"Always be in awe. - Gilberto Gilberneon"

Jonah, a fourth-level astrologer apprentice, looked up to see the glittering aphorism of Gilberto, the original astrology instructor, engraved on the lintel of the tower, and sat down on the cold redstone floor with a grunt, holding his dirty fawn skin bag, and crying loudly.

Before the fall of the Red Rock Castle, Jonah set out at noon every day from the astrological tower in the wilderness and walked three hours to the Royal and Anglican libraries of the Red Rock Castle to study astrological works.

He wears the dark blue hooded cloth robe of an astrologer's apprentice, and hangs a first-class apprentice badge from the Continental Astrology Society on his chest: four pale blue star flowers swim on a black disc symbolizing the starry sky. When another paper is accepted by the Continental Society of Astrology and published in the Astrology Yearbook, Jonah can add another star to his coat of arms and be allowed to sign the document with the words "D. Jonah II. Astrology Apprentice", which is quite an honor.

According to the provisions of the "Joint Amnesty Decree" signed a hundred years ago, all countries on the continent, including empires, ecclesiastical states, republics, and clans and tribes, in times of peace or war, regardless of the change of regime, political system, and ruler, from the army, the inquisition, the law enforcer, to the judges, all state forces shall grant amnesty to the five professions of priests, magicians, steam puppeteers, astrologers, and mathematical scholars. Migrations and even trials are carried out by the respective guilds and societies.

Jonah was dressed in the robes of the five guilds of transcendent status, exempted from the flames of war, which to him was like a stage play around him, and in fact, the whole world had become a stage play since the day he passed the exam twelve years ago, which made him always a little empty and irritable when he walked out of the tower of astrology.

Day after day, Jonah walked through the barren paths of the Red Soil Plain, and saw so many gray-faced people walking on the road, some fleeing from the war-torn land, some heading to their hometowns with little hope, some carrying their forks to join the Farmers' Self-Defense Force, some doing small business to make a fortune in the chaos, some completely abandoning hope and taking numb steps, and some holding the knife under the cloak at any time.

Jona often saw some of them soon after, lying on the side of the road, leaning against the rubble, clutching their bags, holding their scimitars, their eyes looking to the sky, their body temperature gradually cold, they died of the plague, the guns of the invaders, or the teeth of the hungry, no one knows, except that the next day when Jonah passed by, they would be stripped naked, and a few coyotes with no appetite due to obesity wandered beside the scrawny corpses.

Jonah saw the mother crying with her child in her arms, the old man crying in front of a pot with unknown pieces of meat tumbling, and the woman crying, the man on the woman's body was bare-chested, and the upper body was wearing the shiny chest armor of the Earth Walker Dragon Knight. So many tears gave him a headache, and the frightened and awe-inspiring eyes of his mother, the old man, the woman, and the knight when they saw his robes made him sick a little.

On his last way to the Royal and Anglican Libraries, Jonah saw smoke billowing from the towering Redstone Castle on the horizon, and the four o'clock afternoon sun pointed his shadow in the direction of the Redstone Castle, and he walked mechanically.

In two months, Jonah entered the small gate guarded by the five professional unions on the side of the city wall, and saw rolling stones falling like rain, boiling oil pouring on his skin creaking, the steps of the earth-walking dragons shaking the earth, and sharp arrows flashing through the gaps in the heraldic shield, appearing between the necks of the city's defenders. The day of the city's destruction finally arrived, and despite his premonition of this moment, Jonah still felt a little shaken in his heart as he looked at the smoke-filled Red Stone Fort.

He stepped on the red stone road to enter the main gate of the Red Stone Fort, the fifty-foot-high huge city gate collapsed, the enemy military boots trampled over the city gate that was still burning with small flames, the corpses were piled up on the side of the road, the Dixing Dragon herald ran around with blood-stained banners, more than half of the buildings on the central avenue were burning, the intruder officer brandished a leather whip and ordered the surviving residents of the Red Stone Fort to lift the corpses and throw them into the burning buildings, most of the survivors were citizens, the enemy army had slaughtered and sacked the nobles and merchants of the Red Stone Fort.

Jonah felt himself in a strange state, as if everything that was happening in front of him was an illusion in a crystal ball, blood and fire were isolated behind the crystal, he numbly glanced at the Redstone Fort, nodded slightly as the invaders bowed, and didn't even forget to turn on the star array on his belt to regulate the temperature.

Turning in the direction of the library through the palace, Jonah saw two or three hundred captured soldiers kneeling in the square in front of the palace, each bloody soldier with an enemy enforcer with a steel axe in his hand, an officer-like dragon knight holding a saber shouting something, and thousands of citizens were driven and gathered around. The officer raised his sword, and the blood flowed down, and the last of the guards had filled their boots with the blood of wartime. The surviving citizens of the square wept to the ground, and the enemy soldiers seemed to be laughing, so far away that Jonah could not hear anything.

Turning the corner, Jonah's heart shuddered, as if something distant and mysterious had emerged from the bottom of his consciousness, and he stopped, trying his best to grasp the tail of the thought. A line of scribbled round characters faintly appeared in front of him: "On October 5, the sun was pierced by a sharp sword, and they gathered together, and they could not see each other, only the sky and their heels." ”

Jonah's numb nerves seemed to be violently pounded by a sledgehammer, and everything in front of him was no longer a fantasy in a crystal ball, which shattered, and the fragments of memory stung his eyeballs. He was so shocked that his feet went limp, and he almost sat down in the blood stains of the street.

He stiffened his neck and turned his head to look at the sky, where the sun hung diagonally at half past four in the afternoon, and the highest spire in the palace of Her Majesty Queen Wenger III was like a sharp sword, cutting the sun in half.

He turned his head to look at the square in front of him, and faintly heard a hard gurgling sound from his cervical spine. The square was littered with headless corpses, and the heads of more than 200 of the Guardians were scattered among them, some looking up at the sky, others falling at the feet of the executioners, their unfocused eyes staring at the slayer's muddy boots.

"The book!" Jonah muttered as he exhaled slowly. The next moment, he ran wildly between the corpses strewn across the streets, his dark blue robes flying in the blood-smelling air.

He's late. The Royal and Anglican Library, which had been ignited by a fire at the nearby Duke's Palace of Valen, had started a fire on the west side, and several soldiers had come out with open wooden boxes filled with silver vases and candlesticks for the library. Jonah hunched over the library doorway, gasping for air, he looked up at the raging fire, he could feel the heat due to the temperature-controlled star array, but he didn't sweat at all.

There was a large book with a black cover on a small shelf in the corner of the church library next to the chapel on the west side, and he had to get it! Now that the library had been swept by flames, Jonah turned around anxiously, buttoned the hood of his robe on his head, ignored the exclamations of the soldiers behind him, gritted his teeth, and walked quickly into the library.

Streams of fire slanted down from the zenith, delicate frescoes twisted and peeled, and brass statues of Shira, the god of words and painting, melted and curled. A burning pillar collapsed in front of the door of the church's library, and the parchment scrolls resting on wooden shelves inside were transformed into dazzling torches.

Jonah tried to get close to the burning pillar before he took a step before the molten copper liquid of the statue of Shira spread, drawing magnificent patterns along the lines of the carved floor tiles. He moved quickly to the chapel, where the flames were not yet fierce.

Be fast, be fast, be fast. Jonah said, closing his eyes and doing a quick calculation.

Another pillar fell and smashed against the floor of the hall, sending sparks into the sky.

Jonah took out the lapis lazuli engraved with the star array from the deerskin bag that he had brought on his apprentice on the first day, clenched it in the palm of his hand, and the intricate magic array on the gem spun, and before he could try to communicate with the surging star power in it, a white light the thickness of a bucket shot out from the center of the gem, silently breaking through the wall and piercing diagonally, and then the star array exploded in his hand, and for a moment Jonah couldn't see or hear anything in front of him, and stretched out his hands, only to feel that his ten fingers were trembling violently.