Chapter 356 — The Snows of Winter Melt

Heddy fell into thought at Gao Yang's words, while Gao Yang raised his head and looked toward the watchtower window.

A figure emerged from the air and took the form of a petite girl—Amber. Like a nimble swallow, she vaulted over the windowsill and landed lightly before Gao Yang, raising a hand to offer a small paper scroll: "Intelligence!"

Gao Yang took what Amber handed him while glancing at the windowsill behind her, and in the end could not hold back: "You even climb through the watchtower windows! Such a high wall—don't you find it a bother to climb?!"

Amber's face was utterly shameless, taking pride where she ought to feel shame: "To a shadow master like me, so long as there's a bit of shadow in the cracks between the bricks outside your tower, I can climb right up along the seams~~"

Gao Yang, however, paid the fellow no further heed. He merely unrolled the paper scroll, and its contents entered his sight:

Duke Loren of the Eastern Border has recalled over half the high-ranking knights of his territory... A messenger has entered Ansū territory from the direction of Winterwolf Castle...

This was a piece of intelligence from the Eastern Border—the latest news gathered by Military Intelligence Bureau agents who had entered the Eastern Border alongside Cecil's alchemical potion merchant caravan once the caravan finally extended its channels into that region.

Gao Yang rubbed his hands, and the slip of paper instantly turned to ash in his grasp, scattering on the wind.

"It seems the kings and emperors on both sides have finished settling their own domestic messes..."

Heddy had also seen the contents of the slip just now, and could not help asking, "Are the negotiations finally about to begin?"

"That's right, but it won't affect Cecil Territory," Gao Yang nodded, then smiled faintly. "Neither our king nor the Emperor of Typhon would want a Xuánmài Sect sitting at the table offering guidance during a negotiation like this. It's not that I have no say in the affairs of these two countries—it's that my say is too great, so great that I have more right to speak than either of them. So let them thrash it out among themselves. We'll just develop our own affairs."

Eastern Border of Ansū, the land garrisoned by the Loren family: Fortress Longwind.

Silas Loren, Duke of the Eastern Border, stood atop the high city wall, gazing out over the vast plains to the east of the wall.

The snow had been melting for more than ten days, and still scattered flecks of white dotted the great plains, while a faint new greenness offered another kind of accent besides the white. The snow about to melt and the grass bursting into life appeared together on this yellow-brown land, as though winter and warm spring were in the midst of a handover.

This made Duke Silas Loren inevitably think of what was about to happen on these plains. In a sense, two nations ending a century-long tense standoff and signing a peace agreement anew—that too could be counted as a handover from winter to spring.

With such thoughts, Duke Loren cast his gaze into the distance, where far away he could dimly make out a fortified compound under construction.

That was the site prepared for the negotiations—located in the buffer zone along the border, a "balance point" that the border fortresses of both nations could directly oversee, directly strike, and directly protect. Over the coming half month, the transcendents and craftsmen of both nations would spare no expense to build there a "Pact Keep," to serve as the venue for the negotiations between the two nations' leaders, and afterward to stand long as a symbol of peace between them.

Clearly, the two nations jointly building a new castle rather than negotiating in any of their existing fortresses and strongholds appeared on the surface to symbolize peace, but in reality was a manifestation of mutual distrust.

But none of that mattered. The negotiations were already a foregone conclusion.