Chapter 131 — The Eternal Slate
Blade of Dawn · Page 4 of 4
"Of course I never sent it out," Viscount Andrew said with an effortful smile. Weak as he was, he still strove to lift his head. "I am a son of the Leslie family. I could starve to death, die out there in the wild, throw myself from this very spot—but I will never submit to a cultist!"
Though the phrasing struck him as faintly, subtly familiar, Gao Yang still regarded the frail traditional noble with considerable admiration. This was the nobility of this age: truly hidebound, truly backward, truly given to actions that from a god's-eye view seemed foolish—but at the same time possessed of a so-called "noble spirit," a spirit that upheld a pride bordering on the unreasonable, and that pride was such that even in death he would not bow his head to a cultist.
"Then where exactly did you hide the Eternal Slate fragment?" Gao Yang could not help asking.
"Ha... haha..." Viscount Andrew laughed with relish, laughing until he was wracked by coughing. "Right under that fellow's nose the whole time! Right under his nose!"
As he spoke, the Viscount laboriously climbed up from his chair, and then lifted away the thick cushion.
"That fool opened my treasury, ransacked my chamber of magical materials, searched my bedroom and my attic, pried open every locked chest and cabinet in the castle—but he will never, ever imagine that I was sitting on it the whole time!!"
Once the thick cushion was lifted, Gao Yang saw it.
It lay quietly on the seat, no bigger than a palm, its thickness by eye not even half a centimeter. And what differed even more from Gao Yang's conjecture was that this so-called Eternal "Slate" was not a slate at all.
It was a pale gold metal plate, its surface impossibly flat and smooth, etched with mysterious patterns.