Chapter 617 — The Blizzard of Boulder City
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 5
On the 35th day of the Month of Revival, the river warship Pioneer, which had gone on ahead to the north, successfully effected a rendezvous with the advance detachment of the steel rangers. Supported by the might of its naval guns, Knight Byron destroyed a body of crystal giants moving south from the Greatwood Pass. The fleet then put in briefly at the bank of the Fertile Woodland north of the Pompeii domain; after using its close-defense guns to carve out a secure landing ground, the landing force and the steel ranger advance detachment established a base in the Lunberg region west of the Fertile Woodland.
Meanwhile, the ground force led by Gao Yang and Philip also pushed overland to the Fertile Woodland. After helping the advance detachment clear the remaining crystal legions on the periphery, the overland corridor from the Southern Frontier to the war zone was opened. Thus, from Boulder Keep all the way to Lunberg, river route and ground road were at last clear and unimpeded, and the supply line was formally established.
With the "Steel Ambassador" as its node, a temporary wall of prefabricated concrete slabs and steel barricades wound along the riverbank. Fully armed soldiers stared north from the watchposts; rows of reinforced tents and prefabricated huts stood in orderly array within the base; vehicles carrying supplies and personnel flowed ceaselessly in and out of this frontline base, bringing weapons, equipment, and provisions from the Southern Frontier to this place and sending contaminated samples collected at the front, along with the refugees who had been rescued, steadily back to the temporary laboratories and refugee camps in the rear. Everywhere the eye fell, all was bustle.
The magitech car carrying Gao Yang and Amber rolled smoothly into the base. Through the window at their side they saw a half-collapsed castle still giving off smoke and dust not far away; part of its broken wall had been joined to the base's perimeter. On the still-standing structure of the castle, a towering crystal relay tower had already been raised, and a signal-boosting apparatus was turning slowly under the drive of a mechanical platform, sweeping across the ashen sky.
That half-collapsed castle was Lunberg—properly, Lunber-Kri Castle. It was a direct crown holding of the royal house on the Holy Spirit Plain; the castle and the whole Fertile Woodland around it had once been one of the Moen family's chief sources of wealth. Though after the "Fogmoon Civil War" the fortress and its surrounding lands had fallen in status owing to the damage they suffered, it remained the richest land in the southeast of the Holy Spirit Plain.
But that was once.
When the troops arrived here, crystal contamination had already spread into the Fertile Woodland. The lord of this place had in all likelihood died on the northern battlefield; the knights and soldiers left to hold the castle made a token resistance for a few hours, then scattered and fled. Some of the common folk on the land had been contaminated by the crystals; others had fled into the nearby wastelands. In the course of establishing the landing ground, the Pioneer's bombardment had destroyed the already fallen castle and burned the contaminated woodland. Now this once wealthy region had become one of the symbols of the disaster, its crumbling walls and the lingering smell of scorching in the air reminding every visitor that war had come.
The vehicle passed the quarantine zone on the east side of the base. Across a line of fencing, a dozen or so ragged civilians stared wide-eyed at the "steel monster" rolling past not far away, clutching the wire mesh of the fence, unkempt and filthy, some of them still visibly shaken. A short way behind them, more civilians were queuing under soldiers' direction to receive food and medicine—sustaining a kind of orderliness built upon numbness.