Chapter 379 — Peace?
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 3
Seizing the instant when the figure had just steadied itself on landing, Gao Yang barked out, "What are you doing, climbing through the window in the middle of the night?!"
Sure enough, there came a thud—Amber all but went flat on her face as she materialized out of the air. The half-elf scrambled up from the floor in utter disarray and lunged at Gao Yang, claws out and teeth bared: "You scared me half to death!! Sitting alone in the study in the pitch dark in the dead of night, then suddenly opening your mouth—do you have any idea how badly that frightens a person?!"
Gao Yang easily planted a hand on Amber's head and held the little runt at arm's length as she bounced and hopped a full meter away, her claws flailing at their limit and still falling well short of his shoulder. "A trained infiltrator like you, scared of someone talking to you in the dark?"
"When I'm working, nobody's ever standing next to me talking, all right?!"
Er... Gao Yang felt that sentence could be interpreted on rather a lot of levels...
"What's happened?" After a moment's silent grumbling, Gao Yang let go and casually lit the mana-crystal lamp in the study. He had left the lights off because he had been concentrating on monitoring the Pact Fortress ever since dinner and simply had not bothered to turn them on; there was no need to keep the room dark now. "You rarely come to report at this hour."
"Suo Jilin is back," Amber said, rubbing the hair Gao Yang had mussed, "and he brought back something fairly important. I thought you should know as soon as possible."
"Back already?!" Gao Yang blinked. "What intelligence?"
"At the southern end of the Defiant Fortress they found something like a sealed isolation door. Beyond it should be a large, previously undiscovered experimental site. According to the markings in the ruins, the site is called the 'Shadow Proving Ground,'" Amber said. "Suo Jilin suspects it's a large area comparable to the Defiant Bastion itself. Since they weren't fully prepared, he's already led the team back—they'll rest and resupply, then go in again."
"A new large area?" Gao Yang's brows drew together slightly. He had not expected the first ruins expedition after the weather warmed to yield a find of this scale. "Who else knows about this now?"
"I've reported only to you," Amber said. "Should we notify Camille tomorrow?"
"...No need. He doesn't understand conditions outside the Defiant Bastion," Gao Yang shook his head, then glanced at Amber. "Speaking of which... the Shadow Proving Ground, eh? You seem rather accomplished in matters of shadow?"
"Eh?"
In the eastern province of Ansu, at the Pact Fortress, the long first round of formal negotiations had finally come to an end.
The rulers of the two nations and their followers had wrung their brains dry and crossed verbal swords across the negotiating table, spending several hours setting out their respective demands and principles, reaching a preliminary consensus in the process—or, having exhausted their stamina, being forced to lay down arms for the time being. And through all of it, Duke Silas Loren felt worn to the bone.
This business of maneuvering against people across a negotiating table was simply more exhausting than crossing blades with an enemy on the battlefield.
The one mercy was that he was not the commander on this particular field of negotiation. The wise old King Francis II was the one leading the charge. It was hard to imagine that a king so advanced in years could prove so tenacious and unyielding at the table—so much so that the Emperor Luoyan and the entire retinue of advisors he had brought could not gain the slightest advantage over Ansu in the exchange of words.
Now, at last, the negotiations were over. Whether they stood by the negotiating table or waited outside the hall and beyond the castle walls, everyone could not help but breathe a little easier.