Chapter 592 — Dream Theft

Gao Yang thought it over and decided that the "very troublesome person" she spoke of must be himself.

He believed he had roughly guessed who these people were.

He truly had not expected... that after losing the "Dark Bridge" they would resort to the Eversleepers' mind-link technology to maintain contact with the interior of the Wasteland... and those shriveled figures in black robes... were the Society of the Final End's "agents" inside the Wasteland?!

What exactly were they — or what manner of thing — that they could live inside the Great Wall?!

Gao Yang could not help staring at those shriveled black-robed people, and saw the foremost of them speak in a hoarse voice: "We will be careful enough — and how go your own efforts?"

"The materials you provided have been a great help, but the godscourge mutagen displays abnormally high activity, which has reduced the mutants' ability to obey orders and stay sane. We need to confirm whether this is a normal phenomenon caused by the environmental difference between inside and outside the Wasteland, or whether there was an error in the materials you provided."

"There is no problem with the materials we provided," one of the black-robed figures said, "but they are all raw data gathered in the Wasteland environment. You should indeed make adjustments suited to conditions outside the Wasteland. In that, we can offer help."

Zheng Song, the woman in the priestess's gown and skirt, nodded. "That is as it should be. The Grand Hierarch will remember your merits, and not one of us will forget the labor and the sacrifice you have made upon the wasteland."

The foremost of the black-robed figures seemed to drag a stiff smile across his face, and a hoarse rasp came out of his shriveled throat: "This is the sacrifice a martyr is expected to make, Lady Beiyila Augustus."

"I no longer go by that surname," the woman said, her brow furrowing at once. "You should know that."

"...Ah. My apologies. I had forgotten. The wasteland makes it difficult to keep one's thoughts together..."

Not far off, Gao Yang's eyes flew wide open.

Beiyila Augustus!!

He knew that name. He 'remembered' that name, and now he finally understood why the woman's voice had struck him as familiar the moment he heard it!!

And in that same instant he recalled that he had heard the name 'Beiyila' once before, when he had pressed Pi Yun for intelligence on the Society of the Final End. At the time he had taken it for a mere coincidence of names, for such names were hardly rare in the North, nor in northwestern Typhon. But now it struck him all at once... this 'Beiyila' was the very one his memory held.

Beiyila Augustus, younger sister of Roland Augustus, the founding sovereign of Typhon.

And, seven hundred years ago, the acknowledged... Saint of the Senming sect of the North.

She had lived to this day?!

In the violence of that shock, Gao Yang at last lost a measure of control over his own aura, and for one brief instant a trace of the presence he had so carefully concealed slipped out.

And that single instant of leakage was enough to alert the two elven sisters who had scarcely spoken all the while, as though they were standing guard or keeping watch. They raised the alarm in one voice: "Something is wrong—cut the link!"

There was no hiding it now.

Gao Yang judged in that instant, and knew that even if he broke away this moment, he had already roused these Final End cultists to the keenest alarm—they knew their communion had been overheard, knew their secret stood exposed.

Under no circumstances could he let them learn that it was Gao Yang Cecil to whom it had been exposed!

In that instant Gao Yang's decision was made. He understood now that this mind-space had not been wrought by the Eternal Sleepers; these Final End cultists were merely borrowing some device 'donated in friendship' by the Sleepers to hold their communion. Without a moment's hesitation he fashioned a new likeness for himself, dissolved his concealment, and strode forward.

Beiyila Augustus watched in astonishment as a tall, achingly familiar figure coalesced out of the air, and even she was moved to cry out a single word: "...Brother?!"

But an instant later she caught herself: "No—who are you?!"

...