I Am Miss Evalyn's Dog!

“Resurrection from the dead!” Renn Mercury’s eyes went wide. Staring past Nona at Yaxiu from afar, his gaze was brimming with shock and yearning. No wonder the First Scheme was so intricate. No wonder the Kingdom Ritual was so grandiose! This was actually a genuine ritual of resurrection—recasting the departed, reversing life and death! Among sorcerers, there existed a rather peculiar mindset: the weaker and more ignorant a sorcerer was, the simpler they believed resurrection to be. After all, they frequently saw people survive having their heads battered in as long as they were treated in time. To them, that was virtually no different from coming back to life, so how difficult could genuine resurrection really be? Only powerful sorcerers who had ventured deep into the upper tiers of the Void Realm, pored over countless manuals, and learned of the deeds of predecessors truly understood: resurrection was the greatest miracle in this world. The Mercury clan were all fragile “glass people.” Sunlight, table corners, building blocks on the floor... A Mercury was prone to injury from their surroundings from childhood to adulthood. Therefore, after becoming sorcerers, almost all of them took up the water sorcery faction as a secondary path to become healers, and Renn was no exception. Years ago, when Renn’s younger sister’s soul departed for the Time Continent, Renn, a master of healing miracles, had also tried to find a way to bring his loved one back to life. Yet he soon realized that healing and resurrection were two fundamentally different matters. Keeping the dying alive was effortless, but raising the dead was harder than ascending the heavens! The death of a sorcerer generally comprised three stages: physical demise—shattered hearts, blown-off heads, or even bodies pulverized to dust all fell within this scope, and this was the sole stage in which a healing sorcerer could intervene; descent of the soul—drawn by gravity, the sorcerer’s soul plummeted into the Six-Layer Hell, where Hell washed away all superfluous “impurities”; assimilation into the Void Realm—after being baptized by Hell, the soul settled into a corner of the Void Realm, becoming a source of knowledge for the next generation of sorcerers. If a sorcerer was thoroughly dead, it meant they had already become a sorcerer projection. Reviving them required three things: locating their spirit body in the Void Realm, reclaiming their heartbeat from Hell, and forging a physical body in reality. The final step was crucial: if the soul and body were incompatible, the soul would inevitably detach and plummet sooner or later. Take Annan’s Ancestor Summoning, for instance: after lingering in reality for a brief period, her ancestors were bound to return to the Void Realm. Unmatched souls and bodies suffered wear and tear; once the wear accumulated to a certain degree, the body could no longer contain the soul. Still, one could take shortcuts when it came to the body—such as patching up the original corpse. But in the First Scheme, it was clearly a direct recasting, weaving a brand-new, seamlessly fitted vessel out of nothing! Yet for any sorcerer, to say nothing of forging a new body, merely tracking down the spirit body and retrieving the heartbeat was completely impossible. This was unequivocally a magnificent domain that only a god could step into! By comparison, the rituals of the previous nine schemes seemed exceedingly cost-effective. Temporarily summoning ancestors to possess oneself, inheriting knowledge of predecessors, obtaining power of the past... Though the cost was immense, it was not genuine resurrection after all, so the ritual procedures were relatively simple—Renn and the others could each complete them on their own. And what of the final, First Scheme? Years of planning, a workforce numbering hundreds of thousands or even millions, and a risk factor so high that calling it “courting death” seemed like a mild euphemism. No matter how one looked at it, the mastermind could only be described as a madman! If they weren’t mad, why would they join the Four Pillar Cult? If they weren’t mad, why would they conceive and execute such a scheme? If they weren’t mad— Why would they create a shadow kingdom just to resurrect a single man? Thus, the gazes everyone directed at Yaxiu were profoundly conflicted. They wished he would drop dead immediately, yet also hoped he wouldn’t die just yet. After all, Yaxiu had appeared on three consecutive boards, and whether he was dead or alive, he would inevitably bring severe calamity upon the Gospel... He truly was a living bane! Among the sorcerers, “Weeping Red Hat” Cleios felt the most conflicted. She knew that Harvey, Igola, and Yaxiu had all been casually picked up by Annan. When Annan signed contracts with them, Cleios had been right there on the scene, standing by as armed intimidation. It had practically been witnessing a historic moment. She had assumed it was merely an unmemorable routine affair; compared to those few outsiders, the escaped Everlasting Presence had troubled her far more. Yet the world was so bizarre: the destitute outsiders turned out to be the culprits rocking the Gospel to its foundation, while the swaggering cult ringleader was who-knew-where, struggling to get a startup off the ground. Cleios was now even beginning to suspect whether Annan had lied to her: Did you really pick the three of them up in the wild? Didn’t you specially scout out honor students from some Evil God Academy, Demon Den, or World-Ending Summer Camp? Feeling practically stung by everyone’s stares, Yaxiu instinctively wrapped his arms around Nona’s waist, ready to flee at any moment while carrying his young aunt. Suddenly, however, he looked back at Annan and asked out of the blue, “Did you really not conspire with Igola?” “I didn’t.” Annan’s expression took on an amused look. “What are you guessing?” “Because of Miss, our futures are all flawed outcomes meant to deceive the Gospel. But flawed as they are, in the Gospel’s own logical calculations, these flawed results definitely wouldn’t contain internal contradictions or character breaks,” Yaxiu said. “Judging by the other families that appeared in the projections, on the Scheme Board there is at least the Consortium family; the families on the Art Board are all struggling to hang on; and on the Family Board, only the Necromancy family remains... In other words, their chronological order is Scheme Board, Art Board, then Family Board.” Annan nodded. After watching the future boards, everyone had a fair grasp of that. “On the Family Board, Harvey said he obtained the location of the Angel of Necromancy’s tomb from the Berdette clan, but he isn’t someone good at gathering intelligence, and his social circle doesn’t include the living.” Yaxiu glanced at Alice sitting on the coffin; Alice nodded vigorously in agreement. “In other words, the intel that ‘Berdette possesses an angel’s legacy’ must have been given to him by someone else.” Yaxiu turned his head toward Berdette’s main residence. “Yet there are only two people in the Berdette family—an elder sister and a younger sister. There’s no way they would betray family secrets... But now, the Berdette family has one more person. And on the Scheme Board, that person was already judged by the Gospel as someone who would never abandon us.” “‘Would never abandon us’...” Annan chewed over the words, then suddenly smiled. “Perhaps.” “Then you—” “I didn’t lie. Eye contact, body language, direct conversation, written messages... Igola and I exchanged no intelligence whatsoever.” Annan shrugged. “We didn’t conspire. The only thing we have is a mutual understanding.” “What mutual understanding?” Annan didn’t answer, merely glancing down at Lisi. Lisi thought for a moment, peeled Yaxiu’s hands off Nona’s slender waist, and whispered into his ear: “Daddy, why did Auntie Annan bring us to Memphira in the first place?” Yaxiu froze. ... While Yaxiu and the others were chatting, the sorcerers also reached a consensus. “Sennheiser,” Renn said calmly, “apologies, but our terms must be modified. You may only take your daughter and the other redundant personnel. Yaxiu Heath and Archibald Harvey must be placed under the custody of separate factions.” Although the Gospel had not explicitly stated what harm Yaxiu posed up to this point, his historic role in tying together three future calamity boards meant no one dared treat him as a worthless, zero-star waste. In other words, the mere fact that he drew breath was already the greatest blasphemy against the Gospel. He had to be placed under strict surveillance and solitary confinement! To use a card game analogy: if Yaxiu were a card, playing him alone yielded little effect, but pairing him with any one of Annan Dolan, Archibald Harvey, or Rust Crow produced a game-winning bomb! Now everyone saw the grave threat Yaxiu posed. Even Cleios, who shared deep ties with Annan, no longer showed sentimentality and tacitly consented to Renn’s harsh terms. What was more, Renn, Zuvendas, and Aina had all agreed that Cleios would personally hand Yaxiu Heath over to the state! Even strictly from a standpoint of self-interest, Cleios could not allow Qinna to take Yaxiu away! The sorcerers slowly took to the air, encircling Qinna and the others from all directions! Seeing how bad things looked, Yaxiu was about to step back when Nona caught his right hand. Annan soothed little Banjie, who was crouching with his head clutched in his hands, while watching Qinna’s back. Qinna looked up at the four Sanctuary Sorcerers in the air, a hint of weakness showing in her voice for the first time: “Can’t we discuss this further?” “Hand over Heath and Harvey,” Zuvendas said, “and we can take our time discussing it.” The female elf matriarch exhaled. “Is that so... Then I understand.” “I only protect my compatriots. My kin.” Lisi clung tightly to Yaxiu, staring down at her hand mirror, almost crying in her anxiety. “Therefore,” Qinna slowly drew both her guns, her tone solemn and steady, “I will never let you take Annan Sennheiser and Yaxiu Sennheiser.” “I am very sorry,” Renn said. “It is you who leaves us no choice.” Alice blinked, reaching out to pat the coffin lid in an attempt to draw attention—What about us? Just as the tension reached a boiling point, the Book of Gospel finally popped up the rest of the information for first place on the Scheme Board: “Scheme Board #1: Yaxiu’s Kingdom Resurrection Ritual” “Overview: In order to resurrect Yaxiu Heath, Four Pillar Cult leader Igola Bogin initiated the Kingdom Resurrection Ritual on April 10, 1678, building upon the foundation of the previous nine completed rituals.” “Mastermind: Igola Bogin.” Everyone merely glanced at it, committed Rust Crow’s name to memory, and paid it no further mind. Only Evalyn, watching from a distance, snapped entirely out of her daze upon seeing Igola’s name. In a flash of realization, Evalyn recognized that she was currently entangled in a scheme not yet exposed by the Gospel. She immediately made the right call—activating the fireworks apparatus in the front garden and using the dazzling fireworks display to draw everyone’s attention! “Everyone, I—” *Thump!* With the impact of an unseen, muffled hammer, not only did the posturing sorcerers plummet from the sky, but Evalyn’s sole chance to exonerate herself was choked back down her throat. Simultaneously, the entirety of Berdette Manor began to glow. Hell, forest sea, mountain peaks, grassland, main manor... statues everywhere lit up as a faint, ethereal river of azure light streamed in from Memphira, continuously flowing into the statues scattered across the manor. In the blink of an eye, only Yaxiu and his companions remained standing. Everyone else, including Qinna, collapsed to the ground, their bodies trembling faintly, completely immobilized like dolls at anyone’s mercy. Yet Yaxiu and the others didn’t dare make any reckless moves either. After all, from their perspective, Evalyn had stepped up and called out to protect them, and then everyone collapsed—she was truly so sweet, they could cry! Just then, Yaxiu noticed a new message in his Book of Gospel. The sender was... Rust Crow? After reading the message, a hesitant look crossed Yaxiu’s face, but he quickly took a deep breath, gathered his courage, and took the initiative to stride into the center of the grounds. He surveyed his surroundings, met everyone’s panicked eyes, and put on a wicked, arrogant grin: “Sorry, but I’m actually Miss Evalyn’s dog. Offending me is offending Berdette... You’re all finished!”