Chapter 294: The Other Shore

Chapter 294: The Other Shore

Paul stood at the ship’s bow in a foul mood. Under his strict management, the progress of shipbuilding was barely satisfactory. He had thought that with the migration beginning, he could smoothly extricate himself from this thankless task, but some people came at the last moment to snatch the credit.

To remove him as an obstacle, Paul became one of the first group leaders to set off. He didn’t care about this so-called credit, but he was worried whether those who took over could complete the finishing work properly. If problems really arose, those people would certainly turn around and shift the blame onto him. And the shipworkers under his strict management had already accumulated enough resentment; they would stand against him with just a little incitement. With everyone turning against him, it would be hard for him to seek justice.

Although he had expected this, he still felt somewhat unwilling. Perhaps for those shipworkers, him receiving punishment was the greatest justice.

He had been diligently studying and working all along, yet he always struggled to get the rewards he deserved. Thinking of this, Paul grew even more depressed.

Watching the shadows on the distant coast grow thicker, what awaited him was yet another thankless task—expanding the outpost. Paul had to brace himself and prepare for the new challenge.

To improve speed and quality, he could only enforce strict management once again. And the consequence of strictness would again be everyone turning against him.

Why bother? Paul couldn’t help asking himself quietly once more.

His teacher Ge Yin called this continent the Land of Hope. But Paul remembered when he was young, sneaking into the ancient texts room and finding an old scroll in a dusty corner. Brushing off dust accumulated over who knows how many years, when he slowly unrolled it, what met his eyes was a brown, warning skull. A faint dotted line extended from the skull, pointing towards this continent.

Just then, voices came from the hallway. In a panic, the old scroll crumbled into fragments with his suddenly trembling hands. Paul could no longer remember where the fragments were thrown. When he regained his senses, he had already fled.

With the shattering of the scroll, he seemed to have been cursed. This unfamiliar land before him gradually became an inseparable part of his life. First, he was taken as a disciple by Ge Yin, and as a teenager, he followed his teacher, leaving footprints here.

When he first stepped onto the beach here, that brown skull awakened from his memory, reminding him of the foolishness of his ignorant youth. What rose in his heart then was not the strangeness of arriving at a new place, but the sigh of a wanderer returning home—I’m back! That feeling remained fresh in Paul’s memory to this day.

The seaport was still distant, but now clearly visible. Paul once thought building such a large, good port was nonsense, but now he began to admire the foresight of the predecessors. They laid a solid foundation for future generations, allowing idlers like his group to reap the benefits without effort.

On the hilltop west of the good port stood a not-very-tall lighthouse, not only for navigation but also for lookout and alert. However, over the years, the alarm bell on the tower had never sounded.

After landing, passing through the mountain pass, one would see a small fortress. Built against the mountain, it guarded the crossroads, serving as a barrier protecting the seaport. Paul’s job was to complete the initial expansion work without affecting the fortress guards.

The problem he faced was still a lack of manpower, and here there were no targets to plunder. The nearest human villages were still far away, and Paul didn’t want to provoke the native forces at this time.

Speaking of Natives, apart from differences in language, writing, and clothing, Paul saw no difference between them and himself. After a little contact, he even felt a sense of familiarity.

This made him think of the Hell Knights of the Anya Kingdom. Facing those people, he always felt an awkward sense of strangeness, as if he were a sheep fallen into a pack of wolves.

And those rumored Northlanders, the frightening patterns on their faces, like the markings on a wasp, full of intimidation and warning. When he first saw a portrait of a Northlander, he thought it was painted-on pigment. Who would have thought it was actually a mark of adulthood?

As a teenager, he had often doubted the truth of such things. Humans! How could they grow to look like that?

And their enviable, inhuman strength. If only the laborers under his jurisdiction had such power, then many construction difficulties would be easily solved. But now, he could only use clumsy and inefficient tools to compensate for the lack of individual strength.

Far from the shelter of the City of Wisdom, he had to tread carefully. Here, the authority granted to him would be minimized, so he had to be strict but also gauge the limits. He had to lead by example to possibly quell some of the resentment.

Thinking of the various difficulties he might face, Paul began to doubt whether he could hold out until his teacher’s arrival.

Joey stood at the port, ready to welcome this fleet of four ships. Every time ships from the homeland arrived, it was a celebratory occasion for the people here.

But for Joey, today’s significance was even more extraordinary. As a middle-aged man, he had dedicated most of his life to this seaport. He married, had children here, and gradually came to regard it as his hometown. The City of Wisdom once wanted to recall him, but he refused. If he left here, what would he have left?

When news came that Ge Yin had decided to permanently migrate here with a group of Scholars, he was so excited he couldn’t sleep all night. This place would finally no longer be a wilderness; the flame of Scholar civilization would eventually spread across this land. At least, that’s what he believed.

His children had never been back, and he often regretted this. Now, with the arrival of large numbers of Scholars, his regret disappeared. He firmly believed this would be a new City of Scholars.

At the port, many children were running and playing. Some had lived here for generations and had already lost their Reverence for the City of Wisdom. Not everyone, like Joey, still held respect for the City of Wisdom. More prevalent was the accumulated dissatisfaction over generations of being abandoned here.

As descendants of Scholars, the children here were exposed to Scholar education from a young age. Therefore, the elders’ gloom and dissatisfaction were unintentionally passed down through words and deeds.

A faint sense of opposition always existed and had grown with population increase. Joey had even worried whether this port would one day become independent.

Now he finally didn’t have to worry about that, because this would be the new City of Wisdom. The influx of Scholars would soon dilute the resentment here, and the people who had lived here for generations would gain a new identity—Pioneers. He believed this identity would make them proud, and among those proud would be him—Joey.

As Joey waited eagerly, the ships finally docked slowly, and the gangplanks were lowered from the ship’s side. Paul was the first to disembark and hugged Joey, who was waiting there.

“Uncle Joey, how are you?”

Releasing the hug, Joey patted Paul’s shoulder firmly and nodded with satisfaction. “I’m well.”

To Joey, Paul was a good kid. This child had left a deep impression on him from their first meeting. After that, due to the ocean’s separation, their meetings were limited, but each time, Paul’s growth amazed him.

Moreover, he had a small, paternal selfish thought: he believed his daughter and Paul were a good match. A well-educated young man, tempered by the storms at sea—this kind of fellow was just to his liking.

Joey never hid his thoughts, so Paul was quite clear about this. It was a good thing. At least with Uncle Joey’s help, his work would go much smoother.