Chapter 391 — The Day War Descends
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
"You're really letting that big fellow go?" After Wright left, Amber couldn't help asking out of curiosity. "You should know he doesn't have the Holy Light anymore. Apart from being big, he's basically an ordinary man — and one who's never received Combat Corps training... A man who's never even touched a ray gun, won't he be a problem on the battlefield?"
"That's why I sent him to the medical corps. And I believe that with Wright's skill, even without the Holy Light to protect him, he can still defend himself," Gao Yang shook his head. "Let him go. He's a believer — you have to give him a chance to test the things he believes in."
On the last day of the Month of Revival, in the spring of Ansul's 736th year, a courier riding a tall horse, bearing the emblem of Count Hossman and carrying a small black-and-red banner, rode along the south bank of the Whitewater River into Cecil's checkpoint.
The courier was stopped at the checkpoint, and the letter he carried was delivered to Gao Yang an hour later.
In the lord's manor, Gao Yang took from Amber's hands the letter he had long been waiting for. It was an exceptionally formal — one might even say ceremonial — missive, sealed in a lacquered tube traced with gold lines, written on the softest, toughest light parchment with ink mixed with spices. Amid the ornate flourishes and the awkward noble grammar was written the content Gao Yang had long awaited.
Amber curiously leaned half her head over from behind Gao Yang to look at the parchment, and what she saw was a diplomatic letter phrased with exceptional courtesy but containing nothing friendly at all.
Count Hossman and forty-three lords of the Southern Frontier bearing Radiant titles and orthodox bloodlines sent their greetings to Duke Gao Yang Cecil, and solemnly protested the recent interruption of alchemical potion supplies; solemnly protested the soaring prices of ore, mining machinery, and metal goods; solemnly protested the Cecil family's stripping of noble privileges and its encroachment upon neighboring domains; and demanded that the Cecil family immediately cease its destruction of the noble order, restore noble privileges within its domain, and re-regulate the conduct of the lowborn within its lands, so as to prevent this vile trend from spreading further and infecting the customs of other domains...
They also listed a whole pile of Cecil's crimes — constantly attracting refugees from all over the Southern Frontier, preaching heretical doctrines, accepting heretical believers suspected of cult ties, freeing slaves on a massive scale, arresting "sincere and lawful merchants," conspiring to overthrow the Kant domain, secretly murdering the former Viscount Kant and manufacturing cult rumors — and so on. Truth and falsehood mixed together, they had scraped together more than a dozen charges, enough to leave Amber awestruck.
And at the very end, the letter finally revealed its intent: "In order to preserve order, we have no choice but to resort to force in our negotiations."
Amber watched as Gao Yang read the letter through with great care, and then watched as he calmly picked up the dip pen at his side.
She asked curiously, "Are you going to write a reply?"
Gao Yang shook his head, and casually wrote a single word at the end of the letter:
Noted.
"Go give it to that messenger," Gao Yang said, rolling the parchment back up and stuffing it into the lacquered tube. He handed it to a dumbstruck Amber. "While it's still early, have him hurry back and report. We won't keep him for lunch."
"You wrote a single word?!" Amber seemed unable to believe what she had just seen, checking again and again. "This is a declaration of war! Don't normal nobles exchange a dozen rounds of verbal sparring first?"
"This is enough," Gao Yang said. "As for any other reply... Count Horsman will see it."