Chapter 577 — Heading for the Wasteland

After seeing off that deputy commander of the royal knight order, the spacious reception room fell quiet.

Gao Yang sat in his seat and sank into a brief reverie, while Amber's figure gradually emerged from the air. The half-elf glanced at Gao Cen, curiosity written all over her face: "It was actually a letter from that Welsh Moen? What did it say?"

Gao Yang lifted his eyelids. "So you really didn't peek?"

Amber planted her hands on her hips, utterly self-righteous. "Of course not! Do you think I'd do something as immoral as reading someone else's letter?"

This thieving, sneaking, cowardly little menace actually had morals in the strangest of places?

Gao Yang shook his head. "You'd better not know for now."

"Tch, fine, keep your secrets," Amber pursed her lips, her figure slowly fading from the air. "I'm off to keep an eye on those envoys. You go on staring into space."

As Amber's presence gradually dissipated from the room, Gao Yang let out a soft sigh. "In the end, the one who saw through this mire was him..."

The envoys from the royal capital did not linger long in Xuanyao City.

After all, the symbolic meaning of these envoys' visit outweighed any practical one — the elven courier had already delivered all the information, and Gao Yang himself had been the foremost advocate of vigilance over the wasteland and the consolidation of the frontier from the very beginning. As for repairing and reinforcing the Great Wall, so long as the northern domains had prepared the supplies, there was nothing for Gao Yang to negotiate or haggle over; Saint Sunir sending a batch of envoys was, for the most part, merely going through the motions.

The following afternoon, once all the letters and pending matters had been handed over, the delegation led by Cohen Loren boarded the rapid river passenger ship "Wavebreaker" once again and departed Xuanyao City.

Come in haste, go in haste.

And the first batch of supplies, jointly pledged and jointly prepared by Saint Sunir and the Eastern Province, arrived at the Whitewater River wharf on the 30th of the Harvest Moon as scheduled.

Six large river cargo ships, fully laden with cloth, metals, oils, and all manner of magitech materials — the holds packed so full that one could not help but marvel that the nobles of Ans had finally been generous for once. To make those miserly nobles hand over such treasured hoards, Victoria and Edmund had likely had to resort to no small amount of scheming.

On the unloading pier of the wharf district, Amber watched the packaged magitech materials being stacked on the ground crate by crate, piling ever higher until they rose like a mountain, and she grew utterly thrilled: "My god... how much must all this be worth..."

"Every bit of it goes to the barrier restoration project," Gao Yang said, glancing at the gleam in Amber's eyes. "Not a single brick is to be touched."

Amber looked Gao Cen up and down as though she could not believe her ears, her tone full of astonishment: "You're really going to use all of it on the project? You're not planning to skim a little off the top? There's so much! And no one would dare audit you — nobody would know if you pocketed some, right? Don't you go on all day about how the domain needs to develop and there's never enough resources?"

"I don't take a cut of everything," Gao Yang said, ruffling Amber's hair. "Cutting corners on the Great Wall is digging your own grave."

Gao Dai walked off after saying that, and Amber, left standing there, heard Rebecca muttering to herself nearby: "What the Ancestral Inkstone person said makes so much sense..."

Amber shot Rebecca a look. "You think whatever your ancestor says makes sense."

Rebecca put on a serious face. "No — our ancestor is especially convincing when talking about things related to grave-digging."

Amber looked Rebecca up and down with considerable admiration. "...No wonder you get beaten up every other day."

Meanwhile, on the other side, Gao Yang found Hedy and the others waiting for him at the edge of the wharf.

"Once this batch of supplies arrives, I'll be setting out for the wasteland," Gao Yang said to Hedy. "Internal affairs of the duchy will be in your hands and the civil administration hall's; military matters go to Byron and Philip; the other departments each have their own heads and contingency plans, so just follow the development plans we laid out before."

"You're really going in person?" Hedy bit her lip, and at last could not help saying, "It's really not necessary..."

"No one knows the wasteland better than I do, and I want to see the Great Wall and the wasteland's condition with my own eyes," Gao Yang interrupted her. He looked at her, a smile rising on his face. "What, no confidence? Worried you won't manage it all well?"

Had anyone else asked the same question, the best answer would undoubtedly have been no — Hedy would have answered every doubt about her abilities with her usual maturity and composure.

But the man before her was her ancestor, the pillar of the Cecil family, the one who had upheld and led this land all the way from eight hundred refugees and a field of tents to what it was today. Before him, her poise and her stubbornness would be seen through at a glance.

"...I am a little worried, yes." Hedy nodded slightly.

"You'll do fine," Gao Yang said, patting Hedy on the shoulder. "When the Cecil family was at its lowest, you held it together all on your own, and now the whole civil administration hall runs in perfect order under your management. You're more capable than you think."

Hedy very much wanted to say that the domain she had helped Rebecca govern back then had been nothing but a viscounty, whereas the Cecil domain now was the entire Southern Province duchy — a world of difference between the two. But looking at Gao Yang's faintly smiling face, her heart quickly steadied.

"I understand," she lowered her head. "I won't let you down."

"Just don't let the people down — it wasn't easy for them to get to better days," Gao Yan nodded. "Rest assured, I'll set up arcane-net relay devices along the way; even at the edge of the wasteland, I'll keep in contact with the domain. Besides, the Pathfinders' roadwork is more than half done — we'll have a convenient highway through the Black Forest. With modern vehicles and roads, you'll soon find that the wasteland, which seems so distant, really isn't that far from you."

This day was the 30th of the Harvest Moon, fifteen days before the Harvest Festival.

After two days of preparation and personnel deployment, the first batch of supplies bound for the south was loaded onto advanced magitech transport vehicles, and a vast convoy — the technical crystallization of Cecil Magitech Industry — passed through the fortress in the Dark Mountains and set out from the South Gate Bastion, heading toward the direction of the Gondor Wasteland.

Gao Yang personally led this column. Besides the accompanying magically empowered combat troops, Su Jilin led an elite unit of steel rangers as guards and set out with them; the column would soon catch up with the Pathfinders who had already pushed deep into the Black Forest, and rendezvous with the Pathfinder engineering corps and the White Knight guard. The supplies the convoy carried would be used to build the last forward base at the Black Forest's boundary, and beyond that...

Was the wasteland's edge — the Corrupted Plain.

...

"Open the gates!! Convoy passing through!!"