Chapter 606 — The End of Winter

At the end of these portraits hung side by side, he saw the place of Bei Yila Augustus—yet in the center of that pitch-black frame, a shadow seemed to have gathered and refused to disperse, wholly obscuring the face of that saint who had lived seven hundred years ago.

Luo Yan looked calmly at that portrait for a while, then withdrew his gaze and, for the first time, broke the silence: "Is Bei Yila Augustus truly still alive?"

In the depths of the empty palace, no voice answered his question.

Luo Yan seemed to have expected this outcome; he merely showed a faint, mocking smile and turned to walk back the way he had come.

The whisper sounded again: "Why have you not gone mad?"

Luo Yan's steps paused slightly, and his voice was low: "We possess a resilience beyond anything you can imagine."

The palace began to shake violently, as though the dream were about to end.

Luo Yan raised his head and watched the deep, winding corridor crumble apart, shedding bricks and fragments of stone, and somewhere in the darkness behind him, deeper than he could reckon, that low whisper dissolved into a distant sigh: "Alas..."

In that sigh seemed to lie endless regret and helplessness, very different from those maddening, malevolent whisperings that had come before.

After that sigh, the palace's last supporting structures collapsed utterly and dissolved into nothingness.

When the walls had fallen away completely, the scene outside the palace poured into Luo Yan's eyes as well, and he saw a city—a city collapsing swiftly amid the rending of heaven and earth, countless towering spires and lofty walls coming apart in violent shuddering, the ground split open in appalling chasms, the whole of the city swallowed by the earth almost in an instant, and among those ceaselessly falling things, deep within the earth, the last sight he saw was a transparent dome, within which drifted indescribable aggregations of starlight...

...

The giant sun rose in the east and set in the west, day and night alternated, the stars wheeled on.

The ancient constellations gazed upon this world like gods, solemn and indifferent, watching time flow past, watching the busy comings and goings of mortals.

The constellation of Frost Sky passed the zenith of the heavens, and deep winter began to unleash its final power in the last month of the season, the cold wind howling, the earth frozen hard.

With the support of engineering machinery and various other advanced technologies, the "secondary tower" under the charge of the Cecil Spire Base had its main structure completed a month ahead of schedule, and a series of "purification devices" spreading northward from the secondary tower had likewise finished capping their main structures; after this, the installation and calibration of a series of later-stage magical apparatus would become the chief work of the arcanotechnicians.

Technical exchange between the Silver Empire and the Duchy of Cecil had finally gotten onto the proper track. After the initial period of adjustment and small-scale project testing, the elven mages in the south of the continent and the human magical-energy researchers in the north had established a preliminary rapport; the Duchy of Cecil and the Silver Empire each set up more signal relay towers and amplification devices in the territories under their control, and in a more stable and more efficient communications environment, the researchers of the two races began, across the whole continent, a series of technical exchanges and cooperative projects conducted over long-distance communications.

In the thirty-fifth day of the Month of Chill, Anzu 738, Gao Yang received a magic-net communication from Hetty.

"The special envoy dispatched by Typhon has arrived at Xuan Yao City," said the Duchy's Grand Chancellor, her long hair gathered up, elegant and composed as she reported the situation earnestly in the holographic projection. "In accordance with your orders, their tour of the eastern line of the magic-energy railway is to be arranged for the following day."

"They've finally arrived... though it's understandable; this is such an important project, after all. Luo Yan Augustus and his circle of advisors must have assessed it any number of times before finally making the decision," Gao Yang said, seated behind his desk, while through the window came the distinctive horn of heavy transport vehicles: a batch of rock, soil, and monster specimens collected from the waste had just finished being loaded and was ready for delivery to the research departments in Xuan Yao City. "How are things in the Duchy?"

"All is steady. The last batch of exiled knights in the northern regions have surrendered; the laying and activation of magical monitoring and sensory devices has been completed in all border areas and key urban zones, and according to plan, our next step is to extend the sensory devices into the towns and villages."

Gao Yang let out a faint breath of relief.

With this, the Duchy of Cecil's social security apparatus at the present stage was finally complete.

The so-called "magical monitoring and sensory devices" were a special installation developed under Camel's leadership and set up by the Administrative Hall. Its conception came from the ancient Gondu Empire, its technology being a fusion of contemporary "magical detection spells" and magic-net communications technology; its greatest function was to sense any act of spellcasting within range and send back an alarm at the first moment, so that the "supervisors" of the Administrative Hall's security department could see the location of the node that raised the alarm on the city sand table and thereby swiftly pinpoint unauthorized magical activity.

Of course, this system was not meant to forbid the transcendents from casting spells—so long as they carried a specially made "spellcaster's license," the transcendents could cast spells normally, relying on the rune arrays within the license. This license had to be obtained from the Administrative Hall, and one had to submit to periodic inspection, rune renewal, and qualification assessment; in this way, the transcendents within Cecil's borders would have to accept registration—naturally, this system met with some resistance when first introduced, but thanks to the abundant fruits of the Unification War, nearly ninety percent of the transcendents in the whole Southern Region were already under the Duchy's control, and those outside its jurisdiction were few to begin with, so in the end it was smoothly implemented.

This system had begun to be laid down in the middle of last year, and by now it had finally grown into something of a scale.

Effective management over all transcendents—it sounded very advanced, but in truth the idea was not advanced in the slightest.

Never mind the Gondu Empire of a thousand years ago; Typhon alone, beyond the border, had achieved registration and professionalized management of transcendents years ago, and their special corps of "engineering mages" was proof enough of it.

The Typhonites used their numerous mage towers and a great host of royal mages loyal to the Empire to achieve registration and sensing of transcendents across most urban areas, and established a large number of training facilities to forge "full-time spellcasters" more loyal and more obedient to the Empire's commands. This method was enormously costly, but relying on formidable "financial power," Typhon had in the end accomplished it all.

Anzu had been a step behind in this regard, and so Gao Yang had to make up for his latecomer disadvantage through more advanced technology and more advanced institutions; at least within the Duchy's borders, he had to achieve more effective control over the transcendents.