Chapter 576 — The Secret Letter

On the throne of Silverhold sat, at this moment, the nominal crown prince of Ans — Wales Moen.

Now this was interesting.

Gao Yang reined in his surprise, waved a hand to break the sigil on the envelope, and drew out three sheets of letter paper neatly folded within, while Amber beside him immediately turned her head aside with an exaggerated motion, signifying that she would not peek.

"My respects to you, Founder of the Kingdom. I address you for the nonce as the heir of the Moen bloodline, and this should be the first conversation between us — regrettably, it is separated by a sheet of letter paper and half a kingdom's distance, and I can only choose the plainest, most direct language possible, in the hope of making you understand my stance, and my true intentions, as best I can.

"I know of the existence of the Mithril Oath Tablet.

"I know of your qualification to inherit."

The opening of this letter had already startled Gao Yang.

He masked the astonishment in his heart with a calm countenance and looked up at Cohen Loren seated opposite, but the other's face was utterly expressionless, making it impossible to judge whether this deputy commander knew the contents of the secret letter.

Gao Yang steadied himself and lowered his head to read the remaining portion of the letter.

After that, Wales Moen did not continue to discuss the special "emergency inheritance qualification" of Gao Yang and the other founding dukes, but turned instead to describing the internal aristocratic situation of the kingdom — the intricate web of relations among the capital's nobles, and the checks, the watchfulness, the balances, and the frictions among the various fiefs.

In those three pages, Wales spent two describing these things, and within the space of a mere two pages he had all but laid out the characteristics of every landed noble in the contemporary Kingdom of Ans, and had even sketched the rough genealogies of those nobles who held real power.

Even the finest master of heraldry, the most learned historian of the nobility, the most seasoned court advisor would likely have struggled to fully grasp such exceedingly complex matters — let alone to tease out a coherent system from them and finally compress it onto two sheets of letter paper. That required not merely exceptional intelligence, but long study and observation, and a rare gift for plucking the crucial threads from a sea of information and weaving them together.

Gao Yun drew a soft breath. Wales Morn could not possibly be the mediocre, unremarkable royal that rumor made him out to be.

He had reached the end of the letter.

"...Duke Cecil, you must already realize that the kingdom you and your comrades founded seven hundred years ago has passed through long ages of change. Just as a splendid and magnificent city has risen upon a bare wilderness, so too have the bloodlines of those plain, simple, upright pioneers of old evolved into so vast and complicated a collective...

"It is like this Silverfort itself — vast, magnificent, yet beneath its vaults lie countless dark passages and sordid corners. It is like a tangled skein of thread long knotted together, from which it is harder than hard to pull free even a single straight strand.

"My brother — you know of whom I speak — saw this clearly long ago. He sought to unravel this skein by his own methods, or rather to destroy it, to sweep away the sordidness that seven hundred years have accumulated in this kingdom, and for that he did not scruple to take desperate risks.

"Unfortunately, he, like me, is himself a part of that skein.

"Fortunately, you are outside it.

"Wales Morn, descendant of Charlie Morn, salutes you once again."

Gao Cen read every letter on the page word by word, and at the very end he saw a line written in a special typeface:

"Burn after reading."

The instant his gaze swept across those letters, the three pages burst into roaring flame.

Gao Yang watched quietly as the letter paper burned to ash, and the ash was then utterly broken down into its basic elements by the arcane flames that flared up close behind, so that even the finest of mages could not restore it. Only then did he turn to Cohen Loren: "You are loyal to Wales Morn."

"His Highness left the Silverfort for twenty years, yet a small number of royal nobles remain loyal to him."

"Do you know what he wrote in that letter?"

"I do not. Prying into one's master's correspondence is not the act of a knight."

Gao Yang regarded this deputy commander of the knightly order in silence for a while, then withdrew his gaze and said unhurriedly, "When you return, you may make your report. Tell him I have understood."

Cohen Loren rose to his feet and bowed with the most formal of knightly salutes: "Yes."