Chapter 389 — The Blood a King Sheds
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Gao Yang was not a hot-blooded youth, nor did he view the coming war through naive, simple eyes. So even after realizing what the End of All Things was doing, he had not the slightest notion of rallying people to peace with passionate fervor.
Once he understood the cause and effect, Gao Yang realized that although this civil war was what the End of All Things desired, it was by no means something a cult like theirs could set in motion single-handedly. It was the inevitable product of historical trends, as inevitable as the war destined to break out between Ansul and Typhon.
Francis II had fallen. The one who killed him was a high-ranking bishop of the End of All Things; the one who planned it was his son. But the old king did not die by those two hands alone. His death was the result of several powers maneuvering and pushing together.
Edmund needed him dead, not only because he needed a pretext to ignite civil war, but because the prince wanted to eliminate the greatest "compromiser" in the royal house and use the king's death to inflame the righteous anger of the realm's nobles to the utmost, so that he could gain the authority to raise arms in the shortest possible time;
The Duke of the East needed him dead, because the duke had never been loyal to the king, but to Prince Edmund—or rather, to a "House Moen" that could return to the era of the First Dynasty;
The Emperor of Typhon needed him dead as well, because Typhon needed Ansul to erupt in civil war. Gao Yang was almost certain that Typhon would afterward stand quietly by and watch Ansul's internal war until this ancient kingdom completely fell apart;
What about the Wilde family of the North—that Duchess Victoria Wilde? Did she too need the king dead? Francis II was the most difficult king to control since the founding of the Second Dynasty. Though he appeared patient and compromising, beneath that patience lay extreme tenacity and cunning. He had spent nearly forty years slowly breaking free of the Wilde family's control. Had the Wilde family long wanted to replace him with a more obedient king? Someone like Welsh Moen...
Many blades were buried in Francis II, and the End of All Things merely gave the king a slight push toward them.
So Ansul's second civil war, like the Ansul-Typhon war, was a historical inevitability. The difference was that the latter had already been postponed, while the former had become fixed the instant Francis II fell.
The blood a king sheds must be repaid with the blood of the entire kingdom. Anyone's appeals, calls, efforts, and revelations of the truth were pale and powerless. Even if Gao Yang, the "ancient ancestor," spoke, no one would possibly listen now. In fact, even if some did listen, they would deliberately pretend not to.
In the Shadow Experiment Grounds, the personnel left behind were still carrying out some cleanup work.
Tyr withdrew his sea demon form and summoned a great sphere of water, beginning to clean away bit by bit the nauseating remains Clement had left after his death. Suojilin, meanwhile, led his steel ranger team members to set up lighting throughout the Shadow Experiment Grounds. These warriors had endured the psychic shock of Tyr's sea demon form; nearly every one of them had passed more than three sanity checks. Now their SAN values were full, their energy abundant, their fighting spirit high—even their work efficiency had more than doubled...
Gao Yang, together with Amber, came to the center of the Shadow Experiment Grounds. Looking at the circular pit on the platform, he said thoughtfully, "In other words, at the corresponding location in the Shadow Realm, there is an unstable rift here. When someone activates the Shadow Signet Ring in the material world, that unstable rift opens a spatial passage in the material world and summons the shadow dwellers through?"