Pastor's Tantra

Chapter 1119 Aiwass: This land...

Irises, Les Eygents. Chapel of Lambrecht-Champagne.

When Aiwass and his group arrived, it was already late at night.

"This name... is so strange."

Isabel murmured, "It sounds like the name of some kind of wine."

After all, this was Isabel's first trip abroad outside of marriage. And this first trip abroad was to the country of love and beauty. Although Les Eyjanes was not the art capital of the Iris Kingdom, the various novel and gorgeous buildings made her eyes widen.

Aiwass smiled and reached out to stroke Isabel's hair, holding the girl who seemed to have stars in her eyes in his arms.

"—Ah, because it is indeed the name of the wine."

It was Yassen who answered Isabel.

At this point, he smacked his lips and said, "To be honest, this wine is just average. Otherwise, I wouldn't have come to play GG."

Yasen didn't think this was anything to be proud of, but rather felt a little ashamed.

"Because Iris has a bad relationship with the Theocracy...or rather, its relationship with the elves is not very good, so the Theocracy has not deployed any elf bishops in Iris."

He remembered a joke - some of the culture of irises was similar to France in his previous life. And there is a famous joke in France: the only ones who can save France are women, dwarves and foreigners.

The existence of dwarves also allows Iris, who worships the path of beauty, to develop technology normally. Iris's worship of art is like the worship of science and engineering in the previous life... It is the kind of "no matter what your talent is, if you have good grades or are smart enough, you should study art."

Under such circumstances, it is only normal for technology to stagnate and industry to lag behind.

Without the dwarves, their technology would have lagged far behind their neighbors. It was thanks to the dwarves' optimized armaments that the fully armed Star Antimony dared not invade Iris at will; relying on these weapons, Avalon, which was surrounded by the sea and should have the best navy, was shattered at the first touch in a naval battle.

In this respect, the dwarves have indeed done their best. Without them, Iris might have been swallowed up by Star Antimony fifty years ago.

"But even without the sponsorship from the Theocracy, the Church is still necessary. Even though there are a large number of witches providing potions, the Iris leaders don't need the treatment of priests that much... But without the protection of the Church, there are too many undead.

"Although only first-level priests can preside over funerals, that is the population of a country after all—Iris' population is much larger than Avalon's. Even if it is just to purify the dead and let the dead rest in peace, a certain proportion of dedicated Tao transcendents are needed."

Aiwass said softly: "And dedication... requires money."

This is also what Aiwass finds quite ironic.

Just like the alchemy of the Path of Balance requires money, the Path of Devotion actually also requires money - as an individual Devotion Path transcendent, it may not cost much, but at the church level, it costs a lot. Uniforms, icons, churches, ritual materials for consecration and ceremonies, the salaries of ordinary clergy, plus the cost of maintaining nursing homes, orphanages or church schools... This is a lot of money, and it has to be spent continuously.

With witches competing for the business of treating dignitaries and the Moon Children generally unwilling to accept treatment from priests, priests, who are generally of lower level than other countries, find it difficult to earn enough money.

——In this case, pastors can only rely on "sponsorship".

"Lambaugh Chapel was sponsored by Lambaugh. They built the church, and they also paid for the maintenance of the church school, welfare home and Grace Hall attached to it."

Yasen sneered and said, "Being willing to invest in building a temple is a good way to maintain the reputation of the company... But there is a problem. There are not many kind-hearted people among the capitalists. Most of those who need to invest in building a temple are often because they are too immoral and want to balance their reputation.

"For example, Lahm Champagne - they had a 'recipe theft' scandal about thirty years ago. Another century-old champagne brand, 'Champagne Saint-Reno', publicly accused them of stealing and plagiarizing their own recipe. Anyone who has tasted these two champagnes can tell the similarities and differences between the two champagnes - Lahm Champagne has shrunk by one-third in quality, and the various materials used are obviously inferior... Now their quality is getting worse and worse, and they have added synthetic flavors to enhance the fragrance. I even suspect that their alcohol may also be synthetic. Of course, their selling price is as low as one-third of the classic 'Champagne Saint-Reno', and the price has not increased in thirty years.

"Because they were blamed by the whole country, they funded the construction of churches and welfare homes to try to divert attention. This trick worked well, after all, some people just needed cheap wine. They were not short of supporters, and this kind of "holy sponsorship" had a whitewashing selling point. Now, 30 years have passed, "San Relo Champagne" has closed down, and young people no longer know about this incident."

"…Sounds interesting."

Sherlock, who was sitting nearby reading a book, raised his head when he heard this topic.

He glanced at Aiwass and said briefly, "This is actually equivalent to asking the church to endorse you - as a price, it is a disguised way of giving back to society some of the dirty money you earn."

“Well,” Aiwas nodded, “After all, the reputation of low-level devotees among the people is invincible. Most people don’t know how crazy the high-level dedication path is, because ordinary people can’t reach above the fourth energy level.

"Especially when there are so many poor people in Iris... A charity that can provide porridge every day can offset all the bad reputation. So many people rely on them to survive. If the company goes bankrupt, how many people will starve to death? And aren't those people who starve to death the voters who voted for them?

“So no matter how bad their reputation is, no matter how strong the brand and quality of San Leo Champagne is, and no matter how solid the evidence is, the Iris Parliament cannot—and dares not—take action against Ram Champagne.

"I know you hate this kind of evil businessman, Yasen. But you don't have to worry too much about it... Although the original intention was bad, at least the result was good, wasn't it?"

"…But, Aiwass, do you think this is right?"

Isabel frowned slightly, she felt a little confused.

As an Avalonian, she felt that the Iris people's public relations method of first committing illegal acts and then using money to buy reputation to protect themselves was outrageous - if this happened in Avalon, they would have been caught on the spot by the Arbitration Hall.

But she couldn't say anything, because these people had indeed saved tens of thousands...even hundreds of thousands of people in this way.

Use illegal and dirty money to give favors, and let the poor people who benefit protect themselves——

Stealing and copying formulas is obviously wrong, and letting a century-old brand with excellent quality go bankrupt is even more sinful. But they use a considerable part of the money they earn to maintain social welfare...

Isabel had seen the Lambrecht Welfare Home and Lambrecht Charity Hall on her way to the Vendôme Residence a few days ago. She had not seen the inside of the welfare home, but there was a long queue of hundreds of people waiting to receive porridge at the entrance of the Charity Hall.

It was a salty porridge with onions, a small amount of fish, and a lot of rice. It was not nutritious, but at least she could survive by just eating the porridge. She also saw with her own eyes a child in ragged clothes who received a portion of porridge, drank it, and then returned to the end of the line to queue up again - intuitively, this was obviously against the rules, but no one else reacted to it, and it was obvious that this was already the norm.

It is precisely because they have sufficient funds that they don't care about such trivial matters.

They have sufficient funds because the quality of Ram champagne is getting worse and worse, and the cost is getting lower and lower. As the profit increases, there is also a need to whitewash...but this is also an obvious mistake.

San Lero Champagne was squeezed out because of its similar taste and went out of business. If they were willing to take out some money to sponsor the church, they would be able to make up for the difference in this regard. But they obviously did nothing wrong and there was no need to do this... and their quality was excellent, so there was no profit to compete with Ram Champagne.

People who have done wrong are supported by others, while people who have done nothing wrong have nothing.

This caused a bug in Isabel's brain, and she entered an endless loop.

"There are not so many 'right' and 'wrong' in this world, Isabel. Although you don't have the heart of authority, you are still infected..."

Aiwass said calmly: "Because if you want to say it, this is the problem of the Iris government. They have left so many people homeless, without clothes or food, wandering the streets. These unscrupulous businessmen can whitewash themselves in this way because they bear part of the responsibility that should have been the responsibility of the Iris government.

"It's like the street gangs in Avalon. Isn't it because the Inspectorate can't maintain order in Lloyd's Quarter that a new order belonging to the locals is established? Since the local people chose them, it means that at least they are irreplaceable.

"If we really want to make these evil companies disappear, then the Iris Council can only take responsibility - find a way to solve the slums everywhere. Collect taxes and fines on the companies, and use the money to support public welfare and sponsor the church. After all, making the city free of undead will benefit everyone... This should be paid for by the state.

"Since you don't want to pay, don't want to take care of things, and don't want to save people - then someone else will do it. Don't blame him for getting support that he shouldn't have. Originally, this support should have been given to the Iris Parliament, right?"

“…Is this also a kind of dedication?”

After hearing what Aiwass said, Yasen seemed to understand something: "Use the interests of others to help others... Is that why the church is silent?"

"Yes. Justice does not belong to devotion, justice belongs to authority. Although this is a kind of hypocrisy, hypocrisy is better than pure evil."

Aiwass nodded slightly. "But in the final analysis, it's because this land itself is sick. Moon Child, Hawkeye... they are not the choice of the people. The nobles, the parliament, the merchants, the witches, the artists... they have never cared about these grassroots people. When everyone is eating people, there is no right or wrong. Because from the very beginning, there is no way to choose the 'right' one.

"People do evil as a matter of course, kill as a matter of course, and die as a matter of course. And if you want to cure the disease, you have to remove the lesion. But the lesion is in them... To remove the lesion, you have to kill people."

Aiwass looked at the empty Ramchampagne Chapel, which was only lit by candles.

According to intelligence, the Blood Sky Division is located beneath this sinful land.

When he arrived here, Xue Tiansi must have sensed his presence.

But Xue Tiansi didn't respond at all...

Maybe he was ambushing Aiwass, or maybe he wanted to talk to Aiwass.

Aiwass decided to trust the Blood Sky Master for once - with Don Quixote's protection, he had the confidence to choose to trust.

His eyes were deep: “That’s why I said that Yulia chose an extremely difficult path.

"She wants to give these people a chance to live... That's basically the same as trying to fight the entire era with one person, fighting against the evil, greed and emptiness in the hearts of millions of people. She has to kill people to save people, and endure the hostility of the people she saves... This is much more difficult than killing people to save people, and then enduring people's praise.

"If she can succeed, it will be a great achievement that will be praised for thousands of years - it will be more than enough for her to become a Heavenly Official or a Pillar God Candidate."

This is probably why Sand Timepiece chose Yulia.