"The Restless Souls come and go. If they have lingering attachments from their past lives, they may stay for a while, but ultimately they will all return to the realm of the dead." Arthas looked up at the Lordaeron City and laughed bitterly.
"What I didn't expect was that the entrance to the World of the Dead would be the Lordaeron City."
What is the world of the dead? This was a question Arthas deeply avoided.
Robbie's malicious speculation was probably something Arthas himself didn't understand.
"Guardian Medivh absolutely cannot die; if he dies..."
Arthas's voice was filled with resentment. "Countless Restless Souls will burst forth from the world of the dead, return to the mortal realm, and tear his soul to pieces with their own hands, just as the Orgrimmar Doomhammer."
The twisted terror Orgrimmar felt before his death was even deeper than the fear Thrall instilled in him.
In the world of death, all beings are equal. The Orcs in Orgrimmar lost his physical advantage, and in the moment before his death, he saw countless Restless Souls coming toward him, all of whom were the people he had slaughtered.
It tore at his soul, clawing and biting at it, until it turned to ashes, utterly silent, leaving only eternal despair.
"I wonder what will become of my father after his death," Arthas shook his head in anguish.
The two entered the city and walked the streets of Lordaeron, witnessing firsthand that this famous human city was completely different from what they had imagined.
The two felt as if they were walking in a vast, silent wilderness, with the buildings on either side of the street resembling sand dunes in a desert.
Many shops were open, but there was no hawking of goods. People rarely talked; they were all conserving their energy to survive.
Occasionally, you'll encounter pedestrians who are as thin as skeletons, listless, and walk so slowly it's worrying, as if they might collapse at any moment.
During this period in Lordaeron, it was difficult to distinguish between the living and the dead.
The entirety of Lordaeron was like a slow-motion slideshow, with everyone moving in a slow, mechanical manner.
Many more people stayed at home, just getting through each day.
Robbie saw the two Mage Apprentices who had followed Jaina. After Jaina returned, they were banished from the Dalár. Now, the two were standing on the streets of Lordaeron, handing out magical bread to passersby.
The pedestrians didn't fight or scramble; they lined up patiently without making a fuss. Firstly, they didn't have the energy to fight, but more importantly, after reaching the extreme of hunger, they lost interest in food, which became dispensable.
Living is a kind of suffering.
This is a city where, even in peacetime, the streets are littered with the corpses of the starving.
Even without the Orcs attacking, there's no telling when the entire royal city will be deserted.
Perhaps destruction will come with the next time the Silver Hand plunders its resources.
"To eat or not to eat, that is the question."
This was the longest sentence Robbie and Arthas heard after entering the city.
A young man finished his small piece of magic bread and muttered to himself. Looking at the bread, he frowned in confusion, as if he had forgotten how to eat. He tried to take a bite and lost three teeth.
The young man slowly bent down, his movements like those of an eighty or ninety-year-old man suffering from illness, carefully picking up his teeth and gently rubbing them. Suddenly, he saw Robbie and Arthas and let out a low gasp.
"You are foreign envoys, aren't you?" the young man asked softly, valuing his strength.
Among a group of emaciated, skeletal humans, Robbie and Arthas's flesh stood out like an elephant suddenly appearing in the desert. In truth, Robbie felt he was living a miserable life these days, subsisting on magical bread and having to share half with Arthas, but compared to the people of Lordaeron, he was practically living in paradise.
Robbie was very glad he brought the "Spell Staff" that could make magical bread, otherwise he would have gone crazy from hunger.
Arthas stared at the young man's emaciated face and asked, "What do you usually eat?"
"Haha, outsider. 'Eat'—that word is almost extinct in Lordaeron. We usually just drink Soakwater."
The young man grinned wryly, then said with a hint of pride, "These days, who doesn't have a few Undead relatives?"
"What does 'Soakwater' mean?" Arthas, confused.
"Only the Undead can get their hands on this Soakwater," the young man said slowly and clearly. "There are seventeen people in my family, and everyone except me turned into the Undead on their own. The Soakwater we got is just enough for me to drink."
"You still haven't told me what Soakwater means?" Arthas asked again.
"The mages of Dalaran forbid us to talk about it, but since we're all going to die anyway, we're not afraid of losing face." The young man didn't dare bite into the magic bread, lest he burp out his teeth from the soft texture, and could only lick it little by little with his tongue.
"A great secret lies hidden beneath Tirisfal Glades. If Undead buries themselves in the ground and leaves their head exposed, a white, frost-like substance will grow on their head. This substance can be scraped off, soaked in water, and used to satisfy hunger; we call it 'Soakwater.'"
"But drinking this Soakwater for a long time is very problematic, and this is the result." The young man examined his teeth, his pain evident. "Look, the people of Lordaeron are all like this."
He then took a deep breath.
"May King Terenas's soul never find peace," the young man murmured.
"May King Terenas' soul never find peace," the surrounding people chanted in unison.
May the soul of King Terenas never find peace.
This sound coalesced into a torrent, spreading like a terrifying Plague Lordaeron.
Robbie pondered why the people of Lordaeron, trapped in such a dire situation, did not know how to resist.
The standard of living for ordinary people on the Azeroth Continent is similar to that of medieval Europe.
This reminded Robbie of ancient China during the same period.
Throughout history, dynasties have changed hands, emperors have been incompetent, politics have been corrupt, eunuchs have seized power, land has been annexed, and foreign tribes have invaded.
These are all secondary factors.
There is only one reason that truly plays a decisive role.
Not enough to eat.
A piece of land can support a fixed number of people, but in peacetime, the population multiplies. With more people, there is not enough food, which inevitably leads to national chaos, various conflicts, the fall of dynasties, war, and a sharp decline in population. Then a new dynasty is established, and the cycle begins again.
This is the law of Heavenly Dao, the inevitable trend, the historical root that determined the thousands of years of feudal dynasties, which cannot be defied by human power.
Faced with the hunger of the people, even the most brilliant emperor is powerless. Just like Chongzhen, the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, his biggest mistake was being born at the wrong time.
But this did not happen on the Azeroth Continent.
After thinking about it carefully, Robbie understood.
Unlike Earth, the Azeroth Continent is a world of high magic and powerful martial arts.
There is magic, there is Holy Light, there are all sorts of mysterious powers.
The Order of the Silver Hand roamed Lordaeron like humanoid monsters.
Moreover, Medivh is an incredibly powerful being, almost like a nuclear weapon.
Resistance was futile; they could only accept their fate.
In his dream, King Terenas saw countless Orcs storming into the Royal Palace. Leading them was a tall Orcs wearing black plate armor, who grinned savagely and terrifyingly, opening his blood-red maw and swallowing King Terenas's head whole.
"Thrall!"
King Terenas awoke from a nightmare to find his pajamas soaked with cold sweat.
Several palace ladies carrying lanterns walked over.
The older female official lowered her head, her sharp gaze fixed on the King's eyes.
"I call him an old bastard, do you agree?"