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Chapter 314 The Pas

The smell of tobacco hung in the air. It seemed to contain the dust of traveling. A man in a gray canvas robe sat on the sofa beside Maxwell. His aether was as still as dead water as if it was swallowed by the darkness in his robe.

He looked as if he had come from thousands of miles away. He held an old pipe; his face was hidden in the darkness and difficult to see. He was talking to Maxwell. "After all, with our relationship, I will definitely agree to help you with this." He rose and bid farewell.

"You’re leaving now?" Maxwell tried to keep him. "Why don’t you stay a bit longer? It’s not too late to leave tomorrow."

"The distance is far and it will be a difficult journey. The sooner I leave the better. My goal for coming to the academy has been reached as well and there is no point in staying. Thank you for your hospitality."

"Then, safe travels." Maxwell rose to see him off. The traveler-like musician moved silently as if he was floating. When he brushed past Ye Qingxuan, he could feel the pair of eyes under the darkness sweep across his face. Those eyes were meaningful.

"Who was that?" Ye Qingxuan asked when the man was gone.

"Since he doesn’t wish to reveal his identity before you, it’s obviously a secret." Maxwell smiled mysteriously and motioned for Ye Qingxuan to sit. "Whisky or brandy? I also have the strongest ‘kerosene’ from downtown. Maybe you’ll like it."

"Don’t you have anything nonalcoholic?" Ye Qingxuan eyed Maxwell.

He rummaged through the cabinets. Finding some black tea, he boiled water to make tea for himself. Maxwell sat with propped legs and watched as Ye Qingxuan scurried about. He did not care at all and just chuckled.

"Sorry to keep you waiting for so long. I thought you would get impatient."

"No matter where you go, you still have to come back here." Ye Qingxuan sat across from Maxwell, poured a cup of tea, and pushed it over.

"Oh?"

"This is for you," Ye Qingxuan said lightly. "I have a lot of questions so get ready to be thirsty, Mr. Principal."

"If I knew this, I’d choose an easier topic to discuss." Maxwell sighed and downed the cup of tea. He wiped the water on his beard like an old swordsman getting ready to fight after drinking wine. "Okay, let’s start. Don’t worry, I won’t hold anything back."

"Then," Ye Qingxuan asked his first question, "who is White Crow?"

"You know about him?" Maxwell was shocked but he shook his head. "Unfortunately, I want to know the answer too. More than a decade ago, the Sacred City ruled that your father was a heretic and had fallen. It caused uproar but your father ran away. The Lancelot family was the first to be questioned.

"I don’t know the specifics, but the former head of the family closed himself off to the world. Due to all the pressure, he was forced to exile you and your mother. After that, he fell ill and died two years later.

"At the same time, Ye Lanzhou used his Scepter to erase his existence. Other than people with special status, everyone forgot about him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t undo his mistakes. Amongst them, the one who put in the most effort to attack the Lancelot family was the White Crow that you speak of."

"I see." Ye Qingxuan lowered his eyes. "Then why did Ye Lanzhou come to the West back then? An Eastern Deva’s blood with a bright future and scepter would be the star of any school and the hope of the entire family. Why did he leave his hometown to come here?"

"Twenty-seven years ago in the East, Bai Heng inherited the noble Bai family. He led his soldiers to rebel without care for his family in the capitol Chang’an. The emperor was furious and killed his entire family. However, Chang’an was breached three days later and the royal family was practically massacred by Bai Heng.

"Bai Heng was the sole survivor of the Bai family. Due to outside pressure, he did not kill the youngest princess. He allowed her to inherit the throne, change her title to ‘Wu.’ She became the first empress. After that, Bai Heng became the high and mighty regent, and the world’s most treacherous minister.

"One year later, the Ye family was secretly ordered by the empress to fight under the name of removing treacherous officials. They partnered with the Eighth Battalion to besiege Chang’an for five years. However, the Ye family was betrayed by his ally. The head of the family was beheaded and given to Bai Heng as an apology.

"After that, the Ye family was cut up and punished by the crown. All direct blood lines were imprisoned for life. Your father—the successor of the Ye family—Ye Lanzhou was twenty-two years old at that time.

"There was no place in the East and no reason to stay there, so he came to the West alone to start a new life. To be honest, I don’t know what he did to break free from all those bars and shackles. Maybe no one could stop him if he really wanted to escape. Anyway, the result was that he came here and started a new life, just as he had wished." Maxwell sighed. "Unfortunately, the new life here wasn’t as easy as he had thought."

"Then what happened?"

"Then what?" Then I met him for the first time." Maxwell chuckled. "He applied for a position at the Royal Academy of Music and became a visiting professor. One year later, his talent and ability was acknowledged, and he became the youngest vice principal in the academy’s history.

"You know what happened next. He met your mother, they got to know each other and fell in love. In the end, they endured all the challenges and married. I officiated their wedding. That was the most honorable thing I’ve done. Unfortunately, now I always think that maybe what happened next would not have happened if I’d protested their marriage."

After a long silence, Ye Qingxuan asked, "So what happened next?"

"The Lancelot family is practically part of the royal family. In order to marry your mother, Ye Lanzhou agreed to many terms. One of them was that he must work for Anglo for ten years. He agreed and received a secret position in the Royal Research Institute. The following year, he represented the Institute and participated in a research project in the Sacred City."

"The Sacred City?" Ye Qingxuan pondered. "Is it the Church or the Musician Union?"

"Both and even more. The Silence Governance participated as well," Maxwell said lightly. "This was one of the results of the Third Amendment Act."

The Third Amendment Act was a secret agreement made two hundred years ago between the various countries and the Church. According to this agreement, each country would respect that the current King of Red—who was also the Pope—was the only representative of God. He would make no fallacy and protect the Church’s legitimacy and God’s undeniable status.

In return, the Church would not have any political power; it would separate from the government. Churchmen were forbidden to join the military, government, or interfere with any country’s laws. They were even forbidden to accept the worship of believers. All funding came from the various countries. The Sacred City Parliament led by the Pope established the Sacred City’s position as the core of the world.

The first thing the Sacred City Parliament did was to establish the Musician Union to unite all musicians. At that time, the Inquisition—an organization that had grown astray—was abolished. The musicians were added into the Silent Authority that was under the Musician Union’s sole authority and became judicial musicians.

The non-musician priests returned to the Church and formed the Ministry of Faith that had the authority of final interpretation of the Bible. From then on, God belonged to God and mankind belonged to mankind.

The Pope was responsible for guiding the lofty spirit while the men of the world were ruled by their kings. Whether it was metaphysical or physical, everything found its place. A new order was born.

The secret research institute that was not part of any organization was established at that time. The research that Ye Lanzhou participated in was started eighteen years earlier. The Sacred City Parliament gathered scholars and alchemists from each country, secretly deployed musicians of dozens of research fields and sixteen different schools, and began an unprecedented research…What is a natural catastrophe?"

Maxwell’s voice was like stones rubbing and creating blazing sparks. "That was the goal of the research—to understand the nature of the natural catastrophe. For this, all of the world’s strength was secretly united and captured a natural catastrophe. All the preparation, process, and actions of this plan had been sealed. No one knows what happened, other than country leaders and the Pope."

"Natural catastrophe?" Ye Qingxuan was shaken. "Which one?"

"Of the natural catastrophes, the ones with the most characteristics are the Three Saints, the Three Pillar God, the Four Living Objects, and the Eight Phenomena." Maxwell smoked his cigarette. "It’s impossible to even prove the existence of the Three Saints. The Three Pillar God is too large and far away from humanity, making it hard to understand. The Eight Phenomena…are just phenomena. There’s not much research value. Therefore, the most suitable target is one of the Four Living Objects."

"Hecatoncheir?" It suddenly dawned on Ye Qingxuan. The Four Living Objects was Hecatoncheir, Leviathan, the Dark Mother, and Cereus.

Of these four, the Dark Mother did not have a specific shape and was difficult to observe. Leviathan of the deep seas had already died. No one would be able to find it before it is reborn. Cereus seemed to be the easiest but its nature was difficult to grasp. It lived in the black zones across the world. It was where the aether was the most disorderly. Cereus existed between real and intangible. Like an unrealistic bubble, it could burst at touch. Merely observing it could cause it to scatter, let alone catching it. Therefore, the most suitable choice was undoubtedly Hecatoncheir.

"But…the Sacred City was actually able to capture him?"

"Yes, with grave losses," Maxwell said softly. "To my knowledge, since eighty years ago, four of the current eleven saints disappeared and two of the nine Eastern imperial musicians died. The other participants were all gravely wounded as well. The former King of Yellow was lost due to this. But that’s not the worst. The worst is that we succeeded."