"Damn the Church! They confiscated my wealth, enslaved my body! Even if it's God Himself, I'd still fight back!"
"Fight back! Fight back! Fight back!"
The small tavern where Lord Norton often squatted was bustling with voices, with bold statements being made even in broad daylight.
This was truly unavoidable. Since the Church's reforms, even patrol and surveillance schedules had been restructured. Previously, the Church patrolled during daytime to maintain order and uphold Church dignity, but now they had shifted this to after 7 PM.
During broad daylight, Church personnel instead stayed behind closed doors.
So naturally, these groups could only gather during the daytime.
The daytime tavern was filled with furious sentiments.
This scene felt somewhat familiar in European history, where perhaps someone might stand out from the crowd, using their exceptional eloquence to ignite a...
"BANG!" The tavern door was violently kicked open.
Everyone inside turned pale and quickly looked toward the entrance.Then figures of Church Knights clad in steel armor entered the tavern, raising their great swords high, their crimson eyes glowing with predatory light.
"Do not speak recklessly of the Church! You have committed the crime of defiance!"
Second-generation vampires indeed couldn't endure prolonged sun exposure as it would burn them.
But this didn't mean they couldn't tolerate any sunlight at all.
Since the Church personnel going out were third-generation vampires with muddy rather than crimson eyes, this meant these residents were seeing Church Knights with crimson eyes for the first time.
"Ah!! Monsters! The Church are monsters!!!"
"Vampires, they must be vampires! No wonder the Church has been acting so strangely lately - they've been taken over by vampires!"
"Help! Vampires are killing people!"
Painful screams echoed through the tavern, but what greeted them were either descending great swords or the Church's dark dungeons...
Within a week, the voices resisting the Church in Rino City completely vanished.
It was said that a large portion of the middle class had been taken into the Church by Church personnel and never emerged again.
As for what they were doing inside the Church? No one knew, except for a few people who occasionally passed by the Church and heard some chilling screams from within.
They widely spread what they heard, fabricating images of the Church's cruelty from their own imaginations to gain some conversation topics for before or after meals.
Although this incident resulted in either execution or imprisonment as blood slaves for those who had seen the Church Knights' crimson eyes, the vampire nature of the Church Knights remained difficult to conceal for long.
Therefore, Norton felt it might be time to begin new arrangements.
The Cathedral.
The empty cathedral had already stripped away the previously rich religious elements.
On the tallest wall at the main entrance, God's portrait had been completely covered with blood-red dye. Even the tall statue of God that once stood at the church front had been replaced by a statue of Abraham.
Hundreds of Church personnel in white robes stood in the empty hall, eyes closed, confessing their past sins under the terrifying aura pressure of Progenitor Norton.
These people were either former Church missionaries or Rino City nobility who had been converted into third-generation vampires during this period.
Lord Norton showed them no benevolence, instead using the Church's requirements for acolytes to force these vampires to survive in the Church with extreme caution and care.
These creatures accustomed to privilege would immediately use their seemingly clever but actually foolish minds to plot rebellious things if given the slightest relaxation.
This was particularly vivid in Norton's modern memories, having seen too many films, shows, and historical episodes.
Only by keeping these self-proclaimed clever people constantly struggling on the line between death and oppression could they be made to focus solely on survival, minimizing rebellious thoughts as much as possible.
The new Pope, His Holiness Adam, deeply agreed with this approach.
But even so, it was difficult to guarantee they would all remain so obedient, since human hearts were hard to predict.
But Norton didn't care about this.
These vampires were ultimately just sacrifices he used to conceal the old-era vampires, so whether they had hidden agendas or not, they would eventually be pushed by him, Norton, onto the stage to confront the Church.
Therefore, beyond suppressing and cultivating vampires, he cared more about how to push these vampires into the spotlight.
Especially about publicizing several weaknesses and strengths that didn't overlap with his own - like silver, like wooden stakes through the heart.
By making these harmless weaknesses of his widely known, everyone's first thought when confronting vampires would be to use silver or wooden stakes to counter them, thereby obscuring Norton's actual weaknesses.
The pulpit at the front of the cathedral hall, originally used for sermons, had now been converted into Norton's throne.
Blood Ancestor Progenitor Lord Norton, dressed in pure white missionary robes, sat upright on his throne, holding a glass of crimson blood.
Ten bats hung upside down from the throne's backrest - Norton certainly hadn't forgotten his true royal guards.
The pulpit originally stood high, and the marble counter used for placing items hadn't been removed, instead being used as elevation to create a lofty throne.
Norton's nearly two-meter tall, slender figure sat atop this meter-high platform, making his position almost tower over the heads of the vampires standing below.
This lofty posture inevitably brought even more intense pressure to the vampire crowd below.
An indescribably great aura pressure emanated from Norton, though extremely faint, it still made all vampires tremble, terrified and completely unable to raise their heads.
Norton's crimson eyes narrowed slightly as he coldly watched the vampire figures below who wished they could tuck their heads between their buttocks, gently swirling the glass of blood in his hand.
No one dared make the slightest movement under this great Aura Pressure.
This made the hall deathly silent, so quiet they could hear the blood swirling in Norton's glass.
After a long while, the slender, bizarre figure seated on the majestic throne finally broke the tomb-like silence of the hall.
"Kuba was the Blood Ancestor Progenitor. Though his body died, his consciousness survived. To continue his bloodline, he created the Blood Clan, also known as vampires!
Because the Progenitor feared sunlight, sunlight also causes great harm to the Blood Clan. Prolonged exposure to sunlight will cause them to burn to death. Because the Blood Clan transforms from living humans, they cannot bear the Progenitor's glory. Not only does sunlight have special effects on the Blood Clan, but the heart is also a major weakness of the Blood Clan. Because silverware shines brightly and reflects light, silver items can use the sunlight reflected from their surfaces to cause irreparable damage to the Blood Clan, with potential to kill vampires."
Indeed, none of the above were Norton's weaknesses. These were the new-style vampires' weaknesses. Norton specifically described the new-style vampires' weaknesses to obscure his own weaknesses as an old-era vampire. Once the general public accepted and spread the new-style vampires' weaknesses, everyone's first thought when confronting vampires would be to use the weaknesses Norton publicized against him, Norton. When these proved ineffective, Norton could capture and kill them, achieving the most insidious outcome.
Additionally, by linking this to Kuba to substitute concepts, over time, even lies would be sung as truth after many years. Everyone would believe new-style vampires were truly Kuba's descendants, thereby completely confusing the concepts of old-era and new-era vampires!
The hoarse voice echoed through the hall, making Abraham below grind his teeth in frustration.
"Abraham!" Norton's call made Abraham tremble throughout his body, then quickly bow his head in response.
"Progenitor, I'm here!"
"Beautify what I just said, print it into books for people to sing and spread!" Norton looked down at Abraham bowing below his throne, speaking coldly.
"Ah?" Abraham was stunned.
"This... this... Progenitor, these are our race's greatest weaknesses! Exposing them so easily, isn't this..."
Has this damn Old Norton gone crazy from being a beggar?
Exposing the race's fatal weaknesses to people - this is simply idiotic!
"Chirp chirp!" Before Abraham could finish, bat cries sounded from the throne's backrest. Then a somewhat withered bat flapped its wings, rushing toward Abraham like a black light, using its two long sharp front teeth to tear a large piece of flesh from his neck, then carrying the flesh flew back to Norton's lap.
"Hss hss hss..." A leaking sound came from the torn wound on Abraham's neck. He looked utterly terrified, fearfully touching the wound the bat had torn open.
The flesh the bat tore wasn't large - according to his recovery ability, it should have healed in the blink of an eye.
But now the flesh at his neck showed no signs of recovery. The injury to his vocal cords made him only able to make hssing sounds when opening his mouth, unable to form complete words.
Abraham was practically scared shitless!
What was this? Why had he lost even his recovery ability?
Panic-stricken and utterly terrified, Abraham quickly knelt and prostrated, violently kowtowing to Norton seated high above, even cracking the floor tiles.
Norton's crimson eyes coldly watched his terrified appearance, then took the torn flesh from Coal Ball's mouth, clenched it in his hand and forcefully crushed it into pulp.
"Abraham, I won't permit you to question me a second time."
As Norton crushed the flesh in his hand, the flesh at Abraham's neck began growing wildly, restoring to perfect condition in the blink of an eye.
"Thump thump thump..." Abraham kowtowed repeatedly, his body trembling uncontrollably, fearfully responding: "Yes, Progenitor! I'll do it immediately!"
His terrified appearance made the other vampires below even more frightened.
"Such a deranged, autocratic Blood Clan Progenitor - how are we lower-level vampires supposed to survive under him?"