Chapter 225: The Sea of Grave Flowers

Five days had passed since Patrick and the other Greenwardens arrived at Cinder Dusk.

Those five days had been anything but peaceful. Though Gideon was only helping Jade, the situation was enough to make him shake his head and sigh.

At this point, the settlement would be full of zombies and there would be nothing they could do except saving the people who didn’t get infected.

Meanwhile, Patrick barely had any time to leave the temporary laboratory Gideon had prepared for him, spending almost every waking hour examining the parasite together with Elaine and his assistants.

Only this morning did the old professor finally step out of the laboratory after receiving a letter tied to the leg of an aberrant dove.

Now, the three of them sat inside Gideon’s military truck as it steadily climbed the frozen road leading toward the western perimeter.

Jade quietly looked through the window, her eye bags were clear as day, she clearly didn’t sleep at all. While Patrick carefully reread the letter for what was probably the fifth time since they departed.

The old man’s brows remained knitted together, his thumb unconsciously tapping against the folded paper as though every sentence written there carried another problem he hadn’t considered.

Gideon noticed it through the rearview mirror.

"So?"

Patrick slowly folded the letter again before slipping it back into his coat.

"My friend from Greenwarden North finally replied."

"And?"

The old professor sighed. "They’ve encountered Pyrovour Borealis before. I will tell you later when we arrive."

Silence settled inside the truck. None of them interrupted him.

Outside, snow continued falling heavily, gradually covering the tire tracks left behind by the military vehicle. After nearly twenty minutes, the truck finally slowed to a stop in front of a newly established military checkpoint.

Rows of steel fences nearly as tall as the defensive walls surrounding the perimeter of the grave flowers stretched across the entrance, completely sealing the only accessible route toward the canyon.

Beyond them stood dozens of armed guards Gideon had hired from the system, each carrying rifles while continuously patrolling the perimeter without showing the slightest trace of fatigue.

Several military tents had also been erected nearby, allowing the guards to remain stationed there around the clock without returning to the settlement.

Patrick slowly stepped out of the truck and looked around.

"...You really turned this place into a fortress."

"I don’t intend to let anyone accidentally wander inside or even aberrants. There were lots of them here at night."

Gideon locked the truck before gesturing toward the mountain path ahead.

"Let’s go."

The climb wasn’t particularly difficult.

The stairs had only been completed yesterday after Gideon ordered several workers to carve them directly into the rocky cliff. They stretched upward along the canyon wall until finally reaching a natural observation point overlooking the entire valley below.

The moment Patrick stepped onto the platform, he stopped walking altogether.

Jade instinctively followed his gaze.

The canyon spread before them like a gigantic scar carved through the mountains, its steep rocky walls descending toward a vast valley hidden beneath layers of untouched snow.

At first glance it was beautiful.

Giant dandelions bloomed peacefully across the white landscape, swaying gently whenever the winter wind swept through the canyon. From this distance they looked almost like someone had scattered handfuls of white pompoms across a blanket of snow.

Only after raising the binoculars did the beauty disappear as every flower grew from a corpse.

Patrick slowly lowered the binoculars before shaking his head.

"This is certainly a disaster."

Jade quietly folded her arms. "Damn it, this is even more disturbing that I saw on the screen."

"There are dozens," Patrick agreed calmly. "But each mature Pyrovour Borealis produces hundreds of seeds before dying."

Gideon narrowed his eyes. "The letter tells you how to destroy them?"

"It does." Patrick nodded. He unfolded the letter once more before pointing toward one of the sketches his colleague had drawn beside the notes.

"Fortunately, my colleague didn’t only write about their observations. They also enclosed the weapon they used to destroy a mature Pyrovour Borealis."

Jade stepped closer while Gideon took the paper from Patrick’s hand. The drawing looked like an oversized anti-materiel rifle, almost as tall as an adult man, with several notes surrounding it describing the ammunition instead of the weapon itself.

Gideon raised a brow. "An anti-materiel rifle?"

Patrick nodded. "They borrowed it from the Order of the North. The rifle itself wasn’t special. What mattered was the ammunition."

His finger moved toward another note. "A solid tungsten penetrator. No explosive charge, no incendiary compound and no fragmentation. Just enough kinetic energy to cleanly separate the stem in a single shot."

Jade frowned. "So... that’s it?"

"In theory." Patrick smiled bitterly. "My colleague only had to deal with a single flower. They had days to prepare the shot, calculate the wind and wait until the flower was completely stationary."

His eyes slowly returned to the canyon below. "We don’t have that luxury."

The three of them looked toward the sea of white blossoms swaying beneath the snow.

Patrick quietly folded the letter again. "My colleague specifically warned me not to become overconfident after reading this. They succeeded because they only had one target."

He paused for a moment. "We have several dozen."

Gideon remained silent, his eyes moving from one flower to another. Even from this distance, he could already imagine how difficult the operation would be.

The wind inside the canyon never stopped, each Pyrovour Borealis swayed with a different rhythm, and every stem was only slightly thicker than an adult’s arm.

Jade was the first to break the silence. "What if one bullet misses?"

Patrick slowly shook his head. "Then we’re done."

His voice remained calm as though he were simply stating another scientific fact. "Hypothetically, even if every marksman fires perfectly, a single bullet arriving only a fraction of a second later than the others would be enough to alert the remaining flowers. Once that happens, they’ll release their seeds before we have another opportunity."

Neither Gideon nor Jade spoke for several seconds. Gideon finally handed the blueprint back to Patrick before looking at the valley again.

"With this angle, the distance, and the unpredictable wind..." He let out a quiet sigh. "Shooting every flower simultaneously is impossible."

Jade turned toward him, immediately understanding what he meant. "So you’ll let some of them scatter?"

"Yes."

The answer came without the slightest hesitation.

"We don’t have another choice. Even if we only destroy half of them, we’ve already cut this disaster in half. It’s still far better than standing here doing nothing while waiting for winter to make the decision for us."

Patrick silently nodded. "I agree with the Chief. Greenwarden can tell you how to destroy them, but we can’t perform miracles."

Jade rubbed the bridge of her nose before letting out a long breath. "I’ll contact the Merchant Guild."

Her expression gradually turned serious. "If we’re fortunate, one of the guilds may have another opinion or a different approach. They have engineers, hunters and explorers from all over the continent. Someone might have encountered something similar."

She looked toward Gideon. "You’ll come with me."

"I don’t mind," Gideon answered. "As long as it doesn’t take too much time. The longer we hesitate, the closer the Eternal Snow gets. Once the blizzard arrives, all we’ll be able to do is watch these flowers scatter and kill our people bit by bit.."

His attention shifted toward Patrick. "I’ll have William study this blueprint and see whether we can reproduce the ammunition. At the same time, I’ll start looking for people capable of making shots like these."

He paused before adding, "You should come with us to Climber Rift as well. I have a feeling the situation there is becoming just as troublesome."

Patrick chuckled quietly. "’Troublesome’ is a generous way of putting it."

He folded the letter before putting it back inside his coat.

"My assistants have already isolated two Eagle Union members and dozens of people who came into direct contact with them. Fortunately, your quarantine camp is holding up well."

None of them moved immediately. Patrick remained on the observation platform, carefully studying the canyon through his binoculars while occasionally making notes inside his notebook.

Every few minutes he pointed toward another flower, discussing possible firing angles with Gideon and identifying which targets had the highest probability of being eliminated safely and which ones were practically impossible because of the terrain.

The conversation continued quietly until Jade suddenly froze. The binoculars in her hands trembled ever so slightly.

Gideon immediately noticed the change in her expression.

"What is it?"

She didn’t answer. Instead, she silently handed him the binoculars. Following the direction she had been observing, Gideon quickly found the flower.

It stood taller than every other Pyrovour Borealis in the canyon, its white blossom fully opened toward the gray winter sky as though proudly overlooking the rest of the grave field.

His gaze slowly traveled downward. The flower bloomed from a corpse of a man with, the uniform covering his body remained recognizable.

Freebound.

"It’s Arthur. Those fucking zealots. I don’t care how ruthless your methods are anymore, Gideon." She turned toward him, the anger in her hazel eyes burning hotter than anything he had seen before.

"We’ll destroy them. Every single one of them. I’ll help you hunt down every member of the Scions of the Lord until there’s no one left to spread their madness."

Gideon quietly met her gaze before giving a slow nod.

Their reasons were different. But at this moment, motives no longer mattered.

An ally was still an ally, and against an enemy like the Scions of the Lord, he would gladly take every one he could get.