Behind Gelie stood his student Walet and his youngest disciple, Raphael. The two young men had no idea what their respected teacher was muttering about, but Gelie's mood was plainly very bad, and it looked as though Duke Town could not escape being destroyed by the flood. They stood there quietly and did not dare speak.
Gelie stood on the city wall for a whole day. When people urged him to rest, he acted as though he could not hear, staring fixedly toward Duke Town in the east from daylight into the night. It was not until noon the next day that Xiaomo, provincial lord of the city-state of Xuya, came up onto the wall for the third time—not to urge Gelie back to the temple to rest this time, but to report on official business.
"I have already ordered the soldiers guarding the post road through the Black Fire Thicket to pull back. The men at two of the post stations got out in time, but the water came too fast. The station nearest Duke Town is already surrounded by the flood, and we do not know what has become of it. Yesterday you sent High Priest Cosman out on a flying artifact to pick up the men there and scout Duke Town, but Cosman turned back before he was halfway. Word is he could not get through."
Raphael's brows drew together. "How can Cosman be so irresponsible as to leave the soldiers at the post station and wash his hands of them?"
Gelie finally spoke. He let out a long sigh and waved a hand. "You cannot blame Cosman. The clouds are low and there is lightning; flying in a sky like that makes you a target for the thunderbolts, and it would put his life at risk. I sent him to save people, not to throw his life away. He truly could not reach the station."
As they spoke, the thunder in the distance grew louder. Thick clouds spread out from the direction of the Xuya Plateau and pressed almost directly over the city of Xuya. Drops began to fall over the city wall as well, and they came thicker and faster. Xiaomo asked uneasily, "If this rain never stops, the flood will cross the Black Fire Thicket and come up to the walls of Xuya. A third of the whole city-state's lands are already under water. What are we to do?"
Gelie turned and gave his orders: "As provincial lord, set about disaster relief at once. Before long more and more refugees will be pouring into Xuya. ... Walet, go to the temple and fetch two high-grade air divine art scrolls and that Deep Blue Boat."
Walet asked, "The Deep Blue Boat? The artifact inlaid with the Deep Blue Water Heart, the one that burns four godstones every time it is used?"
Gelie said, "Yes. It is in my private storeroom in the rear hall. Bring it at once—I am going out into the flood."
Xiaomo protested in dismay, "Honored grand divine artist, do you mean to go risk yourself in person? The city-state of Xuya still needs you here to hold it steady!"
Walet urged him as well. "Respected master, let me go instead."
Gelie shook his head. "Since we cannot fly, I will go by water. I am the only one here who can handle the Deep Blue Boat—none of you can. I mean to find out news of an important friend, and bring back the soldiers stranded at the post station while I am about it. This is an order; there is no need to argue further."
The Deep Blue Boat was a shuttle-shaped divine art artifact. Such objects were also known as artifacts: barely two cun across and a little over a chi long, silver from end to end, with a Deep Blue Water Heart set into its nose and two grooves on either side. By the time Walet brought it, four godstones had already been fitted into the grooves.
It was a divine art artifact from Gelie's private collection, exceedingly precious. But no one knew that Nietzsche had given it to him twenty years ago—and Nietzsche was one of the finest master craftsmen on this continent.
Even a grand divine artist would not lightly dare to fly through a sky crackling with lightning. To conserve mana, Gelie used an air divine art scroll to drift along just above the water, his figure weaving among the strange shrubs of the Black Fire Thicket.
In principle, a scroll of this kind cannot actually save mana. What it does is store the mana one would ordinarily expend, by certain means, so that the user can release it at a critical moment.
Divine art scrolls are written in divine script according to strict requirements; making one is far harder and consumes far more mana than simply casting the corresponding divine art, and success is not even guaranteed.
High-grade divine art scrolls are therefore among the most precious divine art artifacts on the continent, and only a grand divine artist like Gelie could casually order two of them fetched.
The water was far from calm, heaving with countless whirlpools and chaotic racing currents as it swept over the Black Fire Thicket toward the city-state of Xuya. Only the taller, stranger black rocks still broke the surface, forming little islets here and there. The farther he went, the wider the water opened, the fewer the shrub-grown islets; the water level rose higher and the current ran swifter.
Gelie pushed upstream across the water. In the open stretches he could no longer use the islets and thicket to hide his figure, and he became the most conspicuous target on the water. Several times lightning dropped from the low clouds and struck at him; Gelie drew it aside with his staff and shifted his body away, untouched. Only a grand divine artist could advance like this; anyone else would never have gotten through.
The closer he came to Duke Town, the swifter the muddy current, the greater the churning whirlpools, the denser the lightning falling from the sky. Though the drowned road was invisible, Gelie could still follow the line of the old post road, and at last he reached the place where the nearest post station, thirty li from Duke Town, had stood—long since a vast expanse of water.
Amid wind and rain, thunder and crackling lightning, Gelie unfolded the divine art of detection to probe his surroundings, and at last heard a faint, hoarse cry for help. A squad of soldiers stationed at the post station had survived; led by their captain, they had climbed in time onto the highest boulder nearby. That boulder was nearly submerged now, and twelve soldiers clung to branches still above the water, shouting for help until their voices were shot. Had Gelie come a step later, these men would have been swept away.
Gelie drifted over to the boulder, took the Deep Blue Boat from his breast and tossed it onto the water. The artifact, a little over a chi long, spun once in the water, and suddenly an invisible boat appeared on the heaving surface.
The water drew apart to reveal the shape of a hull, and the rain in the air could not strike its top, only run down its two sides.
When a bolt of lightning struck, the threads of electricity parted around it and traced the outline of this "boat": a long, narrow, enormous date stone, with room inside for a dozen and more people.
Gelie swept his staff, and the boat's outline gave off a layer of deep blue light, until at last it stood fully revealed on the water. He barked, "Get aboard, all of you, and do not panic! Is the captain still there? Keep the men in order and sitting still inside the boat—this is a divine art artifact, so just jump on."
Exhausted, the soldiers, under the captain's direction, tremblingly jumped onto the invisible boat with its film of blue light, as though they were standing directly on the water—yet their footing was steady. Every one of them was shaking, but the captain's orders never faltered; the twelve men sat down in two neat rows, one after another, and not one of them moved out of place.
Gelie gave the young squad leader a glance of faint approval, drifted to stand at the boat's bow and pointed his staff forward. The Deep Blue Boat did not turn back; it kept breaking through the waves toward Duke Town. The captain was bewildered, but he did not ask what the honored grand divine artist had in mind; he only gestured to the soldiers to rest well and not make a sound that might disturb Gelie.
Less than ten li from Duke Town the mountain flood raged, and the Deep Blue Boat had begun to rock slightly. In the empty air at the bow the shape of the Deep Blue Water Heart appeared, and four white glows showed on either side of the hull—the four godstones set there. Dense lightning fell from the sky in bright branching shapes, hammering at the only object on the water. The seemingly invisible Deep Blue Boat protected those aboard well; the lightning only scratched threads of light through the air around it.
Duke Town was gone entirely. All that could be seen was a muddy ocean; even the tall, solid spire of the temple had left no trace—whether it had drowned or been smashed, there was no telling. The flood came surging down from the direction of the Xuya Plateau and ran off south toward the Xuya Desert, while ink-black clouds bore torrential rain with them. This place was like a hell without a ray of light.
Even a grand divine artist would not dare fly in such a sky, and the strongest swimmer could not have struggled long in such a flood. It seemed that no survivor had been left in Duke Town! Yet Gelie halted the Deep Blue Boat at a distance and still gazed at something through the storm—he did not believe that Nietzsche had been swallowed by the flood, silent and unremarked.
If Gelie could risk his way here, then Nietzsche surely had means to escape unharmed. Had he already gone, or was he still here? Gelie had an indescribably strong feeling that Nietzsche was certainly still here.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than a string of thunderclaps burst across the sky and a sheet of ball lightning fell, churning bright spiral traces in the water. Gelie suddenly sensed a powerful surge of mana coming from beneath the surface, and then heard an angry roar: "O god! You have finally shown yourself in the mortal world—I have waited far too long!"
A human figure burst suddenly out of the waves and flew up; the wind it raised coiled around it, and the spray it dragged up formed enormous crystalline wings around its body. The figure shot straight toward the sky, toward the thickest cloud and the densest lightning. It was the old madman, Nietzsche.
Nietzsche had indeed neither died nor left. By some means he had been lurking underwater all along, and it happened that he burst from the surface and flew skyward just as Gelie arrived.
The soldiers who had been sitting quietly on the Deep Blue Boat let out a cry—and then felt themselves wrapped in an opaque blue light, unable to see or hear anything of what was happening outside. Gelie had promptly cast a divine art to cut off both sight and sound; he did not want them watching this.
But with his puppet-eye art Gelie could see the old madman clearly. Wild hair and beard streamed in the air; golden, thread-like bands of light shot from the staff in his hand toward the firmament; his eyes were wide and he was bellowing, "Show yourself, Enlil! Let me see your true face!"