Chapter 862 — Resurrection
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
This would seem to be a story about heroes and knights.
But it was not a story about heroes and knights.
In all the memories that Number Thirty-Two possessed, no play had ever set its tone with an image like this—it carried a kind of suffocating realism, yet revealed some indescribable power, as though the smell of steel and fire seeped endlessly from deep within the picture, gathering around that young knight in full military dress.
It was not splendid enough, not refined enough, and bore no symbols of religion or royal authority—those nobles accustomed to traditional theater would not like it, and would like even less the bloodstains on the young knight's face and the crisscrossing scars on his armor; these things were real, but real to the point of being "ugly."
The nobles of the old days preferred to see knights in gorgeous, flamboyant golden armor, vanquishing evil under the protection of the gods, or to watch princesses and knights wandering between castles and manors, singing ornate and empty verses; even when there was a battlefield, it was merely "paint" to adorn love.
Those painted canaries could not withstand the scorching of iron and fire.
Yet ordinary people who had never touched "high society" could not imagine such things; they did not know what the lofty lords did every day, and they only assumed that what lay before their eyes was a part of "theater," and gathered around the large, exquisite portrait, discussing it animatedly.
Number Thirty-Two also stood for a long while beneath the outer wall of the great hall, gazing up at the enormous painting, over three meters tall—the original might have come from the hand of some painter, but what hung here now was surely a machine-made copy—and for a full half minute, this tall, silent man simply watched quietly, saying nothing, his bandage-covered face like stone.
Until his partner's voice came from beside him: "Hey—Number Thirty-Two, what's wrong with you?"
Only then did the tall man come to his senses. He blinked, withdrew his gaze from the magic-shadow play's promotional poster, and looked around in confusion, as though for a moment he could not tell whether he was in reality or in a dream, or why he was here at all; but soon he reacted and said in a muffled voice, "Nothing."
"You're always this sparing with words," the dark-skinned man said with a shake of his head. "You must have been stunned—honestly, I was stunned at first glance too. What a beautiful painting! You couldn't see anything like this back in the countryside..."
As he spoke, the crowd around them had already begun to surge, as though the great hall had finally reached its opening hour. Number Thirty-Two heard a whistle coming from the direction of the gate not far away—it must have been the brass whistle the construction captain wore around his neck every day; its sharp, ringing sound was familiar to everyone here.
His partner gave him another push: "Hurry up and follow, hurry up—miss it and there'll be no good seats left! I heard from the machinist who delivered supplies last time that magic-shadow plays are a rare thing; even in the south, there are only a few cities where you can see them!"
Ah, rare things—there were truly too many rare things in this era.
Number Thirty-Two said nothing. He had already been pushed by his partner into the flow of people, and followed the crowd into the great hall. Many people had squeezed in, and this place ordinarily used for morning assemblies and classes was soon packed full, while on the wooden platform at the front of the hall, a large-scale magical apparatus had appeared where none had been before.
It looked like a Magic Web terminal, but it was far larger and more complex than the one used for communications in the camp. On a large triangular base, several projection crystals of varying sizes formed a crystalline array, and above that array a faint light surged—clearly it had already been calibrated and made ready.