Chapter 538 — Brain-Computer Interface

The Dark Range, the observation post at its highest peak.

The array of telescopes trained on the Great Wall shifted by a minute angle; far off, that heaven-spanning curtain of light cast a hazy ripple across the lenses, and behind the veil of the barrier, a thin mist floated above the vast Black Forest and the Corrupted Plains, curling and steaming upward like some shifting, uncertain illusion.

The burly monitor turned and reported to Gao Yang, who stood behind him: "The Great Wall's luminance is normal. The signs of overload are confirmed to have subsided."

Hetty and Amber were there as well—the former now standing at Gao Yang's side, while the latter had already poked her head curiously behind the telescopes, gazing through the lens array at that distant barrier. Hearing the monitor's report, Amber chimed in as well: "It really does look like it's back to normal!"

"The barrier has been restored for over forty-eight hours now, and there hasn't been the slightest sign of overload in all that time," Hetty said, looking at Gao Yang. "That strange keening sound is gone too—Ancestor, it seems this wall really has recovered."

"Recovered? It won't recover. It will only keep decaying—right now it's simply quieted for a time," Gao Yang said. He too had breathed a sigh of relief, but he dared not share Hetty's optimism. "Repairing the Great Wall is all but impossible for the nations of today—even for the elves... I very much doubt they still have the capacity to build a new Sentinel Tower. For now the barrier is holding, perhaps because the elves found some special means to restart the critical systems, but the overall decay and damage to the system is an irreversible fact."

As Gao Yang spoke, the memories of Gao Yang Cecil laid this cold truth before him—according to those memories, even before the elves completed the last Sentinel Tower, the elven mages who had designed the barrier had warned the leaders of the human nations: the barrier had been raised using an "ancient relic" of the elves, its core components all but impossible to replicate, and once damaged, beyond replacement.

For the past seven hundred years, this barrier had sailed the storm-tossed sea like a battered, patched-up leviathan—no spare parts, no retreat, and nowhere on that vast ocean a port where it might dock for repairs. It could only age, only fail, while its engineers slapped patch after patch onto its sputtering engines and its cracking hull, doing nothing but delaying the sinking.

Those who had built the barrier, those who had lived through the Second Expansion—everyone knew this truth. Yet no one had imagined that even as the barrier neared its limits, people would still find no way to resolve the magic tide once and for all, that the corruption upon the wasteland of Gondor would never fully dissipate—no one had even imagined that this barrier, raised with the combined strength of all nations, might well fail to last out its first millennium.

And worse still... humanity, that short-lived and ever-changing race, had very likely forgotten what kind of apocalypse was penned behind this wall.

"Continue monitoring. Lift the alert in twenty-four hours," Gao Yang made his final decision. "This observation post is to be designated a key site. Add another shift of personnel, tasked from now on solely with watching the Great Wall's movements."

Hetty bowed her head deeply. "Yes."

Be that as it may, life had to go on.

After returning to the lord's manor, Gao Yang went into his study, drew a sheet from a stack of letter paper, and began writing a personal letter.

Amber leaned in curiously for a look. "What are you writing?"

Gao Yang could not help but shoot a glance at this half-elf who had not a shred of self-awareness or propriety. "Could you show a little discipline? I know we're well acquainted, but this is a confidential letter written in the lord's own hand—do you really just lean over and read it?"

Amber waved a hand carelessly. "Oh, come on, I know you. If this were really a letter I wasn't allowed to see, you'd have slapped me into the wall already..."

Gao Yang: "..."

Why did it feel like this one was actually proud of being slapped into a wall? Was she like Rebecca, taking a certain glory in being able to take a beating?

By now Amber had seen the opening of Gao Yang's letter. Her eyebrows shot up and she let out a startled exclamation. "Ah—you're writing to Saint Sunil?"

Gao Yang did not look up. "There's been unusual activity at the Great Wall. I have to warn them."

Amber's expression turned peculiar. She hesitated a moment, then could not help saying, "You think they'll listen to you? They barely reacted the last time you warned them, and now they're up to their necks in civil war—I'm afraid even fewer people will care about a voice drifting up from the south."

True, Cecil had just struck a great deal with the Kingdom's army, and the resurgent House Cecil had in fact returned to the stage of Anseth's power—but the "inertia" of the noble circles was a frightening thing. Would they really pay heed to Gao Yang's warning?

Until the fire reached their own heads, every noble believed himself the safest of all. That was their nature, and that nature was determined by the fact of the enfeoffment system itself.

The rise of House Cecil might make them watch every move of Gao Yang, this duke with real power, more closely—but that "attention" was more wariness than anything else, and did not mean they would give equal weight to his warnings about the wasteland. Rather the opposite: precisely because House Cecil had risen, because Cecil had reunified the Southern Frontier, they would be all the more wary and guarded against any warning Gao Yang sent them; they would only conjure a whole host of conspiracy theories out of thin air.

"Honestly, I don't expect them to care," Gao Yang said with a shake of his head at Amber's words. "But this is my duty—I am the Guardian Duke."

This letter was to discharge his duty, to fulfill the obligations he had taken on after inheriting the body of Gao Yang Cecil—but there was another reason he did not voice: he had to ensure that all his future actions left as few stains as possible, that he give his future opponents no pretext to attack him.

Amber looked at Gao Yang strangely. She felt she truly could not understand the thinking of this old dumpling—but it didn't much matter; this fellow's head was full of odd notions, and very few of them were comprehensible to anyone else.

If she herself had slept in a coffin for seven hundred years, her head would probably be even less normal than Gao Yang's.

Gao Yang finished the letter, carefully sealed it in a lacquered tube, closed it with sealing wax, and handed it to Amber, who stood nearby. "Have it sent to Stonehold Fortress, and have Sir Wald dispatch it onward to the capital."

"Why not just send a copy to Stonehold Fortress through the magic net?" Amber asked curiously as she took the tube. "This will delay things by days."

"A letter like this must be the handwritten original—for security's sake, and besides... those people in Saint Sunil may not recognize a duke's seal on a copy," Gao Yang said with a helpless shake of his head. "The Ministry of Affairs took so long to adapt to the document transmission system and still hasn't fully gotten used to it. You can't expect Frostrest to do better than the Ministry on this point."

"Tch... those old relics. Compared with them, I'd say they're the ones who've been lying in a coffin for seven hundred years."

Gao Yang thought it over and felt there was something off about Amber's words of praise, yet he could not for the life of him put his finger on it...

Just then, the voice of the little maid Betty came from beyond the door, interrupting their conversation. "My lord! Master Piyun is here to see you!"

Gao Yang started, then a vague guess rose in his heart, and he said quickly, "Let him in!"