T0 Gaming Guild Saves the World.

Chapter 657, Section 656: Sealed Past Events

"It has nothing to do with him."

Upon returning, Sloan explained the outcome of the conversation.

Bertrand's motives were simple: he felt that Sloan had lost more than a dozen of his personal guards in one go, and that the men he had chosen were useless. So he simply ordered his own guards to keep an eye on whether anyone was approaching with ill intentions.

Not only that, Bertrand also felt that since he dared to attack Sloan, he might take advantage of everyone's belief that they wouldn't dare to continue attacking once they returned to the capital, and do it again.

Who said it would be safe once we returned to the capital?

Jiang Heyi asked, "You believe it?"

"letter."

Seeing Sloan's confident demeanor, Jiang Heyi did not press him for the basis of his judgment.

However, Sloan reluctantly told everyone that one of the reasons Bertrand did this was that too many of his personal guards were alien races who had been recruited from among the adventurers.

Henilakai patted the nut shell fragments off the bear's paw, somewhat puzzled.

"I mean no harm, I just want to ask, Second Prince, why do you have racial fastidiousness? Have you been severely harmed by some foreign race?"

“No, not at all.” Sloan shook his head.

Gloria also became interested: "It can't be because of his upbringing, can it?"

The lion cubs of the old lion king all have very distinct characteristics, and you won't see many with the same personality model.

It seems to be the result of being deliberately educated differently from a young age.

“No, Bertrand was with me when he was little.” Sloan shook his head with a smile. “We were both well taken care of.”

Jiang Heyi did remember this.

Bertrand's mother came from a minor magical family in Anna and was fortunate enough to be appreciated by Kurion, working for him as a scribe.

What happened next was quite logical. The wolf queen had not given birth to any children, and Kurien could not withstand the pressure from all sides, so she began to think of ways to have children. Bertrand's mother seized the opportunity.

This is just a story of soaring to great heights.

Some people have begun to wonder as Sloan recounts this story without any apparent burden.

Elsa asked, "Is Wick the current secretary to His Majesty Kurien?"

Vanassis was also puzzled: "It seems that Wick has taken on all of Kurien's personal duties. The last time we met, the maid was only allowed to enter the study with Wick's permission."

Knowing that everyone had realized something was wrong, Sloan sighed helplessly.

“Many things may seem reasonable to outsiders when they first encounter them, but to the nobles of Anna, they may seem very… subtle.”

“Wick manages too many things, and my father actually intended to use this to create a separation.”

French Fries looked at Jiang Heyi, who nodded silently and whispered a reminder.

"It's related to Bertrand's mother."

Sloan did not hide the fact that even the older nobles still remembered this story.

When Bertrand and Sloane were 10 years old, Bertrand's mother, taking advantage of her position as a clerk, secretly passed important information to the family for personal gain.

The "superior" of the Four Primal Bodies is now located in the Kekri Fortress, which once bore the heavy responsibility of reclaiming the northwest of the empire and easing tensions between various border tribes.

After years of hard work and accumulating enough prestige, Kurien dispatched his trusted confidants, deciding to gradually consolidate power starting from the frontier.

He did not send a lord, but a military governor who was familiar with the boundary between reality and illusion.

It possesses immense power to intervene in all the fiefdoms in the northwest of the empire, and wield considerable military and political authority.

This was unprecedented in the entire history of the Anna Empire.

The situation of the alien races bordering the northwest of the empire has always been unique, unlike the empire's southern border and southeastern coast, which are dominated by two powerful forces, the Decaying Leaf Elves and the Fallen Star Siren, and are generally fragmented.

But this place is just too poor.

The empire's great expansion angered the neighboring forest species.

Until Kurien issued a ban on expansion in his first year in power, the forest species created a barren belt around the empire's borders.

The manufacturing method is also very simple: by utilizing the affinity of forest species for plant elements, the seedlings are forcibly pulled up to help them grow, and all the land within the area is ripened in one go.

For the first six months, the area was thriving, with lush vegetation and abundant harvests.

By the time the empire realized what was happening, it was too late to stop them.

The artificial "firewall" built by the forests has forcibly turned the fertile forests of Northwest China into barren lands, where nothing grows for a time.

The empire did gain territory, but it was a wasteland that could be turned to dust with a handful of soil, completely squeezed dry and brittle by magic.

Unlike the Leaf Elves, who have a large national system, the forest tribes here form alliances based on tribes with a ruthless mentality of killing a thousand enemies while losing eight hundred of their own, making every Anar lord who is granted a fiefdom here feel uneasy.

They were fearless, ready to abandon their land and flee at any time when the empire launched an invasion.

But once the imperial magicians, who have mobilized so many troops, leave, they will return with renewed force.

For every inch the empire advances, they destroy it.

The forest creatures saw the Empire's greatest weakness—its sheer size.

An overly powerful nation cannot efficiently conquer and rule them.

Kurien saw this as well, so he had to choose a more efficient way of governing, and this time it was not for expansion, but for pure governance.

The experiment took place in the Northwest, where the conflict was most intense and the destruction most severe, and where even the feudal lords only nominally attended the site.

Here, no one cared that his trusted confidants were interfering in territorial affairs—they wouldn't even accept territory for free. At this time, the northwest of the empire was only one step away from anarchy.

As Sloan finished speaking, Gloria swallowed hard.

"What exactly did Bertrand's mother do?"

Sloan paused for a moment, then said.

"She told her father the secret messages he entrusted to his confidants... Her father trusted her completely and had her write the messages... especially the part about consolidating power... but she told some people she shouldn't have."

Apart from Jiang Heyi, who already knew the inside story, everyone present was shocked.

Many people even felt a chill running through their bodies.

"Why, why?"

Jiang Heyi could understand why Gloria would ask that question.

She is a smart person, and smart people are used to thinking about problems using normal, rational thought processes.

But some things can only be understood by someone as adorable as Plata.

Sloan provided the answer: "According to her, she wanted to garner more support for Bertrand."

"what?"

The little apple in Plata's hand fell to the ground.

This is the extraordinary wisdom of Bertrand's mother.

The Wolf Queen holds an unparalleled position in Kurion's heart. Back then, when the old King Anna threatened her with the throne, she could say such harsh words as "If you're not afraid of dying and having no one to help with your funeral, you'd better obediently agree to my demands." It's not hard to see that not anyone can easily shake Kurion's heart.

Bertrand's mother was insane and wanted to compete with the Queen of the Wolf for favor.

Its audacity is no less than that of someone who travels back to the Ming Dynasty, meets Emperor Zhu, and shouts, "I want to challenge Empress Ma to a duel!"

The Imperial Guards were able to come and check the authenticity of the family genealogy that very night. From the very first day he realized the leak, Kurien had investigated countless times, but never suspected her.

Perhaps they sensed something was wrong, but were unwilling to believe that one of the people they trusted most would betray them.

Until the day the truth came out.

As far as he knew, he remained calm throughout his father's and Bertrand's mother's confessions.

There was no hysteria, no cursing, he simply watched her indifferently and read aloud a list of her actions.

Bertrand's mother was the hysterical one, sometimes tearfully begging for forgiveness, sometimes complaining about her father's favoritism, believing that his love for the wolf queen surpassed everything and that he did not regard the children born to the wolf queen as his own.

Sloan knew better than anyone that his mother had always been frugal.

She personally managed her father's private funds, but she rarely used them.

The allowances allocated to the other children were always more than those allocated to him and Enrique.

As a child, Sloan harbored resentment towards his mother, as he was never provided with adequate food or clothing.
Back then, Sloan didn't understand, thinking that his mother didn't love him and his brother, and that he could never have what others had.

Bertrand's mother was unaware of this; in her eyes, Sloan always received the best.

"The plan is ruined, isn't it?"

Sloan nodded with a wry smile.

It was originally just a pilot project, but the nobles who knew about it in advance realized the danger, and the nobles who were originally enfeoffed in the northwest suddenly had the fighting spirit to reclaim the wasteland.

They returned to the Northwest to outwit and outmaneuver Kurien's "governor".

With the help of those inside and outside, Kurien's trusted confidants, who were unaware of the leak at the time, were in a state of panic and ultimately accomplished nothing after five years of hard work.

After nearly eight years of neglect in the northwest of the empire, a new person has emerged who can carry on the will of Kurien.

He was more shrewd, more intelligent, and more like an Anna aristocrat.

He has many flaws, but what outsiders talk about most is that he makes beautiful women sing and dance, sometimes even naked.

When the four Primal Bodies descended, they were very fortunate to encounter him.

Even if he had arrived 15 years earlier, no matter how skilled he was, he would have been defeated in the purgatory of northwestern Anna.

The leak by Bertrand's mother had a huge impact, creating a terrible rift between Kurien and the nobility, who now scrutinized his every decision with suspicion.

Even if you don't understand it, you should still try your best to oppose it.

So, starting 12 years ago, Kurien stopped trying and became the king of balancing all the rules, a role model for every nobleman.

At the same time, from that time onwards, he no longer had a scribe by his side, and even the head maid was alienated from the study.

He was devastated when the wolf queen died.

Wick and his wife then took full control of everything around him.

He only believed the other three people who lay with him under that tree that summer.

Kurien, who met someone at the boundary between the real and the virtual, was willing to trust others and spent 20 years healing the wounds from that betrayal.

Even if Kurien had arrived 10 years earlier, he would still be considered young and vigorous, and he would not have easily accepted Rainbow Rain.

Bertrand's mother, single-handedly, rewrote the course of Anna's history, representing a powerful historical turning point close to that of Enrique, the source of the chaos.

At the age of 10, Sloan, still a child, welcomed a new playmate.

Bertrand was a quiet child. He didn't know what his mother had done wrong, only that she had been locked up alone deep inside the palace.

He was filled with resentment towards everything, feeling that the wolf queen had done something to cause his mother to be imprisoned.

Children can't keep secrets, and Bertrand, being new to the place, naturally blurted out everything his mother had said in private.

This includes, but is not limited to, the defamation of the Queen of the Wolf, and the need to be wary of Sloan and Enrique.

"He still hates you?" Elsa asked.

“You might not believe it…” Sloan recalled, “He cried out his bile the day my mother died.”

Bertrand was simply led astray by his mother; after the Queen of the Wolves' careful guidance, he had long since learned to distinguish right from wrong.

Because of Bertrand, Sloan had a very bad childhood.

His mother always gave Bertrand the best of everything, and because she wanted to "treat everyone equally," there was often not much left for him.

Sloan loathed this person who was competing with her for her mother's love, and they had even gotten into several fights together in private.

As a result, even when he and Enrique went up together, they were no match for Bertrand.

This guy has been a great fighter since he was a kid.

Even now, he still holds the highest rank among all the princes, reaching the 7th rank.

His practical skills are top-notch; he's not one of those incompetent individuals who only have a rank but no substance.

"Then I don't understand, why does he have such great hatred for other races?"

Sloan said, "He wasn't like this before his mother died. After that, no one corrected him, and he grew up. I guess he developed his own ideas, and since no one corrected him, he became the way he is now."

“My mother said he was not a bad person, but he needed to prune his branches from time to time, otherwise he would be too sharp and would make everyone unhappy.”

That's absolutely right.

In the timeline where Bertrand becomes the ruler of the Anna Empire, he single-handedly led the people of Anna to drive the Sea Clan coalition back into the sea.

Just as things were settling down, they were blown to smithereens by the powder keg of internal conflicts within Annam.

He could be the emperor of Anna, but only under very extreme and limited circumstances.

Jiang Heyi said thoughtfully, "Let me guess, he invited you over not to directly clear himself of suspicion, but to talk to you about the wolf queen and things from your childhood, right?"

Sloan was somewhat surprised: "Captain Potato, you could guess all of this?"

"It just fits his personality."

Even if someone like Bertrand were to engage in scheming and intrigue, he would still be straightforward.

Reminiscing was a rather arrogant thing for him; he was unwilling to lower himself to indirectly show his innocence to his good younger brother.

Considering his unauthorized dispatch of people to follow Sloan and his actions at a sensitive time that would easily arouse suspicion, it would be quite dishonest to say that Bertrand was not secretly concerned about Sloan's situation.

Although the wolf queen has been gone for many years, the maternal love she gave Sloan still protects him.

After Sloan left, Jiang Heyi immediately cleared Bertrand of suspicion.

"Such decisiveness, what if it's all an act?"

"Trust my judgment," Jiang Heyi said confidently. "At this point, you should trust my judgment even more."

That's true. In the end of the game, when everything is a mess, you just have to follow orders.

At this time, it is most taboo for anyone to have extraneous thoughts or to walk alone.

"If it's not Bertrand, then who could it be?"

Jiang Heyi stroked his chin and looked at Plata.

"What, what are you all doing? Didn't you trust Potato's judgment? Why are you all looking at me?"

"Sometimes, we should trust your judgment, even with your extraordinary wisdom."

(End of this chapter)