Eshu didn't answer, just stared at the shadows of the Misty Mountains under the pitch-black sky, his gaze chasing the undulating curves of the mountains all the way to the junction of the extreme eastern sky dome and the snowy region. Heavy clouds piled up on the horizon, like the arched spine of a blue wolf as it runs. The starlight gradually dimmed, and at some point a sea of black clouds surged in the sky above the two of them, as if they were being pushed to the far east by an invisible giant hand.

That's the direction where Boynbru is.

A few white feathers appeared in Kia's field of vision. He looked up and saw snowflakes falling from the sea of clouds. The snow in the north is unforgiving. It didn't take long for a heavy curtain of snow to fall between him and Estheu. Estheus remained silent, his silhouette like an immovable rock in the wind and snow.

Kia clenched his arms, still waiting for Eshy's response.

"Being mercenaries restricts us," the snow seemed to have been flying for a century, and Esher finally spoke in a low voice, "If this war will inevitably worsen for the worst, all we can do is protect ourselves. Even if we knew that Boynbru was a dangerous city that was about to topple, we had to go there. ”

"Is this the spirit of the mercenary's contract?" Kia sighed, "Or is it the basic work ethic of an adventurer?" ”

"It's not about the spirit of the contract or the ethics of the profession," Esher said. His gaze was blazing, like a torch burning in the wind and snow. "I just had a strange and strong intuition, as if something was beckoning me from Boimbul to come by."

"Don't let your instincts lead us to a dead end." "In the end, I found that there was no turning back," Kia said behind him. ”

"You should know that there is no turning back for a long time."

yes, it's been a long time gone. Kea thought silently. When I came into contact with the dark side of this world in the Inquisition, there was only one fork in the road before me.

Tear it to shreds, or be swallowed by it and assimilate.

……

Boynbru, the meaning of these four words in ancient Pand, is "the cliff of extreme ice". Located in the most remote corner of the Pander Empire, this city has a history older than the royal city of Sarion, the most central city of the continent, dating back to the Dark Ages before the establishment of the Pander Empire. When the people of the mountain god Vijovies crossed the Misty Mountains into the continent of Pande, the first to bear the brunt was Poynbru, who was only a frontier town at the time. The initial dispute between the two peoples was nothing more than an occasional spark that erupted during the long Dark Ages, but no one could have imagined that this spark would eventually sweep across the entire northern realm with the power of a prairie fire, and even a century and a half after the Pender Empire existed in name only. For Ravenston and the people of the Misty Mountains, Boimbru has long since transcended the meaning of a city. It does not record history, nor does it carry history, it is history.

Sir Ranmarok clinged to the cold battlements with both hands and looked out. Like all archers of par excellence, he possessed falcon-sharp eyes that could easily lock onto a snow hare wandering across the snowy fields—not a literary exaggeration, but the basic skill of every Poimbru garrison. And Sir Ranmarok is the captain of this heavy archer unit.

But he couldn't cut through the snow. This made Ranmaroke a little irritated. The blizzard visited Poimbru last night, and with it heavy dark clouds. These two uninvited guests have been bothering until early in the morning and have no intention of leaving. Marksmen are stable thugs, and there are very few environmental factors that can interfere with their performance, but the extremely bad weather is one of them.

This year's spring was peaceful, so peaceful that Ranmarok had begun to think that it was not Poimbul, who was surrounded by tigers and wolves, that he was stationed, but Shen Defu, who was singing and dancing. According to the pattern of previous years, the natives of the Misty Mountain tribes should have gathered in a mighty tide of raiding and advanced towards Poimpur - no, Ranmarok clearly remembered that he had already crushed the first wave of attack this time last year.

What happened later confirmed that the so-called peace was nothing more than a dead silence in disguise. For a whole week, not a single caravan had come to Poynbru. The scouts and patrols that had been sent out were lost one after another, and even their ravens did not return. The Black Spear Knights and the city militia organized a large-scale search and rescue team, including many elite knights who had been through a hundred battles, but in the end they did not return, as if they had been eaten by the snowfields outside the city. Ranmarok sent seven ravens in a row to Duke Aldemar, who was still attending the Round Table in Ryan, but he still hadn't heard back.

There seemed to be a huge black shadow flying up and down in the snow, and Ranmarok looked up keenly, and a palm-sized snowflake fell on his face, fascinating his eyes. He swept the snow off his face in a bit of frustration, and when he looked out again, the suspicious black shadow had disappeared without a trace. But with just a glimpse, he had firmly fixed the gesture of that moment in his mind. The black shadow spreads its wings like a raven, but its body is as strong as a falcon. Ranmarok was convinced that it was a bird that didn't belong to the North.

A soldier ran out of breath: "My lord, there is a troop at the south gate, and the leader wants you to go over and see him by name!" ”

South Gate? Ranmarok frowned. To the south of Boimbru is the steppe inhabited by the Catu, and further south of this lawless land is the territory of Saarion. Most of the people who came from the south were not good stubble, either the Gato warlords who accidentally broke into the depths of the snowy region, or the stunned young people who came to make trouble with enthusiasm.

Speaking of stunned ...... Ranmaroke was stunned for a moment, he vaguely guessed the identity of the arrival.