Chapter 786: Annoying Things, Just Enter the Soul Essence Cycle Already
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 786: Annoying Things, Just Enter the Soul Essence Cycle Already
Setting aside that Rebel Witch’s schemes, looking at the situation as a whole made many things suddenly become clear.
After all, once you know what they want, you know how they will act, even if their ultimate goal never changes.
In the end, they were all after [Transcendent Knowledge]. Though I didn't know why that stuff had suddenly become so sought after, the current intelligence certainly pointed in that direction.
The current situation was essentially the other Transcendent Academies isolating the Witch Academy again, while simultaneously coveting the [Transcendent Knowledge] fragments within it. To get them, they would need other means—like winning over the Jack-of-all-trades Club?
By doing so, they could obtain the fragments in the club's possession. As for how they would obtain them… well, they wouldn't be particularly picky about their methods.
"Sister Bai~ Come on, I found another interesting place!" I pulled Sister Bai away, though we didn't leave the castle.
To me, this castle was like an adventure house, filled with all sorts of surprises and fun.
The place I was pestering Sister Bai to visit was the basement located on the subterranean level.
As expected of such a large castle, it just had to have some intricate underground passages and rooms.
"As I thought, it's all Transcendent Materials." Upon arriving below, we couldn't help but marvel at the sight.
While the Transcendent Academies officially forbade ordinary people from possessing anything related to the Transcendent, it was clear that this rule was only followed on the surface.
Behind the scenes… their behavior was quite flagrant.
But then again, this wasn't the Witch Academy, nor was it the Witch Academy's territory. Perhaps that was why they were so bold.
Furthermore, I noticed that the Transcendent Materials here seemed secondary; there were also quite a few things like alchemical potions, but the majority of the items were… Transcendent Items!
"I expected Transcendent Items to be rampant among the families, but this is the first time I've witnessed it. Though, thinking about it, it’s not surprising that Transcendent Items are the most common."
"Eh? Why?" I asked curiously.
"Because the birth of a Transcendent Item doesn't require Transcendent Arts; it requires coincidence and luck. Even if the Transcendent Academies can block the outflow of all Transcendent Materials, they can never stop the accidental birth of Transcendent Items. Moreover, the families control this ordinary society, so they can naturally recover these things quietly at the first opportunity."
"Is that so?" With that explanation, it made a lot of sense.
The birth of Transcendent Items mainly came down to specific rituals and coincidences. Even if no Transcendent Materials were involved, it was possible for one to be born, though the effects and side effects of such items wouldn't be very significant.
"Yes. Xiao Han, you probably haven't participated in the subjugation missions issued by the Witch Academy regarding Transcendent disturbances in the outside world, have you? Actually, most of the time, it's just ordinary people who have gotten their hands on Transcendent Items causing trouble." Sister Bai seemed to recall some past events, her tone tinged with a hint of reminiscence.
"I really haven't," I said with some regret. It seemed I had unknowingly missed out on a lot of the academy's excitement.
Afterward, Sister Bai and I looked through all the Transcendent Items here, but nothing caught our eye.
Then again, if there were any truly effective Transcendent Items, the family members would likely keep them on their person. Why would they leave them here to gather dust?
Originally, I had thought about swiping a few to play with as toys, but since there was nothing I liked, I gave up on the idea. As for… whether stealing was bad?
Well, was it "good" for their family to seriously violate regulations by illegally possessing Transcendent Materials and Items?
"What do you plan to do next, Xiao Han?" Seeing my lack of interest, Sister Bai asked at the right moment.
"Originally, I planned to go see April, but to my surprise, the Hawthorne family didn't kick her out. Currently, my player clone is in contact with the Hawthorne family. I'm trying to understand what kind of lingering bonds still exist between the family and April."
"I see."
"Yeah~ April is just an ordinary person now. She has no spellbook and no mana source. As time goes on, her physical fitness will gradually drop along with her life level. Does the Hawthorne family really intend to squeeze some use out of a 'waste'?"
After all, Sister Bai and I had been strolling through this castle quite openly, and we had seen the security forces here.
The security was indeed beyond my expectations, because they were almost all former students who had graduated from Transcendent Academies!
However, most of them were from Wizard Academies. Their internal wizardry frameworks had been cleared, and their wizard tools recovered. Without the maintenance of Transcendent Materials or the cultivation provided by Transcendent power, their life levels would drop just like a Prospective Witch without a mana source, until they stabilized.
But even without any Transcendent power, their physical fitness, residual Immortality, and combat instincts meant their fighting strength was far beyond what any ordinary person could reach.
"Based on what you've said, Xiao Han, it does make sense. Using guilt for a form of personality manipulation to keep her working for the family is a viable option. After all, April was once a teaching assistant, and she only returned a few days ago, right? She should be the family's strongest non-enrolled member at the moment." Sister Bai nodded.
"Maybe I should create some 'accidents' for her. People are like that—they either explode in silence or die in it." Many people under psychological control only seem indifferent because the environmental stimulation isn't enough to force a reaction.
For an average person, extremes might be a form of salvation. Perhaps no one has ever experienced extreme care, but extreme suppression will inevitably lead to a total explosion.
Hatred, heartlessness, coldness… these are also blades that can cut through Ley Line shackles and human bonds. Just like when I first enrolled and picked up my parents' call—even if it was just to be scolded, I had to listen, because I wanted to lock in their nature and not give myself even a sliver of a chance for regret or hesitation to be born.
"Oh? What does Xiao Han want to do?"
"Stupid and brainless people always bring endless trouble. Sister Bai… do you think the people of this family deserve to die?" I asked curiously.
"That depends on the perspective. Objectively speaking, no one has the right to define who deserves to die. But from the perspective of the law that maintains order, the perspective of the morality that maintains the bottom line, or the personal perspective of private grudges… anyone can die. It’s just a matter of who is in the right after they're dead."
"Sister Bai, you can actually say something like that?!" I said, somewhat surprised. "Then what do you think personally?"
"Me? I think… annoying things, just enter the Ley Line soul essence cycle already." Sister Bai evaluated them bluntly. "But I cannot interfere like that, nor can I massacre them on such a scale. You know the reason."
"Mhm~ I understand, of course~" I nodded in comprehension. Sister Bai was a Transcendent, and she had many restrictions.
However, Sister Bai's unhesitating words certainly made my own thoughts firmer!
Making them materials for my experiments… wouldn't be a bad idea.
I currently possessed quite a few arts. I had planned to come here to perfect Soul Depiction, but I had another art and its accompanying derived spell that I needed to test.
And that was… Wisdom Granting.
I had used this art on the variant beasts in the expansion realm, and the people who hunted those beasts afterward said the effects were excellent.
Wisdom Granting was an art on the level of the essence of life.
From my current "well-traveled" perspective, this so-called "life wisdom" was similar to concepts like Self-Awakened Body Cultivation, Self-Generated Mana, racial concepts, and bloodline information.
They were all feedbacks from the "essence of life."
Either they were innate racial concepts and bloodline information.
Or they were certain abilities structured by post-natal arts, such as Self-Awakened Body Cultivation, Self-Generated Mana, or the "Wisdom Granting" structured by the arts derived from the Great Wisdom Enlightenment Art.
Wisdom Granting, an art that delved deep into the essence of life to explore the foundations of wisdom, now looked like a form of "Forbidden Research" that modified the very essence of life.
And Wisdom Granting also had a reverse application: Wisdom Deprivation.
The deprivation of the foundation of wisdom allowed the Great Wisdom Enlightenment Art to give birth to a special sequence derived spell—the Great Wisdom Weaving Seed.
And this derived spell completely perfected the application of the Wisdom Granting art.
I really hadn't used these abilities in a long time.
And now… they had brand-new test subjects.
However, I didn't plan to perform Wisdom Deprivation on them directly. Instead, I would use another method—the second way to utilize Wisdom Deprivation: Wisdom Wither.
This was a subtle influence, and also the most lethal and difficult-to-detect method.
I remembered clearly what the foundation of wisdom was within the essence of life; it was roughly divided into "consciousness" and "memory."
Consciousness recognizes the self, while memory influences that recognition and even controls emotions.
Having tried the Self-Sealing Art on my own memories, I knew very well that memory is like a behavioral shackle for a person. It is the foundation upon which cognition is born. Memory can provide the motivation for someone to do something, and it can also restrict them from doing something else.
For instance, the memory that saying nice things leads to praise will subconsciously make a person like to compliment others; or the memory of being burned by fire will restrict a person from touching flames.
Memory is just that magical.
And it is one of the foundations of wisdom within the essence of life.
……
At this moment, April was following her nominal father, participating in a gathering hosted by the family. Families were like this; if they wanted to invite guests from other families, they naturally needed a pretext to hold a gathering.
And she needed to take full responsibility for the mistakes she had committed.
Not long ago, she had been a teaching assistant, but now she was nothing.
Furthermore, she was a teaching assistant who had been "abducted" to the Witch Academy. Her current status in the family was becoming increasingly contemptible.
After all, the Hawthorne family was a family that followed the great Wizard Will. They provided talent to the academies, and the academies provided them with protection.
Returning now as a "traitor," everything had become so strange. Because she had seen too much splendor at the Witch Academy, she knew all too well how terrifying the witches were.
So, the family's suspicion regarding her loyalty to the Wizard Will… was actually not misplaced. Even when she spoke those words, she wasn't as firm as she had been as a child.
This further fueled her current helplessness and inevitably made her think of the choice her mentor had once given her.
If… she hadn't chosen the family, what would the final result have been?
No… there were no "ifs"!
She had studied the knowledge of Ley Line shackles, so she clearly recognized that even if she repeated her choice a thousand or ten thousand times, it wouldn't change.
The family was a tumor that had occupied her childhood, to the point where she would need to use the rest of her life to smooth it over.
Whenever she felt the urge to resist, the family's influence would pull her back into the abyss in every aspect of her life, at any moment of vulnerability.
Her so-called strength, her so-called ten years of tempering, were all a joke. She was a woman approaching her thirties, yet her mind was as naive as a young girl's. The only thing she had learned was to pretend to be strong, when in reality, she would crumble at the first touch.
And after her return, the first thing that broke her—something even she hadn't expected—was… she no longer had the ability to bear children.
Yes, no ability to bear children. Prospective Witches did not have this ability before ascending to the Transcendent level.
She was an ordinary person now. She had to face this terrible society, this terrible life, this terrible family, and these terrible relatives. She had lost the ability to bear children, so she didn't even have value for a political marriage anymore.
The values she had been given since childhood were like this. Even though she knew very well that political marriages were just dross… in the reality she had to face, even her value for such a marriage had been erased.
All that remained in her ears were the accusations of others. Who could truly be indifferent to the evaluations of the outside world?
So now, the only thing maintaining her value and meaning was her current strength. She could still rely on that strength to reduce unnecessary trouble for the family. She desperately wanted to prove her value, because personal value was the meaning of existence for everyone in the family.
Thus, the family's shaping of everyone's cognition became a closed loop. Even though April had crossed the family's shackles to study at the Witch Academy and had seen many things and sights she had never seen before, she was still unable to make a change after returning to the family.
She was just a girl who, when encountering difficulties, subconsciously expected someone else to save her…
But she had completely lost her value. Who would come to save a sinner like her?
The family and the Wizard Academy wouldn't, and the Witch Academy certainly wouldn't!
She had no choices left…
The banquet gradually ended. Perhaps only the pitch-black night could give her a sliver of peace, a sliver of a chance to lick her wounds alone.
She was no longer the high-status young lady of the family. Even her former bedroom no longer belonged to her; she was left with only a guest room barely sufficient for a night's sleep.
When she pushed open the door, two voices—familiar yet so distant they felt foreign—reached her ears.
"Miss~ why are you back so late?"
"That's right~ even if it's this late, you should bathe and change your clothes first~"
The voices of the two maids instantly left her stunned. These two… weren't they the personal maids who had served her before she entered the Transcendent Academy?
"Aila? Aini?"
April subconsciously reached out to touch those two figures, but in the next moment, her hand passed right through "their" faces.