Chapter 387: Never Aware Of The Strings
Three days had passed since Nightrose City saw a change in leadership. In such a short span of time, the Ashfallen Sect had made their overwhelming presence known. While cultists from the All-Seeing Eye flooded the streets, preaching stories of his past deeds and offering free pills and technique manuals to the masses, the Mudcloaks had been busy.
The initial one-day deadline to replace the half-destroyed castle with a new symbol of power had been extended to three. Even with Douglas working around the clock and with the help of the Mudcloaks, the project turned out to be bigger than any of them had expected. Formations of unknown purpose ran deep below the city. Not wanting to waste the opportunity to harvest so many spirit stones and to sate Guppy's endless hunger, the Mudcloaks had excavated hundreds of meters deep into the earth under the city.
After an entire day and night of digging, all the spirit stones had been recovered, and construction could finally begin. Due to the sheer amount of materials needed, Ashlock actually flew Willow over to Nightrose City and used the Bastion's artillery to blow up nearby mountains and then used telekinesis and portals to transport the pieces over to the Mudcloaks so they could reshape them into useable bricks.
They needed a mountain's worth of materials because the castle and its surrounding land had been so vast that it could have been considered a city within a city. If this had been on Earth, Ashlock had no doubts that the populace would complain, saying a royal family did not need such a large space inside a capital city, and they would have been right. Driving from the front gate to the castle's door would have taken hours, and then you would have had to add the extra hour it would take to traverse the castle hallways to find a meeting room.
Of course, that would have been the opinion of humans born and raised with Earth's standards. Meanwhile, despite resembling Earth in many ways with beautiful nature, blue skies, and the cities of humans, this world might as well be alien. After all, there were no cars in this world, and the Nightrose family certainly hadn't been a typical royal family.
If Vincent was in a bad mood and released his soul pressure, he could crush millions of citizens to death. That was the type of power entire nations wielded, not a single man. Cultivators and mortals simply weren't comparable. The gap between them was that of heaven and earth, so Ashlock doubted the people of Nightrose City had any negative opinions except jealously on the amount of space the Nightrose family had allocated themselves, as living too near to the comparative demigods could lead to a swift death.
Not that the complaints of the mortals would have mattered if voiced, as the words of the Nightrose family had been absolute in this city, and that fact didn't change despite Ashlock taking over.
If he made a castle any smaller or less impressive than Vincent's had been, then the populace would look down on their new rulers. While Ashlock didn't rule through fear like the Nightrose family, he still understood what it took to be respected.
As such, Ashlock had helped with its construction while enjoying a steady inflow of divine energy as citizens watched in awe at such a construction project being completed so fast.