The plague that had spread through the territory of the Heavenly Sky Kingdom had first started at the edges of the Flying Sword Sects territory and had slowly spread to the other regions of the Heavenly Sky Kingdom, including the centre where the imperial family ruled.
Later on, everyone learned that the plague had actually started in different villages each located in the north, south, east and west of the Heavenly Sky Kingdom.
At the moment, the plague had not really threatened much of the infrastructure of the Heavenly Sky Kingdom yet, but that was about to change soon as the first few cases had started to appear in some of the bigger cities in the centre region of the Heavenly Sky Kingdom.
Over the last months' time, the plague spread fast and had slowly made its way to the centre region where the Imperial family ruled.
Whoever made the plague clearly targeted the Imperial family of the Heavenly Sky Kingdom as the four great sects like the Flying Sword Sect had not taken any real damage from the plague other than losing a few villages on the path towards the centre region…
The Centre region on the other hand saw the plague spread rampantly with no sign of slowing down at all after it reached a village or city there…
This did not really help a lot, as the Imperial family had grown a bit suspicious about whether the four great sects could be behind the outbreak of the plague, but there was not much they could do at the moment other than hope that the plague had an outside force behind it… After all, if the four great sects truly turned on the Heavenly Sky Kingdom with the Azure Sky Kingdom at their borders…
Like this, unrest spread through the entire Heavenly Sky Kingdom together with the plague.
…
"Hmm… Everything is going accordingly, and the plague has already spread to the centre regions of the Heavenly Sky Kingdom… As long as we can convert the Heavenly Sky Kingdom to the faith of the Plague God, we should be able to start getting a foothold in the Sky Empire! Hmph, that church of the God of Nature won't be able to keep the Sky Empires faith for themselves for long!" Inside a dark room, a shrivelled-up figure wearing a black robe with a weird symbol on it was talking to himself as he smiled widely while looking at the papers in front of him on his desk.
"Bishop! There is news from High Priest Bai, he is asking for permission to enter!" A voice came from beyond a door located in another end of the room, as the shrivelled-up figure slowly turned around and looked at the situation outside the door with his divine sense.
"Come in…" After thinking about something for a few minutes, the shrivelled-up figure who was a Bishop of some sort called out as an equally eerie person entered the room with the same black robe covering his body, the only difference being the symbol of the robe itself.
"Bishop, according to the plan, the plague has already started spreading in the centre of the Heavenly Sky Kingdom and the four sects and the Heavenly Sky Kingdom is currently sending out some of their Nascent Soul experts out to find the source of the plague. Other than that, we also noticed a small demonic sect that recently established itself in the north of the Heavenly Sky Kingdom, though they are not strong enough to affect any of our plans…!" Coming to a stop in front of the Bishop, the High Priest Bai silently stood there as he relayed all the information he had managed to gather.
"Good! Send a few people to erase the people sent by the four sects and the Heavenly Sky Kingdom! They should at most be around the first to second stage of the Nascent Soul Realm, so sending a group of two or three High Priests to deal with each of them should be enough.
Ignore the demonic sect for now, as long as they don't interfere! After that, we will allow the plague to develop for a few more months before sending out missionaries to spread the faith of the plague god and cure the plague." Smiling happily, the Bishop thought of the church of the plague god's missionaries entering the Heavenly Sky Kingdom in the future going around and curing everyone, while establishing the faith of the plague god.
"W-won't they be a little suspicious if missionaries from a plague god comes just after a plague spread and says they will cure them…?" Not knowing how to say it, High Priest Bai hesitantly asked as he dared not talk anymore in case the Bishop got angry with him.
"…"
Hearing the question of the High Priest, the Bishop could indeed see what he meant… The Church of the Plague God did not really have that good of a reputation among the other religious orders on the Ewaria continent and faced quite a bit of suppression due to some of their more… "unique methods" of converting people into believers compared to other religious orders who were relatively peaceful when they spread the faith of their god...
"T-the ordinary people won't mind something like that, if they are sick enough and we bring them the cure, they would be more than willing to believe and become followers of the great Plague God! And only the higher-ups of the Heavenly Sky Kingdom would know it's an artificial plague in the first place… At most we can just say that the great Plague God got his name due to the fact that he cured countless plagues of all shapes and forms over the years…" Coming up with a decent excuse, both the Bishop and the High Priest were satisfied as the High Priest Bai soon left the dark room to carry out the orders of the Bishop.
"The Archbishop will be coming in a few years' time to inspect both my work and the other Bishops work… I hope I can manage to convert the Heavenly Sky Kingdom before that happens! Maybe I could even make use of the current situation and convert the Azure Sky Kingdom as well! At that point I might have a chance to get a reward from the main church and be promoted to an Archbishop!" Thinking about his own glorious future, the shrivelled-up Bishop smiled widely to himself as he soon resumed his earlier work.