Chapter 141: The Back of the Gold Coin

Since coming ashore, Kraft felt he had hardly walked a few steps on the pavement of Westmin Castle, repeating the process of boarding and alighting, leaping from one scene to another like a montage edit.

The van body was not large, yet it was pulled by two tall, sturdy draft horses; it was tightly covered, with windows intricately carved that let in no light and were not light themselves, emitting a heterogeneous composite sound of layered material when tapped lightly.

"Iron is lined inside." Martin slid the bolts on the windows on both sides, lit the candle holders fixed to the carriage walls, and sat on the opposite side. "A layer of wood veneer is pasted on the outside for decoration; it ensures arrows won't pierce through. It is very safe."

"This shouldn't be the first time you've assured me of that."

As the carriage moved, the sturdy cabin did not give the guest much confidence. If the initial assassination attempt by the heathens could be explained by common sense, then the deep-aura, human-caused disappearance case made any assurance an insufficient reason to feel at ease.

"Any leads on the heathens and that bunch of devil cherries?"

"My respected Professor, it has only been half an evening; surely two hours is not enough for anyone to produce any results." Martin smiled bitterly. He noticed Kraft's gaze constantly glancing at the side of his own face, raised a hand to wipe it, and indeed smudged a patch of red.

In these two hours, this man had clearly not been entirely busy with proper business, showing quite the style of a time manager.

"If the two matters are connected, the people behind them are far more efficient than us." Kraft gripped his left arm and leaned back against the chair with his eyes closed. Besides the galloping of the draft horses, the sound of additional horse hooves on both sides could be heard keeping pace with the vehicle. "What is outside?"

"Our people." Seeing his tension, Martin opened a slit in the window. Several riders in light armor sandwiched the carriage in the middle.

The window was quickly closed again, but that brief moment was enough for Kraft to see buildings far lower and simpler than those by the river; they were moving away from the city center.

After another stretch of road, the hard stone pavement beneath the wheels turned into a more potholed and bumpy muddy dirt road; the poorly maintained wilderness road occasionally jolted passengers right off their seats.

Meanwhile, the horse hooves on both sides continued to follow. Relying on familiarity with the road and excellent riding skills, they advanced under the limited illumination of torches, maintaining a horizontal distance of about one ell from Kraft.

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This revealed a considerable degree of importance. A cavalry unit like this required not inconsiderable personnel and equipment expenditures, and more importantly, years of training. As a core force, if they were bold enough, they could even charge against small, temporary military units lacking sufficient Wu De.

No matter how prosperous the Westmin region was, mobilizing them required the authority of the very core power.

Being borrowed out of the city in the dead of night to escort a scholar to some unknown place, the implication was obvious.

After a long journey in the darkness that was hard to estimate, the carriage slowed down, and the cabin tilted slightly backward.

【Uphill】

A very long uphill climb; when reaching a certain height, the vehicle paused briefly and turned. Just as passengers thought this was the summit, it turned again to climb higher.

As someone whose doorstep road looked like this, Kraft easily associated it with similar things: zigzag bends used on terrain where the slope was unsuitable for going straight up and down. But compared to this seemingly endless length, the engineering on the hill behind Wood Town was like a miniature toy in a child's hands.

The vehicle repeated the actions of ascending and turning. The journey, longer than a small intestine, gradually made people indifferent, even causing them to forget how many turns they had made and unable to estimate how high they had risen. However, by intuitive feeling, the climbing time between each turn was shortening, indicating they were about to reach their destination.

Military knowledge from his grandfather made him feel an unmaskable admiration amidst his surprise; after all, who wouldn't want such an extremely long, cool, and steep slope in front of their own castle?

When the long slope finally came to an end, the wheel rims drove onto a flat road again. Bright light and rapid exchange of voices briefly passed through the window slit, then the carriage paused before two mechanisms driven by heavy chain winches. After another checkpoint, the carriage came to a complete stop amidst the approaching sound of clattering armor plates.

"We have arrived, Professor Kraft."

Martin pushed the carriage door open and alighted first. A bright, perforated metal cone protruded from the shadows; it was the pointed snout of a pig-faced helmet, thrusting toward Martin.

"Martin? My brother, days without you have been truly hard." The helmet's owner lifted his visor and gave Martin a hug with a breastplate covered in white oak-leaf heraldry and a blue cloth. "Without the protagonist, Anna doesn't even invite us to her afternoon gatherings anymore."

"We can catch up later, Barro. We have a guest who must be brought into the inner castle. Is the gate open?"

"You know, the people guarding the inner gate at night are harder than the wall; even an echo can't call them out. Take that path." A knight of similar age to Martin picked the most blazing torch from the hands of soldiers wearing the same blue cloth armor and handed it to Martin.

Martin rubbed his breastbone, which had nearly been dented, and frowned with little hope. "My guest is rather important; is there room for negotiation?"

"Either you can wait until sunrise tomorrow, when we will line up here to welcome you through the main gate." The oak-leaf heraldry knight lowered his visor, tapped his breastplate, and saluted Kraft, who had just alighted. "Welcome, honorable guest, but the rule-makers here are not us."

He and his soldiers perfunctorily glanced over the carriage in a routine inspection, then reformed their ranks and departed. The lined-up illumination torches lit up part of the environment where Kraft stood: towering artificial structures, just as tall or even taller than those seen before, built from uncarved square stones, rising into the darkness that merged with the night sky, their vertically upright posture carrying an oppressive sense of imminent collapse.

Martin led him along the base of this artificial cliff for a stretch, finding an inconspicuous small door at a corner. "This way; I'm afraid we'll have to take a detour."

"I don't mind."

Walking a few more steps was a good choice for an unfortunate "honored guest" who was very full from dinner and had been jolted all the way. He followed Martin and stepped onto the spiral staircase behind the door.

Then came another endless climb. The left-turning staircase had no windows, only recessed hollow niches at intervals, repeating as if walking in a space with a beginning and end joined together. Surprisingly, even though these niches penetrated deep into the wall, more than an arm's length, they had not drilled through the stone bricks or affected the stability of the building.

The enclosed, confined environment and the thickness once reminded him of the suffocation of being wrapped by a sea of rocks beneath the southern hills, or some otherworldly game designer trying to delay loading the next big scene. He felt a bit regretful about agreeing to take this path with Martin.

But this was indeed just an illusion caused by repetition. In reality, after counting over two hundred steps, an identical small door was embedded on the left side.

Martin pushed the door open for him. A broad stone road wide enough for a carriage appeared before his eyes, stretching straight into an unobstructed space. At the far end, a majestic silhouette loomed like a mountain suspended in the field of vision, wearing a crown of jagged light.

Shaken by this sight, Kraft blinked for a moment, only then noticing the crenellated parapets on both sides of the road. This was atop an extremely wide rampart. Pushed out of the doorframe by the awe in his heart toward the massive object, he stepped onto this building that seemed like a hallucination appearing in the vast, boundless night sky, ready to shatter the next second, and looked down with admiration for its builders.

The patrol's torches were as small as sparks in furnace ash. On the other side of the wall was a slightly sloping trapezoidal rampart facing a hillside with no visible end.

He turned back to look at where he came from and found he had walked out of a magnificent building identical to the one on the opposite side: two towers forming a pincer position, topped with blazing bright flames burning fiercely in the night.

Two towers, a massive trapezoidal sloping wall. Kraft immediately understood this was not his first meeting with it.

【Gold Coin】

Its image was printed on every most cherished and sought-after item, flowing to all corners of the kingdom. Yet only at the moment of seeing it with one's own eyes would one understand why it could occupy one side of it.

A miracle in North's military history, an impregnable fortress, the guardian of the crown, the unyielding and undying oak.

All the confusion and reasoning along the way were confirmed here; the most astonishing yet most reasonable guess became reality.

"Westmin Castle! Martin, you really know how to hide!"