Chapter 611 — The Situation Wavers
Blade of Dawn · Page 4 of 5
"However strange the All-Ending Order's 'plague spells' may look, at bottom they are still plague, and plague spreads by only a few routes — water, food, air, and corruption through cursed corpses. Airborne transmission is the most efficient route, but it usually carries only the weaker plagues, and is easily dispersed by ritual magic. Next come water and food; the All-Ending Order favors those two above all, though boiling drinking water and thoroughly heating food deal with them effectively. As for the last — cursed corpses carry the strongest corrupting power, because flesh itself is an excellent casting material, and that is why our various burners are so necessary: every corpse must be burned, foe and friend alike, highborn and low, and reducing them to ash in the shortest possible time is always safest. And before burning, close or direct contact must be minimized — if contact is unavoidable, proper isolation measures must be taken, and detection spells used to confirm safety."
Gao Yang rubbed his chin. "Sounds like there's nothing particularly special about it..."
"To us, and to the people of the Southern Marches, perhaps. But out on the Holy Spirit Plain, any one of those transmission routes is deadly enough," Pi Yun said, shedding his usual flippancy. He twirled his beard and sighed under his breath. "The firewood needed to boil a single pot of water would buy you half a loaf of bread, and it's precisely because of that half loaf... that waterborne plagues can kill tens of thousands."
Silence fell over the room.
"We still have far too little information about these 'crystal cluster infections.' I can't produce a sufficiently accurate analysis," Kamael suddenly broke the silence after the brief hush. "If I had more samples, I should be able to make some progress."
"Suo Jilin will send a small squad to bring those crystal fragments back—once it's confirmed they carry no active magical properties and show no tendency to spread contamination," Gao Yan nodded. "I'll assign you a dedicated laboratory to study them. Until this incident is resolved, they will be our central focus."
...
After Kamael and Pi Yun had also departed, the room fell utterly quiet.
Gao Yang sat in his high-backed chair, quietly pondering the arrangements and developments to come.
That stillness lasted for who knew how long, until Gao Yang was abruptly startled awake by a faint stirring at the door.
He looked up to see the door quietly cracked open a narrow sliver, and a fellow whom he had nearly forgotten even existed was poking half his body in, peering about.
Tire.
Gao Yang had left his territory back in the autumn of last year and had been busy with the project near the wasteland ever since. It truly had been far too long since he'd seen this fellow.
In truth, though, even when he stayed in the territory, he had little time to meet Tire—since the weather turned cold last year, this sea slug had brazenly gone into hibernation, sleeping twenty hours a day in the pool. On occasion it crawled out only to bask on the balcony and flip itself over, behaving for all the world as though it had forgotten where it came from and where it was going... Speaking of which, why had this creature suddenly shown up?
A flicker of puzzlement rose in Gao Yang's mind, and he watched as Tire wriggled in, one heave at a time. The shame of all sea-kraken looked around the room once and wore a blank expression. "Oh—weren't we having a meeting?"
Gao Yang: "..."
"It finished ages ago," Gao Yang said, marshaling every ounce of his ability to keep his expression from collapsing, though he could not help staring at this saltwater freak with a peculiar look. "You... actually knew there was a meeting?"
"I did. Rebecca told me. But I dozed off," Tire said, wagging the tip of his tail with a helpless air. "And then you'd already finished."