"Stop asking, stop asking... You're going to make the child dumb with all these questions!" Xue Dili's expression was almost as abstract as "The Scream."
He's only 18, yet he's already being pressured to have seventeen or eighteen kids.
There was once a joke on the internet, that the transition from forbidding young love to urging marriage and childbirth only takes the two days of college entrance exams.
Before the exams: No dating!
After the exams: When are you bringing a girlfriend home?
He was experiencing this in his own peculiar way.
"Let's go assassinate the Emperor!" Xue Dili decided to change the subject, and in a moment, his face was etched with the lines of a tough man, moonlight casting shadows that made him look like a "lone wolf."
An old undead is indeed like a single-threaded CPU; after pondering, he realized that the two had already wasted so much time.
They didn't have much time left. The old undead still wanted to meet Da Gu in person, to see his only descendant find new happiness in another peaceful, safe world, and to have dozens of children, grandchildren all around...
Suddenly, it seemed there were too many things he wanted to do.
But there wasn't much time left for any of them.
So, in the few days his old bones could still move, let everything settle down.
The loneliness and confusion in the old undead vanished completely, like a final burst of vitality, exploding into endless fighting spirit.
Xue Dili slung the sinister Demon Sword over his back and headed towards the Imperial Palace in the direction indicated by the old undead.
Otherwise, this inherently evil otherworldly ghoul might want to strip him naked and deliver him straight to the Female Pope's chamber.
...
At that moment, the Female Pope had no idea that her nominal grandfather had already sold her out completely.
After dodging that strike, an overwhelming sense of relief washed over her, accompanied by a simple sense of emotion.
The emotion derived from familial love, the feeling that even though her grandfather had turned into a ghostly figure, he was still willing to protect her.
"Search for General Balak's undead with full force!" she ordered.
"His Holiness the Pope, unrest in the palace signals potential hostility; dividing the strength of the Knight Order could pose great problems." one of the Priests added.
As the loser of the last power struggle, and due to the religious system, the Church Court was at a great disadvantage regarding the transmission of information and intelligence. They couldn't even probe into any internal affairs of the Royal Family, barely managing to grasp fragmented intelligence from the periphery.
"We have nowhere left to retreat..." Alola closed her eyes, no longer able to see the way forward.
Externally, the Undead Army swept down.
Internally, the Royal Family sharpened their knives against the Church Court.
If they tried to escape, behind them lay nothing but an endless, returnless sea where no predecessors who ventured ever came back.
What more could they do?
The Female Pope gripped her Scepter tightly, resembling a gambler down to her last bets, with only one final way to break the deadlock.
And that was to speak with her grandfather, the Undead General Balak, and make everything clear.
Only with her grandfather's support would she have any confidence to barely manage this hopeless mess.
They looked up to the sky, where only the cry of crows remained, as if tolling the bells for the last living souls on this continent.
The army of the undead was coming.
And the living, even, couldn't muster a proper resistance.
"Your Holiness! The 13th Holy Knight Squad detected the trail of the Undead General Balak, finding strong undead presence in an abandoned manor!" suddenly, an Intelligence Officer reported, providing the lost and confused army of the Church Court a sense of direction.
"Track General Balak's movements immediately!"
...
In the Imperial Capital, within the Imperial Palace.
The centenarian Old King sat on a throne embedded with luxurious gems, but his appearance was as hideous as a newly awakened undead.
With yellowed skin, sunken eyes, and age spots spread across all over his body.
Even just sitting there, he needed to wear a loincloth to avoid any embarrassing accidents.
"Your Majesty, that Pope from the Church Court directly forced me to roll out of there; this isn't just slapping my face, it's slapping yours, Your Majesty!" the herald who had rolled all the way out of the Great Cathedral cried to the Emperor sitting on the throne.
"Alright, the Great Emperor has understood your point, you may leave now." said the over-80-year-old Prince standing beside him.
The herald wanted to say more, but seeing the unsympathetic guards, he had to leave with a face full of grief and indignation.
Even just speaking that sentence had left the over-80-year-old Prince breathless.
In fact, the Great Emperor's moments of clarity were scarce nowadays, with only a few hours a day when he retained awareness, and all the affairs of the Empire were already handled by the current Prince.
But as long as the Great Emperor lived, he would forever remain just a Prince!
It was possible that all the Princes would die off, and the Great Emperor would continue to drag along this decrepit, incontinent body.
This was the supreme leadership of the Empire at the time, a centenarian Great Emperor, Leoric II.
And an over-eighty-year-old Prince, alongside countless sixty or seventy-year-old hopeful grandsons who had no chance for power.
The Empire was long decayed, in every sense.
Why had no other noble seized power and become the new king? Because all the nobles not connected by blood to the Royal Family were long dead.
Disconnected by endless power struggles, under the strategy of balance by the old emperor, all the nobles with domains perished at the hands of the Undead Army.
Now, besides the Royal Family, the Julia Family was the largest noble faction capable of leading the army, but they were merely the Royal Family's pet dog.
"Cough, cough, has the Church Court stopped lending troops?" the old King seemed to regain some clarity and asked.
"Yes, my father, the Church Court directly refused our request. Father, what should we do next?" the Prince asked the Emperor who seemed like a corpse, though his moments of awareness were limited too.
"The Undead Army, did Julia hold them back?"
"Father, as I reported yesterday, General Julia failed to hold them back and barely escaped alone, with Wind Snow City already lost. Now, the Undead Army is only several hundred kilometers from the Imperial Capital and might arrive by tomorrow."
The Prince didn't wish to repeat much of the intelligence to the old Emperor.
For example, that there were less than twenty thousand soldiers in the Imperial Capital for combat, but the Undead Army numbered in the tens of millions.
Or that the entire population of the Empire might only total in the tens of thousands, meaning each Imperial Capital resident would have to face several hundred undead onslaughts.
"Is that so..." the old Emperor seemed to drift back into confusion, his eyes blank as he gazed at the ornate hall of the Imperial Palace and the sky of the Empire, thoughts unknown.
"Then let Julia continue to defend the Imperial Capital, and have the Royal Knight Order eliminate the Church Court. Internal peace is the prerequisite for resisting external enemies... After eradicating the Church Court, the Knight Order should shift left five kilometers to directly counter the Undead Army..."
"The advantage is ours."