Chapter 982 — Spiral to the Bottom
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
The smell of blood—An Luo was no stranger to that scent.
She stood before the main gate of the communications tower, still holding it half-pushed-open. The senses of a high-tier Transcendent spread outward, and the various auras within the tower flowed into her mind. Bare seconds later she simply stepped back and drew the gate shut again.
She turned, set off at a stride, and headed for the East Hall at a wind-like pace, while countless thoughts and speculations churned through her mind like a storm, mingled with every scrap of information that had surfaced in all that had happened lately. Her steps gradually steadied, and one question after another began to rise in her head. The first one was—
To blind Winterwolf Fortress's supreme commander for a full twenty-four hours without a single blind spot, and to guarantee that not one soldier accidentally tore open the "Veil" along the way... roughly how many people would that take?
On the way to the East Hall, An Luo picked apart, thread by thread, whatever illusions might lurk around her. She examined every anomaly one by one, bit by bit restoring the farce of the past two days into the shape it ought to have taken.
Count Palin Winterbourne stood before the mana focus of the East Hall. Inlaid in the great circular platform at the hall's center was a colossal crystal apparatus, over which magical radiance flowed unceasingly, and the count's attention rested on the chief currents of light within it—through them he monitored the mana balance and shield load of all Winterwolf Fortress, adjusting the deployment and rotation of the Black Banner Mage Legion at a moment's notice, so that both the mages and the fortress itself could be kept at their finest.
Apart from the count, there were only a dozen or so battlemages in the hall, serving as sentries and guarding the various portals.
An Luo had scarce set foot in the hall when Count Winterbourne sensed her aura. The middle-aged man, whose bearing held dignity wrapped in refinement, raised his head and said offhandedly, "Good timing, An Luo."
An instant later he noticed the exceptionally grave expression on her face, and the stern air she unconsciously carried with her.
"What's happened?" Count Winterbourne asked at once, and before his words had even landed, a soundproof ward rose out of nothing and enclosed the space of several meters around them completely. "This place is secure."
"The duty mages in the communications tower are all dead," An Luo said, knowing the ward was in place, yet she still could not help lowering her voice, her face set in an expression stern to the point of dread. "Time of death was roughly a day ago."
She did not need to explain another word. Count Winterbourne's face darkened in an instant, and within a few seconds the battlemage commander, whose mind was exceedingly quick, had already retraced every milestone in his head, every key event that could be tied to the communications tower. The next moment he spoke in a heavy voice: "So every message we meant to send out... none of them ever went out..."
"Or worse—everything Winterwolf Fortress sent out was something that should never have been sent."
"That adjutant of yours... no, he alone isn't enough, there are more of them..." Count Winterbourne's tone was grim. Not for a moment did he question whether the explosive news An Luo had brought was true, for he knew his old friend's daughter; she would never be vague or careless in a matter like this. "They've all been influenced..."
An Luo drew a soft breath. "Not everyone influenced goes completely out of control like those priests. The greater number hide among us—and they... they are rational."