Pillars of Ita

Chapter 1188 The mastermind behind the scenes

Two giant eagles landed on the top of the airship tower one after another. The Paparal people hurriedly jumped off the saddle and looked around.

Fang He was a step slower than him. He climbed down the eagle's back by grabbing the handle of the saddle. He looked around and found that the guards on the tower were lying all over the ground. He picked up a dagger from one of the guards - it was Miss Nightingale's. The guard next to him was knocked unconscious. Fang He could almost imagine how he looked like when he was knocked unconscious by Alyssa's dagger handle.

There was another guard lying down not far away, and it was obvious that a fight had been going on for a while.

Most of the guards lying on the ground wore exaggerated burgundy helmets with the emblem of the Oakshade family above the brim - a lush oak tree rooted in a hill with a golden acorn embedded in the center of the trunk.

It seemed that Alyssa and the others held back, perhaps because they did not want to create too much tension with the local lords, or perhaps when the war broke out they had already realized that Walter Stonehill and others were the masterminds.

"They are down there, Master," Jita said to him from the saddle, "There are magical fluctuations in the airship tower."

Fang He nodded and led the Paparars towards the stairs.

Jita climbed up from the saddle. Princess Lian Kuiya Arshana reached out and tried to help her, but the naturalist shook her head, picked up her magic book, sat on the saddle and jumped down.

A whirlwind lifted her up, allowing her to land on a ball of cotton and stand up lightly.

The Elf Princess looked at this scene with some surprise.

Several people walked through the stairs to the next floor of the tower, which was also empty - the staff had already fled, and the guards were unconscious everywhere. As they continued to walk down, Fang He heard the sound of a battle coming from below.

In the hall, the cat lady Daryl and May had basically finished the battle.

They were using the blunt sides of their swords and halberds to knock out the guards who were still able to get up one by one, until they were completely subdued, and then they freed their hands to look towards the box and Alisa.

And there, Walter Stonehill's guards were fighting desperately. The latter fled here with his men, thinking that he could easily control the airship tower with the advantage in numbers, but he obviously miscalculated everything.

  In the end, the escape turned into a trap.

His guards were obviously no match for the box and Elisa. The young man holding the magic sword and the elusive Miss Nightingale shuttled among the crowd like two ghostly shadows.

In just a few breaths, several more people fell down.

Walter Shiqiu was hiding on the metal grille walkway above the warehouse. Fang He looked in that direction and found that he was considered short even among the Paparars.

The man was well-dressed but looked very disheveled at the moment. He had a pair of cunning yellow eyes, light brown skin with a faint green luster, and a small, flat nose.

These seemingly ordinary features become extremely ugly when forced onto this person.

"Walter Stonehill!"

The Paparar saw the other party and shouted, causing the other party to look up in surprise. The former raised the crossbow in his hand and shot an arrow. The crossbow arrow hit the mountain lord's hat and nailed it to the wall behind with a thud.

The other person was so scared that he fell to the ground.

Fang He put down his hand only after seeing this scene. It would be almost impossible for Parker to miss and kill the other party at this distance.

“Your Highness…” Walter Shiqiu, who was sitting on the ground, recognized the elf girl next to Fang He at a glance, and shouted in panic as if he had grabbed a life-saving straw, “Quickly stop these people, these guys…”

He suddenly thought of something, his face turned pale and he shut his mouth.

Seeing this scene, Jita couldn't help but raise her eyebrows slightly. She whispered to Fang He from behind, "Captain, this person obviously knows that Princess Alsana is with us."

Fang Plover nodded.

But Lian looked at him coldly and asked, "Why did you take the Holy White Tree Heart away, Walter?"

“Holy White Tree Heart?” Walter Shiqiu widened his eyes and pretended to be innocent and argued: “No, no, no, I didn’t take the Holy White Tree Heart away. I don’t even know what it is. Princess, what do you mean by this?”

When Elisa noticed Fang He and others appeared, she stopped immediately, grabbed the box beside her and pulled them back.

"Don't worry about that woman, let's get on with it." Gwyndos was saying loudly.

However, Xiangzi had already seen Fang He at this time, and immediately put the sword back into the sheath, causing the second half of the sentence to come to an abrupt end.

"You bastard—"

Hezi nodded to Fang He, although the nod itself was meaningless. Then he embraced the magic sword with both hands and walked to the side, pulled up his hood, and pretended to be cool and silent.

Lian looked at Walter Stonehill and said, "The Holy White Tree Heart is just a beacon. The real function is the magic attached to it. Walter, you must be aware of the Elven Court's unique tracking magic. Why do you think we found you?"

Walter Shiqiu was startled and subconsciously patted his clothes, as if there was a poisonous snake attached to them and he wanted to shake it off.

But he suddenly reacted, his hands froze, he raised his head and looked at everyone with a bad face: "You are lying to me, there is no magic on it..."

The mountain lord's face darkened.

Fang He couldn't help but look at the elf girl next to him in surprise. She looked very serious, but unexpectedly, she could also be deceiving.

Perhaps it was precisely because of her identity that she was particularly convincing when she lied to people, so much so that even someone like Walter Stonehill fell into the trap of Her Royal Highness the Princess in the first place.

He couldn't help but wonder if he should be more careful. If the princess used this trick on him one day, would he fall for it?

But after being exposed, Walter Stonehill was not so panicked, and even smiled smugly: "So what are you going to do with me, Princess? It's just a holy white tree heart, can you still use it to judge me?"

Lian said coldly: "Tell those people behind you, Walter, you killed a unicorn girl, you know the relationship between the Saint Girl Association and me."

"You are not qualified to ask me to explain anything," Walter Stonehill interrupted her. "Princess Lian Kuiya Alshana, you are just the daughter of Elseran. Even if the Elf King himself came, he could not speak to me like this. This is no longer the era of six hundred years ago. The days when the Radiant Court ruled Silverwind Harbor are long gone."

This well-educated princess had probably never seen such a shameless person. A blush appeared on her fair face. She gritted her teeth and was about to draw out the Sword of Light.

But Fang He stopped her first and shook his head at Walter Stonehill: "We don't represent the Elven Court."

"Oh? Then who do you represent?" Walter Stonehill said arrogantly.

Fang He was too lazy to waste time talking to this guy, so he turned around and said to the Papara people: "Parker, teach him how to speak."

"I've never found you so pleasing to the eye."

Parker said, quickly turning the capstan with both hands, raising the crossbow and aiming at the opponent, "I've been wanting to teach this damn bastard a lesson for a long time!"

Walter Shiqiu was so frightened when he saw this scene that his hair almost stood up. He screamed, "Stop him!"

But his guards obviously couldn't make it in time, and Miss Nightingale and the box were watching them.

The mountain lord was so frightened that he turned and fled, but a crossbow arrow had already arrived, piercing through his coat with a sound of breaking through the air, and nailing his coat to the wall with a sound of thud.

The huge force caused the lord to fall off his horse.

  He got up from the ground with a bruised face and tears streaming down his face, and shouted angrily:

"Arshana...your father will know all this, and as for the rest of you, I swear you will go to the gallows!"

But threats like this won't work if they are used too often. Fang He ordered the Papara people, "Aim for his throat."

Parker understood what he meant and stuck the magic crossbow into the ground. It automatically unfolded into a crossbow. He manipulated the crossbow and aimed at the opponent.

Walter Shiqiu was so frightened that his voice suddenly stopped, and he quickly gestured with his short hands: "No, no, don't do it, everyone, this is just a misunderstanding..."

The Paparar man spat on the ground. How could such a rubbish dare to target Aina?

Fang He did not answer, but said to the Elf Princess beside him: "Your Highness, it is useless to use the rules that he is familiar with to deal with this kind of person. He knows the rules better than you do and is fearless. Even your father has no deterrent power over him."

"Sometimes, more direct and effective means are more useful."

Lian Kuiya Arsana looked at this scene with some relief, then nodded seriously, "Thank you for your advice, Mr. Ed."

"Tell me," the Paparar has already spoken to the other party, "What is the conspiracy behind you, you bastard?"

As he spoke, he patted the magic crossbow. "Be careful, if my hand shakes, you might lose an arm or a leg. I'll let you see how powerful the Nightingale King is."

Walter Stonehill was in no mood to think about why the Nightingale King would use the crossbow archer's skills. He quickly explained, "No, it's not me. This is a misunderstanding. I just helped them take the tree heart. It was them. They wanted to deal with Ninimer—"

He was about to speak when suddenly a gem in his arms rolled down.

The purple spodumene bounced onto the metal grid by itself as if it had life, then it flashed slightly and flew up and hovered in the air.

Then, a voice came from inside:

"I'm afraid you have misunderstood something. There is no conspiracy here."

The Elf Princess was startled, and looked around, finally locking her eyes on the floating crystal in front of Walter Shiqiu. Fang He immediately realized that it was a communication crystal, and now that the communication between the two worlds was interrupted, the other party must be nearby.

But just as he took out the clockwork fairy, the voice in the crystal warned him: "I saw your little tricks, Mr. Ed. If you want this conversation to go on normally, please put aside these little tricks."

It seems that the other party can observe everything in the hall.

He also knows who he is.

Fang He immediately realized these two points, so he had to throw away the clockwork fairy in his hand. Although he wanted to send a message to Cui Xisi outside, he thought that the other party would not give him this opportunity.

"Who are you?" he had no choice but to ask.

The voice replied, "It doesn't matter who I am. You know very well that you won't get any answers from me, so why ask these unnecessary questions?"

"Our time is precious. Let's get straight to the point and talk about our respective goals. Maybe there is room for us to cooperate."

May shook her head: "But we won't cooperate with murderers."

"That's not necessarily true, Miss May Frost. Our goals may be the same. You want to save the Saint, and Princess Lian Kuiya Alsana wants to quell the tree disaster. Our goals are the same—"

The voice replied in a somewhat nonchalant tone.

Lian asked coldly: "What is your purpose?"

  The voice was somewhat deep and smooth, but other than that there was no obvious feature:

"Didn't Mr. Walter Stonehill tell you that our goal is to deal with Ninimeier? On this point, our goal is the same, which is to eradicate the disaster of apoptosis."

"Deal with Ninimer?" Fang He asked.

"Yes, the Holy White Tree Heart is only the first step. Our ultimate goal is to put an end to this disaster once and for all."

"How to do it?"

The voice said, "The Holy Tree and the Ash Branch are just two sides of the same coin. The disaster of withering is only because one of the twin goddesses died, causing the realm of withering to no longer exist, thus allowing the shadows in the forest to spread uncontrollably. Therefore, it is not the death of resurrection, but the death of withering."

"The Tree Plague was never a 'death plague', but a 'life plague' of luxuriance, because death no longer exists, so overgrowth becomes a disaster - when the sacred tree is overgrown with gray branches, insect pests follow, everything is like a cancer of the sacred tree."

"And the gray branches are but tumors of the great tree—"

"So the role played by the Holy Maidens in this process is worthless, because your duty is to protect the sacred tree and prune the branches, but in such a disaster, a gardener cannot become a doctor."

The Elf Princess frowned and disagreed: "What about you, how do you do it?"

"Didn't I say that the disaster in the forest is not about life and death, but about withering and death, so the simplest way is to restore everything to balance."

"And if we want to restore the balance of withering, the Lady of the Shadow in the Forest must be resurrected. Of course, we cannot resurrect a god, but the priesthood scattered in the Sea of ​​Light is ownerless—"

Miss Naturalist asked in disbelief, "You want to create a god to deprive Ms. Withering of her position as a god? You are crazy. No one has ever succeeded in doing this."

"But we are already halfway there," the voice said calmly, "The revival of the Gray Region of Danteville was actually just a small experiment. I didn't expect it to attract the attention of the Star Ring. But it was a blessing in disguise, and we discovered some really interesting things."

Lian Kuiya Arsana seemed to have thought of something.

A flash of disbelief flashed across her silver eyes, and then they were completely ignited by anger. Her voice was slightly trembling, full of suppressed anger: "...What did you...do with them?"

The voice replied casually: "I remember I said it before - the Holy Tree and the Ash Branch are one, just like life and death are inseparable."

"And the unicorn girls have received the blessing of the forest, symbolizing its lush side. They have obtained a part of Lady Aimaya's power, so naturally they can also be favored by the other lady. So isn't the answer obvious?"

The Elf Princess trembled slightly.

She clenched her fists so tightly that her nails dug deep into her palms. She was completely unaware of the pain and gritted her teeth as she asked, "So, besides Linthia...how many other unicorn girls have you murdered?"

"I can't remember clearly. They came from various regions, from Ravenriel or Shagen, and from the city destroyed by the Scar of Yasha. Perhaps because they had seen disasters before, they didn't want to see the same disaster happen again. Some of them volunteered, some were sent to us by your people, and some were like Miss Linseya, who came by chance."

"But isn't this the purpose of the unicorn girls' existence? Aren't you supposed to protect this land? I told them that as gardeners they couldn't save the sacred tree, so they chose to sacrifice themselves."

The elf girl bit her lips until they bled, her voice trembling with anger: "They never had a real choice! They stood up to protect others and sacrificed themselves because they wanted to protect everything, but they would never fall victim to your conspiracy and deception—"

"It was a coincidence... You planned the attack on the investigation team first, and then brutally killed an innocent girl and all the members of the advance team heading to Danteville. You said that your goal is the same as ours?"

She shook her head decisively: "No, we are totally at odds with you."

"So Princess Alsana, is this what you care about? But I care more about the result - how to solve this disaster?"

The voice said, "May I ask your Highness, have you seen the refugees gathered in Loanhill and Fensado? As for Ravenriel, the situation is even worse. The disaster has only occurred recently. As long as we stop it at the source in time, further tragedies will not occur."

Lian replied: "The Holy Maiden Society was created for this purpose."

"No, the purpose of the Saint's Society's existence is just to tell others to wait, but how long should they wait? Ten years, fifteen years? Do you know what will happen in the process? Famine, war, plague, do you know how many people will die in this disaster, and how much will this land pay?"

"They all died because of your naivety and the decisions you made. Why? Just because Linthia and Miss Merrill were around you and they were unicorn girls, so you loved them more?"

The voice sneered, "But what about the others? Are they just cold numbers? But I don't think so. Behind those numbers are real people and broken families. They are husbands, wives, fathers and children of real people."

"Dear Princess, go look into the eyes of those refugees who come from Finsado, Loanhill, and even further away. Look at them and tell them your decision."

Len Quia Arsana looked at the crystal—no, it's not like that, she thought.

She had an unspeakable reason in her heart, but she didn't know how to refute it.

The voice clearly saw her hesitation: "You hesitated because you know what I said is right."

"NO, I have not."

"Of course you have—"

It went on as a matter of course: "We are all political animals in nature, and a qualified leader must learn to see the long term. Being too naive will only harm the people around you. Both ends of the scale are the same death. There is no such thing as who is more noble than the other. It's just that do you choose to cherish your feathers, be worthless and move yourself, or solve this problem?"

The elf girl bit her lip.

  However, Fang He stood in front of her. He also did not agree with what the other party said. Was the disaster of withering really caused by the death of one of the twin goddesses?

Ms. Roman told him that one of the gods of Orin had passed away, but that was the girl of destiny, Elaine. In fact, he could feel it intuitively, the thread of destiny was becoming obscure, and except for the Holy Mystery Society, no one even realized it.

This is the most direct impact of the fall of a god. They will first disappear from existence, and after their domain and priesthood collapse, a new god will be born from the sea of ​​light to rule them.

During this process, the priesthood and domain will be decomposed and reorganized, and the title and identity of the new god may be completely different from the previous one.

Just as Ms. Roman believed that the newborn Naga God would lose his storm power.

But it will never be like Ms. Apoptosis, where everyone talks about apoptosis all the time.

However, the existence of the "death plague" definitely shows that something is happening in the field of apoptosis. However, the real reason remains to be investigated, rather than jumping to conclusions.

Sure, taking responsibility is important—but it’s not everything.

It does not mean that some people can control the fate of others and make decisions for others.

What's more, there is a serious logical trap in the other party's words, which is to assume that their plan must be correct.

But what if it isn't?

If the foundation of that method is wrong, then these people may just be running on the wrong path.

  But the other party is so confident. If the Holy Maiden's method only needs to be improved, and if these people's plans fail, what will happen to the people who die as a result?

People cannot be resurrected because of this.

Fang He turned around and whispered to the Elf Princess: "Don't listen to him, this is just bandit logic."

Lian Kuiya Arsana bit her lip and nodded slightly.

The voice chuckled in the darkness, not seeming surprised: "Really? Then what advice do you have, Mr. Ed?"

Fang He finally raised his eyes to look at the suspended crystal, his gaze calm and firm, and he slowly spoke: "My question is very simple - then, how do you prove that you are right?"

The voice was noticeably silent.

……