Chapter 189: Yu Mo’s Reason
“Brother… I didn’t do it; I couldn’t save them.”
In just a few days, Charli had become noticeably more worn out. She trembled, clutching the cloth-wrapped bundle at her chest.
Yu Mo looked at the frail child wrapped in cloth in her arms.
“Is this child still alive?”
“So many people… only this one child survived,” Charli’s voice was so weak it was almost inaudible.
This was something Yu Mo hadn’t expected; he hadn’t thought she would truly be able to save anyone in this doomed city.
“You saved her. You did well, Charli.” Yu Mo’s usual cold expression softened as he touched the child’s dry, blonde hair.
Charli shook her head, holding the child close. Tears, mixed with black ash, streamed down her face as she didn’t dare look back at the burning Aram.
…
When they returned to Margburg, Charli collapsed.
She slept for two days, drinking several bottles of magical potions before she finally became a little more alert.
The child she had saved with healing magic even awoke before she did, sitting silently by her bed and ignoring everyone.
People afflicted with the death disease were like that—their life force gradually drained away, and even their emotions faded bit by bit.
This child, revived by Charli’s magic, still needed more time to recover.
Every day, after finishing his official duties, Yu Mo would come to visit Charli. He didn’t make anyone take the frail, expressionless little girl away; he let her stay to keep Charli company.
“Brother.” Charli woke from her sleep to see her brother standing by the window, lost in thought.
“You’re awake. Feeling any better?”
“I’m sorry, Brother.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“I didn’t do well.” Charli, wrapped in her blanket, had an uncontrollable look of pain in her eyes. “I thought I’d already grown up.”
“In the royal city, Teacher Croft told me I had a natural talent for magic. I tried healing people—they were grateful and praised me, and I became full of pride…”
“But actually, that was just their way of flattering me. I’m not as powerful as I thought.”
“I couldn’t save anyone.”
As Charli spoke, her emotions began to spiral out of control. She had faced too much death in just a few days, and it had dealt her a heavy blow.
“Brother once said he hoped I could become a queen, and I’ve been trying.”
During the days when her brother wasn’t in the royal city, they communicated only through letters, leaving her to handle things on her own.
She tried to be an excellent princess—learning the rules of the nobility, gaining their support, winning the Emperor’s favor, practicing magic diligently, and maintaining good relations with the Holy Temple.
“But maybe I won’t be able to be a good queen.” Only now did she realize that doing all of that wasn’t enough.
She must have disappointed her brother, right? She couldn’t save his people, and she was so weak, unable to withstand these blows.
Yu Mo sat by her bed, listening to his sister’s choked words, and was suddenly reminded of Peruth.
Although Peruth had never mentioned it, Yu Mo knew about his past.
Peruth, born in the land that worshiped the Goddess of Desire, had watched his hometown fall to the Death Plague when he was young.
He had escaped alone from that darkened town; no one came to save him.
Perhaps, like Charli now, he had also tried to save those afflicted.
But in the end, everyone he knew had died before his eyes, turning into undead spirits within the liminal realm, hoping to hold him back.
He must have also once despised his own helplessness and weakness, which later drove him to desperately pursue the power of magic.
“Brother, I don’t want this anymore. If only I were as powerful as you and His Excellency the Cardinal.”
“Even we couldn’t save those people. Charli, in Aram, you did better than any of us.”
Yu Mo’s tone was calm, but it carried a weight that made it feel like absolute truth. With his affirmation, doubt was no longer possible.
“This won’t be the last time. If the Death Plague spreads in the North, would you still be willing to try to save them, Charli?”
Yu Mo tucked the blanket around her. “Even if you say you’re scared and don’t want to go, I wouldn’t be disappointed in you.”
“I am scared,” Charli said softly, looking at the little girl curled up at the end of the bed. “But I’ll go.”
The Death Plague spread in the North faster than Yu Mo had anticipated, though the outbreak wasn’t in Borotosh, as in the original story, but in the neighboring Larta.
A few years ago, Larta, like Borotosh, was one of the North’s most barren territories.
When Borotosh welcomed a new lord and underwent dramatic changes, Larta remained the same—still poor and rundown.
This outbreak of the Death Plague in Larta confirmed a suspicion Yu Mo had held for some time.
The plague, which affected both the environment and people, could be influenced by people’s state of mind to a certain degree.
Peruth once said that places devoid of faith were more vulnerable to the plague.
But Yu Mo believed it was more that “places steeped in confusion and lacking a vision for the future are more easily influenced by the plague.”
Borotosh, though it no longer believed in the gods, believed in a future they could create for themselves—a power as strong as any faith.
“Let’s go, Charli, to Larta.”
…
Larta’s situation was much better than Aram’s, and Yu Mo brought nearly all the trained magicians with him.
In Larta’s most severely affected areas, they set up magical formations to channel Charli’s healing magic throughout.
At the same time, they brought in food supplies and stationed people to distribute it in areas impacted by the Death Plague.
They gathered the refugees, relocated some, and assigned others to tasks like construction and labor.
Yu Mo wanted to see if, in the early stages of the plague, these patients could regain their will to survive without relying on light magic.
He also wondered if there was an alternative way to contain and purify the negative corruption that had risen from underground, repressed by sunlight for years, other than using light magic.
There was a lot to be done, leaving Yu Mo so busy he had no time to think about the cardinal, who hadn’t been seen for quite a while.
“Teacher, has there been a fight between you and Lord Peruth? He hasn’t come by in a long time.”
Only Amos dared to ask Yu Mo this question.
As Yu Mo’s longest-serving student, Amos had seen his teacher and Cardinal Peruth interact for years. Though they saw each other infrequently, their relationship seemed harmonious.
The cardinal, despite his outward demeanor, was rather clingy and often came to Margburg to visit his teacher.
The longest he’d gone without visiting Yu Mo was a month, yet it had now been two months since his last appearance.
Amos wasn’t trying to pry into his teacher’s relationship with the cardinal—he was simply worried about his teacher’s well-being.
Given the situation in Larta, if the cardinal were here, his teacher wouldn’t need to exhaust himself so much.
By now, Yu Mo hadn’t slept in five days, relying solely on energy potions to keep going.
“I was wondering if perhaps we should send a letter to Lord Peruth, asking him to come help?”
Amos noticed his teacher frown, as if this suggestion gave him a bit of a headache.
Even when Yu Mo first saw the mess in Larta, he hadn’t shown such an expression.
It seemed as if dealing with the cardinal was, for Yu Mo, an even more challenging task than handling the situation in Larta.
“No need. I’ll consider it when the time is right,” Yu Mo replied coldly, turning back to the endless work that demanded his attention.
*
At the new Holy Temple of Light in Tusihe in the North, the area had become crowded since the Death Plague appeared in Larta. People from nearby areas fled here—nobles and merchants rode in with their wealth, while the poor, clutching their children, trekked on foot, forming a long migration trail along the rough roads between Larta and Tusihe.
The temple, blessed with a cardinal and the Light’s protection, gave them a sense of safety.
Inside the spacious temple, nobles arrived daily to pray, offering vast amounts of gold in exchange for refuge in the safest place they could find.
As Peruth passed by a window, he overheard several nobles inside whispering about the plague.
“The lord of Borotosh is a fool. Does he truly believe he can resist the death plague?”
“He spent all that time holed up in the royal city, never witnessing the true horror of the plague. Just watch—he’ll die in Larta.”
Peruth recognized these nobles as the ones who had recently fled from Larta to Tusihe.
When signs of the plague first appeared in Larta, its lord immediately abandoned his lands and fled with several nobles, coming to Peruth’s temple, where they wept and pleaded for his protection.
The nobles began to angrily curse and vilify Marquis Cecil.
“I heard he’s actually relocating people from the infected areas to other places! My god! Can you imagine such stupidity?”
“Those wretched plague victims will spread the infection everywhere! They should be walled in and burned alive!”
The smile faded from Peruth’s face as he continued walking.
The priest accompanying Peruth glanced at him with a worried expression. “Your Excellency, are you really not going to do anything about the death plague in Larta?”
“The plague is highly contagious. If this continues, the entire North could fall.”
“The nobles are also quite displeased.”
“And what would you have me do?” Peruth asked, “Use the Sun’s fire to burn those areas down?”
In the past, that was exactly what they’d done—like cutting away gangrenous flesh from the body.
No one had questioned it, except for Eloren.
When the plague struck Aram, Eloren had already refused him, making his stance abundantly clear.
Eloren didn’t want Peruth, as the cardinal of Light in the North, to handle the plague in his usual way. He didn’t agree with Peruth’s approach to dealing with it.
If Eloren wanted his help, a request would have reached him long ago. But instead, he had received nothing.
“Your Excellency! A letter from Larta!” A priest hurriedly handed him a note.
Surprised, Peruth took the enchanted letter.
The handwriting was unfamiliar, with a single line: Teacher has fallen ill. Could the cardinal come to Larta to visit him?
…
It was only when he saw Larta’s spire-topped buildings and the constant flow of carts and carriages that Peruth came back to his senses.
His heart was still racing with worry.
He couldn’t remember how he’d arrived, and he was still clutching the letter, now deeply creased.
Larta’s situation was far better than he had expected. Peruth concealed his distinctive appearance and entered the city.
He quickly found Eloren, who didn’t seem ill as the letter had suggested. Eloren was on the plaza, bent over, inspecting a newly installed magical formation.
It appeared he was adjusting the formation, occasionally exchanging comments with the two magicians standing beside him.
There were often people rushing up to him, interrupting their conversations to ask him to make certain decisions.
Eloren would pause his work on the magic formation to deal with these matters first. Usually, after a few brief words, those people would nod repeatedly and hurry off.
He stood there, directing everyone, a steady force amidst the chaos.
Only his overly pale complexion and gaunt face revealed his exhaustion and the pressure he was under.
Suddenly, he seemed to sense something and turned, looking directly at him with surprise in his gaze.
Peruth then understood that the letter had probably been sent by one of his students on their own initiative; Eloren hadn’t expected to see him here.
Their brief eye contact was quickly interrupted.
A long time passed in the same way, with no free moments. After nightfall, someone brought a simple meal, and Eloren finally paused.
Peruth sat on a secluded step nearby, watching him as he approached.
Neither of them spoke.
Peruth sighed suddenly, took his hand, and gently pulled him down to sit beside him.
His hand was cold.
“Why didn’t you call for me?” Peruth held his hand, enclosing it within his own warm palms, speaking softly.
“Although I was upset at your rejection, we both know that if you said something to me, like before, everything would be as it was.”
“I never stay angry with you for long. Or… are you upset with me and didn’t want to see me?”
Yu Mo’s hand shifted within his grasp, lightly closing around Peruth’s fingers.
Peruth chuckled softly. “You see? Just this, and I’m not angry anymore.”
“Why did you come here?” Yu Mo asked, holding his hand and looking into his eyes.
Peruth didn’t mention the letter but instead said, “You disagree with how I handle the infected areas, yet you know that if you asked, I’d be willing to do it your way.”
“You don’t have to consider my feelings; you could just use me as a tool to get things done… Isn’t that what you’re best at? Why didn’t you do that?”
He had always known what kind of person Eloren was.
Eloren had a powerful need for control and couldn’t tolerate anything outside his plans.
He gradually took control of the noble circles in the capital, the shadowy magic forces beneath the city, and even the distant northern lands.
He dictated his sister Charli’s fate, directed his student Amos, and even influenced the path of the knight Makin.
He wanted to control everything, shaping it to fit his vision.
So, was all that he had done over these years still not enough? Did Eloren still feel unable to control him, which was why he kept him out of his plans?
“Why… didn’t you come to me?” Peruth’s words came almost as a sigh.
“Haven’t I told you?” Yu Mo pulled his hand away, lifting Peruth’s face.
“Because I love you.”
He looked down into those stunned amber eyes.
“Because I love you, I resist putting you on a difficult path; I resist letting you face danger.”
