The sun sank in the west, and night was eating away at the last dark red glow on the horizon. Nuoyaji sat on a boulder washed pale by the rain, his legs aching as though they were filled with lead. The blisters on his soles had long since burst, sticking to his shoes and socks amid sweat and muddy water. Every movement sent a burning sting through his feet.
He gnawed on the piece of black bread in his hand, already hard as stone, and struggled to swallow it mouthful by mouthful with cool stream water from his waterskin.
"So fucking weak..."
Nuoyaji cursed under his breath, unsure whether he was cursing himself or this scrawny seventeen-year-old body that had yet to be tempered by war.
In his previous life, he had traveled across the continent, from Karelia's frozen borderlands to Liushan's warm coast, from Vostok's snowfields to Saint Junxi's plains. Eating and sleeping in the open had been routine, and he would not have frowned at marching for days on end.
But now, after barely more than half a day's walk from Dawn City, before he had even caught sight of Luoweida, his legs had begun protesting. His knees felt weak, his soles hurt, and once he sat down, he did not even want to stand again.
He braced his aching thighs and lightly pounded them twice. His muscles were as stiff as though they had been twisted into countless knots.
Fortunately, Luoweida was not far from here.
According to his memories of his previous life, if he followed the imperial highway from here for most of the night, he could reach the outskirts of Luoweida before dawn. Had the storm not destroyed much of the road and flooded many low-lying areas, he could even have reached the city gates late that night.
But now, mud, fallen trees, and collapsed roadbeds lay everywhere. He had been forced to take several detours, adding nearly half a day to his journey.
"If only I had a carriage."
Nuoyaji bit off the last mouthful of black bread and chewed, his gaze falling on the two things laid out on the stone beside him.
A few imperial gold coins and an iron sword.
The coins were standard Karelia mintage, with a relief of the founding monarch's profile on the front and the empire's double-headed eagle engraved on the back. Their smooth edges gleamed dully in the twilight. There were seven in all, enough to buy a shabby house and a month's provisions in Luoweida. The iron sword was an ordinary regulation longsword, its blade bearing two shallow nicks and its hilt wrapped in worn leather cord. It was hardly fine work, but it was certainly no cheap piece of junk hung up as decoration in a smithy.
He had picked up both things along the road.
More precisely, he had picked them up amid scattered wreckage.
About four hours earlier, while following a flood-scoured trail through a valley, Nuoyaji had come upon debris strewn everywhere. Shattered wagon boards, broken axles, scattered iron nails, torn canvas, and several overturned wooden crates lay there. Their lids had been pried open, and the goods inside were long gone, leaving only scattered hay and scraps of cloth.
Wheel ruts ran all the way from the distant highway to this spot, churned into disorder by the storm and floodwaters.
It had probably been a convoy passing through when the storm struck.
A merchant caravan, a noble's private soldiers, an imperial transport convoy? Any was possible. The wagon boards were made of oak commonly found in the south, the axles were the standard pattern of imperial military workshops, and a worn merchant guild emblem was faintly visible on the canvas. The storm had come too suddenly. Before the convoy could find shelter, the wind had overturned its wagons, scattering its cargo. The frightened horses had scattered, and the people...
Nuoyaji had seen no people.
No bodies, no bloodstains, not even signs of a struggle or anyone being dragged away. Those people had probably been blown farther away by the storm, or had been lucky enough to find shelter in the downpour, or perhaps... they were still alive and had staggered out of the wreckage, heading somewhere.
Nuoyaji had searched the wreckage for a while, but aside from the seven gold coins scattered in the muddy water and an iron sword pinned beneath a wagon board, he had found nothing else of value. The food had been soaked rotten, the clothing torn to rags, and even the writing on the documents in the wooden crates had blurred in the water until not a single complete word or sentence was legible.
He had not lingered. After stowing the coins and iron sword, he had continued on his way.
The sun sank completely below the horizon, and ink-black night surged over everything.
Nuoyaji took a fist-sized crystal from inside his clothes. A pale blue glow slowly brightened within it, driving back the darkness for three feet around him. It was a low-grade illumination crystal, capable of lasting most of the night before its mana ran out. He had picked it up at a general store before leaving Dawn City, using his last few silver coins.
He set the crystal on the boulder, leaned against the tree trunk behind him, and closed his eyes. His mind raced as he worked through the situation in Luoweida again and again.
Luoweida, a major stronghold on the empire's southern border, was one of the core production centers of the Magic Nexus Mine.
This city had just one lifeblood-ore. More than half its population depended directly or indirectly on the mine: the miners digging ore, the pack trains hauling it, the craftspeople forging tools, the smelting workshops, and the merchants selling goods. Layer upon layer, all were tied to the mine's operation. Once the mine stopped, the entire city's economic chain would break apart like falling dominoes, link by link, until it came crashing down.
For Luoweida, this storm was a catastrophe.
The Magic Nexus Mine had been built on a spur of the Magic Nexus Mountains, amid treacherous terrain and crisscrossing tunnels. The landslides and mudflows brought by the storm would most likely destroy its entrances and block the main tunnels, and might even trigger deeper geological collapses. According to his memories of his previous life, this storm was far more intense than any natural disaster in history. The mine's losses would only be worse than they had been at the same time in his previous life.
The mine would shut down, and the miners would lose their jobs.
Over ten thousand workers in their prime would lose their income and food overnight, while parents, wives, and children waited at home for rice to fill the pot. Food could not be brought in, and grain prices would soar. Even those with meager savings would not last ten days or a fortnight.
And the empire would not sympathize with local suffering.
In the year 1164 of his previous life, the empire had been in a delicate three-way standoff with Saint Junxi and Victoria. The arms race, border clashes, and struggle over mana veins had turned the imperial family and parliament into an insatiable beast, frantically squeezing the lifeblood from every mining city.
Taxes grew heavier with every year, and the mines' production quotas rose with them. The miners at the bottom toiled more than a dozen hours a day in sunless tunnels, yet earned barely enough to feed themselves.
After the storm, the empire's tax demands would only arrive faster and more urgently.
Because the imperial treasury was empty too. The army needed provisions and pay, the border defenses needed strengthening, and the Tower Mage Corps needed magical resources for its research. The imperial family would not reduce taxes over a natural disaster. On the contrary, under the banner of "weathering the national crisis together," they would extract even more resources and wealth from the provinces.
Nuoyaji understood the logic of the empire's upper ranks all too well.
He had heard those high-sounding words far too many times in his previous life-"The empire faces a time of peril. We ask all viscounts and earls to show consideration for the imperial court and pay their taxes on time, to preserve the stability of the realm." Put into plain language: I do not care whether you live or die, but the money and ore must be paid in full.
Nuoyaji remembered Heross, the viscount of Luoweida.
In his previous life, Heross had not been some great villain. He was a border official personally promoted by a grand duke in the empire's south, loyal and effective at carrying out orders, but lacking opinions of his own.
He would collect taxes strictly according to imperial orders and act under the grand duke's instructions, but would never take the initiative to secure even a little more benefit for the commoners under his rule. Put plainly, he was a blade, an obedient blade. Someone else held the hilt, and whoever they pointed its edge at, he would cut down.
The unrest in Luoweida in his previous life had erupted during Heross's tenure.
Nuoyaji closed his eyes, and images yellowed by the passage of memory surfaced in his mind-
Firelight, cries of battle, streets filled with flying rubble. Miners armed with clubs and pitchforks broke through the gates of the viscount's residence, dragged Heross out of his study, and pinned him to the mud-covered steps.
The furious miners roared, demanding to know why he was still raising taxes.
Heross offered no defense.
He curled up on the ground, his face deathly pale and his lips trembling, unable to utter a word. His guards had already been disarmed by the miners, and a dozen or so personal guards had been beaten to the ground, huddling in a corner with their hands over their heads. The entire viscount's residence had fallen, taken by commoners driven to desperation by hunger and despair.
It was the Luoweida miners' finest hour, and the beginning of their nightmare.
Nuoyaji remembered it clearly-on the seventh day after the unrest began, the grand duke's army arrived.
Infantry in black heavy armor poured through all four of Luoweida's gates, marching in step, their shields like walls and their spears like forests. They were not the lax guards under Heross's command, but the grand duke's own elite legion, well-equipped, well-trained, and seasoned in real battlefield combat.
The miners tried to resist, building barricades in the streets and throwing rocks and firebombs from rooftops. But in the end, they were only miners. They had no weapons, no armor, no tactics. Even their most basic will to fight began to crumble amid the dull, heavy footsteps of the advancing black armor.
Nuoyaji had not witnessed the suppression himself, but by the time he reached Luoweida, the unrest was over.
The entire city reeked of burning and blood. Fragments of black armor, broken spears, shattered shields, and bloodstains left by the miners littered the streets. On the steps outside the viscount's residence, that pool of dark red liquid had not yet dried completely.
And the young leader the miners had chosen-Nuoyaji could no longer remember his name, only that he had been under twenty, a miner's son with a few years of schooling, able to write and calculate, eloquent and highly respected among the miners-his body hung at the city gate. Blood soaked the front of his clothes, and anger and defiance had frozen on his face.
It was said that no ordinary blade had killed him.
It had been a black spear.
Nuoyaji had never seen that spear. He had only heard that it was a magic weapon bestowed by the grand duke upon the captain of his personal guard. Once thrown, it could trigger a localized mana explosion, killing every living thing within a ten-meter radius with its shock wave and magical fragments.
That young leader had been trying to address the people outside the viscount's residence when the spear was thrown with precision from afar, killing him on the spot.
The moment he died, the miners' will to resist collapsed completely.
Their leader was dead. Left without anyone to guide them, the remaining miners were driven by the black-armored troops like sheep back into the mine, shackled once more, and returned to the sunless tunnels. The unrest was suppressed, and Luoweida regained its "order," but that order was built on fear and the oppression of commoners.
In his previous life, the unrest had only just subsided when Nuoyaji passed through Luoweida.
He had seen that young man's body at the city gate and stood there for a long time, silently committing the incident to memory.
Back then, he had lacked the power to change anything. He had not even been entitled to approach that city-he was merely an insignificant low-ranking mage apprentice in the empire's Tower Mage Corps, traveling with his mentor to collect mana samples. Passing through Luoweida, he had taken one hurried look before his mentor dragged him away.
But he had remembered that glimpse for the rest of his life.
Now that he was living again, would Luoweida's unrest play out once more?
Nuoyaji opened his eyes and stared at the cloud-covered night sky overhead, his brows tightly furrowed.
The storm's impact far exceeded that of the same period in his previous life. Luoweida's disaster would only be worse, the damage to the mine more severe, and the crises of hunger and unemployment would arrive faster and harder. Nor would the empire show the provinces mercy because of a natural disaster. Those tax demands were probably already on their way.
Heross, that indecisive viscount, caught between imperial pressure and the people's fury, would most likely choose to obey the empire as he had in his previous life, continuing to collect taxes and squeeze the miners. Then the miners would endure it, until the day they could endure no more, and erupt.
In his previous life, the unrest had only occurred after war broke out and taxes increased. But in this life, the storm had brought every conflict to a head ahead of time. Would the unrest come sooner?
Perhaps fighting would already have broken out by the time he reached Luoweida.
Nuoyaji clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white.
He had to reach Luoweida as soon as possible.
Not to stop the unrest-if the situation had already deteriorated that far, a seventeen-year-old magic apprentice like him could stop nothing. Rather, he needed to find that young man before the unrest erupted: the leader from his previous life, the young miner who had been hung at the city gate.
He did not know the young man's name, but he knew what he looked like.
If he could find him in advance, perhaps he could persuade him not to take that doomed path. Or, even if he still chose to resist, Nuoyaji could at least offer some advice: do not be so reckless, do not let anger cloud your judgment, and do not stand in the open outside the viscount's residence and become a target for a black spear.
Nuoyaji thought again of that black spear.
A magic weapon that triggered a mana explosion after being thrown, killing indiscriminately within ten meters.
At least three to five members of the grand duke's personal guard carried such weapons. During the unrest in his previous life, just one had been deployed, and it had ended everything. If the unrest broke out again, the grand duke's army would still come, the black heavy armor would still advance, and that spear would still fly out from some dark corner to take that young man's life.
He needed to find a way to deal with that spear.
Or, more fundamentally, give the grand duke's army no reason to come.
A night breeze swept past, damp and cold, making Nuoyaji shiver.
He put away the illumination crystal, rose from the boulder, stretched his aching legs, slung his shabby cloth bag over his back, tucked the iron sword at his waist, and continued toward Luoweida.
Traveling at night was difficult. The floodwaters had yet to recede, and the muddy road swallowed every step.
Nuoyaji trudged onward, his footing uneven, his boots full of muddy water. The blisters on his soles were rubbed raw over and over, and every step felt like treading on knife points.
But he dared not stop, nor could he. He knew better than anyone how precious every minute and second was in this era, where the worldline had already diverged beyond recognition.
He had to reach Luoweida before the situation deteriorated beyond saving.
He had to.
Night lay heavy, and the boy's solitary figure moved forward in the crystal's faint blue glow, like a firefly feeling its way through the dark.
In the distance, the outline of Luoweida flickered into view through the night.
And amid that city's ruins and standing water, a pitch-black figure stood on a flooded street, looking up at the gloomy sky and wondering-when would someone finally drain the water from this damned place?
Black Owl, controlled by King Ghidorah, stood in the cold water. Suddenly, he turned his head toward the outskirts of the city.
He had sensed a faint trace of human presence slowly approaching Luoweida.
"Hmm?"
Black Owl's enclosed mask turned slightly, as though that presence had stirred a little curiosity.
But he soon withdrew his gaze and continued strolling through the ruins, observing the city he had destroyed with his own hands.
There was no rush.
He had nothing to do anyway.