Chapter 140 - Byron Takes a Big Risk And a New Guest (2/2)

A soldier reminded thoughtlessly. “Your Excellency, remove your glove and give it a try?”

Byron’s old face wasn’t red at all. He even glared at this brainless soldier. “Then you come and try it!”

The other party proved himself to be a soldier trained by Byron; he wasn’t modest at all. Pulling off his glove, he placed his hand on the slanted surface like Byron had done earlier.

In the next second, the complicated patterns on the surface of the metal object began to shimmer. At the same time, minor quaking came from somewhere. As a stunned look appeared on that soldier’s face, Byron heard a slightly distorted and unusually stiff voice from the metal object. “Checking… Sample examiner… Stabilization period… Entry permitted… Opening isolation door…”

Then, accompanied by the creaking sound of ancient machinery operating, the sunken area on the wall really shrunk inwards and revealed a passageway that was previously hidden!

Everyone stared at one another, gaping.

“I—I didn’t do anything.” The soldier hastily retracted his hand, looking nervous and helpless. “All of you were watching.”

Byron looked at the dark passageway behind the door. He suddenly pulled off his glove and also put his hand on the metal slanted surface.

The metal device lit up similarly and an old-fashioned, distorted voice quickly came from it. “Checking… Sample examiner… Stabilization period… Entry permitted… Isolation door is already open.”

“Me too?” Byron was dumbfounded; then he frowned and casually picked a soldier. “You, come and give it a try!”

This soldier followed suit in resting his hand on the device. Then, what happened next was exactly the same: The metal device lit up, and a sound came from it, informing that he was allowed to enter.

Could it be that as long as it was a human putting his hand on it, he would be able to pass the test?

“It’s most likely damaged…” After testing another two soldiers in a row, Byron heaved a light sigh of relief. “It’s something so ancient after all.”

A soldier asked cautiously. “Your Excellency, the inside, do we still…?”

“Go in and take a look.” Byron still wore a prudent look, but he was already jumping for joy at heart. As an ex-mercenary who’d wandered through remnants of all sizes in the southern borders and had yet to fail, he seemed to have sensed the smell of good stuff. “After searching for so long, there’s finally some findings!”

……

While Byron and company continued to tread deeper into the remnants in the mountains, a new guest also stepped onto the Cecil clan’s new territory.

This was a young woman with a lithe figure. She wore a thin gauze dress that didn’t look to be of Anzu style; long hair hung loosely behind her. A lilac veil covered her face, only leaving a pair of bright and lively eyes outside. She walked with poise into the Cecil territory just like that: past the sentries, past the camp’s (actually, it was now a small town) gates, weaving through the neat wooden huts.

The residents of the Cecil territory walked back and forth and busied around her, but every person paid no heed to her.

The woman wearing a veil walked so naturally, observing with curious eyes this town that theoretically only had a few months of history. Those orderly wooden huts could already be considered qualified town constructions in other places — after all, in most places in this era, the housing conditions of civilians might not even be able to compare with these huts. Yet in reality, these huts were still obviously ‘transitional buildings’. On both sides of the town’s main road, houses were undergoing demolition and reconstruction everywhere. Those houses had a compacted foundation and were built using bricks, evidently the next-generation housing in this small town.

An odd noise came from a distance. The woman wearing a mask looked over following the noise and found that it was coming from a workshop where smoke and dust were rising from. She walked over curiously and pushed open the door. She was stunned by the sight.

It turned out that this was a place for baking bricks, but two strange-looking machines were placed under the rain canopy in the middle of the yard. One of them had an obvious magic response. It spun under the drive of some magical mechanism and used a powerful rotation shaft to spur on another machine connected to it, and that machine was continuously compressing the mixture of mud and silt into well-defined and firm bricks. Not only was the efficiency of these two machines astonishing, they clearly did not require complex controls — just two civilians dressed in denim clothing watched from the side, whereas more people were busy carrying those bricks that were swiftly taking form onto carts and pushing them to the rows of furnace kilns, which were much bigger than the average brick kilns, neatly lined up on the other side of the yard.

Those two large-scale magic equipment… What were they?

Magical mechanism? But where was the mage controlling them? Who was infusing magical power into them? Who was regulating their flow of magical power? Who was controlling their speed and start or stop?

It couldn’t be those two laymen with not one bit of magical power on them, could it?

At the mention of that… it seemed like magical power could be pervasively sensed here. That was really odd. Was this entire territory constructed on a magic focal point?

The veiled woman knitted her good-looking brows. She was really tempted to disassemble those two machines for a look. However, if she were to do something so out of line, no level of stealth or mental-nudge spells would help. Thus, she could only shake her head regrettably, leave the courtyard, and close the door.

And just then, a seemingly familiar voice that was full of vigor suddenly came from behind her. “Ah! Who are you?!”