Chapter Thirty-Five: Coming Home

The Church had brazenly arrested the Empire’s distinguished visiting professor from the Tower of Masters right on the school grounds. Imperial ministers, marquises, high-ranking school officials, and even eccentric recluses like Master Kocha—all of them dared not utter a word in protest before the adjudicating priest. The awe-inspiring authority, that chilling menace, the peerless majesty emanating from the concentration of divine power—these left an indelible impression on Lin Qi.

“If I could become a high-ranking member of the Church, wouldn’t I have a fortune at my disposal?” Lin Qi’s thoughts instinctively leaped from the Church’s authority to its wealth. He hadn’t misjudged it: those Church knights all wore costly triple-layer armor—the innermost a pure steel chainmail, the middle a flexible mail, and the outermost a heavy, solid plate. Inlaid with rare metals and gems, the armor was covered with rune matrices that could effectively withstand both physical and magical attacks.

A single set of armor must be worth tens of thousands of gold coins! Compared to the pure steel plate armor of Imperial dragoons, which cost only a few dozen coins a set, the Church’s knights were veritable moving statues of gold. No wonder they could amass so much wealth selling indulgences—they truly were filthy rich.

Even the blood-robed priest leading the party wore spell rings on all five fingers of his left hand, each capable of instantaneous activation and worth more than ten thousand gold coins apiece! That one hand of his could almost rival Jiang Yong’s legendary right hand.

Such an extravagant, priceless hand!

If even the Church’s field enforcers were this wealthy, what of the upper echelons? The crosier bishops, the crown bishops, and those exalted figures at the summit—did they dine on pearls and drink molten gold every day?

Lin Qi was still turning these questions over in his mind, dazed and distracted, as he boarded the passenger boat for home. What a fortune it would be if someone could rob the Church’s treasury! If only he could plunder it, perhaps his life’s ambition would be fulfilled at once: to dwell in a palace of gold while alive, and to sleep forever in a golden tomb after death.

“Damn, they really are loaded!” Lin Qi smacked his lips, wiping away the drool that almost spilled from the corner of his mouth.

While Lin Qi stood lost in thought on the deck, Enzo had already blended in with the sailors, cheerfully offering his mixture of betel nut and tobacco, and accepting their crude hand-rolled cigarettes in return. Enzo busied himself helping them rig the sails and tidy up the odds and ends on deck.

As an accomplished swordsman, Enzo was strong enough that such tasks posed no difficulty. After all, unlike Lin Qi’s shamelessness, he felt obliged to do his part since they were hitching a free ride to Dunkirk. Lin Qi could enjoy the voyage with a clear conscience, but Enzo felt he should at least lend a hand.

“What a spendthrift!” Lin Qi glared at the industrious Enzo in annoyance. “Wasting your energy like this—you’ll be famished and eat even more later. Don’t you realize we’ll be living off black bread for the next two days? Damn it, we spent our last copper on that bread!”

Patting his coin pouch, as clean as if it had been through a wash, Lin Qi sighed deeply.

On the dock, the Cripple was waving a white handkerchief, his eyes crinkled in delight as he saw Lin Qi, his perennial troublemaker, finally heading home. As the boat was about to depart, he shouted, “Lin Qi, my dear boy, give your father my regards! Tell him the Cripple has a vintage cask of fine wine waiting for him—if he has the time, he must come and taste it!”

Lin Qi grinned and waved energetically in return.

Not far behind the Cripple, atop his tavern’s uppermost terrace, Jiang Yong stood, curiously watching the scene. The round, tall hat on his head gleamed as his black, poisonous lizard perched atop it flickered with points of light.

Catching Jiang Yong in the corner of his eye, Lin Qi drew a deep breath. Damn it—a grandmaster knight! How was he supposed to make a move against that?

The passenger boat gave a slight shudder as it was nudged by the current; its bow, reinforced with thick iron, slowly pivoted downstream. The Seine was the only river in the northern continent that never froze, for reasons no one could explain. Even in the coldest winters, when water froze at a mere touch, the Seine’s surface would at most bear a finger-thick layer of ice, never sealing itself under feet of frost as other rivers did. Ordinary boats needed only an iron prow to part the thin ice and sail smoothly.

Amid the crackling sound of breaking ice, the boat drifted slowly into the main channel, gradually picking up speed toward the lower reaches. From here, following the Seine northward, it would take no more than two days to reach Dunkirk—the place Lin Qi called home, the ancestral domain where his family had dwelled for countless generations. According to their own records, the Lin Qi family had resided in Dunkirk since the time of the First Cataclysm.

The Lin Qi family was a legend in the Western Continent’s underworld. The “Black Tiger” family was as fierce as the beast itself, dominating the northern reaches. Every shady deal in the north was either directly controlled by the Black Tigers or paid them a cut to operate. Their hidden influence was vast; even after being devastated at the end of the Century War, their power was still formidable.

While that war had thinned their bloodline, it had also vastly expanded the family’s wealth and reach. The Black Tigers were now at their weakest in history, yet paradoxically, at their most powerful.

The journey passed in silence, heavy snow blanketing both banks of the Seine in white, offering little scenery to admire.

As they passed a small town called Light, Enzo became visibly distracted—his hometown was there. Lin Qi could only comfort him by patting his shriveled coin purse, promising that on their return they’d have fare enough to stop in Light and visit his home. But for now, there was simply no way—they couldn’t afford to disembark and hope for another boat.

Drinking cold water and gnawing on black bread, Lin Qi and Enzo endured those two days like devout priests, until at last a lighthouse nearly a hundred meters tall appeared ahead—Dunkirk.

The crew cheered as the boat slowly docked. Lin Qi and Enzo crossed the gangway to shore, waving their thanks to the boat’s master.

Drawing a deep breath of air thick with the tang of saltwater, Lin Qi muttered, “All right, I’m home! Damn it!”

Tugging Enzo, who was still gazing around at the sights, Lin Qi expertly merged with the dense crowd on the docks, leading him onward.