True Blood of the Blood Clan, Undercurrents in the Holy City

On the eve of the Blood Moon Season's end, Herian stood at the edge of the Graymist Defense Zone, watching the cleanup teams advance along their planned routes.

He came from the Holy City's Purification Court. As one of the senior Purification Officers accompanying the Anointed One's vanguard, he was responsible for helping deal with the contamination left in the Graymist Defense Zone and several surrounding defense zones.

Under the Tear Knight Governor's arrangements, he was to coordinate the cleanup teams with Sheen, the Long Night Lord, and ensure order was restored to the Graymist Defense Zone and its surroundings as quickly as possible.

The distant ruins had yet to fall entirely quiet. Collapsed bone pillars lay half-buried in the Frozen Tundra, and remnants of Gray Blood tissue occasionally twitched. The purification soldiers quickly hooked them free with iron hooks, then scattered Sacred Ash and Condensation Salt over them.

Herian watched for a while and recalled what he had thought when he first arrived in Blackpine more than ten days ago.

Back then, he could not understand why the Holy City had assigned the Anointed One's vanguard to work with a fifteen-year-old Long Night Lord.

Fifteen was far too young.

Among the border nobles Herian had known, most people that age were still learning about fief affairs. Being able to manage the daily affairs of an Inland castle independently would already have been impressive.

And a Long Night Lord who could independently establish a domain along the Eternal Night Wall was one in ten thousand.

As for a boy in his teens directing the subsequent Purification of high-tier contamination and the postwar recovery of tens of thousands after a battle on the scale of the one in the Graymist Defense Zone—Herian could not imagine it.

He had read the battle