Chapter 43: The Crimson Glow and the Kings’ Deception

In this place, on this very night, three gazes were fixed intently on the sky, each representing a distinct hope.

Wang yearned to keep the person she longed to see close by.

Little Eagle wished for their current peaceful days to endure.

Cai, for her part, hoped that after her departure, that particular person would find happiness.

At this moment, Cai stood alone on the mountaintop, her hands clasped in prayer.

Yet, it wasn’t solely the boundless heavens above that drew her eye; something far closer also captured her attention.

It was an observation made entirely by chance.

The iris pendant, which Cai always wore securely around her neck, suddenly intensified its glow.

For a fleeting instant, Cai mistakenly thought the moonlight had affected the pendant.

But she swiftly realized her error!

Unlike the silver moonlight, the iris pendant now radiated a vivid crimson, appearing as if flowing with blood.

This unexpected discovery shifted Cai’s focus from the sky above.

As she clutched the pendant, her gaze lowered, noticing something in the far distance.

A single point, then two…

Innumerable specks of light seemed to emerge at the horizon’s edge.

Lights appearing in the dead of night ought to bring a sense of reassurance.

Instead, the thousands of white points caused Cai’s heart to pound with dread.

Those flashes of white offered her only a terrifying visual impression.

The immense distance prevented anyone who might notice these white specks from discerning what they actually were.

However, anyone present at the scene would have known the truth:

Those so-called “white points” were, in fact, thousands upon thousands of suits of armor.

When these armors were donned by an equal number of knights, meticulously and uniformly, it signified but one undeniable fact:

The forces of the Seven Great Nations had arrived!

No single nation’s army had come independently.

The reality was that the soldiers of these great nations, without any mutual consultation, were all rushing towards a common destination on this very night!

****

Let us rewind to two days prior, when the King of the Kingdom of Sero initiated a clandestine plan.

The King entrusted seven letters, transcribed by villagers, to his own spies.

These spies had been strategically placed within the territories of the Seven Great Nations for many years.

Only an urgent royal summons would compel them to risk exposure and use teleportation arrays for a swift return to their homeland.

Upon summoning these trusted subordinates, the King instructed them to pose as envoys from the remote village and travel to their respective nations of infiltration.

The spies’ sole objective was to disseminate false intelligence—to weave an elaborate lie!

As is widely known, the prerequisite for fabricating a lie is to make it appear as plausible as possible.

To this end, the King had meticulously analyzed every detail beforehand.

His initial analysis focused on distance.

The village, situated within a five-hundred-mile radius, shared borders of varying lengths with eight nations, including the Kingdom of Sero itself.

A genuine villager, without relying on magic, would only require a horse and less than a week’s worth of dry rations to reach the borders of the Seven Great Nations.

This implied that if a few spies merely presented themselves looking travel-worn and disheveled, the people of the great nations might well be deceived.

Next, the King considered the villagers’ motivation for seeking aid.

The genesis of this matter lay in the village chief and all the villagers, driven by self-preservation, wishing to eradicate a constantly migrating tribe of demons.

Even now, the villagers believed these demons to be nothing more than petty, low-level monsters, capable only of frightening ordinary folk.

However, the villagers’ perception was entirely misguided!

These demons not only possessed a fearsome reputation among the populace but were, in fact, well-known across the central continent and parts of the western continent.

Though the demons had committed no evil deeds, their sheer number—exceeding three thousand—was enough to cause an unspoken wave of pressure among all nations.

It was a perfectly natural reaction for villagers to be terrified when a demonic tribe, feared even by smaller nations, migrated near their remote settlement.

Therefore, from the village’s perspective, the inhabitants certainly had a compelling motive to seek assistance from a major power.

Finally, the King devised a method to gain the trust of the great nations’ high-ranking officials.

For the past decade, intelligence warfare and espionage had become commonplace between nations.

Thanks to this, every country had, to varying degrees, mastered certain anti-espionage military tactics.

The King could make the key figures of the seven nations believe that a village might indeed dispatch envoys.

But, delving deeper:

How could the King possibly convince those officials that the “envoys” before them were not spies, but genuinely diligent and unassuming villagers?

The answer lay in the “old script.”

Decades ago, the central and western continents had adopted the “new script” as their official writing standard.

Today, the “old script” was only still in use in remote or isolated backwaters, such as the very village where Cai was born.

Moreover, it was utterly impossible for an ordinary person to convincingly imitate a letter written in it.

Unless one had been writing in the “old script” since childhood, any attempt to forge such a letter would result in content riddled with inconsistencies.

It would be akin to someone unfamiliar with a foreign language awkwardly piecing words together from a dictionary; its authenticity would be immediately discernible.

It was this crucial detail that prompted the King, when meeting with the villagers, to insist they transcribe the letters, knowing this was the only way to avoid any potential flaws.

Subsequently, the King handed the letters to the seven spies, instructing them to present the “old script” documents after meeting with the border garrisons of their respective nations.

It was well known that great nations adhered strictly to protocols when conducting affairs, unlike the Kingdom of Sero, which might simply “dispose” of suspicious individuals.

Therefore, upon encountering individuals suspected of being envoys, the border garrisons of each nation immediately took the same course of action:

They directed the diplomats stationed at the border to examine the contents of the letters.

Though diplomats did not use the “old script” themselves, they were capable of recognizing it.

This method allowed the spies to gain trust, securing them an audience with the higher echelons of power.

Once the spies faithfully relayed the original message from the true village envoy, the royalty of the seven nations became restless with anticipation.

No royal house ever wished to forgo population expansion.

After all, an increase in population signified enhanced national strength and, crucially, increased tax revenue!

Once the leaders of these royal houses—the Kings of the seven nations—were convinced of the envoys’ identities, the disguised spies began to transmit a unified message:

The spies, speaking in the village chief’s name, informed the Kings that for the entire village to pledge allegiance, the demons entrenched outside its borders must first be annihilated, which would necessitate the deployment of knight orders.

Upon receiving this information, the Kings proceeded to analyze the advantages and disadvantages.

Thousands of villagers within the settlement absolutely had to be brought under their nation’s dominion.

To achieve this, however, a war against thousands of demons would be unavoidable.

Was this exchange truly worth it?

It appeared, superficially, to be a sound deal.

For all the nations, the constantly moving demonic tribes were like unpredictable bombs, threatening to detonate at any moment.

Rather than tolerate such a dangerous force and allow their citizens to live in fear, it was better to find a suitable opportunity to eliminate them.

Their nations were destined to wage war against demons eventually, and now a perfect pretext for war had presented itself, along with the added benefit of population expansion.

With these thoughts, what reason could the Kings possibly have to pass up such a bargain?

Thus, the seven nations, each convinced that only their own army was deploying, unwittingly mobilized vast forces on the same day, alongside six other nations with whom their relations were often strained.

Such a precise coincidence in timing could only be attributed to the meticulous coordination of the seven spies!

Regarding the number of troops, it had to be neither too few nor too many.

Too few troops would fail to decisively eliminate the demons, while too many would compromise their nation’s defenses.

Consequently, based on subtle differences in national strength, the Kings dispatched forces ranging from just over ten thousand to twenty thousand soldiers.

The combined military strength deployed by the seven nations totaled approximately one hundred and thirty thousand.

The border was not far from the village, merely a few hundred miles away.

Within a day and a half of the spies’ departure, the vanguard of the first nation had already reached its destination.

This vanguard, primarily comprised of Pegasus and Gryphon units, was known as the “Air Corps.”

The commanding officer, roughly thirty years old, bore a long, narrow scar above and below his right eye, covering a significant portion of his face.

Judging by how the scar seemed to meld with his skin, it appeared to have been there for many years.

Then, at a certain moment, the iris pendant worn around the officer’s neck began to emit a red glow, its color resembling flowing blood.

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