Chapter 365 — A Commoner's Book

They had probably pooled their money for one copy. Though a newspaper was cheap as a few coppers, for many woodcutters who had only just begun to have a little spare money, spending it on a few sheets of paper to read was likely still "not worth it." But they were curious about the contents all the same, so it was very likely they had chipped in together. A newspaper consisted of several sheets anyway—these men could split it up and take turns reading.

Bud watched them with a touch of envy, grumbling inwardly. All of them were laborers, poor folk who dealt in axes and saws, and now they walked with their backs straight like scholars, even tucking the newspaper under their arms in proper fashion, as if it were a book. Really...

Really, it was respectable...

Bud felt at his pocket, then suddenly gritted his teeth and turned toward the caravan.

The foreman had just finished reading a section and looked up to see what Bud was doing; curious, he called out after him, "Where are you going? Roll call's about to start!"

"I'm buying a newspaper!"

"Can you even read it?"

Bud did not turn his head. "I'll take it home and study it slowly. Worst comes to worst, when Mr. Bernard comes, I'll ask him to teach me!"

"Mr. Bernard" was the teacher sent to lecture at Frostwood Village—a second-rank clerk who worked in the civil affairs hall.

Watching Bud stalk off as if sulking, the foreman shrugged and glanced down at the newspaper in his hands again.

He muttered to himself, "When I get home I'll put this away carefully, save up a few more copies and paste them together... then my family will have a book too."

...

On the Spirit Plain, before Boulder Fortress, Wright Aiviken raised his head and gazed up at the ancient fortress standing at the southernmost edge of the Spirit Plain.

The fortress's black high walls shimmered faintly with a grid-like luster in the sunlight—it was the copper poured into the seams of the wall bricks, glowing. The builders of Boulder Fortress had melted copper and mixed gold and purple copper into the molten metal; this magical alloy absorbed mana from the sun when sunlight struck it and released it slowly throughout the day and night, making the entire wall nigh impregnable. And this grand, solid fortress was itself a product of the Mist-Moon Rebellion a hundred years ago.

It stood among the mountains where the Southern Region met the Holy Spirit Plain, commanding the only road that led from the Southern Region into the plain; even the Dolgon River, which joined north and south, was forced to run through a gorge at the fortress's flank. It was a colossal irony—a monument to the kingdom's total blockade of the entire south. For a full century after the fortress rose, the Southern Region became a land deliberately cast into exile. The Second Dynasty, fearing that the ancient and immense Cecil family would rise again and shake the throne, had spent its years dividing and weakening the Southern Region while raising this fortress, as though to make Rockshard Fortress the kingdom's new "southern frontier"—and to fling the surviving Cecils out into that wasteland below.

This fortress, unassailable and immense, had been built to guard against the kingdom's own founding family.

And yet, for a full century, the Cecil family had never once crossed that barrier. They had borne in silence the price of defeat in the Fog Moon Rebellion, accepted in silence the royal house's division and suppression—until last year, when that Cecil ancestor returned from the dead, and for the first time the family's members passed beyond Rockshard Fortress and set out for the Holy Spirit Plain.

Wright gazed up at the black high walls of Rockshard Fortress, and into his mind rose the history of that stronghold, together with the brief span of time he had spent on that inconceivable frontier land in the Southern Region. Then he drew back his eyes, smoothed his threadbare priest's robe, and walked toward the checkpoint.