Chapter 289 — The Open Beta Has Begun

"Our commercial network is already starting to function now. The traveling merchants from every region will spontaneously send information to the chamber's headquarters, and once professional intelligence personnel enter this system as well, the eyes and ears of Cecil Territory will be truly complete," Gao Yang said, leaning back in his chair once he had finished laying out the matter. "Help me think—is there anything still missing in all this?"

"What could be missing? Is there a craftier fellow than you anywhere in this world?" Amber could not help shooting Gao Yang a glare. "Sometimes I honestly wonder whether those heroic legends of yours from seven hundred years ago are even true. The tales make you out to be a man who solved every problem by charging in, cleaving and whirlwind-slashing his way through the whole field—and yet here you are, scheming against people more smoothly than any conspirator..."

"Legends, well—later generations always add their artistic touches. And in my era we were opening up new territory, so everyone generally preferred to solve problems by cleaving through everything. So when people described how formidable someone was, they'd all say this fellow could really cleave. Did you know that Duke Franklin, who on the battlefield back then cut down the Orc invading army's grand marshal with a single stroke—was actually far better at cooking?"

"Duke Franklin? The founding ancestor of the Franklin family of the Western Region?"

"The very same. His leaping slash was sublime, he cut down two legends and at least a hundred high-tier transcendents head-on, and his greatest skill was carving flowers on radishes. In his idle time he'd practice on radishes, and when he was done he'd call us over to eat them. That's why, after the kingdom was founded, all four of us founding dukes and King Charlie himself never touched a radish again—a thing the history books never mention."

Amber listened, blinking in bewilderment, but suddenly spotted a blind spot. "Wait, no—at dinner yesterday I saw you eating radish with real gusto."

Gao Yang froze for an instant, realizing he had let his tongue run away with him, but his reflexes were incomparably quick. "I hadn't eaten any in seven hundred years—I've recovered from it, haven't I?"

Amber stroked her chin and sank into thought. "E... so that's a thing you can recover from..."

Gao Yang cast Amber a guilty, awkward glance and meant to say something to divert the half-elf's attention, but just before he opened his mouth he suddenly felt a faint ripple stir across the world of his mind.

The sensation defied description; an ordinary person might have dismissed it as a fleeting daze or a moment of wandering attention, but Gao Yang did not let that thread of wrongness slip past. He realized at once that it was not his mind rippling of its own accord—rather, his mind had "connected" to something.

The mind network of the Sleepers!

The connection had been reestablished? The Sleepers had finally opened the public beta? Their servers were fixed? His account had come back?

In that instant a great gusher of ideas—some sound, some absurd—erupted in Gao Yang's head, but nothing showed on his face. He simply cut off the topic at hand and looked at Amber with a grave expression. "I need to... sleep for a while. Keep watch beside me."

"Huh?"