Chapter 323 — Our Path

The news Suojilin brought was of vital importance.

Anyone with even a modicum of sense could recognize what impact this would have on the current tense Typhon-Ansu situation.

For Gao Yang, this was both bad news and good news. The bad news went without saying—he had been worried about this ever since he crawled out of his coffin and saw the vast swarm of aberrants outside (all that grinding in the last patch, wasted). He worried about the Great Wall's growing decay, worried about more and more aberrants breaking free from that wasteland to assault the human world. The attack on Typhon's border meant the last aberrant incident had been far more severe than imagined—the few thousand monsters Cecil Territory faced were merely a portion of the aberrants that had breached the Great Wall. But on the other hand, the emergence of these aberrants, the great enemy of civilization, might also delay the war...

Delay the war between Ansu and Typhon.

Rebecca, ever slow on such matters, only grasped the significance of this after Heidi prompted her. She blinked her eyes and looked at Gao Yang with curious intent: "Ancestor, if the King and the Emperor over in Typhon both realize the aberrant threat, won't they stop fighting?"

But Gao Yang could only shatter the girl's hopes: "Ansu and Typhon will inevitably go to war—it's only a matter of when."

This was the conclusion Gao You had reached after analyzing the current state of the human nations.

Rebecca clearly could not work out how that conclusion had been derived, and even Amber, the craftiest of them all, wore a look of utter bewilderment. Only Heidi, brows slightly furrowed, showed a thoughtful expression. Seeing this, Gao Yang did not hold back—he took the opportunity to give everyone present a lesson:

"Typhon has developed rapidly and is now exceedingly powerful, but in truth it has reached a critical turning point, a bottleneck—the most dangerous moment for it. Through repeated successful domestic reforms, Typhon has achieved tremendous growth in population, economy, and military. Yet rapid development has also sown hidden dangers. On one hand, increased productivity means increased efficiency in resource consumption; this behemoth needs to devour vast resources to complete its society's final transformation. On the other, Typhon's population has grown too fast, while its officials and domestic nobles lack effective new means of management. That enormous population is gradually transforming into a crushing pressure upon the empire.

"Whether to absorb 'nourishment' or to release pressure, Typhon must find an external outlet.

"And there is something even more important: Emperor Luoyan Augustus's reforms have deepened to the point of touching noble interests. Whether it is centralizing legislative power under the crown or the nationwide reassessment of landed nobles, both have profoundly provoked the sensitive nerves of those traditional aristocrats. Though Emperor Luoyan used an iron hand and his personal ability to suppress the backlash and push the reforms through, that pressure has never been released.

"Domestic economic growth has indeed brought considerable benefits to Typhon's landed nobles, but those benefits clearly have not been enough to satisfy the greedy fellows who lost so many privileges in the reforms. Emperor Luoyan still needs to find more dividends—more dividends to prove the correctness of his grand strategy—to feed those still-discontented vassals, or to use the process of seeking dividends to 'naturally and reasonably eliminate those who cannot keep up with the times.'

"A foreign war is the best choice—it can solve nearly every problem Typhon faces after its reforms.

"Typhon already rules all the lands of the eastern continent. Its expansion now can only go in two directions. To the south lies the Highland Kingdom, which is clearly unsuitable. The Highland Kingdom has the closest ties with the Silver Empire, and the Silver Elves' Sun Vault hangs in the sky above the southern strait, monitoring the vast Ancestral Forest on the Highland Kingdom's border. Do you think that if Typhon marched through the Ancestral Forest to invade another nation, the Silver Elves would simply stand by and watch?

"So Typhon really has only one choice—to go north, and make a sacrifice of Ansu. Among the four human nations, only Ansu suffered the deadly Fogmoon Civil War; its national strength has declined most severely. How could the Typhonians resist?"

Rebecca listened in a daze as Gao Yang finished his analysis, the bewilderment never once leaving her eyes. Still, her mind was not slow (probably). Though she could not have worked these things out herself, she could at least follow them. Her brow furrowed on the spot: "So that means... even if the two countries don't fight this time, in a few years—as long as those monsters don't stir up anything bigger—Ansu and Typhon will still go to war?!"

"That is inevitable," Gao Yan nodded. "And even if the aberrants emerge a few more times, as long as the Great Wall itself does not collapse, the two nations will still go to war regardless of cost. Typhon can no longer afford to wait. Luoyan Augustus is already past middle age, and he seems to have no particularly capable heir. So as long as he cannot resolve the hidden dangers of his reforms within his lifetime—or even within his prime—then Typhon's golden age will inevitably turn into disaster as that emperor ages. Luoyan himself understands this, and our King can see it too."

"...There are such complicated reasons behind this war..." Rebecca said blankly. "Ancestor, how do you see through all this? You've only just been revived, yet you seem to understand things better than any of us..."

See enough, and experience comes naturally. For many things, one glimpse of a sprout is enough to reconstruct the whole chain of cause and effect to near-perfect accuracy. Such is the underlying power of the Satellite Spirit...

Gao Yang shook his head: "There is nothing new under the sun. This world has not changed in a thousand years."

Saying "Satellite Spirit" outright would mean nothing to anyone, but put this way... though still no one understood, it was clearly far more impressive.

"Old friend, if I didn't know your history, I'd be curious how you came up with all this," Suojilin said with a strange expression, shaking his head. "The you of back then would have disdained thinking about such things. Usually, if something displeased you, you just cut it down."

Gao Yang sighed: "That was because back then everyone was poor and bare, surrounded by nothing but magical beasts and barbarians. Diplomatic means were useless—when trouble came, you just barreled through. Now we're all civilized people. Who wouldn't rather use their brains a bit more?"

"Civilized people..." Suojilin caught that word from Gao Dai, and a trace of emotion surfaced on his face, all of it then collapsing into a long sigh.

Just as Gao Yang was about to ask curiously why he sighed, the elven ranger asked a question first: "Old friend, tell me—why did we lead those hundreds of thousands, even millions of refugees across the wasteland back then, to found a kingdom in this barren land?"

The question came abruptly. Gao Yi was briefly taken aback, while Heidi, Rebecca, Amber, and even Pi Yun standing nearby all showed expressions of mild curiosity, seeming eager to hear Gao Song's answer.

After two seconds of silence, Gao Ji smiled: "To put it grandly—to lead the people out of hardship, to protect and preserve our civilization. To put it plainly—just to survive. To let everyone survive."

"Yes, even the plainest wish was to let everyone survive," Suojilin smiled bitterly, the cold night of crossing the Eastern Frontier surfacing again and again in his mind. "But do you know? On this very land we conquered together back then, many people can no longer survive."

"Have you heard of something called the Tenant Rent Amnesty Act?"