Chapter 141

The Ashen Spine

“Goodbye, Iron Lord!”

With humidity below thirty percent, on a vast plain where a towering mountain cut across the north like a blade driven into the earth, over ten thousand soldiers stood at attention.

Their eyes were pinned to the helicopter hovering above them, their faces solemn.

The Ashen Spine was known as the highest mountain in the Imperial City. At this time of year, it snowed more than ever totaling seven consecutive months of relentless snowfall.

They trained here year-round, and the shortest amount of time any of them had gone without leaving the mountain was three years.

Yet for soldiers who had survived such extreme conditions and knew better than anyone how to control their emotions, their faces were filled with unmistakable feeling.

“We will miss you, Iron Lord!” they shouted, the cacophony of their voices swallowed by the roar of the helicopter as it lifted away.

Inside the aircraft, the man took his seat, raising his head as a familiar ding echoed in his mind.

A blue screen appeared before his eyes, his stats from the past six years updating.

\[Six years of training: Completed\]

\[Reward: Height increased by nine inches.\]

\[Immense muscle growth. Enormous fat reduction.\]

\[New mission generated: Dominate the Imperial City\]

His brows narrowed.

The Imperial City?

He hadn’t heard that name in years, but why did it feel like he was forgetting something important?

At that moment, the phone in his pocket vibrated and he reached for it.

To foster discipline and lessen distractions, mobile devices were usually confiscated from recruits.

As the Iron Lord, he naturally led by example and only took his phone back when it was handed to him earlier that day.

He fiddled with the phone for a while, finding it difficult to answer the call thanks to the spiderweb cracks across the screen.

When he finally did, a woman’s voice yelled indignantly. “You fat bastard, you finally answered?”

“He did?” another voice asked before the phone was snatched away, replaced by another woman’s sharp tone.

“Rowan Lachlan, you bastard! Do you think you’re so special that you can screen our calls for six years?”

“It’s one thing to run away because you’re a failure, but ignoring all our messages and only coming back to sign the divorce agreement is too much!”

Rowan narrowed his eyes.

Right.

The elderly man who had adopted him eight years ago had done so after seeing how Rowan stood up to bullies.

He offered him money to work for a certain family. What was their name again?

Yes, the Renard family.

The old man was the patriarch of the Renards and had thought Rowan was cheap as a bodyguard and effective, given his size.

Rowan had accepted the deal only because the old man was kind and even offered to pay him extra.

Then he got to the family and…

He frowned, his brows creasing when the memories refused to surface.

“System, how did I get here?” he asked quietly.

The next second, text appeared before his eyes.

\[Host appears to suffer swelling in the hippocampus and thalamus regions responsible for memory storage.\]

His pupils dilated.

Of course.

When he first arrived at the Ashen Spine, he had been told he spent nearly two months in a coma before waking up.

That was when he discovered the blue screen hovering before his eyes and initially thought it was normal.

When he realized no one else could see it, he began conversing with it. Surprisingly, he rose through the ranks at an alarming speed the more he did the tasks it generated.

Had it not told him his name, he never would’ve known it as he had arrived at the mountain with no form of identification.

“If you don’t have a death wish, you’d better get to the Imperial City and straight to City Hall to sign these divorce papers!”

He snapped back to the present as the woman’s voice rang in his ears, followed by the sharp beep of the call disconnecting.

“Change of plans,” Rowan said calmly to the pilot. “We’re headed to the Imperial City.”

The pilot nodded and immediately turned the helicopter around.

The Imperial City — City Hall

In a corridor outside one of the offices, two women paced anxiously, checking the time over and over as they waited.

“Scarlett, I swear to God, if he doesn’t show up and you lose this deal, I will quite literally kill him!” one of them snapped.

Scarlett Renard remained silent.

Turning to her, the woman immediately guessed what she was thinking and scoffed.

“Don’t let this bother you, sister. That fat pig will sign the divorce papers, and we’ll ship Coffee off with him.”

“Then you’ll go in there and be the spinster those wealthy bachelors want you to be. Do you understand me?”

Scarlett’s eyes hardened. “Antonia… don’t you find it strange that he ignored all our calls for six years, but suddenly decides to show up on such an important day?”

“He must’ve heard I’m about to make it big from this contract with the Knox family and came to claim his pound of flesh.”