Chapter 529 — Holy Light and Holy Light

On the road back to the lord's manor, Gao Yang still shared a carriage with Amber. Watching the merchants' guildhall recede behind them through the window, the half-elf lady could not hold back a mutter: "Five years of mining rights... Say, you aren't actually planning to dig that whole place out in five years, are you?"

"Dig it out? Of course not—even with advanced mining machinery and Rebecca crystals to blast the hills apart, hollowing out the White Sand Hills in five years would be impossible," Gao Yang shook his head. "But I can at least guarantee we extract in five years what the Easterners planned to take in fifty—and if we don't care about any consequences and go straight for destructive mining, that number could even double."

Amber blinked, seeming at a loss for words for a moment. Only after mulling it over for a good while did she suddenly ask, "Honestly—is this really the right thing to do?"

Gao Yang glanced at her. "Do what?"

"...Selling weapons to the King, selling alchemical potions to the East, making this civil war more and more impossible to contain..."

Gao Yang shook his head. "Even if I didn't sell, do you think this civil war could still be contained?"

"That's not what I meant," Amber scratched her hair. "I just feel like everyone dying right now is Ansethian... Don't you care?"

Meeting Amber's puzzled gaze, Gao Yang spoke slowly: "Frankly, I do care, because those are people—precious population. But I also don't care—because they're not Cecil people. At least not yet."

On this matter, Gao Yang had no intention of invoking conscience or morality, for he was acting, quite simply, for profit—even if what he schemed for was the profit of the whole Southern March. His goal was all of Anseth, but for now he lacked the capacity for that, so his only choice was to feed the industrial machine of the South as quickly as possible—even if that machine had to drink blood and eat flesh. After all, he was the lord of the Southerners now, not the King of Anseth.

Judging by the inevitable shape of the future, the King and the Eastern Legion would sooner or later be enemies.

And on the other hand, his export of arcanotech weapons and alchemical potions to the King and the East had a second consideration: he wanted to try to force Anseth to develop.

Promoting arcanotech in the Southern March had brought a great deal of experience and hard lessons. This land was like a blank sheet of paper—once the old nobility were swept away, Gao Yang could splash his ink however he liked. Even so, arcanotech had not developed smoothly here. So what if he wanted to spread arcanotech across all of Anseth? What an immense undertaking would that be?

Typhon was already watching hungrily from the sidelines, just waiting for Anseth to bleed its last drop. If one day the civil war ended and Gao Yang succeeded in seizing control of this land, the Typhonians would certainly not give him time to develop slowly and close the gap. To avoid the worst outcome, he had to put Anseth on the arcanotech industrial train starting now—even if he had to tie it down and drag it aboard.

As industrial products, alchemical potions and arcanotech armaments could not exist on their own; they required an entire industrial chain to support them. Just as Prince Edmund of the East had realized the importance of factories and production technology before departing from Bellac, the nobles of the royal capital would also soon realize the necessity of arcanotech industry for maintaining an "industrialized army." Traditional nobles might be narrow-minded, but they were not incapable of thought, and they would not allow their lifeline to be completely controlled by Gao Yang.

Arcane armor and arcanotech weapons needed maintenance; crystal grenades needed the magic net to charge them; alchemical potions needed factories to produce them; and factories likewise needed the magic net. Build the magic net and you had the foundation for importing mining machinery; with mining machinery you had abundant metal ores; with abundant ores you could build more machines...

Even if the nobles of the royal capital and the East did not know how to forge a complete arcanotech industrial chain, they could at least lay a foundation. The weapons and potions Gao Yang sold them were a snare wrapped in flowering vines—bright and beautiful, yet once touched, nearly impossible to escape. Under the pressure of war, to keep those weapons and potions flowing and to keep the machines that maintained and produced them running, they too would have to set the arcanotech industry in motion.

Amber fell silent again, and who knew what she was thinking about, until they were nearly at the city center, when she suddenly muttered: "The people you scheme against are really unlucky—they lose their very lives to you and still have to thank you for your great kindness..."

"You think they won't catch on?" Gao Yang shook his head. "Nobody's a fool."

...

Inside the church, Wright—now dressed in a priest's robe—stood on the wooden pulpit. Facing the congregation below, he spoke in a low, powerful voice, expounding all manner of knowledge about the Holy Light.

"...The Holy Light is stirred by the human heart. The more closely one's words and deeds align with the virtues of the Holy Light, the more strongly they evoke its phenomena...

"Comprehending the teachings of the Luminous One through actual practice is the most effective method. For us who follow the Holy Light according to the new doctrine, actual words and deeds are more effective than reciting scriptures or repeating rituals..."

Wright paused. Below the pulpit, a tall, powerfully built man who looked like a warrior raised his hand: "Great Pastor, you say the Holy Light resonates with noble words and deeds—but is there an unchanging standard for virtue? I've been studying history lately, and I see that the concepts of 'morality' and 'justice' are always changing..."

Speaking out in discussion during a pastor's sermon—something that would have been unthinkable in the old-style Church of the Dark Luminary—was in fact the style of preaching favored by the "Pure Holy Light School" [the New Church]. So long as one followed the rules of questioning, anyone could discuss and delve into the Holy Light as a kind of knowledge that could be studied, which made the New Church's halls feel more like a place of learning than a site for religious ritual—and that was exactly what Wright wished to see.

He nodded to the powerfully built man—he knew him: a White Knight still in his probationary period. Apart from honing his martial skills and battling fierce beasts, this valiant soldier's greatest hobby was reading and studying. Only a new-style pastor versed in both letters and arms could so sharply identify what in the doctrine required explanation: "Moral standards do change. In ancient times, the greatest virtues all had to do with food, whereas today's moral standards have added things like loyalty, honesty, trustworthiness, and courage. The words and deeds that embody these traits have also changed with the times. Therefore we should hold to a concept of 'public morality'—conforming to the most universally acknowledged morality, fighting for the collective—and only then can we accord with the true meaning of the Holy Light."

"...Then why is that?" There was confusion in the voice of the probationary White Knight, versed in both letters and arms. "Does the Holy Light think? Does it select people who meet its standards? And does it change along with the shifts in human moral standards?"

This bold proposition set the congregation murmuring. Wright was silent for a moment, and after some deliberation he answered candidly: "I do not know the answer for the time being."

"You don't know?"