Chapter 243: CCXLIII. New Year’s Eve
The countdown to the New Year had begun.
It was exactly eight o’clock in the evening, and the noise outside was getting louder. Fireworks were incessantly bursting, polluting the night sky with their light. The smell of gunpowder was strong in the air.
Everything has two sides, and Heaven Port had its bad side, and an even worse side.
The good side wasn’t an attribute of pirates but rather the deeply rooted influence of religion.
The Holy Spirit Church was founded on the doctrine of charity. Aside from the present Gion Kingdom, there weren’t any rotten activities like the selling of indulgences. To the people here, believing in God and praying were part of daily life. The common folk might not grasp the teachings deeply, but they never strayed from the universal values; do more good deeds and you’ll drink from the Immortal’s wine in the Holy Spirit Temple for eternity. Do bad deeds and you’ll suffer, banished to the Abyss.
Pirates, of course, also believed in Wave and the Storm Saint Spirit, who were widely praised in the East Sea Domain. Doing bad deeds was often a last resort—who wouldn’t want to be good? But damn it, you need money to be good. If you don’t have money and still try to force good deeds, you might just get a gun pointed at your head.
At this time, some followers of the Holy Spirit Church would crowdsource some money to organize a New Year’s celebration, choosing the central square in the Inner City as the venue. There would be song and dance performances and various small shows, all very lively. Some homeless, living in abandoned buildings or tents in the woods, and aging prostitutes who couldn’t make it on the island, would also come to scrounge a meal.
Caroso was deeply moved; he couldn’t imagine such things happening in this godforsaken place, and went out to host the festivities.
Liszt lit two candles for the statue of the Guan Emperor on the second floor of the inn, thanking the deity for the blessings that had allowed him to get by until today.
For ten years, he had never believed in deities.
But now, he was starting to waver.