Chapter 708 — The War Nuns

The dry, cold wind bit at the face, and the air carried a faint scorched smell. The thousand-mile expanse of fertile land that had once been lush green had become wasteland in a war zone, spreading unbroken to the horizon. On either side, the ruins of shattered villages and the charred remains of trees fell away behind them. Over the long journey, the same scenery kept recurring, repeated again and again.

Badwindel somewhat clumsily shut the carriage window, sealing the dry cold air outside the arcane vehicle. Beside him came an old and faintly irreverent voice: "Well? Seeing this plain you people turned to rubble with your own eyes—how does it feel?"

Bad turned his head and saw the old druid named Piyun looking at him with a half-smile, and for a moment he did not know how to respond.

This unremarkable, slovenly old man was in fact a personage of consequence. Under the titles of Imperial Chief Druid and Director of Alchemical Engineering, he held a revered position and power in this vast young empire. Yet setting aside that dazzling halo, after some time in close contact Bad had come to realize that the old man's character was in truth so foul as to invite a beating—he seemed capable at any moment of producing a torrent of words to choke a man to death and provoke his victim's temper. And unlike Princess Rebecca, who shared a similar gift, this old man did it on purpose...

Bad's greatest difficulty was that he could not even raise a hand against the old man—not because soldiers were watching nearby, nor out of any virtue of "respecting one's elders," but because he was one hundred percent certain that if he so much as brushed the old man by accident, the fellow would promptly lie down on the ground and then swindle the last copper coin out of his pocket.

Why was this Piyun always targeting him?

Bad could not work it out for the moment, and after a spell of awkward silence could only shake his head: "I won't try to defend myself, but I wasn't in Ansu when they launched the plan on the Holy Spirit Plain. I was sent to the eastern continent then, to make contact with the Stormborn."

"Ha, so you just did your wickedness somewhere else," Piyun chuckled. "The Stormborn... so you know what those fellows are up to? Do they still mean to return to the continent?"

"...I don't know their affairs. They put nearly all their effort into the deep sea—even the All-Ending Society and the Sleepers, fellow dark cults, now find them hard to deal with," Bad said with some candor. "I stayed a long while on a coastal island off the eastern continent, but mostly it was a waste of time. I helped them gather some supplies, but more often I was treating limbs mutated by the deep sea's influence—the work of a physician..."

"Limbs mutated by the deep sea's influence?" Piyun raised an eyebrow. "Interesting... you have my attention. The specifics?"

"They were bent on seizing several sea zones held by the sirens, but they wouldn't allow members of other dark cults to take part in their frontline fighting. I don't know what they actually did or what they went through—I only know that some Stormborn sent back had already grown fish scales and fins, and at high tide they kept mumbling 'Eva is calling'..." Bad shook his head. "Frankly, the mutations in them strike me as even more horrifying than many of the All-Ending Society's dark rites. The deep sea... the deep sea hides too many things beyond comprehension, and I don't know what those Stormborn were so drawn to that they fixated on it."

"...Not bad. Leaving you, a cultist, alive turns out to yield some incidental use."

Piyun muttered this, then paid the slightly changed Bad no further mind, casting his gaze into the distance at the other vehicle traveling ahead.

In the arcane vehicle ahead, Gaoyang finished his routine communication with the administrative hall. After shutting down the vehicle's arcane-net terminal, he could not help exclaiming: "The engineering corps Wald sent built two extra arcane obelisks between Soringborg and the Fertile Woods—the communication problem between the southeastern Holy Spirit Plain and the southern frontier is at least partly solved."

"Lately Fortress Bedrock has been sending engineering corps north nonstop—either rebuilding the Wangshao Road or putting up infrastructure on the Holy Spirit Plain, or else helping organize joint reconstruction teams. Some say Wald's Second Legion has practically become a road-and-bridge construction legion," Amber said, draped over the back of the front seat, muttering away. "To think that two years ago Fortress Bedrock was still the gateway bulwark—it's like a dream..."

Grumbling under her breath, she turned her head and glanced at Gao Cen. "That said, you actually decided to come inspect things yourself—that really is a surprise... I can't believe you actually dared to leave the city."

"The consul system and the Council of State exist precisely to ensure the whole Empire keeps running smoothly while I am away from Xuanyao City," Gao Lan said evenly, though his gaze drifted involuntarily toward the direction of Soringhold. "Besides... what's happened here has been weighing on my mind. This is, after all, a nest of the Order of Universal Demise—every upheaval and turning point this nation has suffered in the past two years was almost entirely brewed in this very nest. How could I not come see it for myself?"

"Ha, what I admire most is your talent for inventing a mountain of excuses even when you're just sneaking out for a break," Amber said in a tone that showed no fear whatsoever of being slapped against a wall (there being no wall here), and then, before Gao Yang could knock her on the head, she suddenly sat bolt upright and stared in astonishment at the distance.

"Oh my god..." she gasped, her eyes wide as saucers. "The report calls that thing a... 'tree'?"