The Fire-Bearer

Even now, Gu Hang still couldn't be sure whether Yan Fangxu being trapped was actually part of Hodgson's warning.

If it was, then the Primal Angry Owl Sect was more capable than he'd thought. They had not only mastered the Storm Sorcery granted by the evil god they worshipped, but had also, to some extent, figured out how to control those mutated monsters?

But if it wasn't, then it was an awfully big coincidence.

He had also wondered whether this could be a diversion.

Trap Yan Fangxu, draw the camp's main force away to rescue him, and then attack the camp?

But Gu Hang quickly dismissed the idea.

It was unlikely.

If his enemies were simply the mutated monsters, then they probably weren't smart enough to pull that off.

If his enemies were a cult, or worse, certain people in the Alliance government, then destroying Gu Hang's camp wouldn't be worth much to them. After all, whether he was causing trouble for cultists or for the Alliance government, his greatest asset was his authority as governor.

As long as he was alive, what did it matter if his camp was destroyed? Those people would still have plenty of trouble on their hands.

Of course, it wasn't entirely impossible. If Gu Hang didn't personally lead the rescue force, the enemy might attack the camp to seize the opportunity to kill him.

And if he led the rescue himself, he would have to be prepared for an ambush.

Either way, this was going to be difficult.

But Gu Hang wasn't one to agonize over things.

The challenge had come, so he would face it head-on.

In Revival City, Hodgson sat in his wheelchair, gazing out over the entire city through the enormous glass window of his office.

Revival City wasn't especially large, nor did it have many high-rises. The buildings and roads within the city were laid out in orderly fashion, thanks to the solid foundations laid by the first governor when he established the Alliance.

But after all these years, although the inner city still looked decent, the much larger outer city, sprawled beyond its walls, had become chaotic. Hundreds of thousands, nearly a million people depended on the city for their livelihood, yet had no chance of living inside the walls. Beyond them, they had built a sprawling slum.

There was no planning and little order. Everything was a mess. Flooded with sewage, short on supplies, and mired in hardship, the area was nothing like what one would expect of a planetary capital.

Many Alliance councilors and inner-city residents despised the drifters. They believed these people brought chaos, and that the slums were a den of vice.

But the more perceptive among them understood that Revival City couldn't do without those people.

The drifters living in the outer city ate the worst and scarcest food, had no decent clothes, and lived in ramshackle shelters. The inner-city residents gave them no public services or social protections, yet made them do the hardest work and paid them a pittance—just enough to keep them alive.

Without them, how could the inner-city residents enjoy their comfortable lives? How could the councilors amass fortunes far beyond what their contributions deserved?

So these clever people would occasionally show a little compassion. They'd give the drifters more work, as if they were truly trying to save them.

But they had no intention of seeking better lives for those who weren't even considered residents.

Give nearly a million drifters a good life? Unthinkable. The inner-city residents were already unhappy with their own lot—how could they spare the energy to care about the people outside? Their only mercy was letting fewer of them die.

The truly perceptive might have glimpsed the crisis hidden among the low shacks beyond the city walls.

Beneath those lowered eyes and numb, silent faces, wasn't there anger?

The fire had already flared up countless times. But each spark was too weak. Some resistance was crushed by the immense inertia of this distorted system; other times, the unarmed were scattered by police and soldiers armed to the teeth.

In the end, none of those sparks had grown into a blaze capable of burning everything down.

But that day would come, sooner or later. All that was missing was a fuse—and someone to carry the torch.

Hodgson knew he was one of the more perceptive people. He could see all this, but that was the limit of his wisdom. He couldn't find a solution, and he had no ability to unite and rally everyone. He couldn't even control the Alliance Council.

Some people on the council were secretly supporting the cult. He didn't know.

Someone had dared to attack supplies being sent to the governor. He couldn't stop them.

The endless obstruction from the police and military when he tried to investigate the cult, along with the council's ceaseless arguments and questioning, had left him exhausted.

More than once, he'd felt that he really was getting old.

But he didn't dare step back.

The investigation into the cult had begun as an order from the governor, one that had thrown Revival City's political scene into turmoil. But once Hodgson had truly begun digging, he'd sensed something was wrong. The fuse he had feared, the one who would carry the torch, seemed to have appeared.

"Grandpa."

Lambert Hodgson pushed open the office door.

Old Hodgson didn't turn around. He only asked, "Any results?"

"We still haven't traced where the supplies went. Councilor Marion denies they ever passed through her hands, and two investigators assigned to that lead have gone missing. We found a lot of Angry Owl statues in the outer city. According to witness statements, they came from a relief station. A squad of officers tried to search the place, but it triggered a small riot among the drifters, and they came back empty-handed. By the time we sent more people, the place had already been burned down..."

Old Hodgson sighed heavily. "We're in serious trouble this time."

Lambert agreed with his grandfather's assessment, and that was precisely why he felt so helpless.

He asked, "At first, I thought the governor was just making trouble for us. But as we kept investigating, what we found was enough to make my blood run cold. Those cultists are planning something major in Revival City, but we still don't have any clear intelligence... What do we do next? The governor may well be attacked. Shouldn't we send support?"

"Who would we send? I can't even be sure that the people we send might not be the very ones who attack the governor. The governor may think the same way. He won't trust us easily."

"Even so, we have to make our position clear." Lambert was firm now. "I'll go, with a team I can trust completely."

"Do you know what that means?"

"I do. We'll have to endure the governor's suspicions, while the councilors will think we've thrown our lot in with him. We'll be caught between them."

He was describing a grim outcome, but with every word, Lambert's voice grew more resolute.

"But I understand now what you meant when you said, 'Only the governor can save this world.' We can't be sure this is the governor you meant, but at least he seems a little different from the ones who came before. He's chosen a path no previous governor dared to take, and he has the support of a starship that no previous governor had. I want to take a chance. If he isn't the governor we're hoping for, then I'll do everything I can to help him become one."

"We don't have time to wait for more governors. This whole planet is longing for revival, and the sooner, the better. I'm willing to make a contribution now instead of waiting in silence. It's far more worthwhile to help move history forward than to sit around waiting for the times to change, then scramble to climb aboard."

The young man voiced his lofty ideals before his elder, while the older man watched him in silence.

After a long while, Hodgson let out a deep breath. "I'm very old. In this wasteland, people my age have long since lived enough. I can't make any bolder decisions. You've always been better than your father. If this is what you want to do, then go and do it."