"...Based on the above facts, the Divine Land expresses strong dissatisfaction and protest, and reserves the right to react further and take relevant measures."

In a conference room in Europa, the Foreign Ministry's official statement was being played. That righteous and dignified voice seemed to be sending one clear message: Laozi is out for revenge.

The higher-ups sitting in the room all looked as gloomy as a rainy day.

"Who gave this order?"

No one answered.

"Who? Who was dumb enough to think that just because someone's hostile to the Scorching Sun Department, they must be on our side?"

Still, no one said a word.

Truth be told, everyone was pretty confused—no way any of them were volunteering to be the scapegoat for this mess.

Everyone actually knew: in the Divine Land, stuff involving the water system has always been super sensitive. It's a total minefield—step on it and you're dead.

Even in their own mythology, if a Dragon King messes up the points or timing for bringing rain, he's sent straight over to the Beheading Dragon Platform.

Seriously, they built an execution ground just for taking out dragons.

Talk about being targeted.

The Divine Land had even sent video evidence.

Their own guy had jumped into the river.

Of course, if that was all, they could still try to flip the script and claim their guy was bewitched by the Divine Land's evil magic into jumping to his death.

But just their luck, for reasons unknown, the Divine Land had replaced every camera on that bridge with HD ones just a few days earlier.

Of course, switching cameras had nothing to do with them—they hadn't even had the Devil incident yet at that time.

And that city was in the middle of a massive tech upgrade, swapping out all the old gear anyway.

And, just so happened, that pious missionary jumped in with pure greed written all over his face—anyone with eyes could see it from the footage.

On top of that, a furious Turtle Demon had shown up later, warning everyone and looking ready to spit right in the face of the Scorching Sun Department's field agent.

So yeah, it was awkward as hell. Everyone present knew, according to their intel, none of the water system creatures would ever cooperate with the Scorching Sun Department on a fake show.

Especially that Water God known as the Dragon King—intel said relations with the Scorching Sun Department were totally trashed. Not a chance.

Plus, by what they knew about that missionary, odds were he actually did go try evangelizing a Divine Land Water God...

After a long pause, someone spoke up tentatively.

"We've all seen the files and have a handle on it—the missionary in question was a responsible, dedicated, and genuinely devout missionary.

No doubt about that, right?"

The group nodded in agreement.

"So maybe, knowing there was a potential recruit there, he just took the initiative and did it himself?

Maybe it was just that this very devout missionary wasn't too familiar with how things work in the Divine Land.

You know, a good deed turning into a train wreck?

That's it, right?"

Everyone nodded like it suddenly made perfect sense—yep, that's definitely what happened.

Just his personal choice, so nobody else had to take the blame.

Deliberately destabilizing things and stirring up conflict—no one was going to admit to something like that.

Even if they really had done it, they'd never admit it.

If anyone brought it up in public, they'd just call it the missionary's personal behavior.

Luckily, that missionary had only gone to the Divine Land on his own, as a tourist this time.

If anybody pressed, they could just say it was because of the Devil business, he went to check things out.

Either way, no way were they admitting anything else.

Even if, deep down, they all believed the missionary really was out preaching.

"Is this gonna affect our mission work in the Divine Land?"

Someone asked, but no one answered that one.

Because everyone knew, people in the Divine Land basically believe in whatever's convenient—however many converts they've gained this year depended mostly on how many eggs they handed out...

Asking a question like that was just making everyone uncomfortable for no reason.

Though, truth be told, the hard-core zealots always had it out for the Divine Land, and that had plenty to do with this mess.

But people in the Divine Land—today it's God of Wealth, tomorrow it's God of the Kitchen, the next day they're off to Guanyin if they need something; worshipping is all about practicality there.

Progress on their mission work had always been rough, and after this, it'd probably get even worse.

The Scorching Sun Department caught them red-handed, the Foreign Ministry jumped at the excuse to shout about other stuff, but anyone in the know knew what was really at play.

That "Laozi wants revenge" bit? Yeah, probably dead serious.

And they all knew Nanwu County Scorching Sun Department's current minister, Cai Qidong, was a real piece of work.

This guy was gutsy enough to curse people out in meetings at Scorching Sun Headquarters—not just once, either.

Having been pushed out of headquarters to run a regional post, he was bound to get even more reckless.

Whatever, time to swallow this one.

After all, they'd been caught with their pants down, and besides, there were bigger problems to deal with.

Lately, arrogant heretics had even dared to spread word and hawk Devil materials right in the Holy Land—rubbing their faces in it.

Even the more obscure sects, who had nothing much to do with this, were jumping into the chaos, seizing every chance to stir up trouble.

Utterly insane—the Devil Sect people were showing up near the Holy Land itself. Outrageous.

Time to come down hard on this mess.

...

And to be honest, the Church got it right—Cai Qidong really is a total piece of work.

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