Chapter 150: Chapter 150 Flying Spaghetti Cult_1
The next day, Rebecca visited the Rose Iron Prison once again to report on the investigation, delivering her findings to Aiden’s office.
"...the details are all written in this report. We destroyed Vila’s hideout, but I’m sorry, I wasn’t able to capture her," Rebecca said apologetically.
"That’s something you don’t need to apologize for," Aiden chuckled, glancing over the report again, "Being able to destroy her doll manufacturing workshop in the city is already quite an accomplishment. Given the current situation, it’s unlikely she’ll be able to replicate another hideout of the same scale anytime soon."
There wasn’t much time between Presia’s arrest and the appearance of the first murderous doll, so it was unlikely Vila had time to build a second workshop capable of mass-producing dolls—at least, she probably couldn’t manage two workshops by herself.
The Heretical Judge Bureau continued to pursue Vila, while the mounted police also took advantage of their patrols to inspect rental properties in all districts. It would be very difficult for Vila to try the same tactics and make a comeback in the short term.
Next, she would either have to stop her activities and hide, or try to leave the city that was hunting her, unless she had some kind of trump card up her sleeve that she hadn’t yet played.
Aiden decided to keep observing from within the prison for a while longer; after all, the person who should be worried now was Vila, not him.
"And this one here is the information about the cult you asked me to look into before; I printed out a copy for you," Rebecca pointed to the document in Aiden’s hands, adding to her statement.
"Thank you, I appreciate your diligence," Aiden said as he brought the document from the bottom to the top and began to read the information carefully.
A cult that uses chopsticks... It could very likely be related to a transmigrator, and knowing a bit more about it couldn’t hurt.
Then he was stunned.
"This looks like a local cult that started rising over two hundred years ago in the villages of the northwestern region of the Old Lese Kingdom, called..." Rebecca recalled.
"The Flying Spaghetti Cult," Aiden murmured, staring at the photocopied report.
"Yes, that’s the name," Rebecca nodded.
Aiden blinked rapidly twice.
It wasn’t the Chopstick Cult, but the Flying Spaghetti Cult...
Even though the information was written in the language of this world, the meaning of the words could roughly correspond: flight... spaghetti... monster... cult...
This was most likely not a coincidence.
Just the name alone was enough to be certain—this cult must have been founded by some transmigrator who came before.
Another poor sap summoned by Melifilia? No, not necessarily. Although he inherited this body through the power of the "Authority of Wisdom," there’s no evidence to suggest that the rulers of other authorities couldn’t do something similar.
Moreover, it’s uncertain whether Melifilia was the one who had control of that authority at the time.
"You really have no recollection of such a distinctive name?" Aiden asked Rebecca.
Rebecca immediately frowned, "It was okay, I suppose. When I was a lower Judge, I handled many cases of religious fraud. Some of the cult names were really bizarre. I remember when I first started, there was this hair growth cult that sold plain water as a hair growth elixir, claiming it would work if believed in earnestly and wouldn’t if not. They conned quite a bit of money with that."
It’s heart killing, really... Aiden commented inwardly.
The former Aiden had been promoted to a middle-level Judge right upon entering the Heretical Judges Office due to his special merits, and then he quickly climbed to the rank of a senior Judge, so he had never taken on those purely deceptive and ordinary cult cases.
In this world, "gods" not only truly exist, but they also very diligently come and go. With an abundance of cults as numerous as cows’ hairs, it seems Rebecca also dealt with many cases of religious fraud, where bizarrely named cults were as common as fish crossing a river for her, which is why she didn’t pay much attention to the name of the Flying Spaghetti Cult.
But for Aiden, the name carried quite an impact, since a parody religion that actually existed in his previous world had so abruptly appeared in the history of this world.
Aiden continued to review the documents at hand.
Two hundred and ten years ago, in the western part of the Old Lese Kingdom on the Southern Continent, a mysterious religion called the Flying Spaghetti Cult sprung up in a small village. Cult members used thin wooden sticks as utensils during meals, and considered various kinds of thin pasta dishes, including fried noodles, noodle soup, and mixed noodles... as sacred communion. The founder of the cult was an anonymous witch.
At the time, the Lese Kingdom was a theocratic state that unified political and religious power, with the Earth Mother Religion as the state religion, which worshipped the land for bountiful harvests. The royal family and the church held an extremely suppressive attitude towards heretics. However, the Lese Kingdom was riddled with epidemics at the time, and a massive famine erupted due to a drought, causing the Earth Mother Religion’s status among the people to plummet drastically.
The witch who established the Flying Spaghetti Cult possessed the miraculous power to make wheat grow rapidly in the fields. She sympathized with the villagers’ plight, helped the village overcome the crisis, and taught the villagers knowledge about preventing infectious diseases and farming, hence she was revered by the locals.
She established the Flying Spaghetti Cult to deny the Earth Mother Religion’s doctrine that praying to the Earth Mother would lead to a good harvest, and proclaimed that instead of worshipping a useless god, it was better to worship food that could fill one’s stomach. Therefore, she declared the so-called Flying Spaghetti Monster as the divine being worshipped by the cult.
Against such a backdrop, the Flying Spaghetti Cult, which contested the position of the Earth Mother Religion, spread rapidly. This gave the royal family a sense of crisis, and the queen ordered the local lords to suppress it. As a result, it completely ignited the local populace’s dissatisfaction with the Earth Mother Religion, leading to a rebellion using the Flying Spaghetti Cult as its banner.
The rebellion initially started very smoothly, overthrowing the local lords and establishing a stronghold, and even managed to hold its ground against the Kingdom’s forces seeking retribution. However, after the Kingdom brought in support from allied nations, the rebellion was ultimately suppressed, the witch who established the Flying Spaghetti Cult disappeared after the rebel forces were defeated, and the Flying Spaghetti Cult was thus extinguished.
So does that mean this anonymous witch was his predecessor traveler?
Teaching the villagers advanced techniques for preventing contagious diseases and agricultural knowledge, establishing a new parody religion to defy the ignorant and backward ruling religious ideas... all of this seemed like something only a traveler from another world could accomplish.
Aiden tried to search his memory for historical knowledge, which was sparse, leaving just a blurry impression. He could only ask Rebecca for guidance, "Rebecca, how did the Old Lese Kingdom come to an end?"
Rebecca tried to recall, "Well, I remember that after the rebellion of the Flying Spaghetti Cult, the Old Lese Kingdom experienced several more renowned rebellions, which weakened the kingdom’s strength. The neighboring Empire took the opportunity to invade, the queen was assassinated during this time, and the ally nation chose that moment to backstab. Eventually, after the kingdom was defeated in the war, it was consequently divided up and annexed."
