Chapter 155 — The Missionary
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
By the time Gao Yang arrived with Amber and Heidi, following a soldier's directions to a construction site near the brick kilns, the strange priest who had appeared out of nowhere in the territory had already been hard at work for some time.
He was a hulking, unkempt, travel-worn giant of a man, and he was hauling baskets of heavy bricks alongside the workers to the spot where a wall was going up. Though it was already the late part of Frostmoon and bitterly cold, he had sweated through his clothes just like the laborers, so much so that he had stripped off his threadbare priest's robe and tied it around his waist like a work apron, baring a powerful torso and bronze skin.
Those arms looked ready at any moment to drag a heretic down to hell with him.
The workers kept their heads down and labored alongside this man who had appeared from nowhere, but every so often they stole glances up at him, plainly having realized long ago that this was a peculiar stranger. The site supervisor (who doubled as record-keeper) stood nearby looking helpless, and when he spotted the lord's arrival he immediately trotted over: "My lord! Thank goodness you're here, this is really—"
"What's the situation with this man?" Gao Yang stared at the muscular fellow bent over hauling bricks, utterly baffled. "A priest of the Church of the Daystar? Dressed like that? Why would he suddenly turn up on my territory and start working?"
"We've no idea where he came from either!" The supervisor looked frazzled. "He just said he'd been sent south to preach, then asked the workers if any of them were interested in the Holy Light. Who knows where the man's from? Naturally nobody paid him any mind. I even told him everyone was busy and nobody had time to listen to him—and then the man just up and started hauling bricks without a word. We couldn't stop him. His strength is terrifying!"
"...With a build like that, of course his strength isn't small," Amber said, eyeing the giant in astonishment. When she'd first heard that a suspected priest of the Daystar sect had shown up here, she'd tensed up, ready to fight him for three hundred rounds (or take a beating) and then wring some medical compensation out of Gao Yang—but even her peculiar mind hadn't imagined that this was the sort of character who'd arrive. For a moment she couldn't quite process it. "Are you sure this isn't a paladin who grabbed the wrong clothes and walked out in a robe?"
The supervisor spread his hands. "I asked. He says he's a missionary who's been traveling from the central regions."
Gao Yang frowned and waved a hand at the soldiers who had come with him and at the supervisor before him. "Don't be nervous, all of you. I'll go and make contact."
With that, he led Amber and Heidi forward.
The working laborers soon noticed Gao Yang approaching, and one by one they stopped their tasks, tense and awed, preparing to bow—but Gao Yang stopped them with a look and a wave of his hand. "Don't mind me. Carry on with what you're doing."
At last the brawny giant also noticed the shift in atmosphere. He unloaded a basket of bricks from his shoulder, looked up at his surroundings, then turned his head toward Gao Yang. "The man in charge is here? Are you the one in charge?"
That manner of speaking... really wasn't like the priests one usually saw in the Church of the Daystar.
Gao Yang happened to be in plain clothes for once; though he carried the Pioneer's Sword, it was hidden by its scabbard. Apart from his towering height, an outsider would be hard-pressed to connect this big man, traveling with no decent guard in sight (Amber counted as an indecent one), with Duke Cecil. Realizing that the giant before him hadn't recognized his identity, Gao Yang played along. "That's right, I'm in charge of this area. What is it you do?"