Silent Crown

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 the 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.

The worst thing was that although Asgard was huge, its distribution of resources was concentrated on the other side of their territory. The industrial, manufacturing and even grain producing areas were distributed around the Golden Palace. If they went to war with the Commonwealth of Caucasian they would have to rely on sea transportation to stay supplied.

What was even worse was that if Asgard dared to go through the Anglo Kingdom in order to make war on the Commonwealth of Caucasian, the Anglos could rely on the Avalon effect which accumulated in the ocean currents and the Homeland Defense Front to interfere with the Asgardian supply lines to a freaking ridiculous extent.

Thus, the logical choice was very simple.

War was inevitable.

And once war broke out, it would be long and drawn-out.

Once it had lasted for a long time, the competition would be between national reserves and supplies. In order to guarantee supply replenishment, they had to control the sea.

In order to control the sea, they had to destroy the Anglos first.

They had to destroy them utterly.

Even if the Anglos had only Avalon left, they could still strike at the heart of the Asgardians through the Homeland Defense Front.

Therefore, the first battle would inevitably be between the Anglos and the Asgardians.

And the beginning of the war would be at sea.

This war over sea routes would determine the future of the whole world.

“Be ready, Your Excellency.” Shi Dong lowered his eyes. “Winter is coming.”

“It’s not Winter.” Ye Qingxuan shook his head as he stared out the window at the Net of Aether that hung high up in the night sky. The crystals reflected the sunshine that emerged from far across the dark, distant sea, magnificent and tranquil.

“It’s daybreak.”