Kingdom’s Bloodline

The candlelight was bright, and the silence in the study lasted for several seconds.

Ashida looked at Thales expressionlessly:

"Is the question so important that you are so eager to know?"

Thales smiled:

"Not necessarily, it depends on how much you want to see my 'trick'."

Ashida lowered her head and looked at the crumpled sky blue invitation on the ground.

"This is not a deal," his tone became colder, "let alone using your mana as a bargaining chip."

"Then it's not a deal," Thales said without changing his smile, and responded quickly and kindly. "It's mutual assistance between teachers and students, and teaching and learning can benefit each other."

As soon as the voice fell, Thales immediately felt something was wrong: the surrounding air slowly froze.

"And it's not a joke."

The magician has no expression on his face and speaks very slowly:

"Your magical energy is weird and unpredictable, and the consequences are unknown. If you are not careful, your life may be endangered——"

Thales gently raised his left hand.

Ashida's words came to an abrupt end.

The sky blue invitation card on the ground has disappeared.

At this moment, it was caught between Thales' fingers.

"That's right." Ashida's eyes flashed blue light again and again, "I'm impressed."

"A few months ago, when I was forced to knock on the door to learn this trick," Thales put down the invitation card in his hand, his smile gradually disappeared, "I was in the dungeon, and was attacked by some unreasonably strong spirit. The patient chased him with a knife and played hide-and-seek all night."

The magician remained silent, while Thales continued softly:

"Because he stubbornly believed that I was the product of the conspiracy created by your 'Three Disasters Alliance' back then, even though I was born five years after the Bloody Year."

Ashida's eyes moved!

He spoke slowly, with a cold tone:

"He discovered your secret?"

my secret.

Thales looked at Ashida quietly.

Damn secret.

"Don't worry, he's dead." Thales shook off the vicissitudes but lonely back in his mind, and said indifferently.

A long time ago, died.

The boy's tone changed:

"But until then, he's not 'maybe', he's literally endangering my life."

"The reason why I can still sit here and listen to you condescendingly preach, instead of turning into a prince's brand cake..."

Thales lifted one side of his forehead hair, revealing a bald scar on his scalp.

"It's all because I bowed my head fast enough."

Ashida looked at him silently, silent as before, not knowing what to think.

"So this is really not a deal, not a bargaining chip," Thales snorted coldly, holding up the invitation and shook it, "I was framed by your 'glorious past', implicated by the sins you once committed, and Proof of the old grievances that I don't know about all the way to a desperate situation and almost lost my life!"

Thales's voice seemed to have alarmed the residents on the ceiling, and the noise of rats moving sporadically came, but neither of them paid attention to it.

"This unlucky incident made me realize that magic power is not only about itself, but also about the magician."

Ashida didn't speak, but the lines on his face became sharper and more serious.

Thales took a deep breath: "Compared to the so-called 'weird and unpredictable, with unknown consequences' mana, maybe the things you concealed from me are more threatening to me?"

"So, for the sake of my life, I need to know, I must know, I demand to know."

Thales held up the invitation card and flew it to the other end of the room with a chic movement:

"Now, who is Fleurand?"

the voice fell,

The study room fell silent, and the two faced each other silently.

The Duke stood in front of the window, letting the moonlight cover his shoulders and cast a shadow on his face alone.

The magician stood in the room, the candle was bright, but it couldn't cover the blue eyes in his eyes.

Only sporadic noises from the ceiling proved that it wasn't dead silence here.

After several minutes, Ashida moved slightly, and said:

"You are indeed different."

Thales snorted softly.

"No matter how many times you repeat, you are still the twentieth," the Duke shook his head, "There is no prize."

swish swish...

The increasingly tense atmosphere was a bit suffocating, and the noise on the ceiling became more and more uneasy.

"What if I say no?"

The magician said indifferently, his voice was still elegant and pleasant.

Thales put on an expression as expected, and shrugged helplessly.

"Then I can't help it."

"After all, you are the powerful magician, and I can't force you."

In the next second, Duke Xinghu dropped his smile and focused his eyes:

"But for the sake of my own life, and in order not to be trapped by your old debts, I can only try to save myself and use various methods to spy on that period of history from various channels."

Ashida remained silent, the only response to the Duke was the increasingly restless noise above his head.

Thales raised the corner of his mouth:

"And did you know that there is an ancient library in the Sunset Temple in the capital, and the royal guards in the Fuxing Palace have all kinds of records. Of course, don't forget the secret of the kingdom—"

Before Thales finished speaking, the eyes of the Magician of Qi moved, and a blue light burst out!

"Ah! Damn it!"

The dazzling light forced Thales to turn his head to avoid it, and raised his hand to cover amidst the sound of cursing.

Fortunately, the strong light in Ashida's eyes only lasted for a moment, and then weakened immediately.

Thales raised his head in embarrassment, blinking constantly, waiting for the afterimage in his sight to disappear.

"What the hell are you doing—"

Thales froze as soon as he spoke.

Asheda just stood there gracefully and calmly as always, looking at him quietly.

but……

Thales realized something and slowly raised his head.

Quiet.

No, it was dead silence.

I don't know when, there was no extra noise in the study, only a horrifying dead silence remained.

Thales stared blankly at the ceiling.

"Cleaned up," Ashida's eyes slowly returned to normal, her tone erratic, "including those in the nest and those passing by, a total of fourteen mice."

"You're welcome."

Clear, cleaned up?

Thales took a few seconds to understand this sentence, and couldn't help swallowing.

Damn.

This, how do I explain this to you?

There's a new wildcat in Fort Star Lake? The kind that catches mice?

"If you want to be more thorough, about the surroundings of the castle, including the rat nests in the fields, I can..." the understanding Ashida continued.

"Wow, uh, thank you, thank you," Thales quickly stopped, "Well, it doesn't have to be so thorough, I have to let my subordinates do something..."

Ashida nodded happily:

"Excuse me, I was distracted by this, and what were you talking about?"

Thales clapped his hands.

"Oh that just now, in short, I mean, respected Mr. Sakern," His Royal Highness the Duke smiled and had an amiable attitude, "We are teachers and students, guides and apprentices. We are companions on the long road, so it is necessary to strengthen communication and trust each other..."

Thales looked at the guide he respected and admired from the bottom of his heart, his eyes were full of expectations:

"What do you say?"

The room fell into dead silence again.

A few minutes later, the magician spoke softly:

"His Royal Highness, you mean, you just wanted to blackmail me with yourself in exchange for my compromise?"

Thales coughed and withdrew his smile.

"Sorry, I only found out recently."

Thales exhaled and said as sincerely as possible:

"Using myself as a bargaining chip is quite effective."

Thales weighed the "covenant" in his pocket, thinking sarcastically.

After all, everyone loves Thales.

Ashida's gaze moved, and she stared closely at Thales.

But a few seconds later, he suddenly smiled.

"You should really look in the mirror and see yourself right now."

The magician's smile - it felt like a puppet with a curved mouth - made Thales panic.

"The mirror in the bedroom is broken, I don't know when to replace it." Thales forced a smile to match the magician's smile.

Depends on Maester Julio's ledger.

"Wait, besides exterminating rats, you don't happen to know how to fix mirrors, do you?"

In the next second, Thales' smile hadn't faded away, and the blue light in Ashida's eyes flashed again!

Thales felt a strong force coming, and he was thrown into the air by surprise, and fell heavily again!

Oh shit!

Looking at the ground that was approaching extremely fast, Thales stretched out his hands to cover his head and face angrily: I knew this grandson had a small belly——

Boom.

With a muffled sound, Thales opened his eyes and came back to his senses:

His legs landed on the ground, his face was suspended in the air, and he "sat" in the void in a panic.

And Ashida had already "sat" side by side with him, and was leisurely admiring the night outside the window.

"Then, let's talk." The magician said calmly.

"Old rules, no notes."

talk?

Thales reacted, frowning and touching the "air chair" under his buttocks.

He comforted his thumping little heart, and looked at Ashida who suddenly became easy to talk in disbelief.

Well, it seems that he is not so, um, small-bellied?

"very good."

Thinking of this, the boy crooked his mouth:

"But before you sit me down, maybe you should ask—"

thump!

Thales fell heavily to the ground. He touched his butt, grinning in pain.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

"Then, may I ask?" Ashida looked at him calmly, a blue light appeared on his left side, depicting the outline of a chair, "His Royal Highness, would you like to sit?"

Thales clutched his butt, gritted his teeth and got up.

Sit a few of you!

But as soon as the word "no" came to his lips, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the mottled and faded old crooked chair that belonged to the Duke behind the desk.

The noble and majestic Duke of Xinghu could only smack his mouth unhappily in the end, sulking, and sat down on the "chair" prepared for him by Ashida.

Made.

Small belly chicken intestines.

"Fleilan Sanchet."

In the room, Ashida looked at a small piece of night sky locked by the window, her gaze was misty.

"It's her name, at least the part I know."

Frylan Sanchet.

Thales recited the name silently in his heart.

"She was born very early, and it is said that she has witnessed the empire at its peak. I guess that even among the fellow magicians, there are very few who can surpass her in terms of qualifications."

Ashida's words tightened:

"Before becoming a magician, she was a magic apprentice in the Alchemy Tower. After becoming a magician, her threshold is called 'Sensory'."

"The Tower of Alchemy, I know," Thales raised his hand excitedly, "'Leading to omniscience', right?"

But Ashida didn't give him a positive answer:

"What did you say?"

"The Alchemy Tower, their motto," Thales recalled and repeated, "'Lead to omniscience', just under the sign of the strange eye."

Ashida narrowed her eyes and looked at him strangely.

"This," Thales had to stretch out his hand when he saw this, and drew out an ancient imperial text in the air, "Tong, Xiang, Omniscient?"

The magician was silent for a long time.

"Did they teach you Imperial language?"

"Of course, why?"

"So, you didn't pass?"

Thales' face darkened.

Eight days of class a week, you try?

What, you ask where did the extra day come from?

Of course it was squeezed out from sleep time!

Thales wondered:

"Is there something wrong? Or is it better to translate 'omniscient' as 'omnipotent'?"

"Languages ​​in this world don't have one-to-one correspondence," Ashida said coldly, "If that's the case, why don't we just learn nouns one by one, and when we use them, we only need to say 'you, study, grammar, class, Stupid' enough?"

Thales retracted into the chair and crossed his arms in a wooden manner.

You really don't have to be so mean.

"And if you can be a little more generous and magnanimous, His Royal Highness is a noble, studious and knowledgeable prince."

Ashida said quietly:

"Release a little bit of your touching feelings of being diligent in government affairs, worrying about your family, country, and the world, and caring about the well-being of the people, squeeze out a little bit of time when you stand in front of the window and feel the magnificence of the kingdom, or a little bit of your grandeur and fierceness. I haggled the heroic guts, and then generously and mercifully pouring them out on some boring grammar class that seems insignificant to you, and you may be lucky, coincident, unexpected, touching The earth, like a miracle from heaven, noticed an insignificant point in an inconspicuous corner: the so-called 'leading to' in this sentence is a short combination of noun and verb in the ancient imperial language."

Thales felt dizzy and dizzy after hearing this, and finally digested this long paragraph, then twitched the corners of his mouth and said:

"Well, you, you just say the last sentence, that's enough."

Ashida ignored him.

Therefore, the ancient imperial motto of the Alchemy Tower is not literally "leading to omniscience".

For the dignity of his studies, Thales had to pull himself together and start drawing in the air again:

"Then 'leading to' is a noun, then it is not 'leading to', but 'passage', or more simply 'road'."

"Plus the verb, 'the way leads to omniscience'?"

Thales looked at the guide expectantly.

Ashida didn't even look at him, and said indifferently:

"Look at the case for 'omniscient'."

Thales scratched his head and continued to draw:

"Okay, let's see—oh!"

Thales reacted: "So 'Road to Omniscience' is a separate modification of 'Road'! Hmm, 'Road to Omniscience'?"

Ashida snorted coldly.

"Look at the case of 'road' again."

Thales frowned.

"Look again? But there are only a few of them—oh," the boy's face changed again, "I understand, 'road' is a passive object, and it has a corresponding subject and predicate!"

But Thales immediately became confused:

"But there is no subject-predicate in this sentence..."

Ashida snorted again.

This time, Thales had an idea without reminding him:

"I remembered that in the poems and proverbs in the ancient imperial language, according to the context and logic, certain elements will be omitted, such as - 'I' and 'I am'."

Thales slapped his thigh and said excitedly:

"So the Tower of Alchemy said 'I am on the road, and the road is all-knowing'?"

Ashida was expressionless:

"Do you always talk like that?"

Thales coughed and adjusted his language:

"'I am on the way to omniscience', not simply 'to omniscience', right?"

This time, Ashida didn't make a sound.

leads to omniscience.

I am on my way to omniscience.

Thales read these two sentences silently, thinking of the strange eye logo of the Alchemy Tower, he felt something: "They are different."

"It's a big difference." Ashida said suddenly.

Thales read silently for a moment, then nodded.

"I understand."

"The way to omniscience—it's like the number on a door."

"As long as you open it, behind the door, you will be omniscient."

Ashida was noncommittal.

"But, 'I'm on the road to omniscience'—it's more like a long road, a signpost in the middle of the road," Thales's eyes lit up, "you have passed it, you know you haven't arrived yet, but you Know the direction is right, and then, and then you keep going."

The former is a self-satisfied master who guards the door carefully.

The latter is a traveler with a heavy load, and the journey is long.

They are different.

Thales was a little dazed.

"The muscular guys may be rigid and stubborn," Ashida said quietly, looking at the moonlight outside the window, "but they are also mages."

Thales came back to his senses.

"Muscle guy?"

The magician turned his head.

"The Soul Tower is used to mock their derogatory titles."

"Understood, what do they call you?"

"Thinker."

"Thinker?" Thales raised his eyebrows, "Why not a nerd?"

"Because it's irony."

Thales narrowed his eyes.

Ashida snorted coldly:

"We use the most direct and superficial, and they will not confuse and misunderstand derogatory terms anyway."

"And what they use to insult us is irony that can only be understood by connecting context, history and reality, separated by a layer of meaning."

Thales was in high spirits:

"Interesting, even the scornful names for each other, the soul tower and the alchemy tower, the logic they use is completely different! Right, thinker?"

After the words fell, Ashida looked at him expressionlessly.

The surrounding air became heavy.

Thales reacted and had to cough vigorously.

"Ahem, back to the topic," the Duke said with a straight face, "So, Mr. Sakern, Fleilan, she is a very experienced magician——Sensation?"

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

The magician's tone instantly turned cold:

"Don't call her that."

"You can either call her by her mortal name, or use the full full name 'Sensory Magician', and you can even casually mention 'Sensation' in a paragraph."

The blue light in Ashida's eyes is extremely sharp:

"But only, don't use such a pure, simple, and rude way to call a magician's threshold name alone when you know who you are calling."

Don't call her... the threshold name?

Thales was puzzled for a while:

"Why?"

The Qi Magician was silent for a while, as if he was thinking about something.

But he finally spoke.

"Because we don't know Fleurand's current situation: whether she is sealed, whether she is complete, what state she is in, whether she still walks freely and exists in the world, we don't know."

"If you call out the threshold name of a magician wholeheartedly when you know what your words are referring to—if the other party is normal, you will feel it."

Thales looked serious.

Seriously, alone, and deliberately calling the threshold name, the other party will feel it?

That means……

"Once or twice, maybe it's nothing, but it's a lot... Believe me, no matter how quietly you speak, no one wants to be knocked on the window for no reason." Ashida ended the sentence in a warning tone.

Thales had an idea:

"So amazing? Then I'll try yours, gas—"

At that moment, the surrounding air was compressed like mountains and seas!

"No, no, no—" Thales blushed with difficulty breathing, and waved his hands indiscriminately, "Ha—ha—"

In the next second, Ashida put down her fingers, and Thales resumed breathing, panting in pain!

Grass!

He definitely did it on purpose!

"First of all, it's not a friendly move."

Ashida snorted coldly:

"Secondly, remember that the magic queens stand at the apex and pinnacle of the magic power. I deeply doubt that they can perceive and monitor the known threshold names in a way beyond imagination. Once any magic master is killed Respond to excessive calls, and the bitches will spot the anomaly."

Queen of Magic.

Monitoring the threshold name?

Thales tore off his collar and said unhappily:

"So evil?"

The magician didn't answer, but just looked at him coldly.

Thales could only continue to ask:

"So, a threshold name is like a web address—I mean, an address? When you call it, it's like throwing a stone at his window?"

"And the Shuanghuang lived in the tallest villa. He was a hunter standing on the commanding heights with a sniper rifle - holding a crossbow. If someone's window rang, he would pull the trigger and take him away with one shot?"

Hearing these words, Ashida let out a long and deep sigh, and seemed dissatisfied.

"Metaphors, analogies, analogies, always."

But he only paused for a few seconds before a blue light appeared in his eyes:

"No."

"In a sense, the threshold name is more like a gate with a sign on it. It uses signs to distinguish our territory and boundaries, and to warn others." The eyes of the magician of Qi were bright and dazzling, and he didn't know where to look. Conflict, strife, fight."

Distinguish territory and boundaries.

door.

Thales frowned and asked:

"However, if calling the threshold name directly will make the other party perceive it, then this is like a door that was erected on purpose to attract people to knock?"

Ashida turned her head:

"Isn't this the reason why the 'door' is stronger than the 'wall'?"

"Warning the area and strictly guarding against intrusion," the magician's voice seemed indistinct from thousands of miles away. "Also leave a gap for visitors."

Thales blinked painfully: "A little complicated?"

"You will understand."

The blue light in Ashida's eyes slowly disappeared: "When you understand."

Thales nodded and made a smirk.

Thank you for your nonsense.

But he suddenly discovered that after he showed that magic power and firmly expressed his opinion "I don't want to be implicated by your old debts", this time, there seemed to be more things that Ashida was willing to teach him. , deeper and more incomprehensible?

In the study room illuminated by candlelight, two people, one big and one small, hung side by side in mid-air, one was quietly meditating, the other was gritting his teeth and crossing his arms, looking extremely strange.

"Then the plan to purify the world seven hundred years ago, which aimed to eliminate the records of magic and history, is it related to this?" Thales asked immediately after thinking of something.

The magician turned his head.

"When fewer and fewer people remember you, and fewer and fewer people call you," the young man slowly sorted out the logic, and gradually realized that it made sense, "then when your threshold name sounds, it will be extremely conspicuous, and it will be convenient for the Shuanghuang to search and hunt. kill?"

Ashida was silent for a moment.

"Maybe," the magician said quietly, "but it doesn't stop there."

Thales was about to ask a question, but Ashida had already spoken:

"Whether it is when the devil is bewitching people's hearts, the victims are required to call out their names loudly, or when the religion spreads the belief, the believers are asked to repeat the admonitions of the gods, and even when the emperor rules the Quartet, he has thousands of people and citizens shouting long live the empire over and over again. .”

The magician seemed to be immersed in his own world again:

"Calling symbols is always the most direct way to strengthen bonds, build habits, and build authority."

"The same is true for magic energy, even more so."

Thales was confused.

"I actually, uh, don't really understand."

Ashida raised her head, very sure:

"You will understand."

"sooner or later."

Thales had no choice but to hold his arms tightly and laugh.

thank you.

Another piece of nonsense.

"And that's why, Mr. Sakern, you have been refusing to tell me the name of the Double Emperor, including the unsealed magician's threshold name?"

"That's one of the reasons."

Ashida said solemnly: "And you have to be careful, especially if you have already been in contact with magic energy, and even knocked on the door - a mortal calls out the threshold name, and a magician calls out the threshold name, this is a completely different level."

Thales snorted softly, turned over on the air chair, and turned to the guide.

"You know, you could have told me earlier—you just say what you can do and what you can't do, or it's over," the prince curled his lips. "It has nothing to do with the magic power itself."

The magician was silent for a while.

"Trust me, Thales."

Ashida spoke quietly, but Thales was a little nervous:

"Everything that happens in this world, everything, everything..."

"It's all about mana."

It's strange that he has been talking so much today.

Thales frowned, but decided to turn over again and look at the ceiling—no, thinking of the corpses of fourteen mice on the top, Thales had to turn to the other side, facing the door.

"So, even magicians themselves don't usually call each other by their first names?"

"one."

Thales frowned: "What?"

The ethereal voice of the magician sounded again, this time, his tone was mechanical and indifferent:

"As far as I know, since the advent of magic power, there is only one, the only one magic master. He has no scruples from the beginning to the end, and he is accustomed to and even believes in calling his colleagues by their threshold names."

"As if that was the only name we had."

"As if that's the creed of his existence."

For some reason, Thales shuddered when he heard these words.

He subconsciously turned around and looked at Ashida.

"And every time, the feeling of being called by his threshold name..."

The magician of qi was lying in the void, his blue eyes were flickering, and he was staring at the ceiling.

But it's not like staring at the ceiling.

It's something on top of that, beyond that...something else.

Thales rarely saw Ashida like this.

"Who is he?" the boy couldn't help asking.

Ashida didn't move.

But at the next moment, there was a flash of blue light, and the magician of air's vision full of blue light had already locked on him.

This startled Thales.

It seems like a comic strip flipping through a book, changing to the next page in the blink of an eye.

"Fortunately, he and his brother have been confirmed to be sealed."

The blue light in the magician's eyes overflowed his eye sockets and climbed up his face like cracks.

"Before they destroy the world."

Those two blue lights made Thales extremely uncomfortable, and he subconsciously turned his head to avoid it.

The next moment, the magician of qi turned to the sky in an instant, and called out a word indifferently and dumbly:

"exist."

exist.

exist……

exist, exist, exist...

This word seemed to have some kind of power, and under Ashida's call, there seemed to be no echo.

In the next moment, Thales seemed to have an illusion—all the sounds and colors in the world disappeared!

Even his thoughts stopped.

It's all over.

After an unknown period of time, he felt something move.

Soon, the ceiling, the floor, the wall, the door...everything in front of and around my ears gradually and slowly returned.

In the next second, the boy took a deep breath, turned over and sat up!

Only then did Thales come back to his senses, and realized that he was dripping with cold sweat.

And Ahilda sat next to him, just as before, calm, elegant, looking at him indifferently.

Thales gasped for breath and blinked desperately.

everything is normal.

normal?

The only extra, or rather, left over...

It's a burst from the inside out, everywhere...

Deep heart palpitations.