"What a terrifying experience."
Jing Yuan rubbed his brow with a headache. Just moments earlier, Fu Xuan had come to report on official business, only to see the luxuriant vegetation growing all over him. Her face had gone deathly pale in an instant, and she had nearly lost her footing. Even after hearing the explanation and barely managing to calm herself, she still looked somewhat unsteady.
After all, his condition had looked almost indistinguishable from becoming mara-struck. It had genuinely been terrifying.
If a General were to suddenly succumb to mara without warning, the amount of destruction they could cause aboard the Xianzhou was almost too dreadful to contemplate.
"That sensation of wanting to return was undeniable. It was like a child longing to return to their mother's embrace, or a traveler far from home yearning for their homeland. It was an overwhelming desire from the depths of the heart to return to that original place of peace. Even someone with tremendous willpower would find it difficult to resist."
Jing Yuan could still feel the dampness across his back. The cold sweat brought on by the terror he had felt upon waking and realizing something was wrong with his body had yet to fully dry.
"That gentleman's power is becoming more and more impossible to understand."
Jing Yuan remembered the first time he had met Caelus, back when the young man had been specially hired as a chef. His expression had been just as calm as it was now, or perhaps indifferent would be more accurate. In that respect, he did not seem to have changed much at all.
"Or perhaps he was never someone anyone could truly understand in the first place."
Amphoreus, Cycle 16,440,871.
A thousand years ago, a hero known as Caesar descended upon the world and ushered in an unprecedented era of peace. For the first time in history, she unified all of Amphoreus, bringing every city-state beneath a single government and placing everyone under the authority of the law.
Nobles and former heroes alike were required to live beneath that law. None were permitted to stand above the rules it established.
For that reason, the people came to revere Caesar. Though she had initially been condemned as a tyrant, in the present age she was remembered as the wisest ruler in history.
Near the end of her life, she established a constitutional monarchy. From then on, the people would choose each successive monarch themselves, selecting the next captain capable of steering the nation forward.
A thousand years later, the current monarch was a young Chrysos Heir named Aglaea. It was said that she had once been nothing more than the daughter of a merchant family, and that her greatest dream had been to become the finest tailor in all of Amphoreus.
Unfortunately, tragedy struck her family. Her parents died while she was still young, and most of the family fortune was lost soon afterward. Even at that age, however, Aglaea keenly sensed that something about the situation was suspicious. Believing there was a conspiracy behind it, she decisively entered politics. Using the connections her parents had left behind, she achieved her first major political success and quickly began to rise.
After years of effort, Aglaea finally completed her revenge, having those responsible for ruining her parents convicted and imprisoned for financial crimes.
From then on, her political career advanced with astonishing smoothness. Her position rose at a meteoric pace, and now, despite being less than a hundred years old, she had won the latest election and become the new ruler of Amphoreus.
Of course, a century would be an advanced age for an ordinary human, but for Chrysos Heirs who could easily live several hundred years, she was indeed still young.
Unfortunately, the peace did not last.
The prophecy of the Black Tide, passed down for a thousand years, finally came to pass in full, and the long-peaceful land of Amphoreus once again faced a crisis.
Could this Amphoreus, now unified and transformed by centuries of institutional reform, survive the apocalyptic disaster foretold in prophecy? The Titans had completely vanished from sight, to the point where people had begun doubting whether THEY had ever truly existed. With not a single demigod having appeared in the present era, could this world still accomplish the great undertaking of recreating itself?
And when the people finally realized that their own strength could not save the world and were forced to turn back toward myth, only to discover that the Titans had begun disappearing from history after Caesar's rise, would they begin to wonder whether Caesar herself, that supposed blasphemer, had driven the Titans away?
And if that happened, what title would they give Caesar then?
"How much longer are you planning to keep narrating?"
Caelus and Sunday stood nearby watching Lygus loudly deliver his narration. He even had both arms raised dramatically, making him look exactly like a host sent onto a stage before the curtain rose to stir up the audience.
"Oh, my apologies. This is an entirely new possibility, after all. Nothing like this ever happened in the previous cycles. The Titans and the Black Tide were always essential elements in the recreation of the world. Who could have expected them to become almost irrelevant this time, allowing everything to develop with this much unpredictability?"
Lygus spoke with a smile. Apparently, he had stopped caring about his original responsibilities altogether.
"This cycle will proceed exactly as you suggested. You'll become Anaxa's teacher, give him knowledge, and guide him down the path of learning.
"Sunday, this cycle has already advanced rather far. On top of that, because the demigod factor was removed, Trisidios passed away several hundred years ago. You'll have to wait until the next cycle.
"I'll leave Aglaea to you, Cyrene. When it comes to teaching someone about Beauty, you probably have the best chance of success among the three of us.
"As for me, I'll find Mydei and try to train him into a genuine Pathstrider of the Hunt. If that ultimately fails, then we'll have no choice but to use Lygus's plan and resort to something more extreme."
"I still believe using the Abundance to draw in the Hunt is the safest and fastest strategy," Lygus said. "After all, Irontomb is the one that would ultimately suffer the damage."
"The risk is too high. Rejected."
"What a shame."
Once their discussion ended, the three separated again.
Lygus headed for the Grove of Epiphany, where he would become a teacher and take Anaxa as his student, passing on the miracles of alchemy and using them to introduce him to the wonders of Erudition.
After all, alchemy was fundamentally the study of breaking the world down into its underlying principles.
Sunday, meanwhile, set out to cross the land on foot. He intended to witness the stories of the people of Amphoreus for himself. Just as Caelus had once done, what Sunday needed now was the accumulation of experience that only travel could provide.
Caelus went searching for Mydei, who in this cycle had only recently been thrown from a cliff by his father.
Cyrene would be responsible for teaching Aglaea, guiding her toward a deeper understanding of aesthetics. The first step would be teaching her to accept other people's tastes.
For example, a certain gray-haired young man's favorite combination of yellow and purple.
Could this really work?
(To be continued.)
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◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)