than twenty years.
While his political and administrative skills weren't exceptionally sophisticated, they were above average, surpassing most people in this world who became monarchs simply because they were born into privilege.
“Leave the investigation to us,” Isabel said, taking on the task of investigating old cases. She, Ashley, and Grand were professionals at this.
“Let Alice go with you,” Ambrina said. Alice was quite professional, and her words were impeccable. “Also, let Yingqi go to Faith and Falek’s place, consider it a learning experience.”
Now that they've started working, her team can't just sit idle.
“Okay,” Dinia replied.
Sure enough, once they started getting down to business, these women were no longer just a simple family.
They've all retired, but it seems like they haven't.
And so, Ronan's women sprang into action.
Ronan and Caterpillar's main task was to act as translators, and incidentally, to think about what would happen after the large airship left this space.
A few days later, the investigation began. The Ship Country was poorly managed and didn't have any case files. However, there were only a little over 10,000 people there, and everyone's social relationships were relatively simple. The parties involved were still around and easy to find.
In this way, all that is needed is to re-interrogate the person involved.
Interrogation is something Isabelle and her two companions are experts at.
The work of clearing up old cases, finding wrongful convictions, and exonerating those who have been wronged is progressing very quickly.
But to say that these people who have suffered injustice have no problems at all, or that they are completely wronged, is not entirely true. Because there are only so many people on the ship, the elders and priests may not necessarily have to act in a reasonable manner, but they must certainly be convincing to the people. Otherwise, who knows when they themselves might inexplicably become slaves for a fixed term?
Therefore, those who were identified as having been wronged, but also had problems, naturally accepted the suggestion to take the test.
They became the first people to learn the new cultivation method.
First, they must become close to a certain kind of monster. At the same time, they must learn the new religious texts that Fisse has rewritten by combining the old beliefs of the Ship Country, and create a faith for themselves.
These two points are the foundation for totem enhancement and learning Suleiman's combination magic.
Next comes the real learning, which isn't difficult. The combination of totem enhancement and Suleiman magic are both brute-force training methods that require relatively low thinking ability and knowledge. Just do it! In a sense, it can be said to have a low threshold but high risk.
Of the more than one hundred slaves, more than forty were identified as innocent. These forty-odd people learned the new cultivation method, but more than a dozen of them failed. If it weren't for Dinia and Elena, these dozen or so people would have had to follow Lavini.
However, this is already higher than the proportion that Falek and Faith had expected. After all, they had only been working on the theory before, and the training method that Falek was working on was specifically for the Lag people. The physique of the Lag people is quite different from that of the people of the Ship Country. Even with Faith's help to adjust, it is still very risky.
The next step is to find the reasons from these dozen or so failures and make further adjustments accordingly.
The first priority is to enable more people who have already learned the basics of the Ship Country to learn and master it.
The second priority is to reduce risk.
The ultimate goal is to reduce the failure rate to around 10%. We won't ask for anything lower, since this cultivation method has inherent flaws and it's theoretically impossible to completely eliminate the risks.
At the same time, institutional systems were gradually established to clean up wrongful convictions and promote new laws and ideas.
Those elders who were temporarily spared by Dinia originally intended to proclaim that the Ship Country had its own national conditions, but they didn't cause any trouble at all, because everyone was focused on the case and the new cultivation method.
While most of the people of the Ship Country were focused on the case and the new cultivation method, a new system was quietly taking shape.
This is the method of the tyrannical ruler Ambrina: using the handling of a certain matter as an opportunity to create a temporary measure where anyone who opposes it will suffer. After the matter is over, the temporary measure will naturally become an established system.
By the time the people realized what was happening, it was too late to object.
Under the new system, the first thing that was established was a judicial system, but it only consisted of courts and patrol officers who were equivalent to police officers.
The Senate was abolished and replaced by a representative assembly. There is no longer a hereditary system, and representatives are elected. As the highest authority of the Ship Country, it is currently temporarily filled by that group of filial sons. A new election will be held after the new laws are completed.
The managers who were in charge of various aspects of the ship in the past will be retained for the time being, but in the future, these managers will be selected through assessments, that is, as civil servants.
The duties of education and faith will still belong to the priests. However, in the future, important positions can only be held by priests who have mastered the new practice and have studied the new scriptures in depth. Those of the older generation who do not study properly will all be relegated to the second line.
As for the Knights, the organization will remain the same, only the personnel will change. After they have fully learned the new cultivation method, they will no longer need to pick up trash. They will become the military force of the Ship Kingdom.
If Dinia had done this from the beginning, it would have certainly provoked fierce opposition from the entire Ship Country. But now, everyone in the Ship Country thinks Dinia is a truly kind and benevolent person.
Chapter 695 Two Difficult Problems, Yet They Can Be Solved Like This: A Victory Picnic
With the matter of the more than 10,000 people on board now settled, two other major problems have arisen.
The first challenge is how to get out of this enormous airship, which is over 1,000 meters long, nearly 300 meters wide at its widest point, with superstructures and a height of over 100 meters, and whose entire operating space is equivalent to a small town in this era. It is a massive airship built over a century by the artificial intelligence Lavigne and tens of thousands of human elites. And once it gets out, how can it operate in the outside world?
A way out was found quickly; Lavigne had a backup plan, there was a way.
After some research, Caterpillar also found a way to operate in the outside world, but it still had its flaws.
The method involves integrating the principles of the spaceship Kate built herself into the original power system of this giant airship. By absorbing external magic, it can maintain a high-altitude hover. Since the principle is similar to the levitation principle of elemental mages, it is almost as if it transforms itself into a part of the entire world's magic system, entering a kind of unconventional anti-gravity. Therefore, even such a huge thing does not consume much magic when hovering.
But flying consumes a lot of mana. Just like the spaceship Kate built, it needs to "recharge" after flying for a while.
“My advice is to avoid flying if possible, and instead sail on the sea. This way, we can use the ship’s other propulsion system, which doesn’t require magic,” Kate said.
The other system, whose core components were left behind by otherworldly beings, was installed on this ship by Lavini.
In fact, this giant airship was not built to fly, but to sail on the sea. After all, the original design was intended to transport people and goods to war-torn areas. Hovering in the air was mainly for easy docking and departure, while flying was for entering and exiting this alternate dimension.
Ronan simply couldn't imagine how terrified the "maritime merchants" of the age of sail would be if such a giant ship were sailing at sea.
There were no weapons on the ship, but there was no need for them. The hull of this thing was simply beyond the reach of any weapon from the outside world, and with Lavini's strength, she herself was the strongest weapon.
That should be the solution for the boat issue.
The other problem, far more troublesome than the ship, is the monsters in the White Desert.
First, they are part of Lavini's commission; Dinia promised Lavini to preserve them as much as possible. Second, the new cultivation method also relies on them as "pictorial images" of totems, not to provide power, but as a special medium.
The necessity of this is beyond doubt.
However, from their physiological perspective, once they leave this alien space, they will be unable to adapt to the outside world and will quickly die.
Even with some modifications, allowing for the individual keeping of a few, it would only be temporary.
Because they are part of a relatively simple and fragile ecosystem, once separated from that ecosystem, they will eventually die. They cannot even guarantee their individual survival, let alone the continuation of their species.
Kate Pelle held up three fingers. “Three steps to solve the problem. First, make a big pool. Second, put them in. Third, put the board on top.”
Ronan's eyelids twitched. "I feel like you've skipped a million steps."
“At most, one step was omitted, which is to make them smaller,” Kate Peller said.
"Wait, shrink? Are you sure?" Ronan was stunned.
Kate Pelle chuckled. "You forgot, that giant snake that was only as long as this ship eventually turned into a snake-man who wasn't much bigger than a human? Theoretically, all the monsters there can shrink, but only that highly intelligent snake-man could revert to its normal size on its own."
"What we need to do is shrink that ecosystem and move it to a pool on the ship. The ship's deck area is so large that building a pool of 10,000 to 20,000 square meters is easy. The snake people's shrinking also incorporates the concentration of power. If we remove this and simply shrink them, the actual consumption will be less. With the help of some technology left by Lavigne, we can modify them so that a few of them can enter the outside world to generate right now without much problem."
"Even gradually and comprehensively exerting some influence, eventually enabling them all to survive in the outside world, is not impossible. However, that would take a very long time. Perhaps their descendants, more than ten generations later, would be able to survive in the normal world."
Ronan suddenly realized that it seemed to be true.
"I'm leaving this to you," Ronan said.
“But I’m not good enough yet. Don’t forget, the ‘Original Species’ was originally one of the important tools we used to reshape the ecology of that planet,” Kate Peller added. “So, this matter also requires Dinia, who possesses the power of the Original Species.”
Ronan said, "That's not a problem."
In the blink of an eye, another month has passed, and the problems with the ship and the monsters have been resolved.
They entered this alternate dimension in August and have spent more than two months there. Now it's November, and it's time to leave and start anew.
Since Lavigne's death, this space has no longer been shrouded in dark clouds and thick fog, remaining a hazy gray. However, the boundary between day and night is not clear; the days are not so bright, and the nights are not so dark. There are no seasonal changes, and the temperature remains around seventeen or eighteen degrees Celsius. The sky is mostly not clear, except on this day when Ronan and his group had a long-awaited celebratory dinner together, a rare sunny day arrived.
Ronan and his group flew their small spaceship to a mountain not far from the waterfall, where there was no one around.
On the deck of the small spaceship, a dozen large handmade carpets were laid out together. Ronan and his group sat side by side, with Ambrina to Ronan's left and Dinia to his right. In the middle was a low, large round table, on which were piles of cooked food and wine.
Ambrina leaned against Ronan, wearing sheer white pantyhose with lace details on the sides and vertical stripes in the back. While the style was typically elegant and regal, her slightly chubby legs were adorned with white, lace-trimmed ankle stockings, one foot dangling playfully, giving her a slightly whimsical and sweet look. Zhao Yingqi also wore white pantyhose with rose-patterned cutouts, a blend of innocence and sensuality. Alice, who rarely wore white pantyhose since becoming a high-ranking official, wore them again this time, a pure white, revealing her slender legs and small feet, still retaining that youthful, childlike quality.
Isabel's healthy, shapely legs were encased in slightly thick, flesh-colored satin pantyhose, exuding both professionalism and sexiness. Ashley and Grande both wore the same pantyhose as Isabel, but Ashley's legs had a dancer-like, subtle muscle definition, highlighting a combination of strength and beauty, while Grande's legs were longer and fuller than her sister Alice's, resembling manga-style beautiful legs.
Dinia, Elena, and Agustina all wore slightly thick matte black pantyhose. The same pantyhose had a uniform color on Dinia's perfectly proportioned legs, while on Elena's strong and voluptuous long legs, there was a noticeable color variation: the thighs were semi-transparent, the knees were transparent, the calves were slightly transparent, the ankles were black, and the heels and toes were transparent. On Agustina's athletic long legs, the muscular lines were outlined more clearly.
Chapter 696 Traditional Programs, One Person, One Wish, A Grand Vision
Sitting directly opposite Ronan were Faith and Falek, both dressed in conservative dark brown. Their posture was also very proper, and their skirts covered as much as possible, with only half of their feet visible.
Ambrina glanced at the sliced sausages on the table, nodded to Ronan, and, as an old married couple, Ronan naturally understood. He picked up a slice with his mouth and fed it to Ambrina mouth-to-mouth, which she took.
“Disgusting, ugh,” Isabel said coldly.
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