"Is it really useful?" Scholar Xiu Fu asked with a hint of worry after leaving the manor.
Lynd smiled and said, "Don't worry, that thing can save his life."
Originally, his expectation for Scholar Xiu Fu was only to help him move Sphinx Academy to Summerhall, but he didn't expect Scholar Xiu Fu to give him such a big surprise, allowing him to gain a town for nothing.
What he needed to consider now was where to dispatch an army to station in Ge Dohe, and how to rebuild this city.
It was clear that Kevira, who had been brought to the brink of collapse by the threat of the Faceless Men, had no way to refuse Lynd's request. He quickly agreed to Lynd's proposal to incorporate Watery Hold and his people under Summerhall's command, as long as Lynd could save him from the Faceless Men's assassination.
And Lynd's method of saving him was simple: he gave him a few iron coins with special properties that Jaqen had given him. These iron coins were different from the ones Arya would obtain in the future; these were used to buy lives from the Faceless Men.
Lynd told him to remove the guards from the manor tonight, keep the iron coins he gave him on his person, and then sleep soundly. If the iron coins disappeared by tomorrow, it meant the danger had passed.
Although the crisis of the Faceless Men could be easily resolved, the matter concerning Ge Dohe had not yet been settled. The fact that the Norvos noble Kevira spoke of attacked him out of covetousness for the Watery Hold's profits, even hiring the Faceless Men to assassinate him, seemed somewhat unreasonable.
Although this Watery Hold was the largest distribution center for smuggled goods and stolen items on the Lorne River, precisely because of these items, they couldn't be sold at high prices. Those selling the goods didn't earn much, and the transaction taxes paid to the Watery Hold were naturally not much either.
Moreover, these goods weren't available every day; there were at most three or four transactions a month. The profits generated from these three or four transactions might not even be as much as the profits generated by Miracle Port in a single day, and even less once they reached Kevira, the governor.
Therefore, it was clearly unreasonable that the Norvos noble would act against Kevira solely for the sake of the so-called profits from smuggled and stolen goods.
One must know that the price to hire a Faceless Man to kill someone is enormous. The cost to kill an ordinary merchant is enough to hire a mercenary army of several hundred people, and to kill a river governor like Kevira, who controls a region, the price would be enough to hire an army of several thousand, or even tens of thousands, of people.
Given the prices of the smuggled and stolen goods in the Watery Hold, even if accumulated over decades, they probably couldn't compare to the cost of hiring a Faceless Man.
Therefore, Lynd suspected that the Norvos noble acted against Kevira for other reasons.
Regardless of the reason the Norvos noble acted against Kevira, Lynd had already considered Ge Dohe his own territory, and naturally needed to resolve this matter completely. So, he could only change his route, taking Valyrian Road to Norvos.
However, even without the Norvos noble issue, Lynd probably would have gone near Norvos anyway, because he learned from Kevira that the Dothraki hired by Norvos were currently patrolling the middle section of Valyrian Road leading to Norvos. Lynd speculated that this group of Dothraki should be the one secretly controlled by House Soyid of Kohor.
"Do you need to prepare anything?" Scholar Xiu Fu asked after returning to the manor where they were staying.
"No, just prepare a boat for me," Lynd thought for a moment and said, "Also, have Kevira receive Uda U's fleet tomorrow and deal with their bodies."
East of Ge Dohe, at the confluence of Little Lorne River and Lorne River, a temporary camp by the riverbank had over twenty pole boats commonly used by river pirates. In the camp, five to six hundred river pirates, dressed in crude leather armor and covered in white powder, were dividing a newly plundered boatload of goods. At the same time, they were roasting the youngest crew member from that boat over a fire, planning to eat his flesh later to complete a sacrifice before attacking the Watery Hold of Ge Dohe.
The leader of this group of river pirates was White Skull Udau. He was a native of Kohor, but his mother was a slave. When he was very young, he watched his mother being sacrificed to the Black Goat, and instead of hating the Black Goat, he claimed to have received divine revelation and became a fanatical follower of the Black Goat.
If the Black Goat he worshipped belonged to a normal Black Goat sect, that would be one thing, but the problem was that the Black Goat sect he worshipped was an evil cult that had been classified as taboo. This cult followed ancient human sacrifice rituals, and the initiation ceremony required sacrificing relatives to the Black Goat, as well as eating the flesh and blood of the sacrificed relatives to symbolize becoming one with the Black Goat.
In other words, besides watching his mother be sacrificed, Uda U also ate her flesh and blood.
Later, when the Black Goat Church in Kohor learned of the existence of such an evil cult in the city, they naturally sent people to encircle and suppress them. Ultimately, only Uda U survived his entire family, escaping to Dagger Lake and becoming a river pirate.
After he became a river pirate, he plundered ships and spread his Black Goat cult beliefs, quickly gathering a group of fanatical followers around him. He gradually became one of the top river pirates on Dagger Lake.
The reason he accepted the Norvos noble's employment to attack Kevira this time was primarily because Quinan Tassis of Norvos promised him that once Ge Dohe was captured, he would be allowed to establish his own Black Goat temple there and openly spread his cult's ideology.
This was a condition he absolutely could not refuse, not to mention he had long harbored the idea of plundering the Watery Hold of Ge Dohe. This time, it was merely going with the flow.
He had already eliminated half of Kevira's subordinates, which would greatly reduce his troubles when attacking the Watery Hold. Moreover, inside the fortress, there was an insider prepared by the Norvos noble; as soon as he reached the fortress gates, that person would betray Kevira and open the gates. Therefore, in his view, occupying the Watery Hold was already a foregone conclusion.
Just as Uda U was considering whether to perform a grand human sacrifice to please the Black Goat after occupying the Watery Hold, he suddenly felt something was wrong. He stood up from his seat, looked at the river surface and the surrounding woods, and immediately shouted loudly to everyone: "Alert!"
As Uda U's shout echoed, everyone fell silent, looking at their leader in confusion.
"Fools, the fog, it's not right!" Uda U drew his weapon and shouted, pointing at the fog outside the camp.
At this moment, everyone realized that at some unknown point, the river surface had been enveloped in thick fog, and the fog was slowly advancing towards the camp. At the same time, the surrounding mountains and forests were also shrouded in rolling fog. These fogs enveloped the entire camp and gradually shrunk its scope.
Uda U's subordinates were all ruthless and desperate individuals who had spent many years on the Lorne River. The reason they had survived for so long was not only their strength but, more importantly, their alertness to various abnormal dangers.
They understood in an instant that something was wrong. They all drew their weapons, and some of them, terrified by the slowly approaching abnormal thick fog, ran towards the boats on the shore, wanting to pole away.
These fleeing traitors were not pursued. Uda U's loyal subordinates watched as these people poled their boats into the thick fog, seemingly wanting to use the escapees to test whether the fog posed a danger.
However, to their disappointment, those who entered the thick fog did not provide any feedback, not even a sound, as if they had all been swallowed by the fog.
"Light up the camp, fire can block the thick fog," Uda U immediately thought of something and quickly shouted.
Upon hearing this, his subordinates immediately lit several bonfires around, throwing everything that could burn into the fire.
However, to their disappointment, as the thick fog approached, the fiercely burning flames began to rapidly diminish, and then completely extinguished before their eyes. Even the wood that had been flickering with flames a moment ago was now covered in a layer of ice.
Seeing this, some people, unable to bear the pressure, shouted loudly and rushed into the thick fog with their weapons. But the moment they plunged into the fog, all shouts instantly ceased, and they, like those who had fled by boat earlier, became silent.
Although the fog's advance was slow, it did not stop. Soon, the river pirates' space was compressed into a very small area. Those on the periphery had already been squeezed into the thick fog, and at this point, they understood why those swallowed by the fog would instantly lose their lives: without exception, they were all frozen into ice sculptures in an instant.
The terrifying sight before them instantly stripped these murderous, heinous river pirates of their courage, plunging them into despair. They did not want to be frozen to death alive, so they chose to end their own lives. Those who lacked the courage to commit suicide pleaded for help from others, but no one paid them any attention, and they could only watch themselves be swallowed by the thick fog and frozen into ice sculptures.
Uda U also watched the disaster before him in despair. He didn't understand why such a terrifying disaster would appear around him. His mind was completely blank, unable to issue a single useful command. He could only stand still and watch his subordinates commit suicide one by one, and turn into ice sculptures one by one.
Until the thick fog advanced before him, he, on the contrary, calmed down. He reached out and grasped the Black Goat holy emblem around his neck, reciting the prayer his father had chanted when he first participated in a sacrifice and watched his mother being sacrificed.
To his surprise, a miracle seemed to occur. The thick fog, which had been continuously advancing since earlier, stopped moving forward, halting before him as if an invisible wall blocked it.
"God of Fertility, I sacrifice to you…" Seeing this scene, Uda U immediately guessed that his prayer to the Black Goat had worked. His mood instantly shifted from despair to excitement, and he recited the prayer with an incredibly devout tone, while holding up the Black Goat holy emblem in his hand.
His prayer seemed to have worked; the thick fog not only did not advance but instead slowly receded.
Seeing this, Uda U felt that he was saved, so excited that tears streamed down his face, and he let out a sigh of relief.
However, the instant he sighed in relief, the slowly retreating thick fog suddenly expanded, completely enveloping Uda U.
Uda U didn't even have time to continue his prayer before his entire being, like his subordinates, was frozen into an ice sculpture.
After Uda U was frozen into an ice sculpture, the thick fog slowly thinned and receded. The areas previously covered by the fog gradually became visible. Starting from the surface of the Little Lorne River, a thick layer of ice covered the entire river. The pole boats that tried to escape on the ice were all frozen solid, and the people on board also turned into ice sculptures. All living creatures in the camp were frozen into ice sculptures, the ground formed a thick layer of ice, and the surroundings were covered in ice and snow, as if one had entered the perpetually icy Beyond the Wall from the perpetually spring-like Velvet Hills.
In this world of ice and snow, a figure wearing two knight's Greatswords at his waist stood out prominently.
Although Lynd had already guessed beforehand that driving the Nameless King Rune to create thick fog and activating the power of the Ice Dragon Rune would produce great power, seeing this effect now still surprised him somewhat.
This scene made him think of the appearance of the Others, and also reminded him of the Wild Hunt that came with the White Frost in a certain game from his previous life.
However, his attention did not linger on the magnitude of the rune's power for too long. It shifted to the arm that Uda U, the leader of these cannibalistic river pirates, held high, or more precisely, the Black Goat holy emblem clutched in his hand.
The thick fog stopping its advance and then receding was not Lynd toying with the opponent, not intentionally giving the desperate opponent renewed hope only to plunge him back into despair to torment his mind. Instead, there truly was a force preventing the ice-sealed thick fog, formed by the rune's power, from approaching, and this force came from the Black Goat holy emblem in Uda U's hand.
Lynd walked over and directly broke off Uda U's ice-frozen fingers, taking out the Black Goat holy emblem. He then used his special vision to check if there was any magical aura on it. As he expected, in his special vision, the Black Goat holy emblem was just an ordinary metal badge, with nothing special about it.
But Lynd did not give up his exploration because of this. Instead, he guided the power of the Nameless King Rune to activate his eyes. The Black Goat holy emblem, which had been ordinary a moment ago, now transformed into an eyeball, a goat's eye surrounded by black tentacles.
Moreover, this goat's eyeball was alive, because when Lynd looked at it, the pupil of the goat's eyeball also rotated to face him.
This scene was incredibly eerie, and Lynd even felt an inexplicable chill. He also found that the hand holding the goat's eyeball was already enveloped by black tentacles, and they were infiltrating his palm.
However, when Lynd, sensing danger, wanted to exit this special vision state, a suction force emanated from the Nameless King Rune, directly capturing the black tentacles that had penetrated his palm, swallowing them into the rune, and then began to devour the power within the goat's eyeball along the tentacles.
Immediately after, Lynd heard an angry bleating sound, and then automatically exited that special vision, returning to a normal state. The Black Goat holy emblem in his hand, as if having undergone millions of years of corrosion, turned into a pile of metal fragments.
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