Chapter 123 — Crystal Grenades
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
By the bank of the Whitewater River, the four—Gao Yang and his companions—were checking their personal belongings and the condition of their horses. They would ride fast horses to Tansang Town, which would be quicker than going upstream by boat, and if trouble arose they could use the forests along the way for cover, to avoid tipping off the cultists.
Hedy saw them off at the riverbank, looking rather uneasy: "Ancestor, please, you must stay safe. The cultists are devious and merciless—do not let yourself be undone by their tricks."
Philip Qianshi, at Gao Yang's side, promptly struck his breastplate, his whole body radiating fighting spirit so dense it seemed almost tangible: "Rest assured! I swear upon a knight's honor to guard the Duke's safety unto death!"
"Don't be absurd, you can't even beat me," Gao Yang said, glancing at this young man who flew into a热血 fervor at the slightest provocation. "And in dealing with cultists, it's exactly your single-track temperament that's the danger—honest folk are the easiest to fool, you know that?"
Philip Qianshi thought it over: "My lord speaks truly. I am still wanting, and must temper myself through experience."
Gao Yang felt the young man had understood nothing at all...
Just then Hedy frowned and turned to look toward the camp: "Speaking of which, why isn't Rebecca here yet?"
Amber, who had been leaning against her horse and idly fiddling with a dagger, raised her head at this: "She said she'd prepared something for us and told us to wait. But wait much longer and the cultists will have settled down and put down roots in Tansang Town."
There was a thick resentment in her tone, though the chief source of that resentment was being dragged along to face the cultists head-on—which left the half-elf miss, ever cowardly and ever wordy, rather displeased.
Never mind that Gao Yang had said several times already that the head-on fighting was a task left to him, and that Amber and the others need only provide support...
And scarcely had Amber's words fallen than Rebecca's voice rang out from the distance, right on cue: "Ancestor! Ancestor! I'm here! I'm here!"
Gao Yang looked toward the sound and saw a third-rank fireball launcher come flying pell-mell from afar. Rebecca gripped her iron staff in one hand and a bag of considerable heft in the other, running all the way at a bouncing, bounding clip.
She ran in one breath right up to Gao Yang, gulping for air: "S-sorry... sorry to keep you waiting so long..."
"Wait much longer and those cultists will be having babies in Tansang Town!" Amber planted her hands on her hips and glared. "What on earth have you been fussing over?"
"I prepared some things for you that might come in useful," Rebecca said, managing to even out her breathing before opening the large bag in her hand and taking out what was inside. "I'd meant to present them to you as an achievement report, Ancestor, but I never expected something like this to happen—so it's a good chance to test them in actual combat..."
The bag opened, and several curious gazes fell upon what Rebecca brought out: rows upon rows of metal boxes, uniform in size and neatly arrayed.
They were forged from the commonest cast iron, their shapes exceptionally regular, each a little larger all around than the cigarette packs in Gao Yang's memory. On the side of each box could be seen a protruding piece of metal, apparently an iron bar inserted into the body of the box, and at the top there was a raised structure that looked as though it could be pressed down.
Gao Yang seemed to realize something, but still could not quite be certain: "Is this..."
"Didn't you tell me before to think about how to make a rune trigger with a delayed detonation?" Rebecca rattled on. "I actually designed it a while ago, only the structure is very delicate and hard to machine, especially impossible to make in large quantities—but now that I have help..."