Half a month later.
Hysilens returned to Okhema alone.
Her steps were no longer as brisk as before, and an inescapable gloom hung over her brow.
She brought back the Ocean Core Flame, shimmering with an azure glow. Its moist aura made the air throughout Okhema feel a little fresher.
But she also brought news of Kryudera's death.
When she delivered the news, her voice was dry, like reefs scoured by sea winds.
As for the details, she pressed her lips tightly together, seemingly unwilling to say more.
Her eyes, too, seemed veiled by an unshakable sea mist.
Yet the two geniuses' access permissions to Amphoreus had indeed been unlocked. Kryudera had fulfilled her final promise with her life.
As for why she had died and what exactly had happened, Yan Huan looked into Hysilens's eyes, which concealed complicated emotions, and swallowed the questions on the tip of his tongue.
He merely patted Hysilens's tense shoulder gently, then swiftly summoned several steady ministers and arranged a grand funeral for Kryudera with the highest honors.
At the summit of Dawn Cloud Cliff, drifting clouds unfurled and rolled.
"There shouldn't be any problems now, right?" Yan Huan took a deep breath, as if trying to suppress all his tangled emotions.
He took the stack of documents Aglaea handed him, his fingertips sliding over the pages as he examined them carefully.
The documents recorded the cultivation progress of the Kexia Seeds in detail.
Though they did not mature overnight through strange rules as they had when the Mystic Realm restaurant first opened, a maturation cycle of one week was still astonishing.
Golden waves of wheat seemed to sway within the report itself. The food supply of Okhema and even more dependent city-states would no longer be a rope tightening around their necks.