In the main hall of Loremann, Gilbert's pupils reflected the light of the lights that never went out in the distance.

"Baron Williams informed me that a few days ago His Excellency Duke Cyril Falkenhause had made an unexpected visit to you. ”

The Foreign Secretary asked mildly but cautiously:

"I suppose he gave you more than just a sword?"

Telston paused.

"He did say a lot. ”

The young man swallowed the piece of meat, his eyes slightly condensed, thoughtful:

"It also makes me very uneasy. ”

Gilbert's expression sank.

"Interacting with different people is always the most direct way to understand the world. ”

Gilbert's words were still gentle, but a little more careful and deliberate:

"But, Your Highness. ”

"Make sure you never forget," said Gilbert, sitting across from him, meaningfully:

"Everybody lets you see what they want you to see. ”

"Especially, when your position is so special and your identity is so sensitive. ”

Tails stopped his knife and fork and was silent.

"What a coincidence. ”

"Not so long ago," Tails' expression was filled with frustration and mockery:

"Count Clomar said something similar. ”

Killbert looked at him fixedly, and then stopped.

Tails continued to eat his supper until the cunning fox of the stars sighed:

"Now that you've seen them, Lord Duke. ”

"Then what kind of people do you think the nobles of the Western Wilderness are a group of people?"

Tails' hand slowed.

The nobles of the Western Wilderness......

What kind of people?

His mind went back to the moment when he met the three nobles of Falkenhause, Kroma and Bozdorf.

The prince narrowed his eyes:

"They are not stupid, they know you...... Know what we want to do. ”

"From Camp Bladefang, to Grace Town. ”

Tails stared at the lights in the distance.

Gilbert frowned slightly, only to hear him clear his throat:

"So how did they deal with it, I mean...... Facing 'us'?"

How to deal with ......

Tails fell into deep thought again, caught up in what he had seen and heard in the Western Wilderness.

"It's hard to say, from the guardian duke to the earl, from the four-eyed skull to the crow and the black lion, from the new nobles to the old forces, it can be seen that their relationship is not good, and they have different opinions. ”

Tails cut the steak that had been neatly and evenly cut by D.D into irregular pieces, and frowned:

"I guess they didn't handle it very well. ”

In the light, Gilbert's expression became a little complicated.

"Yes. ”

Tails nodded, not without concern:

"And we are forcing them to come together, step by step, to confront us, to confront their common enemy. ”

Gilbert hummed and suddenly asked:

"For example?"

The prince raised his eyebrows:

"For example – Williams. ”

Thinking of the name, of the corpse of the chisel on the sand, Tails felt that the chops in his mouth should panic.

Gilbert nodded abruptly.

Tails barely swallowed his food, not waiting for the other to speak:

"Why him, Gilbert?"

Tails put down his knife and fork and turned to Gilbert with a serious and confused expression.

"Why this...... The unkind guy stays in the Western Wilderness, representing the Fuxing Palace and the royal family, ruling the Blade Tooth camp?"

Tails shrugged:

"He can't even work well with the people of the Kingdom Secret Branch. ”

Gilbert's face changed several times:

"Your Highness......"

But Tails didn't let him interrupt himself:

"And with what I know about him in my short time......"

Tails raised his index finger and frowned fiercely:

"Every minute that Wings of Legend stayed at Camp Bladetooth made the local nobles of the Western Wilderness more desperate and uneasy, pushing them away from the Fuxing Palace and exacerbating their conflicts with the royal family, until they took the step of jumping over the wall and taking a desperate step. ”

"Don't say it's compared to the thick and fine kingdom wrath, and the old and heavy fortress flower......"

The prince looked back at Gilbert with a complicated expression.

"You're welcome......"

Tails sighed, searched for a suitable description, and said helplessly:

"Even the Starfall is better at being a human than him. ”

Gilbert frowned and did not speak.

His eyes fell first to Tails, then to the plate that the prince had eaten so badly, and was silent for a long time.

Just when Tails thought that the search was fruitless, he could only reluctantly turn around and continue to fight for dinner......

"As sharp and intelligent as you were six years ago, Your Highness. ”

Gilbert sighed slowly, his eyes sharpened:

"But, my Lord Duke. ”

"I'm thinking, maybe you need to jump out and look at the situation of the Western Wilderness from the height of the kingdom, from the width of history, from our point of view. ”

The height of the kingdom.

The breadth of history.

Our perspective.

Tails blinked, puzzled.

"Regardless of other unexpected small and medium-sized nobles, as far as the three major families of the Western Wilderness you mentioned are concerned, they do have different attitudes towards the Fuxing Palace. ”

Gilbert sat upright, smiling at the corners of his mouth, as if he had become the tireless teacher he had been six years ago:

"One is moderate and conservative, the other is radical and dissatisfied, and the other is insensitive and ambiguous. ”

"How do you think this is for us?"

Tails leaned back in the dining chair, his eyes rolling.

Mild.

Radical.

Numbness.

The crow, the black lion, the skull, the old, the middle and the young three different figures appeared in front of his eyes.

"Good thing. ”

Tails tried to remind himself that he belonged to the Bright Star Royal Family and should speak from the right side:

"The opponent - if the West Wilderness is our opponent - is divided and disagreed, and the sand is scattered, so it is more vulnerable, which is conducive to our separate plans and each defeat. ”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked disgusted:

"But...... Williams?"

Gilbert looked at his exaggerated expression and smiled.

"Separately calculated, each one was broken. ”

Gilbert looked at him as he had done in class six years ago, and there was no lack of appreciation in his eyes:

"Like you did in Exeter six years ago?"

Tails was stunned.

He found that Gilbert's questions were clearer, more intentional, and more directive than the old crow's encouraging questions, which were not premised and persuasive.

"Yes, it's like Exter. ”

The prince frowned and nodded:

"Unless we force them to stand together, give up their past grievances, and fight together...... Anti-Bright Star. ”

Tails swallowed the spitting sentence at the end, "Thanks to a handsome little white face who played with a double-headed gun".

Gilbert nodded and laughed.

"Don't misunderstand me, Lord Duke, in fact, I appreciate your thoughts. ”

"But Your Highness, what kind of strategy we take, I think it depends on what kind of opponent we are facing. ”

Tails found that Gilbert preferred direct narration to Puttilley's ironic mockery and personal rhetorical questioning.

"Exeter, it is the number one enemy of the country of the stars for hundreds of years, the country is thousands of miles away, easy to defend and difficult to attack, the people are fierce, fierce and untamed, plus the soldiers are strong and strong, and the heroes are numerous, we may not be sure to be overwhelming, fatalistic and strong natural enemies even in the heyday. ”

The Foreign Secretary seemed to sigh with emotion, and after a few seconds of pause, he said quietly:

"For us, a divided Exeter is naturally more in the interest of the stars than a united dragon nation. ”

In the next second, Gilbert's eyes changed.

"But, the Western Wilderness?"

"This is the realm of the stars, whose lords are vassals of His Majesty, and they are only the tip of the chessboard, and for us, everything is under control, and it is inevitable to win. ”

Gilbert's gaze sharpened:

"In this case, is the confusion and division in the corner of the chessboard really beneficial to us?"

Tails frowned and wondered:

"How?"

Gilbert cleared his throat with a smile and looked at the lights in the distance.

"More than 2,000 years ago, the ancient empire at its peak spanned the continent, with two collars, five districts, and 19 provinces. ”

It was only at this moment that Tails picked up a few hints of the old crow and Putillai's storytelling in his tone.

"But among the twenty-six known places, the most troublesome for the Triumphal Capital and the Pegasus Throne is not the mighty Northlands, not the ancient chauvin, not the precipitous barren mountains, not the complex green hearts, not the untamable Kithery and the wild Neda, not even the inaccessible sea of flames and the unreachable Far Eastern ......."

Gilbert's voice changed:

"Instead, it is the southwest of the empire, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere, in an insignificant thorny land. ”

Thornland.

Tails thought back to the world geography he had learned in the Northlands, and thankfully, the Northlanders had nothing to hide about the Thornlands.

With his recollection, the prince asked tentatively:

"Because they are conservative and xenophobic, and never submit to outsiders, even the rule of the Empire?"

"I have read in the books of the Northlanders the thousand-year-old proverb of the Land of Thorns: 'The sons of thorns are born of rebellion.'" ”

Kilburt nodded, and there was a sense of relief in his eyes that "the Northlanders are finally willing to read":

"Yes, Your Highness, yes, but more than that: the sons of thorns are not only subject to the rule of outsiders, but also to the rule of their own. ”

Tails looked puzzled.

Gilbert smiled:

"Long before the rise of the empire, the small thorny land was known for its division and chaos: warlords, many parties, oligarchs, unrest, and even internal religious beliefs were difficult to unify, let alone find leaders to serve the people. ”

And this caused problems for the empire at the time: after easy conquest, their subsequent rule was too difficult to follow. ”

"If you want to win over Huairou, you can't find an agent in the whole province who can convince the people and can rely on it, and if you want to deter shock, every time you defeat a leading rebel leader, there will always be his opponents or supporters who will come out after a few years and cause chaos again. ”

Gilbert snorted softly, with a hint of disdain between the words:

"This characteristic of the Thornlands lasted for thousands of years, until the empire was no longer there, and it remains to this day. ”

"Even today, after the end of the war, the old land of thorns, whether it is the kingdom of Allembia or the condominium of Talendi, has never stopped: the royal family of the former is like a horse watching flowers, changing seasons from season to season, and the infighting of the latter is like a commonplace, regular and timed. ”

Tails listened carefully to the other party's words:

"You mean, the Western Wilderness is to us what the Thorny Lands are to the Empire?"

"Is it difficult to maintain a stable rule?"

Gilbert paused for a few seconds, as if searching for an appropriate word.

"Not exactly, but ......"

Gilbert looked at Tails solemnly:

"Tell me, Your Highness, if you are your father, in the face of the three heirloons in the Western Wilderness who seem to have different political views, each with their own ideas, their positions back and forth, and friends and foes are difficult to distinguish, who should you reward, who to attack, who to woo, who to support, and to whom do you let things go?"

The question made Tails stunned for a moment.

"As far as I can see......"

Looking back on what he had seen and heard in the past few days, he replied carefully:

"Reward Chroma for knowing right from wrong and knowing the times?"

Gilbert didn't speak, but looked at him expectantly.

So Tails continued tentatively:

"Fight Bozdov because they are arrogant and confrontational, with a clear attitude?"

"Woo Falkenhause, because they haven't said anything for a long time, maybe they're waiting for the price to sell?"

Gilbert's eyes lit up.

"It's good, because that's what we thought at the beginning. ”

Hearing this strange tone, Tails frowned:

"But?"

Sure enough, Gilbert smiled and continued Tails' words:

"But. ”

"In the years just after the year of blood, Williams has not yet been knighted, from conscription, tax reform, land annexation, to rewards and punishments, canonization, and appointments, no matter what kind of national policy should be carried out in the Western Wilderness, and what kind of law should be implemented in the Western Wilderness......"

Gilbert's gaze sharpened, as his tone was:

"When the Fuxing Palace Master is famous and follows the rules, such as the implementation of the Regular Conscription Act and the emergency annex to the desert war, conservatives like Croma tend to drag their feet and disobey the law;"

"When Your Majesty is gentle and supportive, such as suspending the "Border County Development Tax Exemption Order" as a compromise and overture, diehards like Bozdorf jump out and resist to the end;"

"When Yongxing City decided to strike a thunderous blow, such as punishing the nobles who violated the Central Tax Ordinance, the unpopular Falkenhause suddenly appeared, gag, pretended to be stupid, and even scattered the troubled waters of the Western Wilderness to the whole country, so that our plan ended without a problem. ”

What the?

Listening to these specific matters, Tails only felt his head grow for a while, and his brow furrowed more and more.

This is......

Another perspective of the Western Wilderness?

"The rest of the small and medium-sized nobles have sided in line, with few exceptions. ”

Gilbert's words carry a hint of resentment:

"No, not just a few years, not just a generation or two, but the past tens or hundreds of years, every time the stars have a king's destiny and a great government will be executed, every opponent in the Western Wilderness can always find what they want: whether it is the notoriously tough black lion, or the one-winged crow who is superficially obedient, or the four-eyed skull that does not care about himself but is old and shrewd. ”

The more Tails listened, the more frightened he became.

"No matter what we do, there will always be one of the three parties who don't bite each other's strings to throw an unexpected trump card, play the rules of the game with great control, or dodge and move, or play delays, or take the head of the bat, and counter our plan by surprise and half the effort. ”

Gilbert's words were filled with deep jealousy:

"They seem to be at odds with each other and divide the Western Wilderness, but they can always be reduced to zero when facing the king's warrant in the Fuxing Palace, covering each other on the smallest front, using the combined forces of different directions to build the most appropriate obstacles, and skillfully dismantle our efforts to aspire to the Western Wilderness and the entire kingdom. ”

The lights in the main hall were still on, and several royal guards dutifully came to change shifts, but they all kept a long distance to avoid disturbing Gilbert's conversation with the new Duke of Star Lake.

It took Tails a long time to digest the information Gilbert had told him.

But......

"Gilbert, you mean ......"

Tails turned his head in disbelief:

"The three major families of the Western Wilderness, what they showed us, the three-legged situation of the Western Wilderness is colluding?"

"On purpose?"

Tails remembered Falkenhaus's horrific smile, Deller's heartfelt heart, and Bozdorf's aggressiveness.

From power born of violence to sword warnings, from the history of Bounty Town to jokes about Cohen, to the star-studded nine-pointed banner......

At that moment, it was like......

It's as if someone has broken a mirror.

All that was left for Tails was a fragment of countless faces that could not be pieced together.