When the three disciples, Arthurian and Violet saw the video start playing, they all felt their hearts seize. If Dyon exposed what truly happened, not only would their reputations be ruined, but their punishment would be the equivalent to what Dyon's would have been for their false accusation.
According to the rules of Soul Rending Peak, trials for the Pillar of Shame would always be carried out like this. Although Violet and Arthurian would be fine after lying considering the strength of their backing, them as three mere inner disciples with relatively weak families would die in the cross fire for sure.
But, that was when Dyon did something completely inexplicable. In fact, Violet's bent over and naked body was still being projected into the skies, it was clear that Dyon had no intention of taking it down any time soon.
Dyon looked up into the skies along with everyone else, a clear look of disgust on his face. "Ugh, just looking at it makes me feel uncomfortable. Can't believe I stooped so low."
Violet trembled, an uncontrollable stream of tears falling from her eyes. By now, she obviously knew that Dyon could expose her lies. But, doing so would be far less humiliating than what he was doing now.
Her hands flew to her head as she crouched down in the sky, incoherently shrieking as though she was trying to wake herself up from a dream.
Dyon feigned clearing his ears out. "Could you shut up? So annoying."
"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!" Violet's banshee-like screams filled the silent core pavilion.
Seeing her breakdown like this, most felt endless pity for her. However, those who were more intelligent picked up on a few things.
For example, although the video showed Dyon slapping Arthurian away, despite the camera cuts, it was clear that Dyon was walking toward Arthurian. In addition, Arthurian's hands were cut off in the video, but if one had enough spatial awareness, it was clear that the position Violet was bending forward in matched the placement of his hands.
This all led to one question: how was Dyon the attempted rapist if he was nowhere near Violet to begin with?
Donari immediately understood and the conflict in his heart disappeared. Although he didn't understand why Violet did this, he was sure that she was lying.
This led to an odd split in the crowd where the intelligent realized that this was actually Dyon's final stand. They believed that Dyon understood he had no chance of getting out of this situation, so he decided to stain Violet's name in his final moments.
As for the less intellectually inclined half of the audience, they saw Dyon as a cruel bastard that deserved the worst of the worst kinds of punishment.
Of course, the family heads and The Cathedral elders were among those who understood the "meaning" behind Dyon's actions. But, this put them in an incredibly difficult position.
If The Cathedral pretended like they were in line with the stupid half of the crowd, all the reputation they had built up for centuries upon millennia would completely crumble. But, if they absolved Dyon, they would lose their ability to imprison him for his actions. Obviously, it was better to offend the "stupid" individuals than the intelligent because it would be easier to manipulate them later, but doing so clashed with their purpose for coming here today.
This was exactly what Dyon wanted. If he didn't want to sow this sort of doubt, he would have cut out the portion of him walking toward Arthurian and cut to part where he slapped him away. But, doing things in this fashion would begin to slowly unveil the disgusting nature of The Cathedral for all to see.
He couldn't care less about low IQ individuals. The kind easily swayed by public opinion and couldn't form their own thoughts. It was those who still had minds of their own that he wanted to awaken to the reality of their quadrant. This way, there'd be less push back when he destroyed The Cathedral.
Of course, among those intelligent enough to understand what was happening was Violet's father. This was the only reason he hadn't attacked yet.
On one hand, he wanted to completely crucify Dyon for exposing his daughter's naked body to the world like this. But, on the other hand, he understood how it must feel to be falsely accused like this.
His face couldn't help but twist from confusion to anger to helplessness, before going back to rage. No matter what, his daughter was the last relative he had in this life and also his final hope for saving his wife. As a father, it was his job to act as an umbrella for his daughter's mistakes, no matter how shameless that made him.
In addition, if he was the one who acted, it would absolve The Cathedral of responsibility, at least on the surface. Because then they could claim that he was a grieving father who made a mistake.
However, before any of them could act, Dyon removed the massive sword from his back and floated to the ground.
The crowd involuntarily parted, some of them with looks of pity on their faces, and some with looks of disgust.
The black chains that wrapped around Dyon's broad sword flexed to life as Dyon pumped his runic flames into them.
Taking steps forward, Dyon made his way to the center of the two pillars before raising his weapon and stabbing it into the ground.
BOOM!
The chains snaked into the ground, anchoring the massive sword, before they burst back up, wrapping around the pillar of shame and disallowing any names to be added.
Then, Dyon looked to the skies and held his wrist up together. "Alright, you can take me away now. Good luck adding my name to the Pillar of Shame though."
**
As Dyon was surprising the crowd again and again with his demeanor, a storm was raging through the martial world. Unsurprisingly, this storm centered around Dyon too.
The moment the valley closed, the Sapientia News Network was bombarded with information piece after information. After receiving so much, as the businessmen they were, they decided to release this information slowly and steadily, first releasing a few teasing announcements to build up anticipation.
When that was completed, the Sapientia introduced a subscription service. For the price of 1 profound stone a month, you could receive all of the firsthand news the SNN had in addition to exclusive videos and interviews from said events.
Then they introduced a 10 profound stone a month premium service that allowed VIP members to receive this news earlier than others.
The best part about all of this was that this was the second phase of Dyon's plans. As the creator of the Internet, Clara received a 30% cut of all of the profits they made using it. Although 1 or even 10 profound stones wasn't a lot – in fact, most martial warriors carried the saint stone denomination most frequently – one had to think about just the sheer number of experts there were split between 100 quadrants and 10000 universes.
A single planet would already have about ten billion individuals. In addition, not every universe was as scarcely populated as Dyon's home which only had 5 inhabited planets. It had to be remembered how young Dyon's universe was, in addition to the fact a massive war resulted in mass killings earlier in its history.
This was all to say that a single universe usually had a few hundred inhabited planets, resulting in a population counted in tens of trillions.
Then think about how there were one hundred universes to a quadrant, and one hundred quadrants to the cosmos.
The number of individuals who would not hesitate to pay such a trivial amount wasn't few.
Within the first day of the announcement, billions of subscriptions were taken in by the SNN. By the second day, the number could only be counted in the tens of billions, and by the third, the subscriptions were nearing its first trillion.
Clara could only happily smile as she watched the numbers roll into her Sapientia Banking Account. She had no need to worry about the Sapientia backing out of their word because of the binding contracts she signed. This flow of income was massive for their future plans, and this was just the first month!
Of course, there were some unhappy individuals who thought that the Sapientia were becoming greedy, but this was solved easily.
The Sapientia simply released information on just how expensive it was to maintain the Internet in top condition and that shut those voices of dissent up. How could those who were intelligent not understand how expensive it was to maintain an information network that spanned 100 quadrants? It was perfectly reasonable for the Sapientia to begin charging for their costs.
After almost a week of building up anticipation, the first earth shattering piece was released.
