Chapter 698 — After the Burning

A crisp wind swept across the vast wasteland, stirring up dry dust and brittle fallen leaves and grass fragments. On the abandoned land, the irrigation channels that had once watered the fields had run dry when the upstream flow was cut off, and a collapsed, crumbling wall lay in the mud, more than half buried under yellowing weeds.

An abandoned old mill stood alone by the roadside; a huge windmill blade that had fallen from it hung tragically over a half-collapsed red-brick wall like some severed limb. Everywhere around the mill were traces of burning and explosive attack, and a scorched road sign stood askew at the crossroads before the mill, its blurred lettering faintly legible:

"Longtail Woodland - Kabray Town"

A rough hand with thick, knobby joints brushed across the road sign, wiping away a layer of charred ash.

Norris glanced at the black ash smeared on his hand, then rubbed his fingers together and looked toward the abandoned old mill not far away.

A gust of autumn wind blew over, and the cold air it carried poured into Norris's no-longer-healthy lungs; he could not help but bend over and break into a fit of coughing.

Several young people accompanying him hurried forward at once, and someone steadied the somewhat swaying Minister of Agriculture: "Minister, are you all right?"

"It's nothing. I'm getting old, and the wind this season isn't exactly kind to me," Norris said, waving his hand and declining the support of his subordinate and apprentice. His gaze slowly drew back from the mill. "I've heard of this place... They say the most fertile land around Longtail Woodland was right here..."

"All abandoned now," a young official said with a sigh. "When the troops fought their way here, the whole of Longtail Woodland had already been occupied by the Crystal Cluster Legion. Fewer than a hundred survivors were rounded up. To wipe out those monsters completely, the soldiers carried out bombing runs and then burned every town and village, including the settlements around them."

"Abandoned... abandoned isn't what's frightening. Abandoned land can still be saved," Norris said slowly, looking toward the weed-choked fields nearby. "What I fear is contamination left behind. Let's go have a look over there."

The young official turned, ordered several magic-guided vehicles to park by the roadside and stand by, then strode after Norris.

The once-fertile fields had lain abandoned, grown weeds, then suffered a round of bombing and burning; after the burning, several rains and winds had brought up new weeds. From a distance, the fields today barely resembled farmland at all. Norris crouched beside a furrow that could still just be made out, reached down, grabbed a handful of soil, and rubbed it lightly between his fingertips.

The black soil mixed with plant ash had a slightly damp, clinging texture, and it crumbled to the ground as he rubbed his fingers.

"What wonderful soil..." Norris held out his hand and let his companions see the earth left on his palm. "Where in the south could you find land like this?"

After that sigh of admiration, he clapped his hands and began instructing the sampling staff to collect local soil samples. A clerk accompanying them took out the document folder he carried and found the corresponding report: "This place and the surrounding fields are part of the 'Velvet Sedge Manor,' the private property of Viscount Kabray. But it's already hard to determine how many people lived in Kabray Town as a whole; one can only roughly estimate around three hundred households, not counting the more remote villages and a mine."

A young technician in field work clothes, wearing the Empire's standard vine-ring druid badge on his chest, said as he examined the soil: "The soil here still looks healthy, and quite fertile—much better than the two contaminated zones we found earlier..."

"Mark it green for now," Norris said, bracing himself on his knees and slowly rising. "Before the next sowing season, we need to gather as much data as possible on land that can be farmed again, and we mustn't forget to mark the severely contaminated zones..."

"Yes, Minister. In a moment, shall we..."

A Ministry of Agriculture official traveling with them was answering, but before he had finished, the guard standing watch on the earthen ridge beside them suddenly shouted at something not far away: "Who's there? Come out!"

Several pairs of eyes immediately turned toward where the guard had shouted. Norris lifted his eyelids and saw what seemed to be figures moving in the abandoned mill nearby. After the guard's second shout, the two figures hiding in the mill finally came out of the ruined building.

It was a man and a woman, of an age impossible to guess, dressed in dust-grey clothes, their hair and faces filthy. They walked toward the group with cautious, hunched backs, humble and frightened, as though terrified that a single wrong step would get them seized by these "important people."

The expression on Norris's face twitched instinctively when he saw the pair. He remembered himself from years ago... that humble, cringing posture, carved into his bones for decades—he knew it all too well.

"Survivors? There are still survivors in this area?" a young clerk exclaimed in a low voice.

Norris frowned, and only after the two had come closer did he speak: "What are you doing here? Have you been hiding here all this time?"

"Master, we... we ran back from a town to the south... We fled earlier, when the fighting came, and only came back after it was over here."

The hunched man spoke warily, plucking at loose threads on his clothes as he talked. His words were somewhat muddled and disjointed, but Norris quickly grasped what he meant: the two had not been hiding in the mill all along. They must have fled with everyone else when the trouble first began, and been lucky enough to escape this hell alive. For the past six months or so they had likely been wandering as refugees through the Pompeii or Skodran regions, and now, having probably heard that the north was safe, they had run back.

Such cases were not uncommon across this vast region—survivors of that disaster were few, but there were always some who managed to escape.

Some of these people had been taken in and protected by the units sent out from the Southern Region; some had perhaps found a permanent place to settle in the south; and some... some could not give up land their families had farmed for generations, could not give up the only home they knew, or simply could not find a way to survive in the south, and so they had come running back, drifting across this land that had become a scorched wasteland of war.

Left to themselves, most of these people would sooner or later die of hunger, cold, and disease, or in the jaws of wild beasts; the rest might turn into bandits and robbers in the eastern reaches of the Holy Spirit Plain, and this abandoned land would become a lawless zone of astonishing scale.

But the Empire would not leave them be. Norris, the work team he led, and several other teams setting out in different directions—their task was to rebuild this "granary of the Empire."

"I'm no master. My name is Norris, and I've been sent by His Majesty's command to rebuild this place," Norris said, shaking his head to clear the tangled thoughts from his mind. "This isn't a fit place to settle now. You can go first to the resettlement area to the southeast..."

The woman with the filthy hair seemed not to have understood the rest of what Norris said. Instead she stared wide-eyed: "Majesty? Which majesty? Isn't His Majesty Francis already gone?"

Norris was struck dumb for a moment.

Among these fleeing poor folk in the central region, news had lagged to such a degree—they not only did not know the Empire had been founded, but likely did not even know whether the civil war had truly ended. When had they begun their flight? How long had they been cut off from the civilized world?