Chapter 304: Li Ensu Dar

Lex's "self-destruction" gave Li En much trouble, but also put his mind at ease.

"Let's just try it—for it can't get any worse. And thank you, for not hiding it from me."

Dai Niya finished speaking and immediately ended the communication.

This trust may have pleased Dai Niya, who was accustomed to suspicion.

"No, thank you too."

Li En smiled, but did not speak these words aloud.

Lex brought himself many troubles, and even more, but it wasn't entirely without benefit.

"This... is family? Well, it should count."

The former Li En had been like an Earthman trapped in a foreign world; no matter how hard his exterior, his heart held too much unease and loneliness—the unshakable sense of being a stranger in a strange land, always preventing him from truly connecting with the locals.

When you constantly harbor a secret, even fearing you might reveal it in your sleep through dream-talk, that "pressure" and "unease" naturally accumulate.

"Family, one, two..."

As he murmured to himself, Li En looked toward the distant little Miss Miss Lana and Miss Miss Shaliman. Perhaps Hela should be counted too.

If not for the snake's and Miss Miss Lana's help in recovering part of Li En's memories, he likely would not have accepted Miss Miss Shaliman so easily—and the snake helped because of the karmic ties to Lex (Li Ensu).

Li En was indeed a bit sentimental, and he admitted he was a troublesome person.

He had long hesitated to accept Miss Miss Shaliman because she was the fiancée of "Li En." But since he truly was Li En, and had even recalled fragments of Li En's memories, this hesitation had become utterly superfluous.

This, then, was why Li En accepted Miss Miss Shaliman so quickly.

"The Su Dar main house—hmm, indeed, even great nobles of this era have their problems."

The recovered "Li En memories" were so repulsive even Li En himself found them distasteful, filled as they were with bitterness and pain.

The Su Dar Marquis, a great noble family of the Desert Kingdom Stormland, Li En was the third son, yet always a ghost within the household.

To be sent away for a political marriage, without even a single servant, on a solitary journey of ten thousand miles—perhaps his family truly didn't care if he lived or died. Of course, it also had something to do with Li En's own actions.

"A desert lizardman noble who aspired to be a botanist."

In every way, Li Ensu Dar appeared an oddity: farming in the desert, turning his room and garden into experimental fields was bad enough, but he even maintained secret contacts with Druids.

This was a major problem in Stormland. From its name alone, the kingdom was closely tied to the "Storm Gods," and the Storm Pantheon most despised "thieves of natural power."

"Yet in truth, both sides accused each other of stealing natural power—and seemingly, both accusations were correct."

Rivals are enemies, especially thieves who reach into the same pocket—the Druids and the Storm Pantheon had always been on terrible terms.

But the irony was that the Druids' most potent offensive spells were often storm-based lightning techniques, while Storm-domain priests routinely practiced and mastered natural magic, impersonating Druids—or even acting as Druids—with no one noticing.

The Su Dar family of the Desert Kingdom was large and wealthy, so keeping a waste like him posed no issue—until Li Ensu Dar's Druidic notes on plant cultivation were publicly exposed, making him the family's disgrace.

Whether a typhoon at sea or a sandstorm in the desert was more deadly was hard to say—either way, encountering one meant certain death.

The Storm Gods had always used fear to gain faith, and in such extreme terrains, the Storm Pantheon's power was especially strong.

Stormland was an alliance of "oases" and "city-states" forming a desert kingdom; though the Storm Gods were not the state religion, most citizens worshipped the Storm God, at least offering regular sacrifices—otherwise, a mad sandstorm could easily destroy the richest oasis.

"The old Li Ensu Dar, though somewhat saddened, was not truly heartbroken—he had long awaited this day."

Within the family, Li Ensu Dar was an obvious outcast: he knew no martial arts, no magic, no divine arts; though he had awakened the "Ancestral Bloodline" and possessed decent physical potential, being weak was meaningless.

Leaving the oppressive Su Dar household was, for him, a kind of liberation.