Chapter 36 — The Banquet
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
The Dark Mountains.
When they saw the place Gao Yang indicated, everyone was momentarily stunned.
The first to break the silence was Duke Bai Yu Franklin of the Western Marches, his eyes wide: "Are you... certain?"
"And why not?" Gao Yang smiled. "Surely this place isn't already claimed by someone?"
"That's not it..." Francis II shook his head. "The entire Dark Mountains region and the lands further south are unclaimed—that does meet the requirements of the Reclamation Decree. But that place is not only close to the Typhon Empire, its southern edge directly borders the Gondor Wastes. It's really..."
The Dark Mountains formed part of Ansu's southern border. Its eastern stretch ran all the way into the territory of the Typhon Empire, while the western stretch sprawled several hundred kilometers along Ansu's national boundary before bending south at a slight angle and melting into the corrupted earth of the Gondor Wastes. In theory, even the band-like plains on the southern side of the Dark Mountains belonged to Ansu, but in practice the kingdom's control barely reached the northern slopes of the range—and even that control was exceedingly limited.
The most important reason for this was the existence of the Gondor Wastes.
To this day, that land remained shrouded in chaotic elemental forces and magical energy. The churning corruption left the earth all but barren, and it was saturated with poisons lethal to humans.
Though its boundaries no longer spread, the toxic dust storms that occasionally drifted in on the wind from the wasteland's edges, and the monsters that sometimes wandered out, were deadly threats.
Historically, once the Kingdom of Ansu had stabilized, it had attempted several waves of counter-expansion into the southern frontier—there had even been plans to reclaim the old territories of Gondor—but ultimately all efforts ended in failure. Purifying the wasteland was extraordinarily difficult and forever prone to reversal; the returns were utterly disproportionate to the investment. The early settlement outposts that were barely established often could not hold out long enough to produce anything before being destroyed by toxic dust storms and monsters. In the end, the Ansu royal house withdrew all its reclamation teams and halted at the northern side of the Dark Mountains.
After that, as the kingdom's northern regions grew ever more prosperous and diplomatic relations were established with the Violet Kingdom, the kingdom's center of gravity shifted further north. Then came the "Fogmoon Civil War" a hundred years ago, and the Cecil family of the southern frontier collapsed overnight. The situation in the south deteriorated and regressed further still, until today the entire Dark Mountains and most of the surrounding region were no different from the wasteland itself.
The breath of the wasteland, carried over the mountains, had even corrupted the plains north of the range.
But Gao Yang merely smiled faintly: "In my day, I faced situations far worse than that. When it comes to political intrigue and scheming, I may be no match for you younger generations—but when it comes to battling a hostile natural world, you are absolutely no match for me."
Whether or not it was true, best to boast as though it were—that was the plan.
Since Gao Yang himself was so full of confidence, the others present certainly were not about to keep worrying on his behalf. For the king and the other nobles, whether Gao Yang Cecil could gain a firm foothold in the south was not their concern at all—what concerned them most was simply when this hot potato would leave the royal capital. Since Gao Yang had voluntarily chosen a godforsaken place where nobody else would go, what more was there to say?
Hurry up and see the Xuanmai Sect out of the capital!
If not for the need to settle a few details, Francis II would have had the carriage ready for the Gao family by now...