Chapter 72: The Sealed Golden Light
The dinner was held as a banquet.
It was a banquet for the complete victory of this battle.
Bread, dried meat, cabbage, flour, date palms, all these ingredients had been transformed into all kinds of wonderous delicacies in the hands of the chefs. The food filled everyone’s stomachs and brought about the comfortable feeling one felt when one had a full belly.
It was the happiness of a full stomach.
The only regrettable thing was that there were no alcoholic beverages to liven things up.
Nonetheless, holding wooden bowls in their hands, everyone treated the cool spring water as beer. They laughed and boasted to each other about their heroic performances on the battlefield while at the same time also making fun of others for almost peeing in their pants.
Of course, such accusations were met with the other party’s retort. They would say that they were ambitious, and such accusations were simply slanders.
The construction workers who stayed behind and did not go to the battlefield listened with admiration in their eyes.
Many people had looks of admiration and fear on their faces.
The battlefield was a place to test whether one was a real man or not.
Swords and blades clashed against each other.
Fresh blood splattered everywhere.
Lives withered and death was the only constant.
Only brave warriors who had long thrown away their fear of life and death and were willing to fight dared to enter the battlefield. Ordinary civilians did not dare to appear on the battlefield at all.
It was the boundary between the dead and the living.
However, in the end, they still laughed and clinked their wooden bowls together. They drank their water in one gulp as if it was beer. Although there were no alcoholic beverages, the atmosphere of the banquet seemed to make everyone intoxicated.
Even the construction workers scrambled to hold their spring water up high and toast them as if it was beer.
“Prepare your bellies, there will be no limit to tonight’s dinner!”
Kant raised the gla.s.s in his hand. It was also filled with spring water.
Nonetheless, his face had a slight flush. He looked at the soldiers sitting on both sides of the table and chairs on the street and shouted, “To victory, to the future, cheers!”
“Cheers!” The soldiers cheered and drank the spring water in one gulp at the same time.
“Huff Huff…” Kant drank it all and exhaled in satisfaction.
He signaled for everyone to continue. Then, he shrugged helplessly and said to Firentis and Manid beside him, “In the future, we will buy some malt liquor. The light beer from the Dukedom of Leo is not bad either. They are all good things that make people feel good.”
“An appropriate amount of alcohol can help liven up the atmosphere, but it is easy to make mistakes if one drinks too much.”
Firentis smiled gently and continued to try to dissuade Kant, “I should not have said this at the banquet, but the ban on alcoholic beverages is a wise choice for us.”
“Of course. ” Kant was not angry. Instead, he smiled and said, “We must maintain our vigilance. I understand.”
They had successfully destroyed the Jackalan tribe in this battle.
It was indeed something worth celebrating.
However, they could not let their guard down. The standalone Oasis Lookout lacked backup and support. Just one wrong step and they would be falling off a bottomless cliff, and if they fell, they would be crushed into pieces.
Kant had long since been prepared.
20 Ravenstern Rangers were already on alert.
They were highly skilled bow masters. Even the dense forest of a misty mountain could not block their line of sight.
Gazing at the watchtowers on top of the desert bandit’s camp, one could see rangers stationed in them. Together with these companions seated on the roof who held heavy bows and were sizing up the surrounding desert, one could say that their defense was basically foolproof.
It was easy to find enemies in the distance in the desert with a wide field of vision.
Nothing would happen.
Those soldiers who did not ingest alcohol and only drank water and ate meat could pick up their weapons at any time and form a good formation with clear heads to deal with all kinds of troubles and unusual situations.
Although it was a banquet, it could also be simply regarded as a gathering.
Without a large amount of alcohol that could relieve fatigue and free the mind, just what kind of banquet was this?
It was the one thing they could not solve.
However, replacing wine and beer with water and then letting everyone talk to and tease each other made the banquet just as successful.
After experiencing a cruel battle, this sort of gathering could solve many psychological problems. Unrestrained laughing, singing, boasting, and teasing each other helped dissolve the pent-up tension and anxiety in one’s heart.
The banquet continued all the way until late at night.
Buckets of spring water were all emptied.
This also caused the smell of urine to permeate the barley fields and areas around the date palm trees.
There were no toilets in the current Oasis Lookout. Everything was only stored in wooden buckets before being poured into the barley fields and date palm trees as artificial fertilizer. It was something one would consider as waste utilization.
Stars shone brightly in the Milky Way.
The moonlight was also bright.
After the banquet ended, the sober soldiers helped to put away the remaining food on the long table.
It was shameful to waste food.
The sentries on duty began to change s.h.i.+fts.
The Ravenstern Rangers also walked down from the watchtower, the sentry tower, and the roof of the house.
Replacing them were the energetic Swadian Footmen.
After eating and drinking their fill, their spirits were high.
It was time for them to rest late at night. The following day was the start of a new week. At the same time, it was also the last week of the month.
Council Hall.
Manid’s room was already tidied up.
When Kant saw that there were no problems, he nodded to Firentis and Manid. He went to the room on the second floor and fell asleep.
At the top of the watchtower.
The mysterious runes on the sun disc installed horizontally on top of the watchtower were emanating some sort of golden light.
It corresponded to the moon in the sky from a distance.
The Golden Light flowed, and even the seriously worn-out runes radiated a sort of golden light as if they were gold-colored symbols.
Then, within a range of 500 meters, a warmth that belonged to the day slowly appeared.
The cold was dispelled.
It was the special effect of the sun disc, regulating the temperature.
In truth, the disc would absorb the sun’s heat during the day while releasing the sun’s temperature at night so that it would not be too hot or too cold.
At the very least, Kant and the others in the Council Hall slept very comfortably.
Even the two Swadian Heavy Cavalrymen who carried their warhammers while standing in front of the council hall felt a little uncomfortable. They wondered if they wore too many pieces of clothes under their chain mail, and now they actually starting to feel the heat.
However, no one noticed that the golden light radiating from the sun disc at the top of the watchtower was getting more and more intense.
It was as if it was going to break through the sun disc before soaring into the sky!
If the golden sun disc could be erected, the light could probably be used as a searchlight.
However, none of this happened.
Every time condensed golden light appeared on the sun disc, a large number of data streams would appear on it.
The golden light exploded. Then, the data streams began to converge.
It just happened to stop the beam of golden light bursting into the sky, just like a dam intercepting and stopping a flood.
This dam was actually also fighting back forcefully.
The data streams became more and more intense, and finally, the stream of data managed to forcefully push the golden light back into the golden symbol. Even the data streams were infused into it, completely sealing off the golden light.
The moon was bright.
The stars were bright.
Everything was the same as usual.
Except for the depths of the Nahrin Desert.
It was a cruel and brutal environment where no vegetation grew. No living creature or life could live in it.
Even the most tenacious Jackalans were exhausted every time they pa.s.sed through this place. Half their lives would be lost every time before they were able to pa.s.s through this Devil’s land in the middle of the desert.
It was because the sunlight in that area was even more intense.
The blazing sunlight in the area was the same as noon at other locations from noon all the way until dusk.
The deeper they went, the closer they got to the center, the hotter the sun became.
According to the categorization of the Jackalans, the center of the Devil’s land was the center of the Nahrin Desert.
They usually walked along the edges of the area, bypa.s.sing the hottest locations. It would take them 20 days to pa.s.s through it. In fact, it took less than 10 days for the Jackalans to go from the Kingdom of Grey Mane to the edge of the Devil’s land. They only had to spend so much time because they needed to bypa.s.s that brutal area, and it was what caused the Nahrin Desert to become a difficult obstacle.
And now, at the center of the Devil’s land.
Fine grains of sand formed thick layers of sand, covering everything that had once been. Only a vast ocean of sand remained.
However, a faint golden light seemed to be rising through the layer of sand.
It seemed to want to connect to something in the sky. However, in the end, it shrunk back in vain as nothing could be found.