Badge in Azure

Of the two-hundred or so Phoenician men that had surrendered, there were fifty or so noble families. There were also more than ten Barons that had been tied up and left behind in the camp.

The Phoenicians walked to the city gate. The soldiers dismounted, removed their armor and set them on the ground while the noble families removed the badges on their chests. All of them opened their mouths simultaneously and began to sing a song that was low in tone and full of sorrow.

Phoenix, the undying phoenix,

Our honor,

Lights up even the darkest nights,

The mountains and valleys meander,

And the rivers linger,

The flag of Phoenix,

Will always fly high and proud,

Phoenix, my homeland,

Where blood has cast,

A city of immortality,

Phoenix…

Phoenix…

The surrendering noble families and soldiers sang even as they walked through the city gates. Many of the soldiers had already broken down in tears.

The ritual for accepting the surrender was a simple one. The noble families would hand over their badges, fill out the necessary documents, allow their soldiers to be separated from those of the other noble families, disarm, and accept reorganization.

Some mages managed to capture the images of the Phoenicians’ surrender and sent them back to Metatrin City overnight. The entire north was in shock when the news broke.

An army of sixty-thousand men had surrendered! Even if Phoenicians were not considered to be as resilient as the Qin people, this was still hard to accept. Huoxing City was not in the middle of Phoenix, but rather more towards the north. The lands north of Huoxing City were not even one-third of the entire Phoenix. The city in the north was not even one-fourth of the entirety of Phoenix.

It was Saleen’s intention for the news to spread across the north. Then, Saleen copied these magic images and distributed them to the second battalion so that they might use them to persuade the other cities and towns in the north to surrender.

Just like that, the song of the rebel army had also spread across the entire north of Phoenix.

This was the elegy of Phoenix and its effect was huge. Except for some noble families that chose to commit suicide, most noble families chose to surrender. Everyone understood the meaning of that elegy. The bloodline of Phoenix had come to an end and all that they had been defending all their lives had been completely destroyed.

It was an undeniable fact that Holy Rock City had already occupied the south of Phoenix. Surrendering to the Metatrin Kingdom was the last thing the noble families could do.

Phoenix was doomed and at the same time, Metatrin Kingdom of the north has risen.

In the middle of September, before winter arrived in Metatrin, Saleen met with the Phoenician noble families that had surrendered. These noble families not only consisted of those from the north of Huoxing City, but also those from the south.

The army of Guderian City took two months to take down Solar City. Both sides suffered heavy losses. The Phoenicians in Solar City laid down their lives, but were still unable to escape defeat.

Many noble families had already predicted this outcome and had already escaped to the north in advance and pledged their allegiances to Metatrin Kingdom. As expected, the Guderian City army did not cross over Huoxing City. They insteasd built a huge city two-hundred miles away from Huoxing City.

This implied that Holy Rock City had acknowledged that Huoxing City had been conquered by Metatrin, along with the rest of the north.

Holy Rock City did not have any other choice. Lex had launched a powerful attack in the southeast of Luolan, chasing away a few of the Holy See’s main armies, thereby occupying three major cities. The Luolan land occupied by Lex was already one-fourth of that occupied by Holy Rock City.

With such immense power, Holy Rock City had no choice but to bear with all that in Phoenix.

Cloudflow had never given any reliable replies. Even though half of Titan Duchy had already been occupied, the Emperor of Cloudflow had still not chosen to form an alliance with Qin. Holy Rock City had to be prepared to face attacks from any and every country so they must not have any internal conflicts.

Metatrin had already built a huge city in the southeast of Laiyin. Using Laiyin Duchy as the base to attack either Phoenix or northwest of Qin remained as only a possibility. If Phoenix fought with the Metatrin army, the army in the city would no longer continue to defend Qin. Instead, they might even try to help in defending against the attack from Laiyin Duchy.

It was not that Holy Rock City did not have the abilities to defend, but the noble families in the south seemed to be involved in many under the table dealings. According to the House of Commons, there were rumors in the south that there were noble families that were attempting to collaborate with people from Cloudflow. The reason was that Prince Safilos was trying to push Lex out of the picture.

It was for this reason that Prince Safilos had no choice but to bear with it. Compared to dealing with the noble families in the south of Qin, giving up one-third of Phoenix was something he could still accept.

Saleen’s group of envoys had finally reached Holy Rock City and had already set up an embassy. What Prince Safilos managed to gain out of this was that under his request, Saleen had deployed envoys to Laiyin Duchy and an alliance could soon be formed.

Since their group of envoys had been chased out of Laiyin Duchy, Holy Rock City finally had a reason to gather their forces in the south of Laiyin Duchy, ready to launch an attack anytime. At the same time, Saleen had built another two cities in the east of Laiyin. These two militarized cities were not huge and were built solely for war. One of the cities would be occupied by Lex’s armies while the other city would be occupied by the Phoenix soldiers that had surrendered.

Qin, Bitter Water Prefecture, and Metatrin had already surrounded at least half of Laiyin Duchy.

With the help of Alchemy City, Qin’s army had already pushed the battlefront to the west mountains of Caucasus in Luolan and controlled more than half of Luolan’s land.

Holy Rock City established contact with Metatrin once again and requested for the latter to declare war on Laiyin Duchy. Of course, Saleen had no intentions of becoming cannon fodder. He would declare war, but Metatrin would never initiate the attack.

Holy Rock City had no such intentions either. The price that Prince Safilos paid was to sell to Saleen plenty of grain at very low prices. They had no lack of grain in Qin. Once the grain was kept past fifty years, even if it was kept in warehouses created by mages, it would have to be thrown away.

Qin never lacked grain so it made no difference to sell Metatrin the grain that was about to expire.

Saleen was not going to lose out either. He would buy the grain at a very low price and in the end, he even traveled to Qin to transport back all the grain that was about to expire. He had no qualms about paying for the transportation fee.

Prince Safilos had no idea that Saleen possessed elf magic and could manufacture pills that could satisfy hunger. He had only heard that Metatrin was trying to purchase warhorses so he assumed that Saleen planned to feed the animals with the expiring grains.

After Metatrin declared war on Laiyin, the latter only assumed that Saleen had gone mad and did not care too much about it. Winter was coming and Saleen had less than one-hundred-thousand soldiers at the border so they posed no threat to Laiyin Duchy.

It was under such circumstances that Saleen met with the noble families of Phoenix who had surrendered.

Saleen did not preserve their ranks of nobility, but neither did he strip away their power. These noble families would form a special group in the Metatrin Kingdom.

They would possess wealth and soldiers and their status was higher than merchants, but lower than noble families. In order to be awarded ranks of nobility, they would have to follow Saleen into battle and perform meritorious services for the kingdom. Compared to others, it as much easier for them to perform such deeds.

Saleen did not award these noble families any ranks of nobility immediately because he was afraid that they had yet to develop any sense of belonging. In order to help these noble families better understand their powers, Saleen organized a military parade in the biggest fighting arena.

Metatrin Kingdom was expanding, and absorbing the Phoenician citizens was the most important thing to Saleen.

What made Saleen happiest was that Sika was pregnant. Sika and Saleen did not use the elvish potion, but since it was close to completion, Saleen would use it in the future.

South Court was a joyous place and the Caucasus people were even more excited than Saleen. With the elders’ permission, they partied and celebrated. The Priestess’ offspring would inherit part of the Priestess’ abilities and would grow at a rate that was much faster than any other Caucasus people. Sika having a child was equivalent to the Caucasus people gaining another Earth Priestess.

Saleen discovered something unique about Sika. He noticed that all the Caucasus warriors that worked closely with Sika demonstrated a faster rate of improvement in their abilities. Saleen’s temple corp often worked closely with Sika and all the Caucasus warriors in the corp were at least at the level of swordmasters.

This was an ability that was more powerful than divine spells because the warriors did not need to pray every day.

Just as everything in Metatrin was developing quickly and smoothly, Cloudflow’s fleet appeared in the southeast of Luolan in a place the Qin people called the Floating Lake.

This enormous lake was located inland and its eastern side was connected to the south of Qin with a mountainous region in between. Its western side was Titan Duchy and a small portion of its northern side was connected to the region in Luolan that was controlled by Lex. This region was two-hundred miles wide and was the only route that was not mountainous and could lead to Luolan. By appearing at this location, it was clear that the Cloudflow fleet’s main objective was to meet with Lex.

Cloudflow’s envoy came ashore and arrived at Daliang City which was built by Lex.

Daliang City was built on the foundation of an old city and was equivalent to the provisional capital of Bitter Water Prefecture. Lex ensured that one-hundred-thousand soldiers would occupy this city in order to guard against any attacks from Cloudflow. The fleet that Saleen had promised her had yet to be completed. For now, she only possessed a small group of boats that could not be considered a fleet yet.

The Cloudflow envoy and his fleet could not care less about Lex’s group of boats and docked directly beside the shore. Someone in the small town by the shore had already sent a pigeon to inform Daliang City.

The imperial palace in Daliang City was a seven-story magic tower. Lex received the news while in the magic tower and felt uneasy. The people of Cloudflow were so lazy that they could not even be bothered to establish contact with Holy Rock City. Why would they send an envoy over there?

“Bring Nicholas here.” Lex recalled that Nicholas had yet to depart and immediately gave an order to a magic apprentice.

It did not take long for Nicholas to arrive at the sixth level of the magic tower. The seventh level was where Lex’s sorcerers stayed so Lex could only train on the sixth level.

“Your Highness, you are looking for me? I was about to leave.” After escorting Lex there, he was asked to stay for a while longer by the former and participated in a few important battles as a result. He gained quite a lot. It was already September and he was about to inform Lex that he would be heading back to Metatrin though.

“Nicholas… Cloudflow has sent an envoy.” Lex pointed at the slip of paper that the pigeon brought over.

“Your Highness, are you worried? If you want me to stay, you will need to ask my Lord first. I still need to return to Broken Blade Pass to oversee the final stages of its construction.” Nicholas was courteous to Lex, but at the end of the day, he was still Saleen’s subordinate. He could not possibly keep working for Lex. Besides. This place was too near to the Holy See army for his comfort.

“No. I heard that holy priests possess a very powerful ability called ‘prophecy magic’. What are the Cloudflow people here for?”