Chapter 282 — On the Border
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Cecil Territory had once again been attacked by monsters from the Gondor Wasteland, and the invading force had been annihilated that same day. This became the news that spread fastest and widest in the cold winter, and its dissemination was not due solely to the efforts of scouts, merchants, and mercenaries—Gao Yang himself had tacitly permitted it, even quietly encouraged it, which had made a considerable difference.
In Gao Song's words, "We have to make those comfortable southern nobles and capital folk aware that the threat exists."
In this cold winter, many people were destined to find no peace in their sitting or sleeping.
The eastern border of Ansul, Long Wind Fortress.
As the High Guardian of the Eastern Region, Duke Silas Lauren had for many years personally garrisoned this fortress. At this moment he stood on the top terrace of the castle at the fortress's center, gazing at the tiers of walls in the distance and, beyond them, the vast tracts of ice-covered wilderness.
Completed only ten years ago, this fortress was the pride of the Eastern Region's Lauren family. It had taken the labor of three full generations; the Eastern Region family had spent enormous treasure, material, and manpower—even the blood of family members—before finally raising this sturdy fortress on land that stood face to face with the Typhon Empire. It confronted Winter Wolf Keep and its attendant cluster of forts, which the Typhon Empire had established on its border, from afar; it was both a barrier and a deterrent.
The building of Long Wind Fortress had its origins in the rapid deterioration of relations between Ansul and Typhon.
In the Fogmoon Civil War a hundred years ago, the Eastern Region's Lauren family was the one among the four regional dukes that preserved its strength most intact. From the very beginning, this family had recognized that the Typhon Empire, which had always styled itself Ansul's brother, was in fact a massive threat; thus throughout the Fogmoon Civil War the family never committed its core strength to that chaotic and cruel struggle for royal power. The Lauren family's few limited moves during the civil war were made solely to preserve its position and influence within the kingdom, while the greater part of its energy had always been fixed on this eastern borderline. Later events proved that Duke Lauren's caution and dutiful guardianship in those years had protected the entire kingdom.
After the civil war ended and Ansul's domestic situation was swiftly settled by the establishment of the Second Dynasty and the thunderous measures of the northern Wilde family, the Lauren family began building a series of defensive works along the borderline. Long Wind Fortress was the one among all these works into which the greatest effort had been poured, which had taken the longest to build, and which possessed the strongest garrison.
It was less a military bastion than a "fortress city" combining the functions of fortress and city. Within it were all the facilities needed to keep the fortress running and to guarantee self-sufficiency; the warriors of the Lauren family were both the soldiers who held its walls and the residents of this citadel city, and the purpose of this fortress city's existence was to stand firm on this borderland under any circumstances, and never to fall.
When Ansul had declined greatly because of the civil war, while the Typhon Empire had grown ever stronger and conceived improper ambitions, it was precisely because this rampart built by the Lauren family stood on the national borderline that Typhon's improper ambitions could never be anything more than improper ambitions.