Although Wis'adel's fame had spread far and wide, she had not been especially happy during this period. More and more things irritated her, and quiet days were becoming harder to come by.
"And whose fault is that? You brought it on yourself. You just had to stick your nose into other people's lives and deaths. There are that many people—do you really think you can manage them all? You're like a dog catching mice, meddling where you shouldn't."
Wis'adel frowned slightly. "How am I meddling? I didn't take a single coin less than what I was owed."
As the one who understood her best, You Yi showed her no mercy at all. "Fooling other people is one thing. Don't fool yourself too. Think about how much you've earned lately. Are we actually short on money? You keep taking commission after commission—what do you think you're really doing it for?"
She fell silent, not arguing back right away.
Only after a while did she come up with a clumsy excuse.
"Of course it's to get stronger. Target practice only takes me so far. Real combat is the fastest way to gain experience. I'm just doing it to improve my strength."
"Honestly, I'm impressed you managed to make up something that even sounds reasonable."
For someone illiterate, being able to come up with that line at all was no small feat.
You Yi didn't keep needling her. "I'm not saying you shouldn't do these things. I'm just reminding you—don't start thinking you can save too many people's fates. Not until you're actually ready."
Wis'adel still didn't quite understand the deeper meaning hidden in those words.
A few days later, she went to the tavern again.
The moment she sat down, she looked up and noticed the barkeep watching her, something different in his eyes.
"What is it?"
His voice was a little heavier than usual.
"You should go out less for a while."
Wis'adel's brow twitched. "Why?"
His cut depended on her commissions, so for him to advise her to stop taking work for the time being was strange.
The barkeep glanced around and lowered his voice even further.
"People from the Military Commission are mobilizing. The city gates have checkpoints now. Several Royal Court guard units have already entered the city."
Wis'adel's hand paused around her cup.
The Royal Court?
Those old monsters usually stayed cooped up in their own territories and rarely moved. For them to stir like this all of a sudden… the meaning behind it couldn't possibly be simple.
"What else?"
The barkeep hesitated for a moment, then said it anyway.
"Babel's moving too. I heard they've started pulling a lot of people out—mostly foreign doctors, scholars, that sort."
Wis'adel didn't answer. She took a sip of water.
Recently, she had taken all kinds of commissions and traveled to all sorts of places. She had already begun to sense certain things.
For example, some areas had suddenly been sealed off, no entry allowed.
For example, she could vaguely feel that two ideologies were now confronting each other inside Kazdel. The voices supporting Theresa and Theresis were growing louder and louder, and the conflict between them was only intensifying.
For example, several mercenary bands that used to compete viciously over business had suddenly gone quiet, as if they were all waiting to see what happened next.
When she pieced all those fragments together, a rough outline began to emerge.
"Kazdel's sky is about to change."
You Yi, however, was not surprised in the slightest.
Based on his own understanding of the Sarkaz and the realities around them, he had long since inferred that Kazdel's years of uneasy peace were about to end, and that it would soon enter a period of civil war.
If memory served, once the war began, Kazdel would descend into total chaos. Beyond the two main factions, every prince, noble, and warlord would seize the chance to carve out their own territory. The entire country would be reduced to ruins. Refugees would flood into the capital, until it became a place described as "a city stretching for a hundred miles, filled with crime and death."
How many people would die in that?
And mercenaries would be cannon fodder among cannon fodder. By the time it was over, the Sarkaz mercenary population would probably have been completely replaced.
Recently, You Yi had been thinking constantly about how to improve their strength.
But there simply was no way to achieve a true leap in power in the short term.
Even just the energy cannon had stalled him for a long time. Either its performance fell short of what he wanted, or its consumption was too high and its stability too poor. It all needed more time.
On Terra, the gap in strength between different levels could be absurd.
To put it one way: if elite mercenaries were lions and tigers, then Wis'adel was roughly equivalent to a tank.
And the Sarkaz Royal Court—
That was an aircraft carrier.
That was why You Yi had warned Wis'adel not to get too deeply involved.
But judging by the current trend, it would be very difficult for her to escape this whirlpool.
There was only about a year or two left before the Sarkaz civil war fully erupted.
That was such a short amount of time that he had no choice but to think seriously about how to accelerate their growth.
The energy cannon had hit a bottleneck. The symbiotic armor's defense was useful, but still nowhere near enough against enemies on the level of the Royal Court. Wis'adel's combat experience was growing quickly, but there was no way she could bridge that qualitative gap in the short term.
Unless—
You Yi recalled a passage from the inherited knowledge of his species.
Division.
It was one of his racial gifts: expend a huge amount of energy to split off an independent individual. The split body remained linked to the original through consciousness, sharing memories, but able to grow separately.
It was like scattering one of his own seeds into the distance and waiting for it to take root.
The risk was enormous. Division would consume most of the energy he had accumulated. If the split body died young, all of that energy would be lost forever.
And in its earliest stage, the split body would be extremely fragile. It would need to find a suitable host quickly in order to survive.
But the reward was equally great.
Two hosts.
Twice the sources of emotional energy.
Two growth paths.
Twice the speed of ability development.
Once the split body matured, You Yi's consciousness would be able to coordinate between both.
He hesitated for a long time.
The risk was real.
But so was the coming storm of civil war.
If he did nothing, then once the war truly broke out, Wis'adel's little boat would very likely be shattered by the waves of Kazdel's internal conflict.
Then he'd gamble.
If he lost, he would take Wis'adel and flee Kazdel.
Over the next few nights, while Wis'adel slept, You Yi began to act.
He carefully stripped away a portion of his energy—most of the reserves he had built up over this time. The process felt like carving flesh off his own body. The pain was so intense that even his consciousness became unstable.
The separated energy writhed and gathered in front of him, gradually forming a pitch-black sphere about the size of a fist.
That was another him.
His initial state.
Like a newborn infant—but with a complete core. The consciousness of the split body remained connected to the original, sharing memory, sharing the same soul.
Weak and exhausted, You Yi hid the split body inside an empty cargo crate. Strange labels were pasted across the outside; it was part of a shipment from some merchant caravan heading north.
He didn't know where exactly the goods would end up.
Ursus? Kjerag? Sami?
It didn't matter.
Anywhere it could survive was good enough.
Inside the cargo crate, the split body lay quietly, its consciousness asleep, like a seed waiting to sprout.
The wagon set off and gradually disappeared into the distance.
Watching a part of himself go, You Yi let out a long sigh.
Wis'adel's voice sounded in his mind. "What have you been doing lately? Why does it feel like you've gotten way weaker?"
"It's nothing." You Yi brushed it off. "I was researching a new ability. Used up a lot more energy than I expected."
Wis'adel was quiet for a few seconds and didn't press him further.
But You Yi felt that familiar emotion surge from her again, this time tinged with something like worry—concern, maybe?
He smiled, but said nothing.
The seed had been planted.
All that remained was to see what would grow from it on the frozen soil of the north.
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