Only God
Chapter 116 - 103: Who is He?

Chapter 116: Chapter 103: Who is He?

Elder Gula had died.

No one had expected that Rui Ying would kill him in front of a crowd.

King Dovlo snapped back to reality instantly, he immediately ordered his guards to seal the palace gates, and then had Basel captured.

Thus, Basel was thrown into prison.

Basel did not resist at all; his heart was nearly dead, leaving him without a shred of strength to resist.

After the chaos, King Dovlo took control again, with the majesty of a king, he quelled the nobles’ unrest.

Rui Ying coldly looked at Elder Gula’s corpse, he loudly announced to the people that Logos didn’t need the friendship of the Three-eyed Ape People at all.

By then, King Dovlo knew that there was no going back for the two races.

Those so-called friendships, and those poems that praised each other...

Everything would be turned upside down within a day.

Within two short days, King Dovlo had gathered the kingdom’s army, thousands of Logos soldiers, and under his and Rui Ying’s leadership, they moved to attack the tribes of the Three-eyed Ape People in the desert.

King Dovlo went to war to enslave the Three-eyed Ape People.

The war ended swiftly and decisively.

The Three-eyed Ape People were unable to resist the swords of the Logos people; they lacked an advanced civilization, and they certainly didn’t have physical abilities far beyond mere beasts, Logos people conquered oases in the desert, slaughtered or captured the weak Three-eyed Ape People.

Rui Ying led the soldiers in a rampant looting—spices, children, bronze artifacts, bone artifacts... Anything worth taking back to the kingdom was plundered entirely, including, of course, the slaves.

Tens of thousands of Three-eyed Ape People were captured, regardless of age or sex, all were brutally escorted out of the desert by the Logos army; before leaving, they could only nervously pray to the Prophetic God Kagawus and then hurriedly look back at their homes.

Looting, arson, slaughter, robbery...

Their homeland was destroyed, coconut date trees burning.

The Three-eyed Ape People let out pained wails, those who once praised Logos people as elves were now to be enslaved by them.

King Dovlo and his son, to silence any dissenting voices, declared that every Logos person could have the service of a slave, whether nobles or commoners, all would have a Three-eyed Ape Person for permanent service.

With this decree, the existing opposition among the common folk, like a tide, rose and subsided swiftly.

Even common folk having slaves to serve them... was simply a godsend for countless Logos people.

For King Dovlo and his son, those great endeavors seemed within reach.

Their names were ultimately to be left in the annals of history with great emphasis.

...........

...........

Basel, thrown into prison, soon faced his trial.

He was a Priest of the Pattern Garden, a symbol of sympathy for the Three-eyed Ape People. Rui Ying wanted to try him publicly and make an example of him.

The crime fabricated by Rui Ying was blasphemy.

On the day of Basel’s trial, three people stood up to accuse Basel of blasphemy, even though these three did not know Basel at all.

Rui Ying eloquently spoke in front of the noble ministers, he denounced Basel for being a priest yet betraying the Son of God by standing with the Three-eyed Ape People; he extolled the greatness of God and belittled Kagawus of the Three-eyed Ape People, thus denigrating Basel who sympathized with them.

The kingdom’s heir made one fierce accusation after another, the nobles were in an uproar, the crowd was incensed, and they unanimously decided to execute Basel.

In stark contrast to Rui Ying’s fierce accusations,

on the day of the trial, Basel did not say a word.

He just stood quietly in the center of the palace, without any defense or rebuttal. He quietly accepted the crimes pinned on him by Rui Ying, listened to every accusation, and remained silent.

No one knew why Basel remained silent, nor did anyone know what Basel was thinking.

Perhaps he was speechless due to a stutter?

Or perhaps because a defense was pointless, as a death sentence was already certain?

At the end of the trial, King Dovlo issued the final judgment.

Seven days later, Basel would be stoned to death.

.........

Basel was escorted back to his cell.

He faced the blank walls in front of him and reached out his hand, gently caressing them.

Basel felt the texture of the walls; he found that the surface of the wall was actually soft, and pressing hard with fingers could leave scratches.

The prison guards watched this prisoner carefully, Prince Rui Ying had specifically instructed not to give him any chance to escape.

Soon, the guards realized that this Priest of the Pattern Garden, the poet with a stutter, had absolutely no intention of escaping.

Basel seemed to accept his fate silently; each day when the guards brought food, Basel would walk out from the depth of his cell. He wouldn’t say a word, just taking the food from the hands of the guard.

Death row inmates often wept daily, begging the guards for mercy, talking about their own or their relatives’ tragic experiences, trying to move the guards for a chance to escape the cell.

In this process, the guards’ hearts turned cold; they had seen too many tears, heard too many heart-wrenching stories.

But,

a prisoner who did nothing, who did not resist, and even remained silent...

No guard had ever encountered one.

Basel did not interact with the guards at all, not even making eye contact; he seemed to fully accept his crime. Could it be that he felt he deserved his punishment, or that it was his time to die?