Chapter 500 — Two Visits
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
In times past, Hetty would surely have been rather displeased at Amber for suddenly cutting in while she conversed with the ancestor, and using such crude language besides—she might well have conjured an ice bolt on the spot and fired it at some wall behind the other's back. But ever since the affair at Frostgate City had ended, Hetty's view of this seemingly unreliable half-elf had changed somewhat; she had come to recognize the half-elf's abilities and uses, and so she now answered the question in earnest: "Word of Frostgate City could not possibly have reached Saint Sunil so quickly—it exceeds the limit of ordinary messaging spells, and there is no high-tier expert in the Luan church capable of sending the information back. Veroz Morn states in her letter that this is merely a routine visit..."
"Detailed news may not get back, but the Yao Chen Church's headquarters may well have some means of sensing the general situation at a regional headquarters," Gao Dai said. "We should try to think of our opponents as cleverer and more capable than they appear."
Hetty sought Gao Song's opinion. "Then... will you refuse this 'Saintess Princess'?"
"No need to refuse. If she wishes to visit, let her come," Gao Yang said carelessly. "I have at least that much magnanimity."
"Aren't you afraid she'll come to wreck the place?" Amber blinked. "We really did wreck theirs..."
"The schism between the Holy Light's New Church and the Old has become an established fact; word of Frostgate City will reach the Church's headquarters in the end. The entire Southern Church has vanished—could we really keep that hidden? Besides, I never meant to hide it from the start," Gao Dai said, tapping the table lightly. "What I'm more curious about is how the Northern Church will react once it learns the truth... If they really did muster a wave of crusaders to attack Stonehold Fortress, that would be just fine—it would save us a great deal of grain on the road."
Gao Yang was only joking, but Hetty shook her head in earnest. "Then they likely have no such leisure—according to word from the north, the Yao Chen Church has already publicly declared itself on the side of the Royalist camp in this civil war. The crusaders have now gone with the Royalist army onto the battlefield in the eastern Holy Spirit Plain, and are locked in fierce fighting with the eastern rebels."
Rebecca, who had spent a long while down in a battle of wits with the food before her, finally caught a sentence or two of the conversation. The girl looked up in surprise, her face a mask of bewilderment. "Eh? They're not done fighting yet? The eastern army and the royal troops are still at it?"
At these words, everyone at the table turned to stare at her almost in shock. Gao Yang looked at Rebecca's rather easy-to-read simple expression, and it was a full dozen seconds before he asked Hetty beside him, "Is this child still not awake?"
Hetty, breaking into a cold sweat: "...She's been busy with her experiment projects; she may not have paid much attention to the situation outside..."
Only then did Rebecca realize she might have gotten things wrong. She shrank her neck, but could not help saying, "How long has this been going on... With that much time, we'd have taken the whole Southern Region already, and driven the Yao Chen Church out on top of it..."
"You can't measure Ansu's civil war by our style of warfare..." Gao Yang gave Rebecca a helpless look. "But there's no helping it. You're still young, and you've never seen what a traditional noble war is like..."
Ansu's civil war continued. The rebels and the Royalist army remained locked in prolonged seesaw and stalemate in the eastern Holy Spirit Plain. Neither the chaos Prince Edmund had wrought among the capital's nobles nor the shifts in circumstance brought about once the Chi Yao Church entered the fray could hasten the war's progress. Barring the unforeseen, it was likely to drag on, even for years to come—and that was unavoidable.