Cthulhu Gonfalon

Sui Xiong certainly would not let Kersemens return to the mortal world just like that. This guy was very strong but did not have an intelligent mind. If he let it back into the world, it might create a big mess.

So he decided that no matter what, he had to first give this "Lord of the Wolves," who was lagging behind the times by 23,000 years, some basic knowledge on popular science. Other matters could wait.

This was really a tough job, especially when the one to be educated was a fool.

He was a freaking fool!

What a fool!

In the next ten days, words like "he was a fool, let's not be at the same level as a fool" were repeatedly heard coming from Sui Xiong's mouth and resonating in his mind.

But after ten days, his tolerance finally reached his limit. He roared and left a line, "Let Wall teach you," then he hurled the pointer and blackboard whereby both were smashed to pieces. Without turning back, he ran away.

Only Kersemens, with a blank look written all over his face, was left sitting at his desk. It did not know why the jellyfish teacher suddenly went crazy.

"This little idiot is the worst student I've ever thought!" Sui Xiong muttered to himself listlessly.

At this moment, he had transformed himself into an invisible void and was floating up in the skies of the Main Plane while cruising in the wind. It was really like what Zhuangzi would describe as "generally like a boat that was not tied," where he was carefree and unrestrained.

But he was in a mood and not the least bit carefree at all.

This guy, Kersemens, was simply stupid beyond words!

As an ancient lord, his intelligence was not low. At least his memory was quite good. Basically, after repeating up to three times, he could remember whatever Sui Xiong taught. But when he was required to turn this "memory" into "thoughts," he would become extremely inept. For example, Sui Xiong taught him one plus one equals two, then moved on to teaching him one plus two equals three, and so on. Then Sui Xiong asked what two plus three equaled, and he would think for a good half a day and try his best to recall. Then finally, with eyes filled with innocence, he would look at Sui Xiong and reply, "Teacher, you have not taught me this."

…

Even Sui Xiong had to admire himself for being able to tolerate this for so many days. But no matter how patient he was, he had finally reached his limit today.

"Arg! I hope Wall will be able to teach him well…" Sui Xiong said with a deep sigh. He buried the sense of guilt he felt towards Wall deep within his heart, then squinting his eyes. he planned to relax for a while.

Unknowingly, he fell asleep.

Just as he was through the mist of sleep, he suddenly heard a cry.

"Eh? Who's crying?"

Sui Xiong opened his eyes and looked down at the place where the cry came from.

Coincidentally, by floating and cruising about casually, he had unknowingly flown into the skies of Commonwealth of Gold Coins. He was just in time to see a mighty and massive migration team advancing slowly like ants moving to a new house.

There was an ongoing cremation on a small patch of wilderness near the migration team. Dozens of corpses were placed on piles of firewood where they were engulfed by the blazing flames accompanied by thick, billowing smoke and the cries of loved ones. Then they turned to piles of ashes.

Sui Xiong frowned and quickly descended to a height nearest to ground level. He randomly selected a burly man who looked like the host of the cremation ceremony. With his Divine Power, he probed into the thoughts of this man and learned about the whole story.

It turned out that all these people died of illness.

Although the God of Plague used his Divine Power to prevent the outbreak of a massive plague, when a big group of people traveled for so long with food under such sweltering weather, how could they not fall ill?

The young and strong ones would still be fine, but it would not be the same for the old, young and weaker ones. The moment they fell sick, even if there were doctors to treat them, it would still be difficult for them to pull through.

Furthermore, most patients would need to stay in bed to recuperate. They also need ample nutrition. These two conditions were most unlikely to be satisfied within a migration team.

Given such a situation, the number of deaths would naturally be constantly increasing.

At the beginning of the migration, the situation was still not too bad. But as the time of migration got longer, the people's health deteriorated even further. The number of people dying of illness gradually increased too.

The burly man who presided over the cremation ceremony was a knight who had migrated with all the villagers under his jurisdiction. They had traveled all the way south from the North. Along the way, people continued to die of illnesses. Up till now, from a village with a strength of more than 400 people, the number of deaths had exceeded 10%.

However, only one out of all the dead bodies to be cremated in today's ceremony was from his people. The rest were under the jurisdiction of other lords. Because near to where he and his people pitched camp, there was a relatively large open space, so all the bodies were moved here to be cremated together.

Looking at the anguished faces of those emaciated migrants, Sui Xiong sighed and slowly flew higher up.

Looking far into the distance, more than one cloud of thick smoke could be seen. Also, the sounds of cries could be heard coming from various directions. With such a large migration team, there would be many people dying every day.

Sui Xiong frowned, and then he flew towards the migration team of the merchant party.

They were also holding a cremation ceremony over here. Although the situation of the merchant party's migration team was dwarfed by that of the aristocratic party's migration team, it was essentially not that great of a difference.

The farmers led difficult lives to begin with, lacking food and clothing. Coupled with the need to travel a long journey on foot, their standard of living was almost rock bottom. Even if the merchant party tried their best to sustain their lives, there was a limit to what they could do.

Of course, compared to the aristocratic party, the merchant party was certainly a tad better.

But… Sui Xiong observed these migrants very carefully. Most of them were already very thin. Though not to the extent of becoming "skin and bones," they most certainly did not have anything more to be exploited.

If this migration goes on, it won't be long before a large number of people will die!

He was frowning as he secretly felt worried.

Just then, he noticed an ongoing conversation.

A few young men were engaged in a discussion with a clergyman and a petty merchant who seemed to be a leader.

"Sigh! Two more died today," said that petty merchant. Dejectedly, he said, "People are dying every day. Even if we have doctors and priests, there is still nothing we can do…"

"Divinity is not omnipotent. Likewise for medicine," said the clergyman as he consoled the petty merchant. "Don't be too upset, you've done your best."

"I feel that I should be able to do much better than this," said the petty merchant with a gloomy face. "If I was powerful enough, so powerful that I could influence the country's policies, maybe I would be able to stop this massive migration."

"But if that's the case, maybe there'll be a war," said the clergymen. As a member of Church of the Goddess of Wealth, he was very clear on the reason for this migration. He lamented, "The conflict between the merchant party and the aristocratic party has reached the point where it is poised on a hair-trigger. If there's no great migration to separate the two, I'm afraid they'd have been fighting one another by now."

The petty merchant sighed for a moment, then said, "If only we were able to set up the Grand Council back then, maybe there wouldn't be so many things happening now."

"I guess so. My god had originally hoped to get everyone to sit together and iron out any contradiction they have. Even if there are matters that can't be settled, at least resolving some of these problems would be good," said the clergyman, who showed his indignation. Very angrily, he said, "Those short-sighted ones! All of them are only concerned about meaningless things like 'how it might affect their inheritance rights,' or whether 'it hinders the divinity of the aristocrats.' It has never crossed their minds that if there's really a war happening and as a result, all the people are dead, who the hell would be around to claim these inheritance rights or divinity!"

Obviously, he was inclined towards the merchant party. He did not have much affection for the aristocratic party to start with, and now, the more he spoke, the angrier he got. He went on ceaselessly, lashing out a round of criticism at the aristocratic party.

The petty merchant and his entourage nodded their heads as they listened to what he had to say, as though they had been enlightened all of a sudden.

Sui Xiong used his Divine Power to look inside them and realized how clear it was that they were simply putting all the blame for the suffering caused by this great migration on the selfishness and shortsightedness of the aristocratic party.

He shook his head and then flew over to where the aristocratic party was. He looked around carefully, and sure enough, there were also people discussing the reason for the great migration.

Just that, this side was different from the merchant party. The aristocratic party blamed the problem on the greed of the merchant party. They felt that the merchant party's unbridled and unscrupulous pursuit for wealth and status had intensified the problem and brought things to a deadlock. Otherwise, it would have been nice to see everyone leading peaceful lives!

All in all, putting a thousand million words into one sentence—it was the other party's fault.

After he had carefully looked into the situation on both sides, Sui Xiong shook his head and sighed. Then he went to look for the Goddess of Wealth.

"I just went over to the migration team to take a look," he said. "I can't help feeling that… it seems like they are still going to fight another battle!"