In the northern part of the Ansu Kingdom, frost and snow have covered the earth.

This mountainous land is the coldest place in the Kingdom of Ansu. The popular northerners are rooted in the mountains and cold winds, guarding the northern gates of the kingdom, and striving to maintain and renew in the 700 years. A delicate balance between the tough neighbors of the North.

Whether it is the Violet Kingdom in the northwest or the Principality in the northeast, it is never an easy role to deal with.

But in this disturbing winter, new shadows emerged from the frost, and in the eyes of the Duke of Victoria Wilde, these new threats are even more worrying than the elusive northern neighbors. Because this threat is emerging from the country.

"Duke of Ice and Snow" Victoria Wilde stood on the high terrace of the winter castle, overlooking the city below, the snow that started before the winter until the night of the night, the town is full of silver, and the north The typical spires in the area can effectively reduce the snow cover. The black spires pierce the winter silver envelope, just like the black pines on the snowfield stand on the plain below the castle, at first glance, Senran Lin Li.

In most parts of the kingdom, the arrival of winter means that production stops, people are hiding in the shivering days of the house, but in this coldest northern situation, the situation is different, the people here have adapted to the cold, and in order to survive I have to adapt to the long winter that occupies one-half of the year. Even in the early days of this heavy snowfall, I can see that there are countless people in the city who must clear as much as possible before the next snowfall destroys the city buildings. Snow, driving out the road, dragging the bodies of the homeless who were frozen in the gutter to the outside of the city, and in the central square facing the castle, the crowd gathered the most.

The snow on the square has been cleaned up, and the people gathered there are to watch the cultists burn.

The figures in black robes were tied one after another on tall stakes. The heavy black steel chains and inscriptions bound their bodies and magic, but they distort the horror by performing sorcerers. The face is still chilling.

The onlookers have gathered several layers in the square. The soldiers separated these people from the cultists. The sleek swords prevented the over-excited people from getting closer to the dangerous prostitutes. In the process, the firewood was Piled up, the animal fat that melted and melted was also poured on the grass.

"Burn them!" Some of the onlookers finally couldn’t help but scream.

This roar is full of anger: "burn them! They killed my children! Burn these cultists!"

A high-ranking priest of the Church of the Light went to the fire station. He took the sacred emblem from the nearby church and turned to look at the crowds.

"The God of Light reveals the plots of these cultists. Before more people are victimized, the Lord guides us to destroy the nests of these heretics!"

The high-ranking priest raised the sacred emblem high. He turned and used the sacred emblem to ignite a powerful light, igniting the flammable oil and firewood, and shouted in his mouth: "Praise the Holy Light! Praise the Lord!" !"

Under the influence of the light and the oil, the fire station was instantly shrouded in golden white raging flames. The cultists tied to the pillars were twisted in the flame like wax, and they made various indescribable howls. The sound of the tsunami sounded in the square: "Praise the Holy Light! Praise the Holy Light!"

The blazing flame went straight into the sky, and the screams of the cultists did not stop in the flame for a long time. Even until the flame burned their bodies, their snoring continued to come from the flames, and the people around them finally realized that the situation was wrong. They looked at the abnormal flame in horror, listening to the abnormal screaming, and the scream finally became a language that humans could understand. The spiritual power left by a dozen cultists was agitated in the air, making terrible Whistling: "Let's laugh! Let's cry! Let everyone die! You will die like a domestic animal, you will die like a worm!! When they come back, they will eat your meat and **** your blood. !!"

The flame suddenly turned black at this moment, and the flames of more than a dozen fires merged together in the air. A huge, indescribable dark purple mass rose from the flame, as if to swallow up all the people on the scene. Inflated, even the sacred officer who just shouted praise to the light in front of the fire station was caught in the wrong moment, but at the moment of this horrible vision, a white light column suddenly emerged from the winter castle. The terrace was smashed into the square.

Under the impact of the "winter whip", the indescribable deep purple mass suddenly freezes, and then it is broken by the lack of support for subsequent energy. A large expanse of ice crystal dust falls from the sky, as if it had another blizzard. Most of the squares were re-covered, whether it was the excitement of the crowd at the previous moment or the shrine of the slogan of the slogan, which was completely quiet, and in the still square, the cold voice of the Duke of Victoria Wilde was heard: "Sweeping Clean and praise Ansu and your founding fathers."

The powerful magical power gradually dissipated on the terrace. Victoria waved his hand and let the magic book floating in the air return to his side, then turned and left the terrace.

The patio door inlaid with artificial crystals automatically closed behind her, insulting the sound from the square. The female duke returned to the warm lounge, and her face was barely exhausted.

The black-haired maid came forward, and she waved back the other attendants, then pressed her hand against Victoria's temple and pressed it gently: "You rarely show this expression. You still see Govin Cecil last time. After the Duke came back."

"This time it is still related to him. If it was not the warning from the founding hero from the extreme south, we would have to wait until the cultists made more damage before they realized that they had eroded this level." Victoria sighed. "This is the fourth cult nest that has been smashed since winter. The first three are the end of all things. This time is the eternal sleeper. The next time the storm son returns from the sea, I won’t Surprised."

"It is said that the cult members in the South are actually very few. They only showed up twice, but each time they were noticed and annihilated by the Duke..."

Victoria gently waved his hand, and the black-haired maid, Maggie, immediately stopped her movements.

"We have been comfortable for too long, and the whole kingdom has been comfortable for too long," Victoria stood up from the bench, quietly watching the portraits of the founding heroes hanging on the wall in front, Govin Cecil. The portrait has been taken down, but she still looks at the blank next to the founding father of Charlie. "From the king to the local aristocracy, there is a serious lack of vigilance, but the Grand Duke of Cecil seven hundred years ago is the most stormy from the kingdom. When the times came, he was more alert than all of us. The ridiculous generation of Wang Duo’s incompetent generations began to treat the cultists’ warnings of the founding dukes as nervous allergies. It became a fuss of the ancients in modern society... ...oh, now they are panicking."

The black-haired maid stood quietly behind Victoria and did not express any opinions, and the female duke seemed to be accustomed to this. She paused and told her: "Is there something you have to look into?"

The black-haired maid bowed his head: "Yes. The priests of the Church of Light have been more active in recent times than ever before, and new missionaries have emerged everywhere, but all their activities are reasonable. They are fighting against cultists. Searching and clearing the cult's lair, the missionaries are also propagating ways to protect the cultists and protect themselves in the curse of the sorcerer. The power of the Holy Light does have a unique advantage in this respect. Besides, they have no extras. Activities, there is no conflict with other sects or robbing of religious resources, and there is no friction with local lords."

Victoria frowned. "Is that so..."

The black-haired maid asked curiously: "Vigie, do you suspect that there are any problems with the holy light priests?"

"No... just a little care about their recent movements, they suddenly became active," Victoria shook his head. "But it should be my illusion. After all, the cults suddenly become confused and can clear the cults." Only the God of War and the Church of the Light, which uses the Light of the Light, works best against the sorcerer,” Victoria said faintly. “We have no reason to interfere with their activities within the legal range and continue to pay more attention to them if they There is nothing wrong with it, it will always be revealed."

"Yes."

......

After the winter, the circulation of news has become difficult and slow with the decline of travel merchants.

In an era when this cutting-edge technology is scarce and not universal, and the general society still maintains the original backwardness, the transmission of information is an embarrassing and inefficient thing. Although there are magics and props such as the ring of communication and Mithril, these people do not have a timely and comprehensive understanding of the remote because the people who master these communication technologies are extremely rare and there is no effective way to share information with each other. What happened, for most civilians and even nobles, the main way of information dissemination is still the caravans of travel, and the commissioners who send letters.

For the new Cecil collar, which is remote and not attractive to business travel, the slow transmission of information is even more of a problem.

In the territory, Gao Wen established a simple messenger team, and together with the current population of Cecil, there are only towns, western logging villages, and eastern mining villages (which have already developed into small towns). Place, so the internal information transmission is not a problem, but if you want to contact the outside world, the manpower and resources of the current territory can't set up your own channel. You can rely on the extremely limited one to sell grain cloth from Tanzan Town. Or slave traders, as well as expatriates who are specially assigned to Kant and Leslie to collect intelligence.

Therefore, Gao Wenwen learned that there were signs of cult activities in various parts of the kingdom. It was already a month after he warned the king.

This is still the result of the information channel of the Viscount Andrew Lesley. If there is no quick lion's messenger, it is more than a month to go back and forth from Wangdu to the south with one leg.

Looking at the information in front of him, Gao Wen brows tightly.

Amber didn't know what was written in the letter sent from Tanzan Town early in the morning. She was bored with a piece of wood with a dagger and looked up at Gao Wen's expression. She asked a question: "What's wrong? Is the price of rice rising?"

"No, it is a cultist."

Amber suddenly got out of the chair: "You have to fight the cultists?! Oh, I have a stomachache now?"

"Not here," Gao Wen looked at the amber. "Besides the South, there are cultists everywhere in the kingdom."

When Amber listened to this, he calmed down and sat down to continue to engrave his own wood: "Oh, it doesn't matter what we do."

Gao Wen looked helplessly at the shame of this elf, but there was no way to be as relaxed as the other.

As the situation had been expected, the cultists had penetrated into all aspects of the kingdom. Not only did the border lords find traces of their activities, but even the kings were on the plains of the Holy Spirit.

A large number of cult nests were discovered and removed, but more were just found a trace, and then they lost clues.

Either wait until the time of discovery is too late, the cultists have already completed their evil sacrifices, and the local aristocrats discovered nothing but the **** scene after the ceremony.

In addition to these disturbing intelligence, another incident also made Gao Wen feel urgent and ... cramped.

All the information was seriously outdated. The news from Wangdu was a month ago, and the situation in the North has not been able to start.

He needs to establish his own information channels, to be in his own hands, and to be more efficient and more reasonable than the various information channels of the present.

At present, the spelling model of communication has not yet been resolved, and the attempt of electromagnetic wave communication has also failed. From the technical point of view, it is impossible to realize the "modern communication network" in Gaowen's vision, but even if there is no cheap instant messaging. The way, he can also make a framework first.

The potions in the alchemy factory made him think of a path.