The nobles of Silvermine City were celebrating.
Gao Kan, meanwhile, was spurring his horse onward, hoping to rise from obscurity to prominence.
But at the center of it all was Lux, who had come to Silvermine City to investigate and provide disaster relief and was supposed to be "recuperating in bed." She had secretly changed into a commoner girl's clothes and quietly ridden off.
Her fair skin had now become a problem. Along the way, Lux had realized that ordinary farm girls her age simply did not have skin as fair as hers.
Fortunately, the all-purpose Karya always had ingenious solutions.
He taught Lux some fascinating disguise techniques.
With some naturally pigmented berries and wheat flour, Lux could turn her fair skin into a healthy wheat-brown.
Unmilled wheat grains could serve as her "pimples," while incompletely removed wheat bran could be arranged into adorable "freckles."
After this disguise, Lux looked like an entirely different person. With the addition of a large hat that was obviously too big for her head, she had gone from a noble lady to a commoner girl.
The only slightly jarring detail was her sword. After all, ordinary families did not own swords.
To deal with that, Lux designed herself the identity of a "hunter's daughter." Hunters preferred skinning knives, but she was a girl!
Choosing a slightly prettier sword was perfectly acceptable even in martial Demacia.
Besides, if Lux behaved somewhat differently from a country girl, she could explain it by saying, "She usually studies hunting and doesn't know how to farm."
The person traveling with her was the most skilled guard in the group. He had exchanged his usual weapon for a hunting bow and was playing Lux's uncle—a hunter as well.
He had brought his niece here from Irondale to visit relatives.
Oh, he should be "Skola's uncle." To be cautious, Lux had also reversed her name.
And so, after a thorough disguise, she finally arrived at the outskirts of Silvermine City as a commoner.
Unlike Demacian Imperial Capital, which stood along the coast, Silvermine City was a plateau city.
It had the Dragon Ridge Mountains behind it to the north, while to the south lay the boundless Demacian Great Plains. It occupied an important transportation route.
When spring arrived, the snow and ice on the southern foothills of the Dragon Ridge Mountains melted into countless streams among the mountains. Guided by canals, these streams eventually flowed into Silvermine City's lake.
Half natural and half man-made, this lake provided Silvermine City with abundant water resources. It could irrigate farmland and support shipping. Although it took a long time to travel by carriage from Demacian Imperial Capital to Silvermine City, going the other way meant traveling downstream, covering a thousand li in a day.
Even better, because of Silvermine City's rich underground mineral resources, the great lake almost never froze. Thus, unless the city encountered a once-in-a-century cold wave, its waters protected it throughout the year.
Silvermine City was broadly divided into two parts.
The inner-city fortress in the lake was the noble district and the military district. It had been built on a natural hill at the center of the lake, with high ground and water on all sides. Even if the northern barbarians starved themselves mad and descended upon it in full force, they still could not do anything to this fortress.
Scattered around the lake were the other districts: the agricultural district, commercial district, handicraft district, and so on. These areas had low but complete walls, allowing them to support one another if war broke out.
Precisely because it combined military, agricultural, and commercial functions, Silvermine City held immense strategic importance throughout northern Demacia. Together with Freljord to the west and Irondale to the east, it was known as Demacia's "Three Northern Towns."
Returning to Silvermine City after so many years, Lux's eyes were filled with wonder.
Its population was nowhere near that of Demacia City, but it was still quite prosperous.
The lake's sweet water was like the source of life, nourishing the fertile fields nestled among the mountains, fields reclaimed through the efforts of dozens of generations of Demacians.
It was early winter. Almost no streams flowed down from the snowy mountains anymore, yet the great lake of Silvermine City still held abundant water. There were not many farmers working in the fields, but everywhere was brimming with life.
By the time Lux reached the outskirts of Silvermine City's outer district, night had fallen.
The bright moon had just risen. Lux did not hurry into the city. Instead, according to plan, she began looking for a farmhouse where they could spend the night. After expressing her willingness to pay, she and the guard successfully settled down in a village.
The village chief was a kindly-looking old man. He accepted the introduction fee, then helped Lux and the guard find a family with an empty room and arranged for them to stay there.
This was not a particularly well-off family.
According to the head of the household, the empty room had originally belonged to his daughter. She had gone to the inner city to work as a maid, so the room had been vacated.
By commoner standards, the room was fairly clean. But in Lux's eyes, this level of cleanliness was still extremely sloppy.
Lux did not consider herself a neat freak, but once she actually lay down on such a bed, she found herself unable to sleep no matter how she turned.
"Is this how commoners live?" Lux gripped the hilt of her sword. "Karya, why don't they wash the blankets more thoroughly?"
"You mean the duvet cover, right? Frequent washing makes the cover wear out easily," Karya replied. "Besides, washing one is troublesome, and most people don't have time to clean them regularly. Summer is fine, but washing a duvet cover in winter really isn't a good idea."
"That's true..." Lux nodded and simply decided not to sleep. "Forget it. Let's go take a look outside. I want to see the nearby farmland. You can also teach me what frost damage is."
After the household had gone to sleep, Lux and the guard put on their coats and arranged the room to look as though two people were sleeping inside. Then they quietly left the courtyard.
Farmland lay not far from the village.
It was currently the overwintering period for winter wheat. The seedlings had stopped growing, each one lying alone against the ground like an inconspicuous weed. They would spend the cold winter this way, then return to green, joint, and grow vigorously when spring warmed the land, continuing until harvest.
Karya had already explained the relevant knowledge about Demacia's winter wheat to Lux.
Here, frost damage to winter wheat was generally divided into two types.
In most regions, the damage occurred when sudden low temperatures struck during the green-up or jointing period. The winter wheat was not very cold-resistant at that point, and the frost froze and ruined it.
In the north, according to the reports submitted by the nobles, the proximity to Freljord meant that, in bad years, winter wheat could be frozen to death directly during the overwintering period. Even when it was at its most cold-resistant, it could not withstand such low temperatures. This was known as hard frost.
Lux's purpose on this trip was to determine whether Silvermine City had suffered hard frost.
Lux crouched in the wheat field and reached toward a seedling.
Following Karya's instructions, she carefully felt the veins on the back of its leaves.
The leaf veins were clear. Even when she pinched one with her fingernail, it had not hardened.
She plucked off several leaves, crushed them, and spread them across her palm. There were no ice crystals.
So... this wheat seedling showed no signs at all of having suffered hard frost.
Lux let out a quiet breath, then walked several dozen steps forward and selected another seedling. It was still fine.
And so, Lux worked in the fields for nearly an hour before finally confirming that all the nearby wheat fields were safe and had suffered no frost damage.
After reaching this conclusion, Lux narrowed her eyes slightly and returned to the room with the guard. She took the map from her pack and marked an X at their current location.
To be continued tomorrow!
After poking around in the farmland for half the night, Lux finally fell asleep when she returned to the room.
The next morning, when Lux woke up, she happened to see the male head of the household pulling a cart back.
"Good morning!" Lux waved. "You're already done with work and back? You got up really early!"
"Got to earn some money!" The man chuckled, leaned the cart against the courtyard wall, and shook out his padded jacket. "I just went into the city and delivered a cartload of firewood. I heard an important person is coming to Silvermine City, and the noble lords in the city are buying firewood at high prices!"
"An important person?" Lux put on a curious expression, though she already had a rough guess. "How did you find that out?"
"My son is a guard in a lord's household!" The farmer, who Lux estimated to be around fifty, looked proud. "That boy's sharp. As soon as he heard the news, he had his sister tell me. Other families are still chopping firewood, but I've already delivered mine!"
Hearing this, Lux felt somewhat happy.
"It's all thanks to the lord's kindness!" Without Lux needing to say anything, the middle-aged man began talking animatedly. "He said that as long as we can prepare armor and a packhorse, my son can join the mounted scouts and become a knight... Oh, a knight's squire!"
"Join the mounted scouts?" Lux recalled the composition of Demacia's armies. "Isn't that for fighting the barbarians in the north?"
"Fighting barbarians is good!" To Lux's surprise, her worried words meant something entirely different to him. "Once he fights the barbarians, with my boy's skills, he'll definitely become a real knight!"
Why was this happening?
Wasn't the right to avoid war and sacrifice one's life a privilege of commoners?
Why did this farmer seem to hope that his son would go to the battlefield?
"I heard the barbarians in the north are very formidable..." Lux could only probe indirectly. "I've only hunted before. I imagine fighting must be even more dangerous..."
"Dangerous? What isn't dangerous?" Instead, the man looked completely unconcerned. "Isn't hunting dangerous too? Even farming can be dangerous. The frost three years ago would've ruined us if my boy hadn't been exempt from needing food... Tsk, tsk, we all depend on the weather. On the battlefield, he can become a knight and a lord. Farming can't make him a lord!"
"..."
"Once he becomes a lord, he'll have his own squire. Then war won't be dangerous anymore. We'll move into the inner city and collect rent. Even if the northern barbarians come, we won't have to fear them!"
"..."
Lux listened patiently to his descriptions and his fantasies, even though an invisible wall seemed to stand between them.
The sturdy man was eloquent and never seemed to run out of things to say. His eyes were filled with yearning.
He sincerely hoped that he could work more and save more money, enough to buy his son a suit of armor and, ideally, gather enough for a horse—even if it was only a packhorse.
As long as his son earned merit on the battlefield, their family could go from farmers to nobles.
Even the lowest-ranking knight was still a noble.
He clearly did not know Lux's identity. He did not know that the "inside information" he had received and the firewood he had chopped in advance had all been for the person standing before him. He was simply happy that he had sold his firewood at a high price and earned a little more money from Lux and her guard.
It was not much money. Perhaps it was only worth a single armor plate or the iron nails for a horseshoe.
But it was enough to make him happy for the entire day.
Lux had learned the art of listening from Sona, and it allowed him to continue rambling on. He did not stop until his wife appeared and handed him several slices of black bread and a bowl of hot soup. The bread, soaked in hot soup, finally plugged his mouth.
His wife was a broad, sturdy woman with smooth, pale golden hair. Taking advantage of the moment, she handed Lux a bowl of soup as well. "Warm yourself up, little girl. Don't bother chatting with him here. He just loves talking nonsense with people..."
Lux accepted the thick soup and, imitating the farmer, casually leaned against the cart before taking a large gulp.
The soup was so salty that Lux almost spat it out, but after Karya reminded her, she forced herself to swallow it.
"Now that's flavorful!" Lux drained the bowl in one go. "I feel full of strength!"
"Heh heh, right?" The farmer had somehow already finished his own portion. "One bowl of soup, and you've got all the strength you need!"
"You certainly talk a lot!" The farmer's wife shot her husband a glare. "Why don't you go rest? Look at you, acting so capable..."
"If I didn't talk so much, could I have gotten our child into a noble lord's household as a guard?" Perhaps feeling that he had lost face in front of outsiders, the farmer shouted loudly. "Being articulate is a skill too!"
"You and your skills... If you're so capable, go chop some wood!"
"I'm a little tired. I think I'll rest instead..."
"..."
"..."
Perhaps the soup had simply been too salty.
Perhaps it was because of something else.
After leaving the lodging fee and saying goodbye to the family, Lux felt a tightness in her chest.
Although she had stayed only one night, and although she did not even know their names, Lux still felt that she had seen and learned a great deal.
At that thought, Lux drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled after a long while.
"Keep going!"
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