by Feng Yue
Although most of its powered armor could be further improved, the production and cost of a single water tank would only be less than one-third of a basic powered armor if Sterling internal combustion engine was used! With some slight modifications, the water tank would be able to contain at least seven people!
Other than the mandatory driver, the others could take on the role of mass production musicians in the net of aether. With the water tanks as mobile fortresses, the defensive abilities of the musicians would be increased and they could even install a mobile small-scale instrument of harmonious melody inside!
As long as the water tank stayed within the area of the large-scale instrument of the harmonious melody of the net of aether, the power of the net of aether would be extended to the water tank. They would no longer have to worry about the stability of the transmission of music theories.
This was the perfect repeater that would function between the large-scale instrument of the harmonious melody of the net of aether and the musicians. But even without this function, the water tank could still act as a powered armor for ordinary people!
It would be different from knights, where one could easily take more than a decade to groom and develop elite soldiers, and there would also be no need to modulate the knights! Modulating a knight would require the insertion of artificial nerves and catabolic organs, which could easily cost up to 80 pounds of black gold, and this was not even taking into account the cost of technology. Not only that, one would only have to go through three months of training for driving. No, in fact, in times of emergency during wartimes, an instruction manual and three hours of time should be sufficient for a literate person to drive the water tank.
Now, before Caucasian could use their ‘redemption,’ every country tried to catch up and follow the trend, ending up with plenty of molten lead weapons. Shortly after, the musicians realized that their defensive abilities would be greatly reduced when they were near the molten lead weapons. Many ordinary musicians died as a result.
In the past, when faced with six molten lead weapons, even musicians that could go against a shower of arrows would have to think twice about retreating. But with the water tank, the threat posed by molten lead weapons had reduced drastically. Unless the enemy decided to go berserk and start firing their large-scale weapons without a care, in which case it could only mean death… but at least one would still die in one piece, right?
After thinking for a long while, Ye Qingxuan had finally come up with a plan. He looked at Shi Dong. “In that case, what do you think are some of the flaws that have been surfaced from this field test?”
“Stability,” Shi Dong replied without hesitation. “The stability of the external combustion engine still needs to be improved. Even if the cost will be doubled, it is still acceptable as long as the stability can be improved by 30 percent. The external layer of armor can be removed and be used as accessories and we will need another ten of those! This object is a consumable and its armor will have to be changed after each battle. Another bigger problem is its track. The research institute did not have a clear understanding of the importance of tracks. The formula for the alloy to make these tracks needs to be upgraded at least once so that its abilities can be maximized.
“Later, ask your subordinates to write this down clearly and furnish them with more details. Bring these three broken things along and hand them over to the research institute. The institute will settle it.”
Ronald looked like he wanted to speak but stopped himself. He looked helpless.
“Don’t worry, I will not give all of you any additional pressure.” Ye Qingxuan patted his shoulder. “With regards to modes of transportation made from iron, the Chainsaw Fraternity is quite experienced. I will discuss with the Patriarch on the possibility of a collaboration. As for the hierarchy of production of the water tanks, bring it up to the second sequence from today onwards. The World of Dark is an excelling testing ground. We will go through three rounds of pressure testing there before we hand them over to Birmingham’s production line for production and assembly. The biggest reason for limiting the production capacity was to keep it a secret, but now that we are prepared to mass produce it, there is no point trying to hide it any longer.”
Ronald looked slightly more relieved. But even so, there was still tremendous pressure on the institute of research. He took his leave with a bow as he prepared to work overnight on the project report.
…
“Oh yes, there’s something else I need to tell you.” After half a night of debriefing in Ye Qingxuan’s office, Shi Dong was drinking a bowl of herb tea when he slapped his bald head as he finally remembered something. “Hua Sheng has leveled up to scepter.”
705 War and Daybreak
Several months before Watson and Shi Dong had set out from Avalon together, but they had different missions and different destinations. Compared to Shi Dong, who would send messages from time to time to prove that he was still alive, there was no news at all from Watson on any channel. If he was alive no one had seen him, if he was dead no one had found his body.
Even though he knew that something that would completely kill someone else would not even necessarily harm a hair on that guy, Ye Qingxuan was still a bit worried. But the news that he was waiting for was not whether he had succeeded or failed, but whether he had advanced to the Scepter level…
Ye Qingxuan had never worried about Watson’s qualifications. He could count the number of people in the world who could compare to him on one hand. After all, he was the robin. He was the evil spirit of the Anglos who had once been a Royal Musician. For others breaking through to the Scepter level was as difficult as ascending to heaven. For him, it was merely a step by step process.
Although when Ye Qingxuan had cleansed the evil spirit he had once again become an official musician, after that he had an unlimited supply of core music theory from each of the schools. If he couldn’t make tremendous strides in a short amount of time that would be fishy.
But Ye Qingxuan had not thought it would be so quick.
“He must have prepared for a long time,” said Shi Dong. “He incorporated purifying music theory into the animal nature of a robin and then let his own animal nature be infected by the Abyss and then purified himself. He repeated this several times a day. By the end, I couldn’t tell what state he was in. Purifying music theory didn’t work on him, and the Abyss’s infection didn’t affect him at all. He made his Scepter by wavering back and forth on the line between redemption and depravity.”
“When did he make his breakthrough?” asked Ye Qingxuan.
Shi Dong took a sip of the bitter concoction and smirked. “He did it on the way after we left Avalon, before we got off the boat at Netherlands Harbor.”
Ye Qingxuan was silent.
He knew what Shi Dong meant.
The whole process of an official musician becoming a Master, and a Master becoming a Scepter, was for the musician to promote their sound of heart to a Symphony of Predestination, and then to promote their Symphony of Predestination into a Scepter.
This was a distillation of the self.
In short, in order to become a musician, you first had to be yourself: the self that you most wanted to be. This was one of the reasons why he had been able to elevate himself so easily after he had left Avalon, as Ye Qingxuan had made him do it, it went against his very nature. Even though Ye Qinguan had given him the whole lower city to do with as he pleased, this was only to make him use his dark side to suppress all the gangs down there.
Use evil to control evil.
By fully leaving Watson to his own devices, he could absolutely produce dozens of huge results.
Not everyone could be killed, and not everything could be dealt with. He had to leave a line and be careful about crossing it. The most excessive thing would be to ask him to be a good person.
That was too difficult.
Ye Qingxuan was not worried that after he set Watson loose who would become a man-eating,
blood-drinking demon. He had enough willpower and wisdom to overcome his dark side, and would only get better and better.
But in the end, that wasn’t good.
Ye Qingxuan hadn’t freed him to let him curl up in the shadows his entire life and become the next Shaman, but to let him live properly in the light.
Unfortunately, hate was hate, after all.
“It seems like this mission made him very happy…” Ye Qingxuan sighed. “Forget it, a forcibly picked melon is not sweet. Let him live how he wants, I won’t get in his way.”
“You should have done that from the start.” Shi Dong rolled his eyes. “He told me to tell you that he was going to disappear for awhile, and not to worry. If he doesn’t come back that means he died. If he doesn’t die, then sooner or later he will come back with success.”
“He has his own ideas. Let him go then.”
“So, other than us and the Holy City collapsing, did anything happen after I left?”
“Lots.” Ye Qingxuan shrugged. “Yesterday, the Holy City officially declared the Orthodox Church to be heretical and asked the Inquisition to protect God’s authority by sending a punitive expedition to the east against the Confederation of Caucasian.”
Shi Dong laughed. “Is that what you wanted?”
“Haha.” Ye Qingxuan was too lazy to even roll his eyes. “They’re saying now that the College of Cardinals is even ready to accuse the Anglo Kingdom of Heresy. We can expect that in a few months I’ll be the “big red dragon” that has plagued the Anglo Kingdom. Will I have to obey the Sacred City’s orders and kill myself?”
Shi Dong did not bring this up anymore.
This was a leftover set from the game they had been playing that year. During the witch hunts, many people who were suspected to have connections to the Abyss were sent directly to the stake. For civilians, they did not need a reason, and for nobles, any excuse would do. In those days when that crowd of mad men had been barbecuing demons, the people in the Sacred City hadn’t even learned how to light a fire.
“What about the East?” Shi Dong asked. “Since Bai Heng broke the balance of power between East and West, could it be that he’s planning something big next?”
Ye Qingxuan was silent for awhile, then shook his head.
“No.”
“No?” Shi Dong looked up at him. This was the only thing that surprised him, so unexpected. For centuries, the East and the West had maintained what could only be said to be a tenuous connection. The two sides had rarely interacted with each other, had kept each other in check, and had rarely interfered in each other’s spheres of influence. Now that Bai Heng had rashly broken the tacit understanding and balance between the two sides, a storm was sure to come.
But it turned out that he wasn’t doing anything.
What on earth did he want to do?
“It’s not only that he isn’t doing anything,” Ye Qingxuan said unhappily. “He also isn’t letting anyone else do anything.”
“What do you mean?” asked Shi Dong.
“See for yourself.” Ye Qingxuan sighed and knocked on the table. A ray of light emerged from the void, intertwined until it became an image in front of Shi Dong’s face.
It was a huge three-dimensional map of the whole world. But compared to parts of it that had been mapped out by humans, at least two-thirds of it was shrouded in darkness. And of the parts that had been discovered by humans, more than half of it was ocean.
The Anglo Kingdom was located on the western part of the map among the several dozen countries of the West. And facing it from far away was the Empire of Aurora in the East. In reality, the Empire of Aurora couldn’t be compared to the West, as it was only about half the size.
The reason why the world was divided into East and West was that the two halves were separated by the almost completely unexplored World of Dark, leaving only a few shipping lanes and winding roads that were difficult to travel to connect them.
The Aurora Empire had never really paid attention to the changes outside, having little interest in the West that lay on the other side of the World of Dark. There were only a few dozen students who came to the West to study abroad every year, but they rarely spoke of their hometowns.
That included Ye Lanzhou.
The East was a place of pain for him, and would only bring him trouble. Thus, he never talked about the Empire of Aurora, except for its movements. This led to Ye Qingxuan, though he had the blood of Devas, having no concept about the Empire of Aurora at all.
And if in the past there had been almost no contact, nowadays there was none at all.
“What’s this?” Shi Dong stared, slack-jawed, at the changes in the map. As they watched through the Net of Aether, the darkness that had originally separated the East and the West grew a hundred times thicker, completely blocking all the roads. The entire Empire of Aurora was shrouded by a faint halo, making it impossible to see how it was changing.
“It’s probably the Great Wall.” Ye Qingxuan looked indifferent. “If I’m not mistaken, Bai Heng used the fragment of the Wheel of Balance that he got to fix the blemishes in the Great Wall and achieve this effect. And from what we can see here, the Great Wall has been completely initiated, covering the entire territory of the Empire of Aurora and completely expelling the music theory of the outside world. So they’re not afraid of falling out with the Sacred City at all, because even if they did the Sacred City couldn’t touch them. He’s built a shelter before the storm.”
Shi Dong was silent for awhile, then sighed as if he had been relieved of a heavy burden.
“That’s good, that gets rid of a huge variable.” He looked to the north of the Anglo Kingdom on the map. “Now all we have to consider are the Commonwealth of Caucasian and Asgard.”
Asgard.
The room plunged into temporary silence.
For the past two days, the Anglo Army Headquarters had held many meetings about this, but any time that name was mentioned they felt exhausted.
They were known as the Millenium Hegemony.
They were the largest country in the entire West, the empire with the strongest finances and war potential. Besides the Empire of Aurora, they were the only nation with an Emperor.
Now, in this chaotic time, they had opened up the path to war.
Ye Qingxuan would not be surprised if the Asgardians chose to go to war. In fact, them not choosing to go to war would be strange.
In the past Asgard’s hegemonic status had come from their own strength, but they relied on the Sacred City tieing up the other nations to maintain it. Now that the Sacred City had lost control, could not sit by and watch other countries threaten them. Moreover, Asgard was the biggest beneficiary under the Sacred City’s system, and would certainly not allow a new system to be established, negating its own position.
Gaius’s revolutionary system, in particular, was completely incompatible with a conservative nation like Asgard.
The two were destined to come into conflict from the start.
Asgard had already declared war on the Commonwealth of Caucasian.
Nowadays, in the face of Ye Qingxuan’s rebellion and Gaius’s threat, and the so-called Orthodox Son of God, the Sacred City that had lost its ability to control the world could not sit still and await their fate. Everybody felt that this war would sweep across the entire world. If the East did not seal their borders even the Empire of Aurora would be dragged into it.
The world was large, but none could escape it.
“It seems that Gaius has become a mortal enemy in the eyes of the Sacred City.” Shi Dong shook his head helplessly. “Whether it’s the Orthodox Church or your…friend, the Son of God, they’re all frightening.”
“Charles is not the Son of God,” Ye Qingxuan corrected him. “He is my fellow apprentice, nothing more. Don’t make me remind you again.”
“Alright.” Shi Dong sighed and did not bring it up again. “So, after rejecting the alliance with the Commonwealth of Caucasian, how do you plan to face t
he current situation? You’re no longer a lone musician, the whole of the Anglo Kingdom is behind you. You have the Inquisition, and even the Chainsaw Fraternity chose you. Once you start the war you can count on having even more allies…and more enemies than allies. On the surface, your greatest contradiction comes from the Sacred City. But as long as they are willing to give in, and you are willing to compromise, your goal can coexist with theirs. But Asgard is different…”
“I understand.” Ye Qingxuan hesitated for a moment, then said softly, “You mean that I can choose to make the Anglo Kingdom the next Asgard, but Asgard has no way to retreat…”
“Asgard’s centuries of prosperity came from its cooperation with the Sacred City. It was the backbone of the Sacred City’s system. They have always relied on the benefits they gained from this system to deal with their domestic issues, but the conflicts between the clans can’t be suppressed, and the conflicts between the common people and the nobility are so pronounced that there was no way to solve them. And Gaius’s theory of abolishing the nobility has been fiercely pushed behind the scenes. If the Sacred City’s system fails, then they will be destroyed by internal chaos and external threats. So Asgard has to protect the old ways and has to protect the Sacred City. This is a matter of life or death to them. If I was Asgard, I would definitely start with the Anglos.” What Shi Dong was saying was the conclusion reached by the two days of meetings at the military headquarters.
The war between the Anglos and Asgard would definitely start.
There were many reasons, but the biggest one was the geographical location.
They were close.
The Anglo Kingdom was too close to Asgard. If the Burgundians opened up their borders, they would only have to cross a straight to land in Anglo territory. Moreover, the Anglo Kingdom’s national strength had been exhausted by Leviathan’s attack. The Royal Navy had taken heavy losses, and the economy had just started to rise, too late to employ effectively.
Also, anyone with half a brain could see that the more Ye Qingxuan’s Net of Aether spread out, the more terrifying it became. If they were to become enemies, it would have to go too.