Chapter 569 — An Incomplete Solution

At Suojilin's somewhat awkward greeting, Suoyou Frostleaf merely gave a faint nod. "At least you're still in good health."

The people around Gao Yang were all dumbstruck. Having had little occasion to deal with elves, they could not possibly have guessed that this elven lady, who looked scarcely a few years older than Rebecca, was in fact Suojilin's mother. Out of politeness, however, each of them kept their astonishment well in check—only Rebecca's "Whoa" broke the silence as the sole exception.

Gao Yang, though, had anticipated this the moment he laid eyes on Suoyou Frostleaf. He remained perfectly composed, and even remarked offhandedly, "Separated all these years, and you greet him this coldly?"

Suojilin shrugged helplessly, while Suoyou glanced at Gao Cen. "He hasn't been home for seven whole centuries."

Gao Yang: "..."

There was nothing he could say to that.

"We've already arranged lodgings for you all. I hope human rooms will still suit you," Hetty said, speaking up at just the right moment to ease the subtle tension in the air. As she spoke, she looked toward the enormous birds of prey on the plaza. "As for these giant eagles... could they stay in the griffin roosts?"

Though Cecil had begun promoting arcane-net communications and the griffins' role as messengers was gradually diminishing, Xuanyao City still maintained a basic griffin squad and infrastructure like the griffin roosts for delivering important correspondence and undertaking certain reconnaissance duties.

"That will do. Giant eagles aren't particular about where they roost," Suoyou nodded. "Ranger Oran will tell you how to settle them properly. Also, please see to the griffins whose nests have been taken over—soothe their feelings a little."

A male elf in green leather armor stepped forward; he was presumably the "Ranger Oran" Suoyou had mentioned.

The staff in charge of the griffin roosts began the handover with this ranger, while Suoyou and the other elves followed Gao Cen toward the Autumn Palace.

The giant eagles that had landed on the plaza seemed uneasy in this unfamiliar city. One of them raised its head and let out a loud call in Suoyou's direction: "Coo! Coo!!"

Suoyou stopped helplessly, turned back, and called loudly to the massive bird: "Show some courage! You are a giant eagle!!"

With that she turned and walked on. Gao Yang had been startled the moment the giant eagle opened its beak; he looked at Suoyou in surprise. "What's the matter with that giant eagle?"

"Its name is Coo. I hatched it forty years ago," Suoyou said, pressing her fingers to her temple and shaking her head in spite of herself. "Damn it, I never should have let Master Thornheart help raise it... Moon Valley is full of pigeons!"

Gao Yang: "..."

Fortunately, all these brief interludes did nothing to disrupt the welcoming proceedings that followed. As planned, the Autumn Palace had prepared a lavish welcome banquet for the envoys and a resting environment more in keeping with elven tastes. After a feast in which host and guests alike were well pleased, in the reception hall of the Autumn Palace, Suoyou Frostleaf placed the two letters she had long since prepared into Gao Yang's hands.

One letter was sealed in an openwork wooden case, on which pale green vines and leaves were carved as decoration, the sealing wax at its mouth bearing the mark of the Elven Court. The other was enclosed in a pale gold metal cylinder, its seal stamped with the sword-and-shield emblem of the Ansul royal house.

Clearly, one was from the Elven Queen herself, the other from the White Silver Castle.

Of course, nominally at this moment, the second letter was supposed to be "jointly signed and issued by the White Silver Castle and the Eastern Province."

Gao Yang glanced at Suoyou. He opened neither letter, but remarked as though casually: "So now you are both envoy of the Silver Empire and envoy of Holy Sunil."

"Strictly speaking, I am merely delivering this official letter to you on behalf of the White Silver Castle. Elves cannot represent any human party; I am only a courier," Suoyou said. "The envoys of Holy Frostperch—and the delegation from the Eastern Province—are still being assembled, though they should have set out by now. Traveling by fast horse, they should reach you within half a month."

"Wanting face and wanting profit, neither yielding, each wary of the other, and time waiting for no one... In the end it became this mongrel arrangement, a letter bearing the royal seal having to be delivered by an elven courier," Gao Yang sneered, shaking his head. "Never mind those unworthy descendants. Let's get to business—I know the rough situation, and I know why you've come to the human kingdom. How bad is the Barrier's condition, exactly?"

"All the Sentinel Towers are damaged to varying degrees. The Barrier's overall effective output has dropped to seventy percent. For the moment it is stable, but the system's self-repair function is half-stalled; if another impact causes an overload, it will not hold—one hundred percent certain," Suoyou concealed nothing. Before this human hero who had personally lived through the magic tide, she stated outright the truth that would cause mass panic out in the wider world. "We no longer have the capacity to produce the core components of the Sentinel Towers. The situation now is: no spare parts, no substitutes, no thorough repair plan."

She paused, then continued: "I have already been in contact with that Duchess Victoria Wilder. She mentioned that you issued several warnings to the royal capital, and I have seen those warning messages you wrote. If my judgment is correct, the initial overload should have begun in the northern section of the Wasteland—only at the time your... Ansul's monitoring of the Great Wall was purely nominal. No one noticed the precursor anomalies. By the time the aberrations invaded Ansul—the period you mentioned in your first warning, when the aberrations destroyed Old Cecil—the precursors had already become substantive damage."

Gao Qi frowned. "After that, I organized people to resume long-range monitoring of the Great Wall, and for a long time we saw nothing unusual."

"The self-repair system masked the condition of the faulty nodes. By the time you resumed monitoring the Barrier, it was already 'operating normally'—but unfortunately, only on the surface," Suoyou said gravely. "In reality... the fault kept spreading, from one Sentinel Tower to the next, until today it has spread through the entire Barrier."

Hetty could not help asking: "Didn't your monitoring system detect it? A situation like this, a fault continuously spreading... shouldn't there be some kind of early-warning mechanism?"

This was exactly what Gao Yang wanted to ask as well, but Suoyou shook her head slightly. "That is precisely what we have been investigating recently. The Sentinel Towers should have sounded alarms. Even if the self-repair system temporarily fixed a faulty tower, there should at least be a fault record transmitted back to the supreme control center at the Radiant Vault. But in fact, none of the systems can find any such records... For the past several years, all data sent back by the Sentinel Towers has indicated that everything is normal."

Gao Yang and Hetty exchanged a glance in spite of themselves.

"Is it a deeper-level fault? Or is someone tampering with things?" Gao Cen asked, his face grave.