Chapter 304: Li En Sudar

Lex's "self-destruction" gave Li En many troubles, but also eased his mind considerably.

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

Talia immediately ended the communication after speaking.

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

"No, thank you too."

Li En smiled, but did not voice these words.

Lex brought himself many troubles—many big ones—but it wasn't entirely without benefit.

"This... is family? Well, I suppose it counts."

The former Li En had been like an Earthman trapped in a foreign world; no matter how tough his exterior, his heart held too much unease and loneliness—the unshakable sense of being an outsider, forever unable to truly connect with the locals.

When you constantly harbor a secret, even fearing you might blurt it out in your sleep, that "pressure" and "anxiety" naturally accumulate.

"Family. One, two..."

As he murmured to himself, Li En gazed at little Laina and Sallyman nearby. Perhaps Hela should be counted too.

If not for the snake's and Laina's help in recovering part of Li En's memories, he likely would not have accepted Sallyman 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.

His prolonged reluctance to accept Sallyman stemmed from her being "Li En's" fiancée. But since he truly was Li En, and had already recalled fragments of Li En's memories, this hesitation had become utterly redundant.

This, then, was why Li En accepted Sallyman so quickly.

"The Sudar main house—huh, Guoran, even the great nobles of this era have their flaws."

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

The Sudar Baron, a great noble family of the Desert Kingdom Stormlands, Li En was the third son—but always a ghost in his own household.

To be sent away for a political marriage with no servants, traveling alone across ten thousand miles, suggested his family truly didn't care if he lived or died—and his own actions certainly contributed to that attitude.

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

In every way, Li En Sudar was an oddity: farming in the desert, turning his room and garden into experimental plots—then even maintaining secret contacts with Druids.

This was a major problem in the Stormlands. From its name alone, the kingdom was deeply tied to the "Storm Gods," who despised most of all "thieves of natural power."

"Yet in truth, both sides accused each other of stealing natural power—and both accusations seemed valid."

Rivals are enemies, but thieves who reach into the same pocket are worse. The Druids and the Storm deities had always been on terrible terms.

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

The Sudar family of the Desert Kingdom was wealthy and powerful enough to shelter a waste, but when Li En Sudar's Druidic notes on plant cultivation were publicly exposed, he became 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 long used fear to secure worship, and in such extreme environments, their influence was especially strong.

The Stormlands was an alliance of "oases" and "city-states"; 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 En Sudar, though slightly hurt, was not truly devastated—he had long awaited this day."

Within the family, Li En Sudar was an obvious outcast: he knew no martial arts, no magic, no divine arts. Though he had awakened his "ancestral bloodline" and possessed decent physical potential, being weak meant nothing.

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