Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The afternoon sun shone down through the skylight and fell into the great hall, turning into a gentle corona that covered everything.
There was a gloomy atmosphere in the quiet and solemn hall.
The fourteen seats on both sides of the hall were filled with musicians from all over. Some were old, some were in the prime of life, some were men, some were women. On their faces they all well concealed the anger and dejection that they were feeling, but they could not stop the gloomy looks in their eyes. When they looked at each other they could not help but sigh softly.
Outside the open door, the afternoon sunlight flowed over the square like a wave, odd yet magnificent, as the statue of a child in the fountain sprayed out drops of water.
Young students reclined on benches with the new textbooks in hand, painstakingly learning the new laws held within. It was difficult to memorize this new music theory that was different from the past. Although they looked bitter about having to do it, their spirits exuded an enviable youthful vitality.
Between memorizing and reciting, some of them would gaze up in reverence at the being suspended high above the Academy.
The miracle slowly rotated between the heavens and the earth.
The scorching sunlight fell upon the huge water-colored cube, was refracted through its countless blocks and then fell upon the ground like rippling waves, as beautiful as paradise.
This was the realization of power, the miraculous crystal, the proof of God’s existence.
The Catastrophe Net of Aether!
There was a sharp contrast between the gloom in the great hall and the exuberance out in the square, separated only by an open door.
In the long silence, a door in the great hall opened, and an old musician walked in. He shook his head at his long awaiting companions, his eyes full of bitterness.
As soon as they saw him enter, the other musicians rose to their feet.
“What is the situation, Master Ambrose?”
“What did His Highness the Prince mean?”
“Is it impossible?”
Master Ambrose sighed. “I haven’t had a chance to meet with the Prince. The one who told me everything was His Highness’s assistant, Lady Kraft…”
“What! That…that’s too arrogant!” The other musicians were stunned. “You represent all the musician schools in the Anglo Kingdom. How could he not even be willing to meet you in person?”
“I’m afraid he he felt it was beneath his dignity to do so.” Ambrose smiled bitterly.
He saw things more clearly than anyone else.
The youngest of the Masters turned red and whispered, “His Highness is not willing to rescind his order? Does he know what he’s doing? Isn’t he afraid of becoming a pariah in the Anglo Kingdom by driving all the schools away?”
Ambrose stared at him like he was an idiot. “Do you think he cares?”
The mood in the room darkened as everyone sat back down dejectedly. Some of them were filled with indignation, “He insists on placing the Anglo Kingdom on the road to ruin!”
But more of them looked sad. “This situation must not be allowed to spread. Our schools have already lost half their apprentices!”
“What can we do?” Someone sneered. “With three months of his training they can receive the same results as ten years of ours. Seems like a clear choice for the apprentices.”
Which of the schools could pat their chest and say that they could definitely help apprentices clear the hurdle of becoming an official musician? But all that guy had to do was nod his head, and it would be perfectly clear which side was more attractive.
“What kind of musician is he?” the old musician roared. “If you just rely on that d*mn thing you will be controlled by it too, and then how can you follow the path of the Originator?”
“Who cares about the path of the Originator anymore?” someone sighed faintly. “Did you think about pursuing the Originator when you were fourteen? When I was that age all I cared about was becoming an official musician. But no one liked me, so I had to study by myself…I would have even been willing to become a Dark Musician if it had let me advance.”
Everyone was silent.
Wasn’t the reason that Dark Musicians had been prohibited for so long because it had been so easy for them to achieve success?
As long as you could give your heart over to hate and kill enough people you could increase your strength.
And evil spirits and catastrophes were easier to bargain with than usurers, and sometimes they even paid in advance.
And wasn’t the path that was now revealed by the Net of Aether was ten times more attractive than becoming a Dark Musician?
It was a hundred times more attractive! A thousand!
They did not have to pay any price as long as they offered their loyalty and signed the contract to serve the Anglo Kingdom for thirty years. If you regret it, they wouldn’t even take your life, you would just lose your power.
Some musicians would use the Net of Aether to break through their own barriers, and then after being cut off from it, would break through them themselves. Having experienced it the first time, doing it again would be practically certain.
In ten short days all the schools in the Anglo Kingdom…no, all the schools in the West had been thrown into chaos by this sudden tornado. According to the lighthouse’s statistics, more than a quarter of apprentices had already left their schools and headed for the Anglo Kingdom.
Of the remaining three-quarters, one quarter of them were painstakingly trained by their teachers and did not need external help, and the others had been forced to stay by their schools.
But for people to stay when their hearts weren’t in it was of no real use, it was only effective for the time being. His Highness the Prince had even informed the nations that he was willing to provide interest-free loans to those apprentices who could not leave due to the high cost of terminating their contracts! They could even travel to the Anglo Kingdom for free!
In four short days he had already squandered half the Anglo treasury! The fleets flew back and forth from the Anglo Kingdom over the ocean.
The Royal Musician’s Academy had been expanded to four times its original size and still could not meet demands. The Royal Family had approved six satellite islands around Avalon to be used as extra campuses for the Academy, and the construction there was already in full swing.
In just fourteen days the number of Royal Musicians had expanded to an incredible 40,000 people!
40,000 official musicians!
At their greatest height the Royal Musicians had never numbered more than 3,000. Now they were more than ten times more than that!
Even if 35,000 of them left the Net of Aether to return to their original apprenticeship, it would still be a force to be reckoned with!
40,000 official musicians!
That was enough to fill a small country!
Obviously there was no lack of spies sent by the various schools, but Ye Qingxuan didn’t care. He was generous enough to open the outer connections of the Net of Aether to them.
He wasn’t worried about what secrets they might steal.
Soon, the higher ups at the other schools would discover that the Net of Aether was not an artifact. It was a poison, and if they stole it it would only harm them.
Not only would their spies not bring back many secrets, but much of the backbone of their own school would be sent back by counter-intelligence as many of their spies became double agents and they could no longer trust them.
The nations had already issued a warning to the Anglo Kingdom: for each day that the Net of Aether was not brought down, they would impose trade and economic sanctions on them. But the results were not what they expected: many people continued to do business privately with the Anglos.
In Ye Qingxuan’s hands even the smuggling business had grown ten times better!
Others had done everything they could do short of declare war, but the Anglos would not so much as bow their heads, not to mention limit the spread of the Net of Aether. Their attitude had not softened one bit.
All the schools within the Anglo Kingdom had gone to the palace to force an abdication, but they had not even been able to see him as they were casually dismissed by Lola.
“What does His Highness mean by this?” Some of them had completely lost interest in continuing to be caught up in this. “Can’t he even give us a definite answer?”
Ambrose was silent for a moment, then he said, “There are two choices. Either merge with the Net of Aether and offer up our core music theory and His Highness the Prince will grant us with mid-level authority to freely upload and modify the movements of our own schools, or we get the h*ll out.”
This last sentence was obviously Ye Qingxuan’s direct words.
He had no patience for those old b*stards who sought to take advantage of their seniority and did not care about the current situation.
Actually, he had said one more thing. “If you get the h*ll out, the Anglo Kingdom will pay all your expenses, and will not hinder you from leaving the country in any way.”
These two choices were placed in front of everyone.
Everyone was silent and began to think once again.
The general trend of the times was that if you couldn’t beat them, join them…so, did they want to surrender to His Highness the Prince? It was not that there was no precedence for this. The four schools that had sought refuge with Ye Qingxuan had in this short time already expanded to six times their original size!
And once they reached six times the original size it was not that they had not wanted to keep expanding, it was that they couldn’t take anymore!
Although they had lost their freedom, they had gained strength and growth. Ye Qingxuan had even corrected their core music theory for them, which improved their inheritance efficiency by more than ten times!
And once they had received mid-level authority, they could also view the important music theory of the other schools at will…although it wasn’t core music theory, in bygone days if even one note of it had leaked out countless people would be locked in a life-or-death struggle for it.
And right now it was at their fingertips.
As for leaving the Anglo Kingdom, no one was being forced onto this dead end road. Almost no one even considered it. No one had the temperment of the School of Magic of one hundred years ago.
So many years of contacts, so many years of operations, so many generations spent planting the roots, building the school buildings, creating a good aether wonderland…
They could lose it all with a single sentence, which would be incredibly foolish.
Before the schools of the Masters who came here today had set out, their schools had drawn a line in the sand past which they could not accept anything and authorized the Master to make decisions on behalf of their school.
Staying behind would be like boiling a frog in warm water. Sooner or later their schools would become part of the Net of Aether and their independence would disappear. But for many schools there was still a question of if they would even survive. Now they had a chance to keep moving forward, so even just a little bit of thinking would make it clear what the right choice was.
Everyone looked at each other and felt powerless as the wheel of history rolled on.
–
–
In the principal’s office, Ye Qingxuan heard a knock on the door.
Lola unceremoniously pushed the door open and sat down in the chair across the desk. She took off her glasses, threw them onto the table and poured herself a cup of tea from Ye Qingxuan’s teapot, drinking it down in one gulp.
Since in her job as secretary Lola had to walk between various offices around Avalon, Lola no longer wore the cumbersome formalwear and long dresses of days past, and had changed to wearing simple and serious attire.
She wore glasses now, and her long hair was pleated behind her back, revealing her slender, pointed ears, no longer hiding the fact that she had moon spirit blood.
Anyway, no one who grasped this fact dared to say anything.
The result was a strange scene in which a moon spirit strolled through the Inquisiton every day. The purification musician who guarded the door had to show her respect, making people think that public morals were declining day by day, and that public morality was not what it used to be.
It seemed that she noticed the trouble in Ye Qingxuan’s heart. She rolled her eyes at him.
“The old men figured it out.” She pulled something out of her pocket and threw it to him. “This is the finished terminal that the Royal Institute of Research made at your request.”
Ye Qingxuan caught it, then looked at the thick, heavy piece of iron the size of his palm. He could not help but raise his eyebrows.
“Interesting…”
