Chapter 31: Above and below ground, majesty and crisis.
The military parade continued. After the first batch of Tindaros Legion soldiers were released, twenty-two transport boats started their anti-gravity engines and flew forward, making way for subsequent transport boats returning through the field.
After taking off, they will continue to fly forward for 19 kilometers and land at the end of the parade route to recover the previously released troops.
The second batch of airships began to land.
After the regular infantry standard corps appeared, pure heavy armored corps and auxiliary medical and logistics phalanx also marched out of the gate opened by the transport boat in an orderly manner.
At the top of the viewing platform, the atmosphere that had just relaxed became solemn again, and after the official formation of the Inquisition and the three companies of the Minotaur Chapter appeared later, this depressing atmosphere reached its peak.
"What a grand display!" The nun of the Silver Shroud Order couldn't help but say.
The legion of 30,000 people consisted of twenty-seven pure infantry phalanxes in units of 1,000 people, plus eight heavy-armored phalanxes driven by more than 3,000 people with auxiliary equipment. The parade array with a total length of more than five kilometers had just passed. They thought it was the right time.
It’s time for the boss to appear.
But the hundred-man array composed of the black and red uniforms of the Inquisition, and the hundred-man phalanx composed of the Astartes warriors of the Minotaur Chapter, made everyone present couldn't help but raise their eyebrows.
Let the official members of the three major orders of the Inquisition form a parade to participate in the military parade?
You must know that this is not the monks of the national religion who do not have military power, nor is it the Astra Militarum, which ranks low in the imperial armed forces;
This is a formal member of the Tribunal who has the authority to investigate and judge a planetary world just by taking one out!
Although there were only a hundred of them, the people of the empire who were watching the ceremony did not understand them.
But just look at their uniform robes of the same color under the black and red flags, and the feedback power armor exposed under the robes, and then look at the power swords they wear on their waists, or the power hammers they carry in their hands. Even though these civilians were hundreds of meters away, they could still smell the strong smell of blood on their bodies!
The atmosphere of the military parade is no longer a matter of tranquility.
Middle-class families and clerical bureaucrats with some status have been intimidated to the point of breathing by the golden eagle emblem and the Roman numeral 1 with three horizontal bars on the pendants swinging on the chests of the judges under the inadvertent eyes of the judges.
Beginning to stagnate...
If the ignorant people facing the phalanx are like this, what about the high-ranking imperial officers who know their identities?
Where are the Astartes warriors?
What about the battle nuns who are dually managed by the State Church and the Inquisition, and look at the phalanx formed by their immediate superiors wearing the emblems of the three major orders?
On the terraces on both sides of the avenue, the sculpture-like Astartes warriors had to step out of their ceremonial decoration after seeing the formations of the Inquisition and the Minotaur warbands. They clenched their weapons and faced the procession.
Show respect by paying attention.
The commanders on the high platform became even more silent. For a moment, they didn't know how to organize their words.
Because if they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, they couldn’t believe that someone could integrate the Tribunal to such an extent that they were not subordinate to each other, and even the sect itself questioned each other!
The air on the spacious terrace was stagnant, and all the commanders of the imperial armed forces and senior officials of the state church turned their eyes to the battle sisters present in disbelief.
As the armed group most closely related to the Rebellion Order, they should have some understanding of this situation...
The atmosphere on the ground is extremely stiff, and in the Vatican's secret chamber underground several kilometers above the ground, the atmosphere is equally cold.
Under the orders of the Supreme Administrator, the cardinals held high the flags with the blessing ceremony, and each carried a ceremonial guard holding a candle and a book of scripture behind them, parading over and over again in the King's Hall hundreds of meters underground. p>
A dozen teams with a total of nearly a thousand people walked through the corridors and quiet rooms inside and outside the King's Hall, but they did not find any suspicious traces, let alone the lost Heavenly Punishment Stand Arms.
Candles passed through the dark corridor. After lighting up the candles on the walls along the way, they walked away again to the sound of reciting the emperor's motto from the Book of Holy Words.
The cardinals searched the place three times before finally finding nothing and regrouping in the central circular hall with their ceremonial guards.
"Impossible...absolutely impossible..." one of his own cardinals murmured, and the colleagues around him were also serious and silent with expressions of disbelief.
This is one of the most core and confidential locations of the Cardinal Affairs Office of the State Church in the City of Divine Grace. Above the entire hall is the majestic main body of the City of Divine Grace, with a ten-kilometer-thick isolation barrier on the flanks, and several kilometers deep below.
The layers of blessing prayers are filled.
The main hall and the buildings above and below have absolute isolation at both the theological and physical levels. There is only a pontoon made of steel chains, hanging outside the entrance of the main hall as an entry and exit passage. It is like a huge sphere, suspended out of thin air.
In the huge cavity prepared for it by Divine Grace City.
How could a blessed holy object be lost here?
There are 24-hour guards specially set up by the Emperor's Hall on the outside here, and further outside, the military organization of the Holy Light Brotherhood, which has been officially disbanded by the Empire's official religion, has also set up a strict blockade here!
In the context of the Ecclesiastical Priests and Battle Sisters stationed around the clock on the surface and at the peripheral defense nodes of the temple.
They couldn't imagine who could take away thousands of heavy halberds and sharp swords under the eyes of nearly ten thousand people guarding the three levels of guards!
"Are there any signs of damage to the Holy Word underground?"
The leading cardinal asked the leader of the Holy Light Brotherhood who came back from outside the hall, but as expected, what he received was a silent shake of the head in denial.
The Cardinal forced himself to calm down, and then signaled to the priest waiting at the door of the hall. "Inform Your Majesty, we...failed."
No one blocked his order, even though they knew that if this news was spread, what awaited them would be decades, or even a lifetime of atonement as an ascetic monk.
The atmosphere among the cardinals became even colder, but the time left for them had run out. The supreme administrator was still waiting for his return on the ground. They could only give up and convey the news of the search failure to the surface.
The military parade on the surface has reached its climax, and the crowd who have recovered from the shock and shock began to cheer.
They were moved to tears by the miraculous ceremony they were lucky enough to witness. Hymns praising the Emperor and the Empire of Man rang out from the crowd, and the loud singing pierced the sky and made the domes of churches several kilometers away reverberate.
When the Inquisitor and the Minotaur Chapter walked out of the square and stepped onto the central avenue, Calvin was riding on a huge throne like a carriage, and the three hundred Gray Knights directly under his command were the protagonists of the military parade.
After waiting for a long time, their sacred and majestic faces were finally revealed.
And Calvin, who was sitting high on the throne at the top of the carriage, also "carefully" covered himself with a layer of psychic aura.
The subjects of the empire could only see his silhouette from a distance of several hundred meters, but under the influence of the spiritual aura, that sacred figure spontaneously appeared in their minds and became something they could recognize.