Chapter 538 — Brain-Computer Interface
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
Amber waved a hand carelessly. "Oh, come on, I know you. If this were really a letter I wasn't allowed to see, you'd have slapped me into the wall already..."
Gao Yang: "..."
Why did it feel like this one was actually proud of being slapped into a wall? Was she like Rebecca, taking a certain glory in being able to take a beating?
By now Amber had seen the opening of Gao Yang's letter. Her eyebrows shot up and she let out a startled exclamation. "Ah—you're writing to Saint Sunil?"
Gao Yang did not look up. "There's been unusual activity at the Great Wall. I have to warn them."
Amber's expression turned peculiar. She hesitated a moment, then could not help saying, "You think they'll listen to you? They barely reacted the last time you warned them, and now they're up to their necks in civil war—I'm afraid even fewer people will care about a voice drifting up from the south."
True, Cecil had just struck a great deal with the Kingdom's army, and the resurgent House Cecil had in fact returned to the stage of Anseth's power—but the "inertia" of the noble circles was a frightening thing. Would they really pay heed to Gao Yang's warning?
Until the fire reached their own heads, every noble believed himself the safest of all. That was their nature, and that nature was determined by the fact of the enfeoffment system itself.
The rise of House Cecil might make them watch every move of Gao Yang, this duke with real power, more closely—but that "attention" was more wariness than anything else, and did not mean they would give equal weight to his warnings about the wasteland. Rather the opposite: precisely because House Cecil had risen, because Cecil had reunified the Southern Frontier, they would be all the more wary and guarded against any warning Gao Yang sent them; they would only conjure a whole host of conspiracy theories out of thin air.
"Honestly, I don't expect them to care," Gao Yang said with a shake of his head at Amber's words. "But this is my duty—I am the Guardian Duke."
This letter was to discharge his duty, to fulfill the obligations he had taken on after inheriting the body of Gao Yang Cecil—but there was another reason he did not voice: he had to ensure that all his future actions left as few stains as possible, that he give his future opponents no pretext to attack him.
Amber looked at Gao Yang strangely. She felt she truly could not understand the thinking of this old dumpling—but it didn't much matter; this fellow's head was full of odd notions, and very few of them were comprehensible to anyone else.
If she herself had slept in a coffin for seven hundred years, her head would probably be even less normal than Gao Yang's.
Gao Yang finished the letter, carefully sealed it in a lacquered tube, closed it with sealing wax, and handed it to Amber, who stood nearby. "Have it sent to Stonehold Fortress, and have Sir Wald dispatch it onward to the capital."
"Why not just send a copy to Stonehold Fortress through the magic net?" Amber asked curiously as she took the tube. "This will delay things by days."
"A letter like this must be the handwritten original—for security's sake, and besides... those people in Saint Sunil may not recognize a duke's seal on a copy," Gao Yang said with a helpless shake of his head. "The Ministry of Affairs took so long to adapt to the document transmission system and still hasn't fully gotten used to it. You can't expect Frostrest to do better than the Ministry on this point."
"Tch... those old relics. Compared with them, I'd say they're the ones who've been lying in a coffin for seven hundred years."
Gao Yang thought it over and felt there was something off about Amber's words of praise, yet he could not for the life of him put his finger on it...
Just then, the voice of the little maid Betty came from beyond the door, interrupting their conversation. "My lord! Master Piyun is here to see you!"