Southern Kingdom, Seagull City-State.
In the spacious and tidy meeting room, Ed opened the Sun Praise Prayer Book in his hands.
"We plan to kill the Eternal Fierce Sun that shelters all beings..." (in the giants’ language)
Under Lin Lan’s encouraging gaze, Ed stumbled over the obscure words written on the pages.
"Let us praise the Eternal Fierce Sun... praise His selflessness and greatness..."
The man’s words gradually became fluent: "The sun allows people of future eras to mine its corpse, which is also His last hope and gift to the world..."
Following Lin Lan’s orders, the giants’ language had become a compulsory course for the soldiers, and Ed, as the commander of the Ark Legion, naturally needed to master this difficult language.
In a daze, Ed felt his soul being pulled into another wonderful world.
Pale golden mining soil formed a flat land, the sky was a mesmerizing eternal twilight, and a boundless giant city connected heaven and earth, magnificent and dazzling.
This was Ed’s second time stepping into the ’mine’ for the extraction of sunstones, and he looked around, finding it not as bustling as he imagined, but rather quiet and desolate.
Because the process of collecting sunstones is actually very simple; people just need to scoop up the golden dust on the ground and let the weight of the dust pull them back to reality.
However, this process severely depletes the miner’s spiritual power, and even energetic children cannot bring back many resources.
It’s worth mentioning that even staying in the mine doing nothing, or exploring in the direction of the city, would continually exhaust a common person’s energy.
Ed bent down and gathered a small handful of golden sand.
The tugging sensation hit immediately, but this weight was nothing to his will. The man carefully felt the warm, delicate golden sand in his palm, and as he let it drop from his fingertips, it transformed into brilliant streams of light.
Ed took a deep breath.
This is what Lord Roland relies on to establish the Ark Kingdom—near infinite extraordinary resources.
To be honest, as a composed officer, Ed felt he had experienced enough shock during this period and didn’t want to be seen as someone easily startled.
But each time he came to the mine, feeling the heavy ash soil underfoot and gazing at the majestic giant city on the horizon, Ed’s heart would tremble.
That giant city traversing the land was even more advanced and bustling than the Star Ladder main island of the Alliance!
In comparison, the Angsak people’s Sea Sanctuary used to refine sunshine is like ants crawling on the ground.
Lord Roland has never declared what this place truly is; he only told people that this world is a gift from a friend.
Ed’s mouth twitched slightly. He truly wanted to know who Lord Roland’s ’friend’ was, but he knew as a subordinate it was best not to ask questions he shouldn’t.
Anyway, the world is about to change...
The next second, the figure of a gray-haired boy appeared before Ed.
"My lord." Ed instinctively lowered his head, realizing that Lord Roland’s stature in his mind was growing ever greater.
He basically believed that the boy in front of him was some old monster surviving from the Ancient Century.
"No need to be so formal and stern."
Lin Lan casually waved his hand and looked around at the sun’s current Divine Kingdom, his eyes revealing a trace of reminiscence.
With the Eternal Fierce Sun’s eternal slumber, the endless flame storms on the surface of the Divine Kingdom had subsided, and the eternal paradise crafted by the Holy Spirits was nowhere to be seen.
Clean and serene.
This place had transformed into a peaceful and tranquil cemetery.
Lin Lan naturally wouldn’t tell the world that this was the Divine Kingdom capable of granting mortal souls eternal life. Since faith is poison, he had to heed avoiding these hazards from the start...
While the boy pondered, two small figures emerged not far away.
"Ethan, look! It’s Lord Roland!"
The little girl habitually looked around quickly, spotting Lin Lan’s figure. The two little ones immediately jumped over joyfully.
In Seagull City, children admired the lord who was harsh on wrongdoers yet gentle and kind to his subjects.
Whenever they summoned the courage to greet Lord Roland in reality, he would always respond with a sincere smile, never brushing them off.
"Hello, Ethan, Laila."
Lin Lan did not disappoint the children’s admiration, smiling as he rubbed the heads of the two children.
"Lord Roland! I can carry many, many minerals at once now!"
The boy gasped, digging out two chunks of ash soil the size of an adult’s fist and presented them as treasures to Lin Lan.
Ed raised his eyebrows in surprise; having personally felt the weight of the ash soil, he naturally understood what the boy’s performance implied.
Only then did he realize that for the common people, collecting sunstones itself was an intangible reward!
The weight of carrying ash soil would temper the children’s will, and the blessing from the sun would burn away the remnants of curses within them.
This selfless gift really touched the heart.
"Don’t take too much at once, Ethan."
Lin Lan proactively took one piece of sunshine from the boy’s hand, blinked as he kindly reminded, "You still need to save some energy for completing the homework that Miss Wendy assigned."
"Alright..." The boy’s little face fell quickly.
He didn’t want to do homework at all, but dared not seek help from the boy in front of him because Lord Roland would surely secretly complain to the formidable Miss Wendy...