Chapter 607 — The Month of Revival

Winter had ended.

Deep within the Peak Base, in a room with its doors and windows tightly shut, a magic-net terminal was running.

The room was empty. The heavy curtains blocked out what little daylight there was, plunging the whole space into a peculiar gloom; the white-noise projection cast by the running terminal was like a lamp too dim for its purpose, throwing flickering shadows across every piece of furniture and object in the room.

On the room's only wooden desk, a printing machine connected to the magic-net terminal was clattering away. Sheet after sheet of white paper was fed into the machine by the paper-feed mechanism, and the messages arriving from distant places were printed onto the pages and delivered to the output tray.

At the front of the machine, a small stack of printed materials had already accumulated.

Suddenly, the papers on the desk rose into the air, as though lifted by a pair of invisible hands, and began to flutter and turn with a rustling sound.

A moment later the materials were set back down on the desk, and the automatically running magic-net terminal gradually fell quiet. A faint wind drifted through the empty room; the curtain nearby trembled once, and with a touch of brightness entering the room, everything returned to silence.

At the center of the base, Gao Yang was leafing through technical documents from the elven archmage Banner—because the construction schedule had been shortened, the secondary tower and its related facilities under the Duchy of Cecil's responsibility were about to be completed ahead of time. The secondary tower was currently in the final stages of installing and calibrating its magical apparatus, and several purification nodes were more than half finished. To ensure this vital project could be brought to a successful conclusion, Gao Yang did not dare relax for even a moment.

An invisible wind suddenly blew into the room. Gao Yang sensed a familiar presence at the window, casually crumpled up a ball of paper, and threw it. With a yelp of "Ouch!", the next second he saw Amber emerge from the air and tumble clumsily off the windowsill.

—The windows of the Peak Base were specially made: the sills were narrow and had a ridged, sealed structure, so no mousetraps could be placed on them. This was a matter of great regret to Gao Yang.

"What's the situation?" Gao Yang lifted his eyelids and glanced at the half-elf, who was just climbing to her feet. "You don't often come by at this hour."

Amber stood up and dusted off her clothes, then strode over to Gao Yang's desk with an air of unconcern, as though nothing had just happened. "Just received a batch of intelligence from the north—a few things feel off to me."

"Intelligence from the north..." Gao Yang set down the documents in his hands. "Tell me."

"Starting in late Fog Month, the controlled zone in the Eastern Region began a large-scale purge of cultists. At first we guessed it might be Prince Edmund's 'acting,' that he was trying to put on a show, but according to the latest intelligence, the Easterners have so far captured hundreds of Church of the Final Death believers and destroyed dozens of hidden altars where dark rituals had been secretly performed. Our intelligence officers' preliminary judgment is that those hidden altars and the evidence of heresy are genuine."

"...So it seems the cooperative relationship between Edmund and the Final Death Church really isn't that close after all..." Gao Yang's brow furrowed slightly. "But is the Eastern Region's reaction really this large just because of a single warning letter from me? Considering Edmund had at least some degree of cooperation with the Final Death Church before, the fact that he made such a big move immediately after receiving one warning letter from me is suspicious in itself..."

"What's even more suspicious is still to come," Amber said, a strange expression on her face. "Would you believe it—from last month to now, in the royal-controlled zone along the standoff line of the Holy Spirit Plain, the number of Church of the Eternal Silence cultists captured and hidden altars destroyed by the noble armies is actually even higher than in the Eastern Region!!"

Gao Yang blinked, failing for a moment to react; when he did, his first thought was that this was simply impossible—

Those old nobles in the north had suddenly stopped being useless? Was there anything in the world more suspicious than that?!

Could one warning letter from him really have had such an effect? The Ansor nobles had suddenly realized the danger of the Final Death Church and decided to unite and root out the wicked? Had Victoria Wilde instantly completed the ideological transformation of the old nobility?

Gao Yang would sooner believe those Final Death believers who had been dragged out had committed suicide!

"What exactly is going on?" Gao Yang looked into Amber's eyes. "I don't believe the old nobles suddenly became more efficient."

As expected, Amber had more to say: "The reason both the Eastern Region and the royal nobles are so efficient is that someone is informing on them."

"Informing?" Gao Yang frowned. "You mean the Military Intelligence agents you sent out?"

"Only the first few times were reported by our agents. But after Frost Month ended, the reports suddenly surged, and almost every day leads on cultists were delivered to the local lords. It took the agents a long time to trace the identity of those informants—guess who?"

A strange thought suddenly surfaced in Gao Yang's mind: "...It isn't the Final Death Church itself, is it?"

"Exactly—it really is them! And the situation is utterly bizarre!! Every site reported was one where a dark ritual had already been performed, and all the Final Death believers who took part had killed themselves during the ritual. So strictly speaking, whether it was the royal faction or the Eastern Region, what they 'captured' after receiving the leads were only the corpses of cultists who had already completed their rituals..."

Before Amber had even finished speaking, Gao Yang's brow twitched.

So they really had committed suicide after all...

And then, right on the heels of that, he realized that behind this absurd situation lay something deeply unsettling—

This looked exactly like some kind of secret, sustained, large-scale sacrificial ritual! The Ember Shadow cultists were sacrificing themselves on a massive scale!

There was no doubt that Amber, who dealt with all kinds of intelligence regularly, had reached the same conclusion. A grave expression had appeared on the half-elf's face as well: "Looks a lot like mass sacrifice, doesn't it—over the past two months, the cultists on the Holy Spirit Plain have held at least several hundred dark rituals requiring participants to kill themselves. As many as a thousand Final Death believers may have already completed their sacrifices!"

"Yes, sacrifice—this is undoubtedly sacrifice," Gao Yang said, his brow unknowingly knit tight. He couldn't help pressing a hand against the desk, his voice low and grave. "But why would they inform on themselves... why voluntarily expose those hard-won secret altars and strongholds after the sacrifices were finished... unless the ritual requires it... wait, it isn't necessarily the ritual!"

It was as if a flash of light suddenly cut across Gao Yang's mind. He jerked his head up and stared into Amber's eyes: "Were all those bodies that were discovered burned?"