Chapter 1136: Chapter 1073: Holy Cabinet, Takeoff
The time for slacking off is always short.
Wanting to get off work early, Horn forced himself to tear his eyes away after watching for a while, still a little reluctant.
Watching the ry Court Barracks being built was just like when he used to play city-building games; his favorite thing was always watching a city slowly take shape.
It’s just that in reality, a city’s construction, compared to a game, is so slow it could give you geriatric disease.
Sitting back down at the desk, the clockwork engine fan in front of him whirred, blowing over damp air with the tang of grass.
Horn tidied the desktop, pulled out the unfinished files, and continued reviewing them.
Ever since a complete paperwork-processing system had been set up, for similar types of government business, Horn usually only needed to lay down the general policy; the Imperial Cardinal Conference could then come up with quite decent handling suggestions.
Compared to Charles VIII, who was busy every day until his heels met the back of his head, Horn was living much more leisurely on his side.
He was, after all, the founding monarch; the Imperial Cardinal Conference was entirely made up of people he himself had promoted, and he knew them all very well.
So he dared to delegate power, and was even happy to do so.
If it were Charles VIII, he, first, didn’t trust his ministers, and second, was unwilling to delegate, so of course he worked himself into a borderline pathological state.
Ginijis was the same back then, so both Kings’ health tended to be not so great.
It’s just that Charles is young, and his Knight’s breathing technique has reached five segments, plus he trains regularly, so he hasn’t yet been crushed by the endless government work.
So at this stage, what ended up on Horn’s desk were generally documents that absolutely had to be approved by him personally.
The very first one in front of him was quite a heavyweight.
"On the recent series of rumors related to the Saint’s Grandson."
Never mind the wild tales about how, back in the day, the Saint’s Grandson was a hooker in High Castle City; lately, for some unknown reason, public opinion in the Holy Alliance had gone nuts and started randomly assigning Horn some secret dads.
No one would dare question or spread rumors about Horn’s identity as the Saint’s Grandson, of course—that would literally get the Cheka knocking at their door.
What they were gossiping about was the blood relationship of Horn’s physical body.
Because of deeply ingrained noble and hero-worship mindsets, commoners always felt that heroic figures must have glorious origins.
The Saint Master chose Horn to save the world; surely that couldn’t have been a random pick.
So they dug through every local record they could find, and finally discovered a coincidence: the year Horn’s mother was pregnant.
Moliat’s father, the former Grand Duke Hemashi, Grand Duke Vincent of old, happened to die that year.
And some time before his death, he just so happened to have gone near High Castle City.
They made a bold hypothesis and carefully verified it, using "rational reasoning" to arrive at the conclusion—Horn’s biological father was actually Grand Duke Vincent of Hemashi.
Thus Horn possessed the blood of two Kings; as for Moliat, how could a Witch possibly give birth to a child?
So she definitely wasn’t it.
On this basis, what had originally been just small-talk and speculation among commoners—
Has now been turned into print by some private publishers who, in order to make money, would literally publish anything.
All kinds of books like "Ten Shocking Truths You Don’t Know About His Holiness the Pope," "An Elder’s Oral Memoir: In 1426 a Middle-aged Man Came to Our Village," were pouring off the presses.
For the sake of sales, these authors and editors really pulled out every trick they could think of.
First they deduced that Horn’s biological father was Grand Duke Vincent, then they said Horn’s biological father was Madlan, and then that Horn’s biological father was Patrick.
The mentality of "a hero’s son must be a hero" was deeply rooted in people’s hearts in this era.
In one stroke, it "explained" why Horn was so powerful even aside from the Apocalypse.
This was because the Holy Sect denied the existence of the Apocalypse; since the Apocalypse didn’t exist, then how did the Saint’s Grandson become the "Saint’s Grandson"?
The Holy Alliance’s official explanation was that Horn’s Apocalypse was real, because no demon would deliver a fake Apocalypse just to have it kill themselves.
But the issue of the Saint’s Grandson’s identity had once again become a topic the Holy Alliance absolutely could not touch.
The ry Court Barracks had a lot of immigrants in its surrounding districts, and a lot of rich folk as well.
Once their stomachs were full and they had enough to drink, they naturally needed entertainment; their usually barren spiritual life now had to be fed by this kind of cultural industry.
The cheapest, and most readily endorsed by these petit bourgeois, was all sorts of secret histories and "inside stories" about the upper echelons of the state.
They could get entertainment, gain conversation topics, and satisfy their curiosity about high-level politics all at once.
"On this issue, it’s best to differentiate in our approach: some affect public order, some are merely after-dinner entertainment...
The authorities don’t need to officially refute them; the more you refute these kinds of rumors, the more they multiply. Best to exaggerate them to the point of absurdity—then fewer people will believe...
Little rumors that don’t affect public stability and security aren’t worth the cost of a crackdown; let them be. As for those with vicious political innuendo, those that impact public order—deal a light punishment as a heavy warning..."
After finishing his comments on the first document, the second one made Horn frown again.
The second document was simple enough on the surface, but the possibilities behind it sent a chill down Horn’s back.
This document had been submitted by Night Watcher Duvalon, with several scholar, Wizard, and Cheka investigation reports attached.
Ever since the Ethereal Tower started drawing ether frequently, monsters similar to that Lightning Slime had been appearing more and more.
In the mountains and forests of Daze Village, and even on Autumn Dusk Island, the probability and frequency of monsters appearing had exceeded normal levels.
Monster attacks in the surrounding areas had become frequent; in the past two years alone they’d caused over a dozen casualties.
Although the Night Watchers were quite pleased to have obtained so much monster meat, they hadn’t forgotten their duty.
Based on investigations by scholars and Wizards, they put forward a reasonable yet terrifying hypothesis.
Could it be that monsters are actually creatures mutated under ether radiation?
Or did something else from the astral world slip in?
Back when Autumn Dusk Island and Daze Village were crawling with Long-haired Zombies, was it actually to clear out these monsters and keep them from drawing attention?
If that’s the case, then in the future, if we really end up covered by an ether field twenty-four hours a day, won’t that lead to large numbers of monsters being born?
Now that we have monster Slimes, can monster rats, monster cockroaches, or even monster cockroach-rats be far behind?
On this basis, some Wizards had also attached a line of reasoning that both chilled and excited Horn.
If it can be proven that ether has a gathering effect on monsters, then does that, in reverse, prove that wherever monsters gather, there must be a weak point between the astral world and ours?
The lead to a second possible Ethereal Tower had appeared.
At the end of the document was a treatment suggestion handwritten by Madlan.
He suggested establishing a dedicated Demon Hunter squad responsible for exterminating monsters and patrolling, while also mobilizing the army and Wizards to investigate the cause; if necessary, they might request a Dreamless Divination.
Horn dipped his fountain pen in ink and wrote on the opinion column, "Must be taken seriously. Forward to the Imperial Cardinal Conference and the Mechanical Palace, to be discussed at the next regular meeting."
Picking up a carrot-shaped bronze seal, he stamped the comment, exhaled a long, heavy breath, and noted the matter briefly in his notebook before picking up the third pending file.
As for this third one, it was also a heavyweight.
Not about anything else, but about the Holy Cabinet Horn had inherited from Puliano back then.
No one knew what was stored in this Holy Cabinet, and it had never been opened.
Afraid of damaging a cultural artifact, Horn had always kept it in the Hall of Heroes Museum, where it was on display for visiting tourists.
At present, the museum in the side hall of the Hall of Heroes had been closed down, because this morning, for some unknown reason—the Holy Cabinet had inexplicably flown up into the air.
Yes. Horn circled the phrase "flown up" with his fountain pen.
He almost couldn’t believe what the report said—that the Holy Cabinet had actually floated up into midair on its own.
For the moment, no one had gone near it yet; they were still checking whether it was some prank by the Wizards from Black Snake Bay.
Those guys had made the dragon head float once before, and Horn had been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and called over, only to arrive and find nothing but a mess.
This time they’d learned their lesson and submitted the report in broad daylight.
"In that case, let’s go take a look."
