Chapter 901 (1/2)
Chapter 901: The Witches From Afar (Part III)
Translator: TransN Editor: TransN
“What do you want to know?” Azima said as she glanced at her.
“Scroll…” Wendy held her hand, looking pretty worried. If what Tilly said was true, these people did not come to Neverwinter voluntarily. Their visit was instead due to internal conflict among the witches from Sleeping Island. If this problem was not properly resolved, not only would the Witch Union be involved in the mess, but would also lose the newcomers’ trust. The would have defeated the whole point of getting the new witches to come here.
“Don’t worry,” Scroll raised one of her eyebrows and then turned to the witch who wanted to return to the Eastern Region. “You miss your hometown, which means that you most likely weren’t abandoned by your family. Like other refugees who fled to Sleeping Island, you were forced to leave the Eastern Region under the pressure of the church. Right?”
“So what?” Azima cut in.
“Let me tell you about the current state of the Eastern Region.” Ignoring the red-haired witch’s provocation, Scroll replied indifferently, “That area has not been fully recovered by the King ever since Garcia the Queen of Clearwater plundered Seawindshire and Valencia. The area was first devastated by the demonic plague spread by the church and was then ravaged by the army of Timothy. Farmlands in all surrounding areas are deserted, and people can’t sustain themselves. Many of those people have become refugees.”
The witch showed a troubled look but was not willing to relent. “If we don’t go take a look ourselves, who knows whether you’re telling the truth?”
“Two years ago, His Majesty Roland started to take in those refugees. Now the population of Neverwinter has exceeded 100,000, 70% of which are from other cities, with the majority of them being refugees from the Eastern Region and the Southern Territory,” Scroll spoke calmly. “Your family members are most likely amongst them. Can you tell me where you lived before? Name a town or a village, a specific landmark, or a local specialty.”
“Do you plan to find her family only with those clues? She wasn’t born in a big city where each street and alley has its own name and where people in the same community knew each other!”
Scroll did not reply to Azima but instead gently pushed her hair behind her ear. She looked on at that witch encouragingly like a teacher patiently waiting for an answer from her student in the class.
“My village… didn’t have a name,” after hesitating for quite a while, the witch answered in a low voice. “There were no other villages nearby, and it was very far from Valencia, so far that if you want to sell wheat, you would have to sell them to a merchant traveling there at a meager price. This isn’t official, but some people call the village ‘Sixteen.'”
“Six…teen?” Wendy echoed involuntarily.
“Because when they returned from Valencia, it’s the sixteenth village that they would pass by.”
Scroll closed her eyes and asked slowly, “Let me see… There’s a branch of Sanwan River winding behind that village, right?”
“There’re numerous branches of Sanwan River in the Eastern Region.” Azima grunted. “How can a village survive without a river to irrigate their farmlands?”
“But that branch is different.” Scroll waved her hand. “It isn’t wide nor deep enough for boats to pass, and even the riverbed would show in a dry season. That’s why the villages nearby can’t transport food and supplies by ship. But the branch converges into a huge lake at the sixteenth village, which will never dry up even if the river water dried up. Because of this, the wheat in the village always grows better than those in others. Am I right?”
The witch’s eyes were wide open. “Have you been there?”
“I heard from somebody else,” Scroll answered after a short silence. “The one who told me this is currently in Neverwinter, but he wasn’t a resident of the Sixteenth Village.”