Chapter 605 — Kindred Spirits

The barren, corrupted wilderness receded ceaselessly beyond the carriage window; the waste's endless wind coiled dust around the convoy. At the front of the convoy, firelight flashed along the flank of the "Steel Ambassador" multipurpose war chariot, and the searing ray it spat pierced through a mutated fiend that had tried to approach. Gao Yang sat quietly in the magic-drive carriage at the center of the convoy, already deep in thought for a long while.

Amber drew her gaze back from the desolate waste and looked at Gao Cen curiously: "What have you been thinking about this whole way?"

Gao Yi let out a faint breath and set aside his tangled thoughts for the moment; then he glanced at the half-elf lady with the gleaming eyes, and under her gossip-hungry stare said casually: "What sort of person do you think Luo Yan is?"

Amber answered without thinking: "An old fox just like you—I mean, the deep-scheming sort."

Gao Yang glanced at this disgrace to elfkind, who had hastily corrected herself at the last moment, and shook his head slightly: "I cannot determine how deep Luo Yan Augustus's connection to the Society of All Things End truly runs. Judging only from the details observed so far, the two parties may merely be cooperating for mutual benefit. Of course, it is also possible that Luo Yan Augustus's acting is simply too flawless."

"When you brought up Bei Yila Augustus, he acted as though he had no idea the other had already become a high-ranking priest of All Things End," Amber blinked. "If he truly does not know, then his cooperation with the Society of All Things End may be very shallow indeed, and Bei Yila Augustus has truly severed all ties with the former Typhon royal house. But if he is feigning ignorance, then the fun really begins... that would mean the Typhon royal house and the Society of All Things End are absolutely in league."

Gao Yang neither confirmed nor denied this, but in truth, by instinct, he had already begun to lean toward the view that the connection between the Typhon royal house and the Society of All Things End went no further than mutual benefit—at least where Luo Yan Augustus himself was concerned. Yet he also knew that in such matters one could not rely on "instinct" to judge.

The carriage fell silent once more, broken only by the hum of machinery and, now and then, the sound of weapons fire as the escort chariots destroyed monsters that suddenly appeared on the waste.

After a spell of quiet, Gao Yang finally broke the silence with a faint sigh of feeling: "I do not know why, but I always feel that this Luo Yan Augustus is somewhat like me..."

When no response came to this remark, Gao Heng could not help but glance curiously at the half-elf beside him—only to find that shame of the elven race staring at him wide-eyed in astonishment, and it was a good while before she managed to squeeze out a single sentence: "Good God—what on earth did you do back then?!"

Gao Yang: "..."

In that instant, a thought surged up in him that he could scarcely restrain: to lash this shame of the elven race to a pole, spike it on the roof of the vehicle, and haul her along just like that—h-a-u-l h-e-r a-l-l t-h-e w-a-y t-o t-h-e c-a-m-p!!

He had barely managed to get away from that hard-headed Rebecca, and now Amber's head had turned to iron too?!

...

At the Typhon Peak Base, beside Luo Yan Augustus's palace, a steel-forged, sharply contoured magical-mechanical construct sat quietly in the plaza.

A dozen or so fully armed Typhon soldiers guarded the place.

Luo Yan and An Luo Wendel stood beside the "magic-drive vehicle," observing the complex machinery before them with a trace of curiosity.

This was a gift from the Cecil people, left here as a memento of the "trade pact."

"Truly a miracle of engineering and magic... wouldn't you say?"

Luo Yan sighed softly.

An Luo frowned slightly. "But I still have my misgivings about this thing."

"You may harbor misgivings about the conduct of the Ansu people, but you must hold advanced technology in awe," Luo Yan said, glancing at the young wolf general and reminding him mildly. "Technological progress brings tremendous development—society's output grows, the people grow prosperous, the army grows strong, the nation flourishes. Every step Typhon has taken in recent years has been built upon these foundations."

An Luo lowered his head. "Yes... Your Majesty."

Luo Yan gave a slight nod, his gaze returning to the magic-drive vehicle, and he murmured, "I just never expected... never expected that Ansu, which had fallen behind across the board, would suddenly stride ahead of us. The Cecil people have found a path no one ever conceived of before. Had we discovered it even a little later, we might well have been left behind by a mere duchy."

"You seem to place great importance on the Duchy of Cecil?"

Luo Yan did not answer An Luo's question. Instead, after a few seconds of silence, he suddenly asked, "What sort of man do you take Gao Yang Cecil to be?"

An Luo stated his feelings frankly: "...He seems generous and upright, yet there lurks a side of him that one cannot see through. I have heard many stories of the first-generation pioneers, his among them, but those stories describe him only as a symbolic hero—they never mentioned that he would also cross swords with a man at the negotiating table."

Luo Yan cast an inadvertent glance at this "wolf general."

Given the wolf general's hostile attitude toward the Ansu people, this was plainly high praise indeed.

He revealed a somewhat stiff smile, his voice low: "That pioneer... will sooner or later become an enemy of Typhon.

"Because he and I are the same kind of people."

(A friendly recommendation: a book titled My Editor Is Super Fierce, a fan work—killed and sacrificed to the heavens (=))