As Iver arranged matters concerning these migrants, he pondered something else.
He was thinking...
What had Adil ultimately wanted to say, but never had the chance to say?
According to Adil's secret, the great desert of the Parthian Ancient Kingdom had actually been caused by the sin thorns buried beneath it.
The sin thorns constantly absorbed water. As long as they continued to be satisfied, they would not grow. But this could also be put the other way around: water could seal the sin thorns and put them to sleep. If they received no water, they would gradually become active and grow upward... just like people drinking alcohol.
Although these two possibilities were completely opposite in essence, they appeared exactly the same.
Therefore, the water that the good lords actually received—"enough for several hundred people"—was far more than what ordinary people needed to drink.
What people could drink was... the portion of water left over after satisfying the sin thorns.
That was why almost all the good lords used various forms of decorative art to "waste water"!
On one hand, it displayed their extravagance. They could casually squander something that ordinary people did not even have enough to drink, thereby demonstrating their power and status;
On the other hand—water itself was meant to be sprinkled onto the ground. The rivers and lakes they built around the oases were actually "watering" the sin thorns. So putting on a flashy show before watering them did not affect the essence of the matter at all.
From this perspective, Iver could understand why Adil was so proud of this tradition. The first good lords, those Taboo Mages who had left the Tower to the Heavens, had most likely been trying to seal the sin thorns beneath them. They had chosen the taboo spell they