Chapter 72.2

The young boy was still at an age where he should have no worries, but he had already experienced the feeling of relief that comes with surviving a catastrophe.

He glanced at the clansmen who were sprawled out on the ground, their brows furrowed in sleep. He was supposed to wake them up one by one, but he suddenly felt lazy and wanted to stretch his legs.

He put his plan into action. The little boy fell to the ground with a "boom," rolled three times on the grass, and wriggled like a mud dog before lying on his back with his arms and legs spread wide.

He laughed twice, "hehe."

A few days after the Empress God's spell, most of those who had been affected woke up. They shouted for each other and searched everywhere for their companions.

They found a large group of people lying on the south coast. There were thousands of them, and it appeared that they had all floated up from the sea and washed ashore.

Their clothes were dried by the sun, and they had even harvested a small amount of sea salt for free. If they shook it out, they could easily get two bowls' worth, which was quite a bargain.

The claim of these "floating corpses" at sea was not troublesome, as most of them came from San Antis and some nearby towns.

Not long after they were discovered, a group of troops from the Golden Lion Kingdom brought them back.

Humans are indeed a very resilient existence. They can withstand blows and suffer disasters. It took only a month for them to go from returning to their own towns with injuries and a messy face, to jumping around the streets with their arms hanging and crutches.

The emperor of the Northern Emerald took the lead in risking his own life, turning himself into a human skin sandbag.

He disappeared along with the group of palace guards who had been harmed by him, and went to accompany the sand ghosts under the loess.

Those who survived were left to pick up the pieces and rebuild their lives.

Those small city-states had long since lost their leaders, and their people were left to fend for themselves. The Golden Lion Kingdom took advantage of this chaos and quickly uniting them, doubling its territory in the process.

The new borders of the Golden Lion Kingdom now stretched from the ice field and snow peaks in the north to the dense forest of Andorha in the south, the desert in the west, and the Great Rift Valley in the east. The entire range of activities of the Ona tribe was now within its borders.

The Golden Lion Kingdom was now one of the largest and most powerful kingdoms in the world.

The three major legions had suffered heavy losses in the recent war, but most of their commanders had survived.

The Red Iron Army was tasked with cleaning up the mess left behind in the Northern Emerald Kingdom and the small city-states along the Kela River.

The Bronze Army was not idle either. They helped the Golden Lion Kingdom's aborigines to repair the half-collapsed town houses, while the Wujin Iron Cavalry guarded the area around the imperial city.

The people were bustling with activity, the houses and waterways had been repaired, and life was gradually returning to normal. Even the market had begun to bustle again. In contrast, the atmosphere in Wujin Suspended Palace was rather heavy.

The war had taken its toll on the Golden Lion Kingdom. Most of the living people had woken up, but two remained unconscious and unresponsive.

One was Bronze Army Commander Kevin Fassbender, and the other was Emperor Oswald Kno.

The two men were the pillars of the Golden Lion Kingdom. Kevin Fassbender was the kingdom's most brilliant military strategist, and Oswald Kno was its wise and benevolent ruler. Without them, the kingdom would be in chaos.

Were it not for the Golden Lion Kingdom's relatively complete mechanism for legions and ministers to act on their behalf, one fear it would be in the same state of chaos as the Northern Emerald Country and those city-states.

In fact, when the two were brought back to Wujin Suspended Palace that night, all the medical officers who were still alive were summoned, from the youngest to the oldest, without exception.

On a normal day, these medical officers would often disagree, and they would occasionally argue over certain diseases.

However, when it came to Kevin and Oswald, their answers were surprisingly consistent: there was no possibility of them being alive.

The commanders of Mi Ao and the others stood around, their arms hanging limply and bandaged. Their eyes darkened when they heard the news, and they refused to believe it.

They insisted that there must be some other explanation, so they recruited a group of doctors from the people and showed them Kevin and Oswald one by one.

However, the result remained the same: there was no hope.

Over the course of that week, the people who had been brought back from the south coast began to wake up one by one.

These included the Imperial City Patrollers, the servants in Wujin Suspended Palace, and those closest to the emperor and Kevin.

Even His Royal Highness Sinia and Ian, the old housekeeper who had taken care of Oswald for more than 20 years, had awakened.

Those who had witnessed the Empress God and the God of Light were left dazed and speechless when they woke up. They lay with their eyes open, as if their souls had been left on Mirror Island and disappeared with it.

A few days later, their condition gradually improved, as if they had awakened from a great dream.

They suddenly returned to normal, but they could not remember everything that had happened on Mirror Island. They only vaguely remembered seeing a miracle, and that the gods had completely disappeared.

Only Ian and the Ranger Commander Peter were left with any memory of what had happened on Mirror Island.