Gun of Ashes

This was an emergency bulletin, so urgent that Lorenzo could almost smell the ink fumes drifting off the newspaper.

At dawn this morning, a Jiuxia fleet appeared on the sea shrouded in white fog. They were like ghosts, suddenly manifesting with the sunrise. The fishermen in the surrounding waters had never noticed their presence; only when people could clearly register that they were there did the scarlet banners ignite one after another, blazing fiercely and blotting out the sky.

Everything was so eerily similar to the time, decades ago, when they arrived at Reindona's port—appearing without the slightest warning, then slipping away in silence. Some had tried to track their trail, but all came up empty-handed, as if that so‑called Orient had only existed for those brief few days; after the Jiuxia people left, the very concept of the "East" had been erased from the Western world.

Beyond those memories, it was almost impossible to find any trace that they had ever existed.

Now, they were back again.

Lorenzo stared fixedly at the silhouettes of the great ships on the newspaper, vaguely making out the Jiuxia people upon them.

"Where are they now?" Lorenzo asked anxiously.

"It's a bit complicated. Don't rush me—this is inside information."

Red Falcon grinned smugly. After so many lethal missions and the personnel losses inside the Purification Mechanism, Red Falcon now looked dead tired, but his position was no lowly one, and the authority he wielded was far greater than before.

"The Jiuxia people did appear, but in fact they reached Ingwig several days ago. For reasons I'm not cleared to know, they chose to split into two groups."

"Split into two?"

"Yeah. One group of Jiuxia will be showing up at Reindona's port. They're basically a smokescreen, covering for the real primary personnel… After all, you know this too—there may be plenty of foreigners walking around Old Dunling, but the Jiuxia are still far too conspicuous. Unless they wrap themselves up from head to toe, they're way too easy to pick out."

Red Falcon cast his mind back to their appearance. He had never seen a Jiuxia person with his own eyes, but from certain files and photographs he could still glean a thing or two.

Black hair, black eyes—completely unlike the people of the Western world.

"The real primary personnel actually arrived at the Thunderous Cape Military Port a few days ago. They'll be entering Old Dunling together with those other Jiuxia."

The Jiuxia at Reindona's port were only a smokescreen, meant to conceal these truly important Jiuxia.

"As for what those bastards are really after, why they chose to show up at this critical moment—I have no idea," Red Falcon glanced at Lorenzo, then at the Holy Silver weapons stacked all over the living room, and said, "But I've got a feeling that even without you asking, you'll be meeting these Jiuxia in a few days."

"Why?"

"Intuition."

Red Falcon shrugged, looking utterly helpless as he spoke.

"Think about it, Lorenzo.

On the very eve of a world war, you somehow crawl back alive from the World's End, we dig up this massive cache of Holy Silver, and the Armor of Original Sin steps out from the shadows into the sunlight.

And right at such a moment, the Jiuxia people, vanished for decades, reappear in the Western world."

Red Falcon's expression collapsed into a grimace.

"Anyway you slice it, this is a colossal pain in the ass! And you've always been a trouble magnet—I can't think of a single reason why you wouldn't get dragged into all of this."

Lorenzo's face went a bit stiff; he had no idea how to argue with Red Falcon's words.

"You know, both Armor technology and Anti-Meme technology came from the Jiuxia. Who knows what else those ancient, mysterious bastards are bringing this time. I'm guessing the Rhine Alliance is going to have to think very carefully about their next moves."

Unexpectedly, Red Falcon's brain was actually firing on all cylinders; no one knew if this counted as hidden depths or called for some other adjective. For all his rough-and-tumble manner, he had a very clear grasp of the current situation.

"Anyway, I'm off. I've got a pile of crap waiting for me. Later."

As Red Falcon spoke, he shut the door. On his way out he snagged one of Lorenzo's apples, and—with the hand axe Hebdo had given him—laboriously started peeling it.

Once again, only Lorenzo remained in the office. He slowly stepped back until he could see the map in its entirety.

It bore not only red crosses, but several other markings as well.

On Ingwig he had sketched a fortress; across the White Tide Strait, on Gaulunaro, he had drawn a blood‑red crown; and farther still, in the Holy Evangelical Pope Kingdom, at the location of the Seven Hills, Lorenzo had marked a skull with a red cross through it.

He pondered, a faint glimmer of light rising in his eyes.

The current situation was dire. The world's population was about to trip the red line, deepening the Roads and rousing The Inexpressible from its sleep; at the same time, two ancient monsters of unknown age still roamed the world, hunting one another. Beneath all that, Lorenzo still had Lawrence as a mortal enemy, and a new Pope whose life or death remained unknown.

Many times Lorenzo had stood before this map like this, trying to find, amid this tangle of factions, some perfect way to resolve everything—but he had never been able to find a perfect answer.

His hand brushed against something cold and hard; Lorenzo drew it from inside his coat.

It was a black cube, dark, deep, and absolute. All light that fell upon it was devoured, and only by the edges of its corners could one make out its shape.

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