We were only a few dozen kilometers away from Pine Village, and it had only been half a day since we left the quiet and peaceful village in the forest. However, the distance in time and space was enough to make people realize the thin paper-thin relationship between peace and war.
The North Fortress had become a veritable heavily guarded place. With this fortress as the center, there were military camps and stations of all sizes that stretched for hundreds of miles along the Long Bridge Mountains. There were regular troops from the interior of the Empire, second-line regiments from lords and churches, and the rest were scattered freelance mercenaries and ambitious people. It could be said to be a grand occasion, but it could also be called madness. The fearless attitude of the people on the ground in the face of the invasion of the dark moon and the spirit of the whole nation was amazing. Although the dark moon war itself seemed inexplicable to us, these people who defended on both sides of the Long Bridge Mountains and were ready to fight at any time were still worthy of the name of warriors.
Compared to the atmosphere here, even the air here had a hint of bleakness, the atmosphere in Pine Village seemed too peaceful and too cowardly. However, there was nothing to criticize. After all, not every race could be a soldier like Schilling, and the people also had their own way of living. It was understandable that the villagers of Pine Village first thought about their three meals a day. Also, they would soon appear on the second line of defense as militia. From this point of view, it could be said that the people here were tough.
We were going to spend the night outside the North Fortress. Although it was outside the fortress, it definitely did not feel like the wilderness here. The freelance mercenaries from all over the world had built a hundred-mile encampment in the wilderness. Even if you galloped at the foot of the Long Bridge Mountains, you would not be able to find a real "uninhabited" place in a short time.
When we were preparing to set up camp, we encountered a small interlude. At first, I wanted to ask if the freelance mercenaries had a nominal planner, but when I asked, I found out that not even the officers in the fortress knew how the mercenary camp was "planned". These loose small groups were randomly distributed in the "unruly area" divided by the knights. They formed groups or worked alone according to their preferences. It even felt like a group of new migrant workers who had just gotten off the train and were waiting for odd jobs at various intersections. In such a group, no one had to worry about the problem of "setting up camp".
It was just that the nature of this group of "migrant workers" was particularly high-end: they were here to save the world, at least they thought so.
Thus, we found a relatively quiet place in the mercenary district as our 'territory'. After that, it didn't take much effort to prepare the tents. Bryndis, the rich god, used his power of creation to create three large tents. They didn't look much different from the tents around us, but there were a lot of barriers and enchantments inside. We didn't have to worry about being found out even if we discussed the end of the world inside.
After preparing the tents, Icetis and Visca volunteered to cook dinner (that's right, it was the two of them). Seeing that there was nothing for me to do, I casually strolled around the large camp. Because Lin Xue wanted peace, we chose a place far away from the others to set up camp. According to the size of the mercenary camp, the place we were staying at was at least outside of the Tenth Ring … I had to walk around for half a day before I could greet the nearest "neighbor".
What made me happy was that everyone I met along the way was friendly. It was probably because we were all fighting for our lives. Even the mercenaries who were usually fiercely competitive had become a harmonious family here. Even though most of the people here did not know each other, even though everyone here might have come from different parts of the country, I still felt as though I had come to the lively streets of the countryside. The people around me were like neighbors who had known each other for many years. This atmosphere may be very noisy, but for the first time … it was actually quite interesting. Almost all the mercenaries were blabbermouths. If you strolled here for 30 minutes, it was enough for you to write fantasy novels on Qidian for a lifetime …
While wandering in these sihe-like lively camps, of course, I did not forget to ask around for some information. As a "novice mercenary" who had just arrived, I quickly figured out how these seemingly unorganized and undisciplined guys planned to participate in the battle against the Dark Moon. It was similar to what I expected: Mercenaries were not prepared for the main battlefield.
They would still do their old business here: Waiting for the highest price to sell their combat power.
The knights of the North Fortress had specially prepared a contact window for the mercenaries. They would issue missions over at the fortress. These missions might be tricky and dangerous, but without exception, the rewards were generous and could earn a great reputation. The manpower of the knights and other regular armies was precious. They did not have so many "special forces" to carry out piecemeal reconnaissance and exploration missions, so these jobs were outsourced to the mercenaries. Every day, there would be people who were responsible for reporting the mission catalog running between the fortress and the mercenary station. These people were usually mercenaries, and they were running around for daily missions. After receiving this information, various large and small mercenary teams would weigh their own abilities and luck to decide whether they would go out and fight for their lives or watch others go out and fight for their lives.
All the mercenaries were like this. The process of them being stationed here was also the same: After receiving the news of the Empire's conscription, they would rush here on their own, find the fortress's registrar to report their individual or team's name, then get a small identification card, and set up camp on their own, becoming a member of the protection of this world: What a chaotic but free and easy group of people.
Knights, second-line legions, mercenary groups, temporary dispatch centers, semi-free mission handover, and various dual-line military operations. These elements together formed a special small society. The foot of the Longbridge Mountains was not only a line of defense, but also a strange, wall-less city: You could even find markets and traveling merchants between the various camps!
The place seemed chaotic, but after walking around, I faintly felt that there was some basic order amidst the chaos. No matter who was in charge of the North Fortress, he must be a talented person. To be able to manage both the food market and the military camp at the same time was already shocking enough in my eyes.
I didn't walk too far, I just wandered around the mercenary camp and the camp of an independent army next to it: The latter claimed to be the army of a lord of the Empire, 'Archduke Hector'. Since it was already a regular military camp, I didn't enter it: There was nothing to see anyway.
"Yo, the boss is back?"
Just as I returned to my family's tent, I heard Icetis's carefree voice coming from the front. Looking towards the direction of the voice, I saw the female gangster sitting in front of the bonfire, waving her hand vigorously. Lin Xue, who was beside her, nudged Icetis with her elbow, "It's our boss. You Fireball Third Cultivator, don't cause trouble."
I cheerfully walked over and sat between Lin Xue and Shallow Shallow. The latter excitedly came up to me and nibbled on my cheek, then turned around and continued to use a stick to stir the firewood in the bonfire. This girl has always been interested in camping and bonfire dinners, and I expressed my understanding of it: She's used to living in the high-tech Shadow City, so it's actually quite interesting to experience this kind of primitive lifestyle once in a while.
"Where's the dinner we agreed on?" I looked at Icetis, then looked at Visca, who was sitting on the other side of Shallow Shallow. The two of them had excitedly announced that they were going to prepare dinner. Even though I had many doubts about their 'culinary skills', their cooking skills were definitely better than Sandora's, so I let them fool around. It was already getting late, and I was very curious about what they had prepared.
"Don't worry, it's sumptuous," Icetis casually pulled out a floating tray from behind her. On it was a large pile of steaming hot bowls, emitting a rich aroma. "Spare ribs in scallion oil, dried seafood, tender beef in soup, seaweed and shrimp, and also chicken stewed with mushrooms. It's just that they were soaked for a little too long …"
After a while, I slurped the mushroom noodles that had almost turned into a lump of Master Kong Chicken Stewed Mushroom Noodles, and told Visca earnestly, "In the future, try not to get involved in things that you're not familiar with, understand? Especially when it's Icetis's idea, you can't get involved — Let's just eat the ready-made rations that we brought from home tomorrow. "
Visca and Pandora were holding large bowls that were bigger than their heads, sharing the same bowl of noodles. The former nodded his head vigorously, almost knocking Pandora's head into the bowl …
"It's not bad to do this once in a while," Miss Lin seemed to be very happy. She picked up a small piece of noodles and fed it to Jingle, who was leaning on the side of her bowl. Then, she looked around and her tone suddenly changed, "Every day in the City of Shadows, we have to face 'national affairs', armies, worlds, races, and the rise and fall of the universe. Slowly, it seems that we are like those Empire soldiers who only know how to do things, sweep, sweep, and sweep … If we can't solve a problem, then sweep … Blockhead, if we don't have this opportunity, do you think that one day, we will forget that the places that we have swept through are actually people who can cry and laugh? Look around you … "
Even though Lin Xue seemed to have said it casually, I was stunned.
Even though we would wander around the macro world every day in the Empire District and mingle with everyone, how long has it been since we came into contact with a new world that hasn't been touched by the Empire? We didn't descend as invincible, nor did we observe from the perspective of a savior. We didn't bring an army, nor did we have any plans to conquer the world. We just came into contact with the locals like tourists and lived with them for a period of time — How long has it been since we came into contact with them?
When we went to Vanilla's homeland, we had the thought of testing the faith of the Crow God. When we went to the world of Mellowa's rebel army, we had the goal of quelling the rebellion. Even when we came into contact with the natives of those worlds, we observed and planned from a detached perspective … Even though I knew that there was nothing wrong with my mentality, there was still something wrong with the reality.
Only this time, the situation was slightly different.
I looked at the tent behind me and the bustling mercenary camp in the distance. The metal plate that Joseph had given me was still in my bosom. The blockhead was still waiting for us to go and look for him tomorrow. We were interacting with the locals and living together in an "inefficient" way that we hadn't done for a long time. So far, we hadn't summoned any superpowers to tear apart the truth of this world (in this regard, we had to thank the deterrence of the Fallen Apostles). By the standards of the Shiring Apostles, this was a bit of a waste of time, but I felt that there might be some meaning to it.
Although Bryndis had said that our whole family had an ability to maintain our temperament (you could say that we were simple-minded), it would be a good thing if we could use this simple-minded talent to remind ourselves to pay attention to the people and things that are easy to ignore through other methods.
My gaze fell on Bryndis. I didn't know when this carefree female gangster had become our 'leader'. She had been the one who had planned our actions for the past two days. Even coming to the North Fortress had been her idea. It was hard to say if there really was some kind of foresight behind these decisions. But when she noticed my gaze on her, Icetis simply looked up and rolled her eyes at me. "Hurry up and eat. We are still studying the forbidden books. The louse spirit has already copied a portion of the books."
Who cares? It's not my style to overthink things.
We quickly finished this "sumptuous" dinner and then came to the tent in the middle. Icetis took out three thick, coatless books from her dimensional pocket and threw them on the short table. "These are the three most representative books of the forbidden books. One is a history book of an extinct race, one is a folk tale and poem, and the last one is an ancient encyclopedia of the continent."
Shallow Shallow immediately rushed forward and grabbed one of the books, flipping through it. "Hey, why is it still warm? You have body heat in your dimensional pocket too? "
"Didn't you say that it was just copied?" Icetis glanced at Shallow Shallow. "It's just the heat produced by divine arts. Oh yeah, the second half of these books are temporarily blank. The louse spirit isn't very powerful, so there was a data loss during the copying process. I am getting them to retransmit it. "
I picked up one of the so-called "forbidden books" and flipped through it. The second half of the book was indeed blank, but large paragraphs of text and pictures were rapidly appearing on the white paper. There were some mistakes in the copying process, so the text on the page would be erased and reprinted in front of me. The amazing thing was that every page of the book that was copied using divine arts had a very faint watermark on it that didn't affect the reading. There was a line of words on the watermark: Reading pirated version, if possible, please support the original.
"… Icetis, your divine arts are really human-like."
The female pervert swung her hair proudly (this time, she really slapped Visca). "Tsk, the cigarette box even has the words' smoking is harmful to your health 'printed on it. No matter what, I am still a goddess, so I have to pretend that I have professional ethics. Besides, adding this line of words will make it easier for me to pass the examination when I apply for a patent at the Pantheon. Those old antiques all have holes in their brains. It's okay for others to make anything, but when it comes to guarding against me, it's like guarding against a thief."
Beads of sweat formed on my forehead. Who knew how many strange and bizarre "divine arts" this goddess, who considered herself a technological geek and a top scholar, had researched. These divine arts could destroy the heavens and the earth, and the smaller ones were similar to "sharpening a pencil to never break." I didn't know how her brain worked, but it was undeniable that she was a genius in a certain sense. A so-called genius didn't mean that you had to research the theory of relativity to change the world. Sometimes, if you could explain why there was static electricity when you took off a sweater in the winter, but there was no static electricity when you took off a sweater in the summer, that was also a genius. Back when I was watching television, I was stimulated by those little inventors. For a period of time, I was obsessed with researching why there was no static electricity when you took off a sweater in the summer. I felt that if I succeeded in my research, I might be able to stay on a local TV station for five minutes. Later, just as I was about to succeed, my big sister cut me off. She told me that the reason why there was no static electricity when you took off a sweater in the summer was because no one wore sweaters in the summer …
I casually flipped through the book in my hand. It should be the folklore that Icetis mentioned — a folklore from before the first Dark Moon War. Such a large book seemed to be about the same size as the Goddess's bible. The other two books that Shallow shallow and Lin Xue were holding were similarly large. It was obviously unrealistic for me to read them word by word, so I could only roughly flip through them.
Previously, when I was researching the Goddess's bible, I discovered that the Goddess's religion had completely cut off the history before the first Dark Moon War, turning all knowledge before the war into folklore in the name of the "Age of Heaven". They forbade any academic organization apart from the Goddess's church from studying that period of history. This was obviously abnormal.
Under normal circumstances, there would only be two reasons why ancient history would be treated as folklore. The first reason was that humans were far too primitive back then, living a life where they used rocks to cut their meat and smeared grass juice on their faces to pretend that they were possessed by God. Such an ancient era would naturally become no different from a legend due to the lack of written records. The second reason was that it would be a war of extinction. Not only that, but the scale of such a war would be enough to reduce the entire world's population to 10% or even less, as well as completely destroy all traces of civilization. Indeed, every intelligent species' civilization would often be attacked by war. However, in many cases, their strength and ability to "fake their deaths" would be astonishing. Shallow Shallow's dad could piece together what an ancient civilization that had been extinct for thousands of years ate every day from a pile of broken tiles. Therefore, any traces of civilization left behind by intelligent creatures would not be so easily erased.
Therefore, it was obviously not right that the history before the first Dark Moon War was regarded as an "ancient legend". Although the scale of the five wars was huge, the people on Earth still knew how to use the teleportation station. This meant that their civilization had not been completely cut off by the war. Then, where was the real history before the first war?
It was in the books that we had in our hands.
The teachings of the Goddess's religion described the history before the first war as an era of "great rule" in which all races were at peace and the world was in harmony. They called it the glorious term "Age of Heaven". Considering that most intelligent species grew up amidst the smoke of war, and civilizations with multiple species living together would have catastrophic wars every few days, it would be a miracle if a world with multiple species could live in harmony, even if it could only develop into a nation in relative peace, and it would certainly be enough to be called a 'heavenly world'.
However, after flipping through the book for a few minutes, I saw at least four or five folklore stories in the background of racial discrimination and wars between countries …
Qian Qian was flipping through a history book. That book was even more exaggerated: it was recorded from the perspective of a bystander by another race. It depicted the process of a small race known as the 'Forest Goblins' being exterminated by the monsters!
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