A few days flickered by in the blink of an eye, yet under the near-harsh and highly efficient operation of Mason's new Order, the entire Olan Plains had been utterly transformed in complexion.
That Olan Royal City, which had been handed down for several centuries and once symbolized the supreme honor of the old era, now had the Golden Lion banners atop it long since wholly consigned to the flames.
Beneath the complicated gazes of the whole city's populace and the fifty thousand surrendered soldiers, banner after banner of Black Rose, giving off a faint, clear fragrance, fluttered in the wind, proclaiming that this place had been formally renamed—Olan City.
There was no bloody massacre as had been anticipated, nor the cruel liquidation the nobles had dreaded.
Under the joint suppression of Delilah's heavy greatsword and Bardess's garrison troops, the handover of the entire city took on a bizarre, cold sort of orderliness.
The fifty thousand prisoners of war—who had originally been starved until their faces were the color of dirt, trembling along the long streets—after being apportioned steaming bone broth and Black Bread stuffed with honey, had their last shred of resistant thought collapse wholesale before the instinct for survival.
At this moment, within the study of the Yurilland Temporary Palace.
Sunlight spilled gently across the broad long table. Sophia had just changed into an exceedingly comfortable plain white silk nightgown.
Her fingertips, fair as porcelain, pinched a delicate quill pen, scratching away as she wrote upon a sheet of fine parchment.
It was a preliminary victory report to be sent to the headquarters at the Royal City.
Upon the silver-haired girl's exquisite, flawless deadpan face there was still that ancient-well stillness; in those pale-gold pupils there could be seen no trace of the elation of having defeated an empire, only a coldness and weariness belonging to a veteran reborn one.
At last she had dealt with that maliciously competitive fellow, Tina.
Had she not, Sophia would have had a bit of trouble sleeping soundly.
This Tina was a sinister, vicious sort; so long as she lived a single day, she would stir up no end of trouble, leaving others not a moment's peace.
However, these fifty thousand extra mouths that had appeared out of nowhere, combined with the several hundred thousand displaced people of the seventeen miniature cities, consumed a quantity of stored grain each day that was simply a bottomless pit.
If she did not hurry to put the production schedule in place, the entire grand asset ledger of Mason would, before this winter was through, go completely bankrupt, causing huge numbers of people to starve to death this winter.
Sophia set down the last elegant Black Rose seal-mark upon the paper, then somewhat distastefully rubbed her rather sore temples.
While the weather was still warm, she had best hurry up and start farming.
And so, under Sophia's supreme decree, across the entire plains of the Northern border, an all-hands farming campaign that transcended the great tide of the age was launched in vigorous, roaring fashion.
Outside Olan City, upon the suburban wilds stretching for dozens of li in every direction.
A battlefield that just a few days ago had still been thick with gunsmoke and the reek of blood was at this moment wholly blanketed by a clamorous and fervent tide of labor.
"Stride out, all of you! Grip those spades tight in your hands!!"
"You ox-carts in the back, keep up!
Get the new refined-iron tilling plows the workshop just forged hoisted onto the beasts' backs!!"
"Over there—you're supposed to be turning the field, not digging a pit!"
"Hey, Her Majesty said that fertilizer's not to be touched with bare hands!"
The Olan surrendered soldiers and the Vala tribe recruits, who had originally belonged to different camps, were at this moment standing together row upon row; what they held in their hands was no longer spears for killing, but coldly gleaming farm tools.
Not far behind them, several dozen enormous iron cauldrons were churning with thick meat broth, the domineering aroma drifting everywhere on the light breeze, coaxing forth in this crowd of laborers an inexhaustible vigor through their whole bodies.
This was the farmer's midday meal Her Majesty had prepared for them.
"Easy! Easy!
Careful not to shake This Queen—no, these old bones of mine—to pieces!"
Upon the muddy field-ridge, the City Lord of Goran City, Berick, was treading along with one foot sinking deep and the next stepping shallow, the lavish silk ceremonial robe on his body long since changed out for clothing convenient for farming.
This former king, in order to leave a diligent, favorable first impression in Your Majesty Sophia's ledger, had this very early morning personally led his own private soldiers down into the fields to supervise the work.
And at the very center, with everyone looking on, the twin-tailed Irene was squatting atop an enormous wooden crate, like a pink lop-eared rabbit.
That artisan's vest of hers, hung all over with assorted wrenches and little hammers, had been washed spotlessly clean, yet in those sapphire-like eyes there glittered an exceedingly excited flowing light.
Before her, several hundred enormous sacks, bound tight with coarse hemp cloth, were stacked in neat array.
"Listen up! Every one of you, prick up your ears!!"
Irene planted one foot on the edge of the crate and, in her crisp, booming voice, shouted toward the centurions and farmers all around:
"I know the ordinary wheat you used to grow in Olan—year in and year out it grew like dried-up hay roots, and a whole mu's harvest of barley chaff wasn't even enough for the lords to skim off!
But today!
By Her Majesty's grace, the treasure our workshop has newly cultivated is being bestowed upon you!
Although... I've got to make it clear to you first: that top-grade, premium wheat seed grown back at the Royal City headquarters of our Mason was, last month, all used up in full on account of quota reasons.
So what you're getting today is a variety I've lightly improved with potions in the workshop—I call it the Improved Wheat!!"
"Improved Wheat?!"
The dozen-some old Olan farmers gathered around exchanged blank looks, and one extremely aged old man, mustering his courage, asked in a quavering voice:
"This artisan lord... what manner of thing is this Improved Wheat?
Can it boil up a broth as good as our ancestral ordinary wheat?"
"Bah! What do you know, you barley-chaff brain!!"
Irene rolled her eyes and crisply smashed open a hemp sack with a small copper hammer, revealing the grains within—plump and full, giving off a faint cyan shimmer in the sunlight.
"That ordinary wheat of yours, once you plant it you've got to look to the heavens' mood for mercy, and the ears that grow out are shriveled and hard.
This Improved Wheat of mine, though not as large and plump as Her Majesty's premium wheat, isn't afraid of the Northern border's drought, and its growth period is a full one-third shorter!
So long as you now honestly turn the soil two inches deep for me and scatter this Improved Wheat down,
come autumn, I guarantee the grain that grows out of this field will fill the dog-bellies of every last one of you to the brim!!"
At a single command from Irene, sack after sack of Improved Wheat was methodically distributed into the hands of every cultivation team.
The City Lord of Goran City, Berick, grabbed up a handful of those cyan seeds and held them before his eyes, examining them carefully.
When he noticed that these seeds, even though they were merely the so-called improved variety, were several times better in the plumpness of their grains and the faint aroma faintly circulating upon them than the ordinary wheat he had once carefully nourished with fertilizer in the palace's rear garden—
the two thigh-bones of this former king could not help but once again begin slamming frantically against each other within his silk trousers.
"Di-Divine Miracles... this is actually only the Improved Wheat?!"
Berick somewhat neurotically scratched at his brown hair, gazing at the displaced people sowing in full, fervent swing across the ground, the trace of old-era arrogance at the bottom of his eyes thoroughly washed clean:
"Madness... Mason's reserves are simply rich to a degree that drives one mad!
In the past, to snatch a few hundred catties of shriveled ordinary wheat, we did not begrudge letting thousands of soldiers bleed dry before a fortress.
In our understanding, that was already the finest grain asset on the entire wasteland.
Yet within that ultimate operating model of Your Majesty Sophia's, seed several times better than ours is only fit to be called Improved Wheat and tossed to prisoners of war to plant!
And that truly plump wheat, the premium kind that can fill people up every single day, has long since become a standard ration known to everyone in the Royal City!
That is something they have never even laid eyes on!
To go to war with a god like this, who holds infinite supplies and epoch-transcending technology in her hands...
that old woman Tina actually still harbored the wild hope of hedging against her with a bowl of stale rice broth—her death was truly not the least bit unjust!!"
Hearing this, some of the former Olan prisoners of war silently lowered their heads and turned the soil.
What kind of bitter days had they lived through before?
Meanwhile, on the other side of the battle line, the female liege of Black Stone City, clad in a deep-purple robe, was at this moment also personally hauling a spade forged of refined iron, treading laboriously along the muddy field-ridge.
Crystalline beads of sweat slid slowly down her mature, graceful cheeks, staining the robe at her chest with a trace of dampness.
Yet that pair of long, lovely eyes of hers, at this moment, leapt across the dozen-some li of open wilds, locked dead upon the direction of the Yurilland Temporary Palace.
Listening to Irene's explanation of the Improved Wheat beside her ear, this shrewd middle-aged beauty had the full, delicate body hidden beneath her sleeves once again seized, owing to extreme heart-pounding, by wave after wave of numbing tremors.
Sophia truly is too perfect... Even a careless, slapdash pink-haired artisan, under Her Majesty's tutelage, can produce an improved seed like this, enough to overturn the entire ecology of the Northern border.
Her Majesty deliberately kept the premium wheat at the Royal City and handed out the Improved Wheat to Olan; this is by no means any matter of not having enough seed—this is clearly the ultimate administrative chain she uses to apportion territorial contribution and lock down everyone's loyalty utterly tight!
So long as we newly-surrendered cities can complete the Improved Wheat autumn-harvest schedule this winter, will we in the future also be qualified to have an audience with Her Majesty, to exchange for that truly plump, premium wheat?
Oh~ Sophia, you truly are bewitching.....
These few named Willow, Daphne, and that Third Princess, Victoria—
under what manner of blessed fortune are they able, each and every morning, to attend at such close distance to the left and right of that streak of silver skirt-hem, to listen to Her Majesty's divine teachings cold and clear as frost...
My Black Stone City, sooner or later, must all become a core asset Her Majesty cannot do without!!
Off to one side, another young female City Lord of a small nation was at this moment also propping herself on a spade, panting for breath, a pair of moist eyes brimming with a near-blind worship and dependence toward Sophia.
Gazing at the Black Rose magic seal faintly shimmering upon her wrist beneath the blazing sun, she felt nothing but an inexhaustible vigor coursing through her whole body.
Although Her Majesty had said this brand was only temporarily given to them, and that later, once their labor credits or contributions were sufficient, it could be removed,
she did not want it removed at all; she only felt that having Your Majesty Sophia's mark upon her body was simply far too comfortable.
Across the entire plains, tens of thousands of prisoners of war and displaced people who had originally been filled with dread—after truly scattering those Improved Wheat seeds into the soil and, at noon, receiving as a matter of course their steaming bone broth—saw the labor efficiency of the entire battle line begin to multiply and surge at an exceedingly terrifying speed.
Turning soil, sowing seed, watering, leveling.
Every work-step conformed to the standard plan laid down by Irene's workshop; everywhere along the long streets and the wasteland rose the fervent chants of laborers' work-songs.
This enormous sense of gain—sowing the future with one's own hands and being able to eat one's fill that very day—saw the military morale and popular sentiment of the entire Olan City complete, within the span of mere days, the most thorough remolding and reordering.
And at this moment, upon the terrace of the Yurilland Temporary Palace.
Sophia's pale-gold pupils overlooked, without a ripple, those rolls upon rolls of labor-dust rising skyward across the distant wilds.
The administrative officer Willow walked up softly and lightly, neatly presenting to one side of the long table the morning agricultural report that had just been signed by Irene and fully tallied up.
"Your Majesty, all one hundred seventy thousand mu of large fields on the Olan Plains have been entirely re-outfitted with Improved Wheat seed; the sowing schedule is expected to be fully completed within three days.
The other scattered plots have all been arranged for as well."
Willow wore her signature gentle smile, her gaze full of earnestness and reverence:
"The work enthusiasm of the various newly-appointed City Lords is a full thirty percent higher than we anticipated.
The female liege of Black Stone City even personally went down into the field to turn the soil today, expressing the most absolute submission toward you and Mason's new Order.
It seems... this macro-scale dispatch of yours, using the Improved Wheat as an advancement metric, has already thoroughly neutralized clean every last shred of this band of neighbors' self-respect."
Listening to Willow's gentle words that once again embellished her into a "god who governs the distribution of all things' resources,"
Sophia, seated steadily in her chair, had her long lashes flutter faintly upon her cheeks, and in that pair of ripple-less pale-gold dead-fish eyes there silently flashed this afternoon's thirty-eighth powerless sigh.
That female liege of Black Stone City, the supreme person in charge of a marble mining district—instead of being in her office early in the morning reconciling the stone-material ledgers, what was the point of her grabbing a spade and going off to muck about in the mud?
She'd even gotten her neck sunburned red; if she suffered heatstroke from this, and the resulting attendant panic made the subjects of her city think that I, this Queen, had squeezed her dry—was that, too, going to have to be charged to my mental calculations?!
Somewhat at a loss, Sophia rubbed the space between her brows with her fingertips, feeling that the few wisps of cool summer breeze blowing in through the window had, in this instant, turned somewhat hot and dry once again.
Several hundred li away, in the Kingdom of Leighton.
The palace carved with intricate rose patterns lay in dead silence deep in the night.
The bright, clear moonlight poured down through the tall Gothic arched windows, illuminating the enormous mahogany long table before the throne into a stretch of snowy brilliance.
Liliana, the Queen of Leighton who had emerged victorious from a cruel struggle for the throne and overturned all the ancient die-hard factions, was at this moment lounging languidly against a soft chair draped with white fox fur.
Her head of curls, rich as the deep night, fell casually across her rounded shoulders; her body was wrapped in only a crimson silk nightgown that exceedingly displayed her figure, sketching out those heart-stopping, elegant lines to the fullest.
Yet this new Queen—who in the eyes of Leighton's subjects was ruthless of means and deep of scheming—at this moment had those obsidian-like, enchanting eyes of hers locked dead upon a stack of parchment secret letters rushed in by express from the Northern border.
Owing to excessive shock, her fingertips, fair as jade, were trembling faintly, drawing from the intelligence pages in her hands a series of crisp rustling sounds.
Liliana spread those confidential reports, each stamped with red fire-wax, open across her lap, and by the dim candlelight read them carefully, line by line.
With each line she made out clearly, her full bosom would heave violently once, and from her rosy lips she could not help but let out cry after cry of soft exclamation, brimming with shock and disbelief.
Commander Bardess personally led the heavy-armored garrison troops and within a single week took three great border cities in a row; wherever the edge of her forces passed, the old nobles' defensive lines were as fragile as thin paper.
The red-haired General Delilah, wielding a ruby greatsword, at the hour of noon forcibly shattered the windlass of the west main gate, and the Olan Royal City fell.
Queen Tina was executed on the spot; the Second Princess, Una, took her own life atop the inner-city wall; the fifty thousand defenders knelt along the long street, surrendering their spears in full, and Olan was downgraded in its entirety and renamed Olan City.
The next morning, beneath the long wall of Yurilland's west gate, Your Majesty Sophia, using only several tens of thousands of catties of white powder backlogged in the main warehouse, reduced the three thousand fire-controlling deathsworn that the Crimson Vulture Duchy had secretly concealed to ashes.
When the news spread, the surrounding Goran, Rhodes, Black Stone City, and the like—seventeen miniature nations in all—were scared out of their wits, driving their carriages several hundred li through the night to rush to the Temporary Palace and present their national seals, voluntarily abolishing their ducal legitimacy, downgrading into cities, and submitting to the wholesale reorganization of the Black Rose Order....."
"Heavens... Sophia..."
Liliana abruptly sucked in a breath of cold air, her whole person sinking feebly into the soft leather chair.
She pressed a pair of warm jade hands hard against her somewhat scalding cheeks, those lovely eyes brimming with a near-intoxicated fervor and shock.
"One week.....
In just one week's time, she utterly erased the Olan Empire that had entrenched itself in the Northern border for several centuries.
She didn't even utter a single superfluous riddler's word, yet made the kings of seventeen nations line up overnight and kneel before the gate of her Temporary Palace.
My Sophia.....
Just what manner of terrifying and great means have you concealed?!"
Within the domain of Liliana's thoughts, those complicated changes concerning Sophia were, in an instant, infinitely magnified and sublimated into a kind of absolute mastery, near to a god overlooking the mortal world from on high.
Especially when she saw the intelligence detail of "smelting three thousand elites with quicklime," this Queen of Leighton could even imagine it.
That silver-haired girl seated upon the black-lacquered carved throne—with what manner of cold, dead-fish-eyed, even faintly distasteful, elegant expression had she casually flicked through the ledger a few times, and steamed the enemy's cunning alive, calculating them into the most despairing dead end.
How could she be so strong?
How could she be so heart-stirring, so utterly bewitching?!
Liliana rose slowly to her feet, the crimson silk skirt-hem tracing a forlorn arc across the cold marble floor.
She walked to the window and, gazing at the distant stretch of Leighton plains winding and undulating beneath the night, had upon her exquisite, pretty face a rarely-seen complex expression that mingled extreme longing with bitterness.
At the thought of that silver-haired girl—into whose bedchamber she had once boldly intruded deep in the night, who had been offended at such close distance under the covers until she was somewhat at a loss, glaring back with that faintly displeased deadpan face—Liliana's heart felt as though it had been gripped dead by something sticky, aching with a fierce sourness.
"Sophia... I really... really miss you so much..."
Liliana somewhat aggrievedly bit her moist lower lip, her slender fingertips digging deep into the crack of the rough stone windowsill.
A trace of bitter, self-mocking murmuring drifted quietly through the empty palace on the cold night wind:
"Why.... when I've clearly already tried this hard.
Back then, in order to be able to walk to your side, I did not begrudge setting up a chain of deadly schemes deep within Leighton's administrative palace, personally clearing away all those decaying nobles, along with that Old King and Old Queen who only wished to make use of me.
With such difficulty I put on Leighton's supreme crown, thinking I had at last become the supreme Queen who controls a nation's assets, thinking that this way....
I could, in your world, possess an equal standing—one that could converse with you shoulder to shoulder, no longer be coldly pushed away by you.
But why....
by the time I truly sat upon this throne, you had already walked off farther even than the gods in the heavens?
I'd only just finished reckoning out one small ledger of Leighton's, yet you had already, with those magical Improved Wheat seeds and Black Rose identity cards, stuffed the entire map of the Northern border beneath your skirt-hem.
You grip in your hands the black muskets and Delilah's greatsword; even the other nations must tremble in your shadow.
And this crown of mine, that I snatched away with such difficulty....
before that grand ledger of yours, it is simply like an insignificant, ridiculous stone...."
Liliana faintly lowered her obsidian-like eyes.
Before the enormous gulf in strength and the aesthetic impact, her pride as the sovereign of Leighton was forcibly smashed by Sophia's epoch-transcending iron curtain into worthless garbage.
But this bitterness, within one one-thousandth of a second, was—under the catalysis of the fervent love deep in her heart—utterly twisted into a near-pathological possessiveness and submissiveness.
At the thought of those female lieges mentioned in the intelligence—that middle-aged female City Lord of Black Stone City who not only personally went down into the field to turn the soil, but whose very gaze upon Sophia had been adoring to the utmost extreme.
Furthermore, those several female monarchs of similar age clung all the more tightly to the magic seal Her Majesty had branded upon them—cradling it in their bosoms like a treasure, unwilling to have it cleared away.
Within Liliana's pair of dark eyes, an exceedingly dangerous, sourness-soaked, fervent edge instantly erupted.
That vixen of Black Stone City... and those eyeless little vixens too...
Liliana fiercely crushed a silver hairpin in her hand to pieces, her full bosom heaving violently, even her breathing turning ragged and hurried.
"Sophia is mine!
She is the treasure whose body warmth I myself circulated upon the bed of her Bedchamber in the dead of night!
You pack of Northern border natives, who can't even tell the new-type wheat apart from ordinary wheat—how dare you, with those clingy, disgusting eyes, go and sully the pure, noble black Gothic skirt-hem of Sophia?!"
Though reason told her that Sophia, who now controlled over a hundred thousand square li of land as the Black Rose True God, was absolutely bound to have all manner of fervent followers at her side.
Yet every time she thought of how those women could attend closely upon Sophia every morning, and listen to her frost-cold divine teachings, Liliana's heart was like a vinegar jar stuffed full of sour vinegar, bursting apart utterly.
"No good... I can't go on sitting here waiting for death."
Liliana ripped off the crimson silk nightgown from her body, and before the long marble mirror began, with utmost crispness, to change into a set of close-fitting dark-black light marching armor.
Her black curls she tied neatly behind her head with a hair-ribbon, fully revealing that exquisite face brimming with wildness and morbid fervor, and she smiled a satisfied smile.
"Convey This Queen's secret order to the shadow guards!!"
Liliana fastened the refined-iron clasp at her chest with a backhanded motion, her voice brimming with an unshakable resolve and excitement.
"Pack up every last bit of the century-old Alchemic Copper Mother in the Royal House of Leighton's stores, the most precious East Pearls, and the newest main-warehouse ledgers of all the great merchant guilds—pack the whole lot for This Queen!
There's no need to wait for the Envoy from the south to come over.
This very noon, This Queen will personally ride the fastest warhorse, carrying the entire Kingdom of Leighton's supreme directive authority, force my way across the border wasteland, and go to the Yurilland Temporary Palace to see This Queen's Your Majesty the Queen!
This time... not only will I cram all of Leighton into Sophia's asset table, but upon the couch of her Bedchamber I will also have a good, proper reckoning with those eyeless vixens over this...
this core grand account concerning who Her Majesty belongs to!!"
So what if she couldn't become the Queen?
With enough fighting and grabbing, she could always get something out of it!
Within the rooftop greenhouse of the Yurilland Temporary Palace, the afternoon sunlight pierced through the exquisite glazed-glass vaulted dome, scattering fine, fragmented golden glints across the long table draped with a lace cloth.
In the air, apart from the faint fragrance of Black Rose herbs, there now also drifted a thick, sweetly scented aroma of cream and Red Maple honey-syrup.
The kitchen had strictly carried out Your Majesty the Queen's command, using the new-model iron-sheet oven to bake the very finest small cakes, each one baked fluffy and golden, its surface coated all over with glistening syrup.
At one side of the long table, Irene was cheerfully swinging her twin ponytails, stuffing cake into her mouth in a thoroughly unbecoming manner, those sapphire-like eyes utterly full of a satisfied happiness.
"Mmm! Your Majesty, this Red Maple cake is simply too delicious!"
Irene swallowed the dessert in her mouth, her two little hands waving somewhat excitedly in midair, and looked with glittering eyes at Sophia in the head seat:
"I feel like I'm bursting with strength all over right now!
This afternoon, once I'm back at the workshop, I'll definitely be able to verify that whole batch of Alchemic Copper Mother hauled back from Olan, absolutely without delaying the next assembly schedule for the new-model muskets!"
Seated beside her, Delilah had by now shed that blood-soaked dark-red heavy armor and changed into a somewhat loose-fitting black knight's casual garb.
That head of hair, dazzling as raging flame, was casually tied behind her head, setting off her tall, slender yet immensely strong physique.
At this moment the red-haired big-sister type was leaning somewhat languidly against the back of her chair, holding a whole platter of bacon in her hand, with a near-greedy and incomparably focused, fervent gaze locked dead upon the silver-haired girl in the head seat.
"Eat slower; the workshop's accounts are sitting right there, they won't run off on their own."
Sophia steadily lifted the white-porcelain black tea cup before her, her fingertips fair as porcelain carrying, in the gentle breeze, a nobility that made one's heart tremble.
Upon that deadpan face exquisite as a divine creation, the pale-golden pupils held not a single ripple.
She elegantly took a sip of black tea, looking with a faint trace of distaste at the layer upon layer of elaborate Gothic nightgown skirt-hem upon her own body.
Her Majesty, no matter the moment, is always so gentle toward those at her side.
Seated on the other side of the soft couch, the Third Princess Victoria elegantly spread open the ivory folding fan in her hand, and within those pretty golden eyes, that trace of fervent admiration nearly spilled forth into substance.
She gazed at Sophia's profile, placid to the point of near-coldness, and in her mind those thoughts concerning the macro grand map once again began to churn frantically.
Did you see it..... this. is precisely Her Majesty's breadth of spirit.
Even though the Olan City side had only just completed such a soul-stirring full takeover, even though the Imperial Capital in the south might at any moment whip up an unforeseeable, terrifying storm.
Yet Her Majesty, seated here, did not carry even a hair's worth of tension, and even had the leisure to bestow dessert upon Irene in the afternoon.
What does this signify?!
It signifies that the entire Northern border's resource flows and offensive-defensive shifts in the days to come, within Her Majesty's supreme operating model, are nothing more than a simple reconciliation of accounts whose large-margin surplus has long since been written out!
Those monarchs of the old era think they can make trouble for Her Majesty, yet Her Majesty, standing here, is merely using a posture that has seen through the laws of the mundane world, coldly arranging for them the schedule of their march toward destruction!!
"Tap, tap, tap."
Just as Victoria, in the deepest depths of her heart, was frantically crowning Sophia with the title of omniscient, omnipotent Rose True God, a string of exceedingly light yet exceedingly regular leather-shoe footsteps broke, at precisely this moment, the tranquility within the greenhouse.
The hollow-carved wooden door on the inner side of the corridor was pushed open composedly by a pair of fair palms.
Willow, the administrative officer who ought to have been busy in the Administrative Hall's main warehouse calculating the full autumn-harvest seed quotas, was walking in with elegant, brisk steps.
That head of neat short hair was groomed without a single strand out of place, and upon her beautiful face she wore that ever-present gentle smile that left not the slightest fault to be found.
At this moment, within her pair of clear, bright eyes there was no concealment whatsoever, radiating a shrewdness and admiring sigh unique to a top-tier civil official of the old era.
"Your Majesty, good morning.
Pardon me for disturbing everyone's enjoyment of afternoon tea."
Willow came gracefully forward, performing an exceedingly practiced and elegant bow to Sophia.
Then, the exquisite pure-silver tray she held with both hands she respectfully presented to one side of the long table before Sophia.
And in the very center of that mirror-smooth silver tray lay, plain to see, two heavy golden great seals giving off a faint, frigid gleam.
The edges of the great seals still bore several wisps of uncleaned sealing-wax marks unique to the Royal Houses of the old era.
"Wow! It's this thing again?!"
Irene didn't even spare the time to wipe the cream from the corner of her mouth; her sapphire-like eyes snapped wide open, and she pointed at the tray, exclaiming in some surprise:
"Willow, didn't you just collect those seventeen cities' national seals into the main warehouse this very morning?
How is it that in the blink of an eye, you've got two more in your hands?!
Could it be that the kings of the Northern border all treat their family's hereditary great seals as worthless scrap copper and iron?!"
Hearing Irene's utterly unguarded, flighty question, Willow tilted her head slightly, that signature trace of elegant smile at the corner of her mouth growing all the more profound.
She cast a glance—somewhat helpless yet extremely fervent—at the silver-haired girl sitting silent upon the high dais, and softly explained:
"In reply to Miss Irene, after those seventeen City Lords signed the new Order state letter amid streaming tears, the moment the news crossed the hill-line in the central Northern border, it triggered a spiritual trauma of no small scale among those forces somewhat farther off.
These two national seals... come from two neutral duchies on the northeast side of Red Maple Valley.
Their kings, upon receiving the battle report that the Crimson Vulture's three-thousand-man assault squad had been entirely steamed through by Her Majesty with the white powder, fainted dead away on the spot in their Palaces last night."
Saying this, Willow presented the tray forward another few inches, her tone exceedingly soft, as though carrying a thought-magic capable of setting one's heart at ease:
"They knew their territories could not withstand the southward advance of General Delilah and Commander Bardess, so they did not even have time to draft a formal state letter.
This very dawn, the two kings personally brought all their Royal House private soldiers and the ledgers of the great merchant guilds, and knelt before the outer sentry checkpoint of our Yurilland.
As of now, the entire border defense of these two nations, along with nearly ten thousand regular soldiers, has been handed over in full to our garrison force stationed in the surrounding area."
"Hummmm—!!"
Having heard Willow's crisp and clear internal report, Sophia, seated in the head seat, imperceptibly and exceedingly faintly went stiff for one ten-thousandth of a second.
Those pale-golden dead-fish eyes of hers rolled slightly, and gazing at her own exquisite deadpan face reflected in the cup, in the deepest depths of her heart she let out this afternoon's who-knows-how-many-times, near-frantic, powerless sigh.
Wait.... hold on!!
You pack of Northern border native kings—in your own self-awareness, exactly what kind of murderous demon have you imagined me to be?!
I really didn't vaporize those people of the Crimson Vulture Duchy into rotten meat; right now they're plainly still perfectly fine, locked up in the dungeon by Willow, eating barley porridge while awaiting interrogation!
Sophia rubbed her somewhat sore temples, feeling that the few measures of cool summer breeze blowing in through the window had, in this instant, again turned somewhat hot and dry.
This sudden new asset merger was, in others' eyes, the supreme matter of expanding territory and breaking new ground, but in her own eyes—as one of extreme rationality, a transmigrator—it was no different from a most terrifying liquidity-bankruptcy crisis.
Two more nations come.... and that's another ten thousand soldiers who produce no grain and know only to open their mouths to be fed every day.
Add to that the displaced-people population of the dozen-some remote little towns under their governance, and the wheat and bread consumed daily would simply drain my reclamation district utterly dry!
No good—the improved-wheat planting schedule originally drawn up for those seventeen cities was still too conservative.
This very afternoon, I must have Willow bring these two newly merged territories entirely into the scope of compulsory cultivation as well.
Be it king or City Lord, under Mason's rules, anyone who is a person must get down into the fields for me and turn over the black earth!!
Sophia slowly set down the exquisite porcelain cup in her hand, her black silk skirt-hem cutting a cold, sharp yet elegant arc through the gentle breeze.
She lifted her head, those two golden great seals reflected in her pale-golden pupils, her voice as cold and detached as ever, without a trace of mortal emotional fluctuation:
"Since they've even handed over their military authority, then have the garrison camp scatter those ten thousand new recruits in full, according to the prior management regulations, and merge them into Bardess's second-line defense sequence."
The girl's fingertip rapped lightly against the long table, giving off a crisp physical impact:
"As for those two newly arrived City Lords....
Willow, tell them there's no need to come queue at the Temporary Palace to see me.
Have them set out right now with their respective inventories and the cultivation manual for improved barley, and before this day's sunset, return to their original lands to reconcile the figures.
Before this winter's autumn-harvest target comes down, if I see so much as a single grain concealed or missing in their granary grand accounts.....
then they can just wait to be razed to the ground."
"Respectfully obeying, Your Majesty.
Your majesty's authority shall become the most unbreakable lock of contract upon this wilderness."
Willow's expression turned solemn, those eyes brimming with earnestness and admiring sigh.
She bowed slightly, then lifting her administrative long skirt, turned around with utmost crispness and, carrying that trayful of heavy old-era authority, strode out of the greenhouse.
"Wonderful!
Our Mason's Black Rose banner has now firmly planted itself on the Northern border plains!"
Irene excitedly stuffed the last piece of Red Maple cake into her mouth, those sapphire-like eyes utterly full of boundless fervor for a future of everyone farming and a surge in the arsenal's production capacity.
And at her side, Victoria elegantly folded up the fan in her hand, and within those golden eyes, that trace of trembling heart-stir and adoration interwove all the more thickly under the sunlight.
My dear little sister, this bloodless purge of yours has truly turned the rules of the entire continent into worthless garbage.
Those small nations think they can stay neutral so long as they carry sword and blade, yet with merely a stack of the most basic cultivation manuals, you have merged their supreme governing authority entirely beneath your skirt-hem, as casually as flipping through discarded account books.
By the time the Imperial Capital in the south realizes what has happened, and rushes over through the night across a thousand-some li of wasteland, what they will see....
is likely a most unbreakable Black Rose Empire that won't leave even a single grain of aged rice to the old era.
Listening by her ear to Victoria's political over-imaginings, which had already veered off into the deepest reaches beyond the horizon, Sophia, seated steadily upon the throne, maintained upon her exquisite deadpan face that all-dominating, cold and detached air as ever.
Yet those pale-golden dead-fish eyes of hers were at this moment silently gazing toward that stretch of bustling cultivation field beyond the Temporary Palace terrace, and in the deepest depths of her heart, were written, without the slightest reservation, a faint distaste for the ultra-high-intensity overtime of the future.
She did not intend to proactively speak up to those outside nations; though Mason now possessed formidable strength, one must also have the absolute momentum to suppress these dregs of the old era.
----------
The noonday sun, like a furnace that never goes out, scorched that ancient commercial road sunk into the central Northern border wasteland into a stretch of glaring, blinding white.
Rolling heat-waves, mingled with choking yellow dust, twisted wantonly in the air, and the gale howled past, raising bursts of irritating rustling sounds.
"Giddyup—!
Push the speed to the very fastest for This Queen!!"
Amid the sky-filling flying sand and dust, a delicate shout brimming with wildness and cold sharpness abruptly tore apart the dead silence of the wasteland.
A great host of Leighton elite troops, clad in ink-black light armor and mounted upon tall horned-horses, were like a streak of black lightning, frantically galloping at full tilt down the ancient road whose mud had not yet entirely dried.
And at the very front of the entire column, the red-and-white interwoven warhorse reins were clutched tightly in Liliana's hand.
This Queen of Leighton had by now shed the alluring, enchanting crimson silk nightgown of the dead of night, and changed into an exceedingly close-fitting dark-black light marching armor.
The utterly sturdy refined-iron clasp bound tightly at her chest outlined that soul-stirring, full and graceful figure into a line of elegance near to brimming with destructive force.
A head of black curls rich as the dead of night was tied neatly behind her head with a dark-red hair-ribbon, exposing that exquisite face, fair beyond snow, yet at this moment flushed with an unusual redness from extreme urgency and sourness.
Liliana's pair of dark eyes glittered with a near-fervent, wolf-mad streaming light, and with every swing of her riding crop, the intelligence concerning the Yurilland Temporary Palace would irrepressibly surface in her mind.
Faster, faster still.
If I'm not fast enough, my Sophia's side is likely to be filled up in full by this pack of shameless Northern border native women!!
The instant she thought of that person she so admired, Liliana wished she could sprout wings right now, forcibly cross these last few hundred li of wasteland, and plunge straight into Sophia's embrace, which gave off the clear fragrance of Black Rose.
However, in the very second the entire Leighton elite column was about to cross the three-way crossroads ahead that marked the Northern border's watershed.
"Neeeigh——!!"
"Hurry!! Whip these beasts hard for This Queen!! Move faster!!"
A burst of exceedingly abrupt whip-cracking, brimming with terror and impatience, accompanied by the chaotic trampling thunder of several dozen horned-horses, abruptly erupted from around the bend of the mountain road on the northwest side that led toward the Mafen Duchy.
Because both columns were moving at the very extreme of speed, within the one ten-thousandth of a second before they were about to collide thunderously at the crossroads, the lead knights on both sides changed color and yanked tight the horse reins in their hands.
"Bang! Clang!!"
Heavy hooves smashed hard against the rough obsidian ground, splashing up sky-filling sparks and a suffocating yellow dust-storm.
Several tall horned-horses, owing to their enormous inertia, even scraped out several pitch-black furrows on the spot, raising bursts of piercing armor-clashing sounds.
"Damn it!
Which eyeless mongrel dares to block This Queen's....
This Duke's carriage convoy?!"
The carriage curtain, sealed with brass and fire-wax, was in an instant rudely yanked open by a withered hand, gaunt as a chicken's claw.
Following that, a middle-aged man of extremely gaunt build, dressed in layer upon layer of elaborate, heavy old-era ceremonial robes, abruptly poked his head out from the carriage compartment.
That single wisp of long goatee of his fluttered about somewhat comically in the hot, dry gale of summer, and upon that originally pampered, puffy face there still lingered an uncleaned, boundless terror concerning the three thousand elites steamed to death by quicklime.
This man was precisely the King of Mafen, who had through the night sealed the city gates dead with portcullis-stones and, leading a squad of Royal Guards, was fleeing frantically toward the south.
The King of Mafen wiped a handful of the cold sweat from his forehead, on the one hand somewhat neurotically clutching his own long beard, and on the other, using those somewhat murky, snobbish eyes, swept an exceedingly contemptuous glance over Liliana's column ahead.
Because Liliana's purpose on this trip was to secretly meet her lover while forcibly handing over her supreme directive authority, so as not to draw attention, the entire Leighton elite troop had not hoisted any banner representing the legitimacy of the Royal House.
In the King of Mafen's eyes, this woman before him—though exceedingly beautiful, with an exceedingly full and bewitching figure, yet clad only in a set of emblem-less dark-black light armor—
was nothing more than some petty noble of a miniature territory, who these past few days had been scared witless by the Northern border storm and was now about to go to the Yurilland Temporary Palace to wag her tail and beg for mercy.
"Hmph, and here This Queen thought it was some important envoy of a great empire."
The King of Mafen, eyeing her askance, with that extremely arrogant, old-era ruler's lofty and disdainful vocal line, gave a cold snort toward the red-haired Liliana surging before his horse, and sneered:
"This female liege, judging by the direction you're heading....
could it be that you too heard of the affair a few mornings ago, were scared witless by that sixteen-year-old yellow-haired girl of Mason...
and are now anxiously taking along your pitiful little assets and private soldiers, preparing to go kneel before that deadpan witch and beg her to grant you a mouthful of rotten rice gruel laced with honey-syrup?!"
As the King of Mafen spoke, he spat exceedingly contemptuously, his voice brimming with an arrogance twisted out of extreme terror.
"What a pack of short-sighted, utterly visionless dirt-legs!
Those seventeen good-for-nothings who self-demoted into cities are the same—actually scared into handing over their national seals in full by mere tens of thousands of catties of lowly white powder used for whitewashing walls!
Let This Queen give you a word of advice: don't think that bringing these few dozen black-iron-clad blacksmiths along will make that silver-haired little girl spare the displaced people under your governance.
In their Mason's new Order, even a king has to take up a spade and go down into the fields to turn over the black earth—simply trampling the noble legitimacy we've held sacred for several centuries as worthless garbage!
Going over there now, you're merely seeking your own death, devaluing yourself into a senior wage-laborer under that little girl's hand!!"
Silence.
Across the whole crossroads carpeted in yellow sand, apart from the somewhat uneasy panting of the horned-horses, there instantly fell a near-eerie deadlock.
The fifty Leighton elite knights guarding behind Liliana, the eyes behind their masks turning in an instant utterly cold and grim.
The refined-iron lances in their hands dipped slightly; so long as their own Your Majesty the Queen gave a single command, they had absolute certainty of shredding this goateed, gaunt man before them, along with his shabby carriage, into sky-filling flecks of flesh within three breaths.
However, Liliana, seated upon her horse, after listening to this whole string of insulting words brimming with old-era haughtiness, self-righteousness, and utter belittlement of Sophia—
did not fly into a rage.
On the contrary, upon that exquisite, wildness-brimming face, within zero-point-one seconds, there exceedingly bizarrely tugged out a smile of nation-toppling beauty—yet also so cold it scalded one's very marrow... a fervent smile.
"Heh.... heh heh.... hahahahaha!!"
Liliana slightly raised her haughty chin, that head of black curls rich as the dead of night blazing and roaring in the gale.
She laughed until she trembled like swaying blossoms, the crimson silk lining rising and falling somewhat enticingly along the edges of her light armor with her movements, yet within those obsidian-like lovely eyes there now brimmed a contempt and toying interest near to having seen through the core of a piece of rotting flesh.
Laughed out of fury.
This noon, she truly had been thoroughly laughed out of fury by this gaunt old good-for-nothing who couldn't even keep his clothes on straight.
A miniature little kinglet hiding away in the northwest, who has to rely on Sachi City's charity for even his barley and refined salt, actually dares, before my horse, to use that old-era foul-stinking tone to pass judgment on Sophia—whom I exhausted every means and still could not draw near?
And he even dares to call my little silver-hair a yellow-haired girl?
That is the supreme Empress who commands every resource flow of the entire Northern border, who turned three thousand deathsworn into ashes within a single day!
Even my Leighton crown, before her, is fit only to serve as a stepping stone—and you, this impurity whose main warehouse is nearly bankrupt empty, with exactly what kind of farcical regulations are you passing comment on Mason's new Order?
Liliana slowly reined in her laughter, her body leaning slightly forward in the saddle, that dark-black marching armor pressing the soul-stirring curve at her chest tightly against one side of the horse's head.
She looked down loftily upon that gaunt man inside the carriage window, the blaze of the noonday sun reflected in her dark eyes, her tone exceedingly soft, as though carrying some kind of deadly toxin capable of freezing one's blood, and asked with a smile:
"My, my, my....
This old gentleman with the pretty long beard.
Listening to this brilliant macro discourse of yours, it seems you rather disdain Your Majesty Sophia's Black Bread and improved wheat?
Since you so look down upon the new rules the Mason Duchy reshaped this very dawn, then upon this wilderness already covered in full by the Black Rose banner.....
could it be that you, this gaunt displaced wretch whose very carriage bearings are nearly worn through, still have somewhere with a larger surplus to go than to kneel at the Yurilland Temporary Palace?"
Hearing this exceedingly gorgeous yet coarse-marching female liege before him actually use a term like "gaunt displaced wretch" to describe himself, the King of Mafen's single wisp of long goatee quivered violently in the air three times on the spot from anger.
"Ignorant! Simply an ignorant woman and child!!"
The King of Mafen slapped fiercely against the wooden window-lattice of the carriage, giving off a piercing impact sound.
He puffed out that withered chest of his, which had scarcely a few ounces of meat, and upon his face surfaced a near-morbid, blind superstition toward the old Empire's legitimacy, as he burst into smug, rampant laughter:
"You think everyone under heaven is like you pack of unworldly Northern border dirt-legs, who, the moment they see a few slips of paper that can be exchanged for supplies, have to hand over the entire ancestral estate clean?!
Let This Queen tell you!
My Mafen Duchy under my governance has been passed down for several centuries—it is a legitimate tributary state registered on the rolls of the southern temple merchant guild!
That sixteen-year-old little girl swallowed Olan, and thinks she can cover the sky with one hand over this one-acre-three-tenths patch of the Northern border?
The mountain at This Queen's back... that is the supreme core seated at the very southernmost end of the entire continent, which has ruled the whole continent for several centuries—the Imperial Capital!!"
The moment the King of Mafen brought up those two words, Imperial Capital, his whole person seemed in an instant to gain confidence, even raising his voice by thirty percent:
"The Imperial Capital holds in its hands heavy-armored legions and knights that ordinary people simply cannot imagine!
That witch Sophia has now forcibly downgraded seventeen close neighbors—this is a blatant trampling upon the Empire's supreme legitimacy, a severing of the Empire's large-margin annual tribute target in the Northern border!
By the time the Imperial Capital's punitive mechanism finishes fully mustering from the south and lumbers its way to the foot of this Yurilland city, every thread and stitch upon this wasteland will have to be exchanged back in full for the old rules of gold coins!
Go and throw in with her now, and when the Empire's grand army comes steamrolling over, you can just wait to be crushed alongside her into fertilizer for these great fields!
Hahahaha!!"
Listening to the King of Mafen's laughter brimming with morbid fervor and arrogance, Liliana's pair of enchanting obsidian-like dark eyes, within less than one-thousandth of a second, narrowed exceedingly dangerously into a sharp needle-point.
As a top-tier schemer who had, within a single interlocking death-trap, personally cleared away the Old King and the old Queen entirely, she had, almost the very instant she heard the words "tributary state" and "Imperial Capital," calibrated crystal-clear the true identity of this gaunt man before her and the genuine motive behind his frantic galloping at this moment.
Mafen Duchy.
This Queen remembers now—that eraser of a little nation on the northwest side, whose very defense must be taken over by Sachi City, so impoverished it makes one subconsciously overlook it.
So it turns out.... you gaunt old wretch, you're not fleeing for refuge.
You're taking advantage of the critical juncture while Delilah and Bardess's main force is putting the battlefield in order at Olan City and Yurilland's rear is empty, preparing through the night to take a shortcut across a thousand-some li of wasteland....
to go to the supreme core of the south, to lodge a malicious complaint against my Sophia treasure, to apply for the Imperial Capital's expeditionary liquidation mechanism.
The instant she thought of this goateed old good-for-nothing actually attempting to forcibly lure that "Imperial Capital great crocodile" of the south—which could at any moment trigger a total collapse of the entire Black Rose credit grand account—right up to Sophia's terrace.
The furnace within Liliana's bosom, piled up out of extreme possessiveness and ultimate sourness, in an instant blazed utterly red, heating to the most frenzied critical point!
"Heh heh.... so that's how it is—truly a hidden plan that opens one's eyes."
Liliana lowered her head slightly, her fingertips fair as jade scallion-stems somewhat languidly stroking the rough mane of the horned-horse beneath her, the smile at the corner of her mouth growing all the more soul-stirringly resplendent.
She turned her head slightly to the side, those eyes brimming with deadly fervor locked dead upon the King of Mafen's face, and in an exceedingly soft yet word-by-word measured voice, softly asked:
"So you mean to say.... this great King of Mafen, Your Majesty.
This very dawn you took these few shabby carriages that don't even dare hang an emblem, whipping your horses at full speed toward the ancient core of the south....
On this trip, are you specially going to the central Council Hall of that supreme core, to report, in full, to that great Majesty of the Imperial Capital, every one of these.....
so-called heaven-towering crimes by which our Your Majesty Sophia reshaped Order with paper slips, destroyed Olan, and purged the Crimson Vulture in the Northern border?"
Hearing this gorgeous woman in dark light armor before him actually lay bare his final trump card in one breath, the King of Mafen, inside the carriage, first froze imperceptibly for zero-point-one seconds.
But then, looking at the thirty regular Royal House guards escorting him at his side, and at the southern highway behind him whose end was already entirely within sight.
His blind worship of the great Empire's power made him utterly lose that last shred of keen intuition toward danger.
He let out a long cold snort, haughtily flicked that single wisp of long goatee, and with a face full of viciousness and smugness loudly berated her:
"——Of course!!"
The King of Mafen abruptly slapped his thigh inside the carriage, his voice loud and resolute.
"Tomorrow This Queen will go strike the Eternal Bell at the Empire's center!
Have the south's hundred thousand heavy-armored knights all march north!
This Queen wants to watch with my own eyes that sixteen-year-old yellow-haired girl, beneath our great Empire's iron hooves, crying and screaming as she vomits back up for This Queen every one of the seventeen national seals she took!
Since you already know This Queen's grand plan, if you now kneel down..."
"Swish—!!"
Before the King of Mafen's final ultimatum, brimming with old-era arrogance, could even fully spill out from his withered lips, the sky-filling hot, dry yellow sand in the center of the long street was suddenly, violently torn apart by a pitch-black storm so violent it suffocated!
Liliana let out a long laugh upon her horse, and upon that face brimming with wild beauty, there now remained only a coldness and cruelty near to that of a deity—born of the need to defend her beloved asset.
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