Free Web NovelChapter 786: Annoying Things, Better to Enter the Soul-substance Cycle Soon
Casting aside Anti-Witch's plotting, taking a bird's-eye view of the whole situation made many things suddenly become clear.
After all, knowing what they wanted meant knowing how they would act next, yet the ultimate goal would never change.
In the end, they were all after [Transcendent Knowledge].
Although it was unknown why this thing suddenly became so sought-after, the existing intelligence indeed reflected it this way.
The current situation was roughly that the other Transcendent Academies were once again isolating the Witch Academy, and they wanted the [Transcendent Knowledge] fragments inside the Witch Academy.
To get them, they would need other means—like winning over Wan Shi Wu?
Thereby obtaining the fragments in Wan Shi Wu's hands.
As for how to obtain them... there wouldn't be much fastidiousness regarding the means.
“Big Sis Bai come on, I’ve found another interesting place!”
I pulled Big Sis Bai away from there, though we still didn't leave the castle.
After all, this castle was like an adventure house to me, filled with various surprises and fun.
The place I pestered Big Sis Bai to go was the basement located on the underground level.
Sure enough, a castle this large still had to have some intricate underground passages and rooms.
“As expected, it’s all transcendent materials.”
After arriving below, we couldn't help but marvel as we looked at these things.
Although it was said that Transcendent Academies did not allow ordinary people to hold anything related to the transcendent, clearly this was likely only followed on the surface.
In the shadows... their behavior was quite rampant.
But this was not the Witch Academy, nor was it the Witch Academy's territory.
Perhaps that was why they were so bold.
Furthermore, I found that some of the transcendent materials here seemed to be secondary; there were also many things like alchemical potions, but even more items were... transcendent items!
“Although it was expected that transcendent objects would be rampant within families, this is my first time witnessing it. But thinking about it carefully, it doesn't seem surprising that the items with the most severe proliferation are transcendent items.”
“Eh? Why?”
I asked curiously.
“Because the conditions for the birth of a transcendent item are not transcendent techniques, but coincidence and luck. Even if a Transcendent Academy can lock down all outflows of transcendent materials, it can never prevent the unintentional birth of transcendent items. Moreover, families control this ordinary society, so they can naturally recover these things silently at the first moment.”
“Is that so?”
After such an explanation, I also felt it made a lot of sense.
The birth of transcendent items was mainly due to special rituals and coincidences.
Even if no transcendent materials were involved, it was possible for a transcendent item to be born, though the effects and side effects of such transcendent items wouldn't be very large.
“Yes. You probably haven't participated in any of the subjugation missions issued by the Witch Academy regarding external transcendent chaos, have you, Xiao Han? In fact, most of the time, it's basically good deeds done by ordinary people who have mastered transcendent items.”
Big Sis Bai seemed to recall some past events, her tone carrying a hint of memory.
“I really haven't.”
I said with some regret.
It looked like I had unconsciously missed out on a lot of excitement within the academy.
Subsequently, Big Sis Bai and I looked through all these transcendent items here, but none of them caught our eye.
But it made sense thinking about it. If they were truly transcendent items with great effects, those people in the family would probably have carried them close to their bodies; how could they be left here to gather dust?
Originally, I was thinking about whether to swipe a few to play with as toys, but there truly were no appealing items, so I gave up on that plan.
As for... the behavior of stealing being bad?
Then was it good for their family to seriously violate regulations by illegally holding transcendent materials and transcendent items?
“What does Xiao Han plan to do next?”
Seeing my lack of interest, Big Sis Bai asked at the appropriate time.
“Originally, I planned to go see April, but to my surprise, the Hawthorne Family didn't kick her out of the family. Currently, my player avatar is in contact with people from the Hawthorne Family. I'm trying to understand what kind of bond still exists between the Hawthorne Family and April.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah April is just an ordinary person now, without any spellbooks or Magic Power Sources. As time stretches on, her physical quality will continuously drop along with her life level. Does the Hawthorne Family still intend to use her for some 'waste utilization'?”
After all, Big Sis Bai and I were strolling through this castle in a grand manner and had seen the security forces inside.
The security forces inside indeed exceeded my expectations, because they were basically all students who had completed their studies at Transcendent Academies!
However, most of these people were students of the Wizard Academy.
The sorcery structures in their bodies had been cleared, and their sorcery tools had been recycled.
Without the maintenance of transcendent materials and the intervention of transcendent power in their cultivation, they would similarly drop in life level like a reserve witch without a Magic Power Source until they reached stability.
But even without any transcendent power, their own physical quality, the residual undying nature, plus their combat instincts made their combat power absolutely unattainable for ordinary people.
“According to what you said, Xiao Han, it's true. Utilizing a kind of personality manipulation based on guilt to make her continue to work hard for the family wouldn't hurt. After all, April was once a teaching assistant, and she probably hasn't been back for many days, right? She should be considered the family's strongest non-enrolled personnel currently.”
Big Sis Bai also nodded.
“How about creating some accidents for her? People are always like this: they either explode in the silence or die in the silence.”
Many people who are psychologically manipulated are actually just not stimulated enough by their environment to make a reaction, which makes them appear indifferent.
For average people, extremes might be a kind of redemption.
No one has probably experienced extreme care, but extreme suppression will inevitably make a person completely explode.
Hatred, heartlessness, coldness... these are likewise sharp blades that can cut through Earth Vein Chains and human bonds.
It was just like when I, having just enrolled, picked up my parents' phone call; even if it was to be scolded, I had to listen, because I wanted to set their nature in stone, giving myself no possibility of generating a single thought of regret or wavering.
“Oh? How does Xiao Han want to do it?”
“Stupid and brainless people always bring endless trouble to others. Big Sis Bai... do you think the people of this family deserve to die?”
I asked curiously.
“This has to be analyzed from various perspectives. Objectively speaking, no one is qualified to define who deserves to die. But from the legal perspective of maintaining order, the moral perspective of defending the bottom line, the personal perspective of private grudges... anyone can die; it's just a matter of who is in the right after they die.”
“Big Sis Bai, you can actually say such words?!”
I said with some surprise.
“Then what do you personally think, Big Sis Bai?”
“Me? I think... annoying things, better to enter the soul-substance cycle soon.”
Big Sis Bai evaluated this without being polite at all.
“But I cannot interfere like that, nor can I slaughter them on such a large scale. You know the reason.”
“Mhm I naturally understand.”
I nodded to show I understood.
Big Sis Bai was a Transcendent, and there were many restrictions.
However, Big Sis Bai's unhesitating words indeed made the thoughts in my heart even firmer!
Letting them become materials for my experiments... wouldn't hurt either.
I still mastered quite a few techniques.
On this trip, I planned to perfect my Soul Depiction, but I had another technique and an accompanying derivative spell that I needed to test.
That was... Wisdom Bestowal.
I had used this technique on those mutated beasts in the Expansion Realm, and afterward, the people hunting those mutated beasts all stated that the effects were very good.
Wisdom Bestowal was equivalent to a technique upon the life essence on another level.
From my current "widely experienced" level, this so-called "life wisdom" was similar to concepts like self-awakened body cultivation, Self-generating Magic Power, racial concepts, and bloodline information.
They were all a type of feedback upon the "life essence."
Either they were some kind of innate racial concept and bloodline information.
Or they were a certain ability structured by some postnatal technique, such as the "Wisdom Bestowal" structured by self-awakened body cultivation, Self-generating Magic Power, and the techniques derived from the Great Wisdom Enlightenment Spell.
The technique of Wisdom Bestowal, which delved deep into the life essence to explore the foundation of wisdom—looking at it now, this was likewise a type of "forbidden research" that remodeled the life essence.
And Wisdom Bestowal had derived a reverse application: Wisdom Deprivation.
The deprivation of the foundation of wisdom had allowed the Great Wisdom Enlightenment Spell to give birth to a special sequence derivation spell—the Great Wisdom Weaving Seed.
And this derivation spell completely perfected the application of the Wisdom Bestowal technique.
I really hadn't used these abilities for a long time.
And now... they had brand new experimenters.
But I didn't plan to perform Wisdom Deprivation on them directly.
Instead, I would adopt another means—the second way of utilizing Wisdom Deprivation: Wisdom Withering.
This was a subtle influence, likewise the most lethal and not easily discovered means.
I clearly remembered what the foundation of wisdom was upon the life essence; it was roughly divided into "Consciousness" and "Memory."
Consciousness cognizes the self; memory influences cognition and further controls emotions.
Having tried the self-memory sealing spell, I was very clear that memory was like a shackle of behavior for a person, and also the foundation for the generation of cognition.
Memory could give a person the motivation to do something, and likewise could restrict a person from doing something.
Just as the memory of receiving praise after saying good things to others would subconsciously make a person like praising others; or just as the memory of being burned by fire would restrict a person from touching flames.
Memory was just that miraculous.
And it was one of the foundations of wisdom upon the essence of life.
……
At this moment, April was following her nominal father, participating in a gathering held by the family.
The family was just like this: if they wanted to invite guests from other families, they naturally needed a reason to hold a family gathering.
And she also needed to bear full responsibility for the mistakes she had committed.
Not long ago, she was still a teaching assistant, but now she was nothing.
Furthermore, she was a TA who had been kidnapped to the Witch Academy.
Her current status in the family was increasingly looked down upon.
After all, the Hawthorne Family was a family that followed the great Wizard Will.
They provided talent to the academy, and the academy provided protection for them.
She had returned once more with the status of a "traitor," and everything had become so strange because she had witnessed too much brilliance in the Witch Academy; she knew all too well the terror of the witches.
Therefore, the family suspected her loyalty to the Wizard Will... and in fact, they weren't wrong to suspect.
Even when she spoke those words, she wasn't as firm as when she was a child.
This further promoted 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 would be no 'if'!
She had studied the knowledge of Earth Vein Chains, so she clearly recognized that even if her choice were repeated a thousand or ten thousand times, it would not change.
The family was just such a tumor; it had occupied her childhood to the point that she would need to use everything in the rest of her life to smooth it over.
Whenever she had the thought of resisting, the family's influence would pull her back into the abyss in every aspect of her life, at any fragile moment.
Her so-called strength, her so-called ten years of tempering, were all a joke.
She was a woman nearly thirty years old, yet her mind was still as naive as a girl's.
The only thing she had learned was to pretend to be strong, when in fact she would collapse upon the slightest touch.
And after she returned, even she hadn't expected the first thing that would make her break down was... she had lost the ability to reproduce.
Right, the ability to reproduce.
Reserve witches do not have this ability before advancing to Transcendent.
She was an ordinary person now.
She needed to face this terrible society, terrible life, terrible family, and terrible relatives.
She had lost the ability to reproduce; she didn't even have value for a political marriage anymore.
The values she had been endowed with since childhood were just so.
Even though she knew very well that the so-called political marriage was nothing but dregs... in the reality she had to face, even her value for marriage had been erased.
Only others' accusations against her remained in her ears.
Who can completely ignore others' evaluations of oneself?
So right now, the only thing maintaining her value and meaning for existence was her current strength.
She could still rely on this strength to reduce unnecessary trouble for the family.
She was desperately trying to prove her value, because individual value was the meaning of existence for everyone in the family.
Thus, the Hawthorne Family's construction of cognition for everyone became a closed loop.
Even though April had crossed the family's shackles to pursue advanced studies at the Witch Academy and seen too many things and scenes she had never seen before, she was still unable to make a change after returning to the family once more.
She was just a girl who, when encountering difficulties, subconsciously expected others to redeem her...
But she had completely lost her value.
Who would come to redeem her, this sinner?
The family and the Wizard Academy would not, and the Witch Academy certainly would not!
She had no choice anymore……
The banquet gradually ended.
Perhaps only the pitch-black night could give her a sliver of peace, giving her a sliver of opportunity to lick her wounds alone.
She was no longer the noble young miss of the family from before.
Even her former bedroom no longer belonged to her; she was only left with a guest room enough for a night's sleep.
When she pushed open the door, two familiar yet somewhat distant voices—to the point of being strange to her—came.
“Miss, why have you returned so late?”
“Yeah even if it's this late, you should still bathe and change first.”
The voices of two maids came, instantly making her dazed.
Weren't these two... the maids who had served her closely before she entered a Transcendent Academy?
“Aila? Aini?”
April instinctively reached out her hand to touch those two figures, but in the next moment, her hand passed through "them."
