Chapter 666 — Clues and Progress

Dark Crow leaned over and glanced at it. He frowned slightly, as if hesitating, but spoke nonetheless: "That stamp shows he was once a royal shadow. And 'defected or missing'... means just what it says. But for a royal shadow, going missing is treated as defection. We know too many secrets—so the moment contact is broken and there's no proof we're actually dead, we're regarded as a 'risk.'"

"Defected... he was a royal shadow who defected?" Amber murmured. "But why would he defect..."

Dark Crow studied the register before Amber for a while, then suddenly spoke: "If it's the operational records corresponding to this register... those should exist. I've seen them before. Please wait—I'll go find them."

This time he returned even faster than before. Barely a few minutes later, he came back with a file that was plainly some years old.

"Here it is—the record of Sarylendorff's last mission before he went missing. Thank goodness it doesn't involve any court intrigue and wasn't destroyed." Dark Crow handed the material to Amber, his finger indicating a line of now somewhat blurred writing. She took it at once and read the contents aloud in a low voice:

"...In the year 690... departed for the Dark Mountains in search of the Gondor legacy. Did not return. No evidence of death found; suspected defection."

That was the entirety of the description concerning Sarylendorff's final mission as a royal shadow.

"The Dark Mountains... he went to the Dark Mountains and never returned to the capital to report, so he was deemed a suspected defector?" Amber frowned, her thoughts racing. "No... by the code of the royal shadows, he truly did defect... In 690, and afterward he lived under a false name in the Southern Frontier for over twenty years..."

In her mind she turned over every memory she had of her adoptive father, trying to sketch a clearer outline from those memories—to explain the course of his life, to explain the choices he had made.

A royal shadow, trusted deeply by the king, a royal shadow even granted a secret noble title by exception, who set out for the Dark Mountains in search of the Gondor legacy, then defected without the slightest warning, lived under a false name in the Southern Frontier for over twenty years, adopted a half-elf daughter, ran swindles together with a druid of vile habits, and at last was caught when he botched a theft at a church, and was put to death by the local noble and the bishop—dying for nothing, like some clumsy little thief...

The turning point of it all seemed to have happened at the "Dark Mountains."

Sarylendorff had gone there in search of the Gondor legacy—and now Amber knew full well that the Gondor legacy truly existed there!

There was a Fortress of Defiance there!

Did Sarilendor find that fortress? And what did he find inside it? Or was it precisely because he found nothing that his mission failed, forcing him to simply go to ground in the Southern Frontier?

Judging by logic, Amber did not think the second possibility very likely. A royal shadow guard whom the king had personally elevated beyond the normal rules would not defect for a reason like that. Which left the first possibility...

According to the intelligence Amber held, Cecil's explorers had been operating inside the Fortress of Defiance all this time without ever discovering traces of a third-party intrusion. Apart from the Cecilites, no one else should have entered that ancient fortress.

But this conclusion was not entirely reliable, for the Fortress of Defiance was far too vast, and many of its regions were hidden for various reasons or remained in an unexplorable state. To this day the commander of the exploration team would not claim to have mastered even half the fortress's regions; even Kamal, that "Defier," had admitted he did not know how many subdivisions that fortress contained, how many different project teams were occupying different laboratories, or how many varieties of attempts to defy the gods and resist the magic tide were underway within.

Amber shook her head hard, forcibly crushing down all her tangled, clamorous thoughts, then snatched up the documents on the table, jumped down from the high reading stool, and ran toward the archive room door.

Dark Raven could not help calling after her: "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to find Old Zongzi!"

Tossing out that one sentence, Amber's figure had already vanished beyond the doorway.

Dark Raven scratched his hair, utterly baffled. So what on earth did the code name "Old Zongzi" mean?

Meanwhile, in the study of the Silver Fort, Vera/Ophilia was reporting to Gao Yang on partial progress in reorganizing the church's administrative structure.

"We have already spread the oracle far and wide. The mid- and lower-ranking faithful believe in it without a doubt, and have raised no great objections to the various restructuring measures...

"The upper-ranking priests are somewhat sensitive—the right to interpret the scriptures touches their interests—but the situation remains within controllable bounds.

"Halting the heretic trials will help ease relations between the Daylight Church and other sects, and help restore order within the country. But there is also the possibility that once-oppressed believers of other gods will harbor prejudice and resentment toward the reformed Shadowlight Church—on this point we need the support of the Administrative Hall's propaganda efforts...

"The High Pontiff is now working to incorporate and reorganize the original church knight orders. Since those orders have suffered severe attrition and were already in urgent need of restructuring and rebuilding, the process has gone quite smoothly."

"Let us leave the church report there for now," Gao You said once Vera's report had reached a pause. "Let us talk about something else."

Vera maintained her serene, gentle expression: "What would you like to discuss?"

"Let's talk about you, Miss Ophilia," Gao Rong said. "And about the Defiance Plan as you know it. I think it is time we went somewhat deeper into this subject."