Chapter 452 — The Ancestor Has Truly Arrived

"That is precisely our worry," Baiyu Franklin said. "The Cecil family... their current head is Gao Yang Cecil."

The nobles fell silent once more. They exchanged glances, and at last recalled the several urgent letters Sir Maki, the fortress commander, had sent in succession before Boulder Fortress fell—

More than forty families of the Southern Region had raised troops together to punish Cecil, and had then been swiftly swept away...

That astonishing news had once stirred waves among them and prompted another military council, but at the time no one had thought the Cecil family would act so swiftly, still less that Boulder Fortress would fall so easily.

They had assumed it would take at least a year before the southern situation demanded their attention.

Welsh Morn, who had not spoken all along, sighed softly.

He remembered Virodai's warning to him not long ago. He still recalled that Virodai had warned him that Gao Yang Cecil was releasing a wild beast, and now it seemed... the capital nobles might have lost their last chance to put that beast back in its cage.

"We once thought what happened in the Southern Region was merely a war between lords, and that those who provoked it were the lords outside the Cecil family. But now it seems everything in the South has been under our Founding Hero's control—he has been planning this for a long time," Duke Baiyu Franklin said. "The fall of Boulder Fortress is now a fact. However the Cecil army managed to take a fortress in such a short time, they have occupied it and prepared its defense. Count Cromwell, do you believe we are capable of retaking the fortress?"

Cromwell Whitehill shook his head almost without thinking: "Impossible—unless we withdraw at least half the army from the east of the Holy Spirit Plain, and even then, half may not be enough to take Boulder Fortress. I know Sir Maki Onar; he was a knight lord of real ability, and his troops were no worse than the capital's knight order. If even he was no match for Duke Gao Yang Cecil, then the Cecil's strength can be imagined."

With that, the old knight lord shook his head: "What I am most curious about now is how that Founding Hero built such an army... less than two years, not even two years! And he could take Boulder Fortress?"

"Every ancient family hides secrets, especially one that has gained an ancestor returned from the dead," Baiyu Franklin said in a joking tone. "Perhaps seven hundred years ago Duke Gao Yang Cecil buried a Gondor-era undead legion in the mountains of the Southern Region?"

Cromwell Whitehill shook his head, his voice rough: "That is not funny at all..."

"Ladies and gentlemen, let us consider countermeasures now," Baiyu Franklin said, his smile fading as he tapped the table lightly with a finger. "This is likely a situation no less dangerous than the Eastern rebellion—Ancestor above, this time the Ancestor really has come."

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