"More tulips?"
Inside the office, Trozan saw Sonia come in holding a bouquet of tulips and reached out to take them. Sonia said with a smile, "One of your students asked me to pass them along to you."
"How magical. Not a single student gave me tulips over the past few years, yet ever since you showed your face in the Meteor Tribulation, someone asks you to deliver flowers to me every few days." As a Sword Saint, Trozan loved delivering plain truths with cutting sarcasm, just like her signature miracle, 'Secret Blade of the Hidden Hand.'
"Oh, Sister Trozan~" Sonia wrapped her arms around Trozan from behind, acting coy. "I'm your student too. Couldn't they be from me?"
This year, Trozan had been researching a new swordsmanship miracle that happened to require flower petals as material. When Sonia was studying under her a few months ago, she noticed that Trozan replaced her tulips every few days, and thus learned what flower her professor favored.
When Adele wanted to sell information on Sonia's preferences for some pocket money, Sonia claimed she loved tulips, only to turn around and give them all to Trozan. That way, the suitors who sent flowers weren't embarrassed, Trozan got practical benefits, and a world where nobody was hurt was born.
Trozan naturally knew this, but she didn't refuse either; she genuinely liked tulips. Perhaps because it contrasted too sharply with her appearance and personality, Sonia remained the only one privy to this little secret.
As for what flower the village girl liked herself... a fondness for flowers was clearly an affected indulgence of city folk. Every spring back home, she could see the hills outside her small town ablaze with crimson and vibrant blossoms, and she had grown sick of it long ago. Unless the Watcher could conjure a bouquet out of the Void Realm, flowers stirred nothing in her.
Unable to handle her clingy affection, Trozan changed the subject: "Do you know where I was called to this morning?"
Sonia sat down and asked curiously, "Where?"
Trozan wasn't a terrible professor who looked for any excuse to exploit her apprentices. This was the first time she had asked Sonia to substitute for her, so an urgent matter had obviously arisen. Judging by her tone, it seemed to have been ordered by higher authorities.
"Kilian was severely injured." Trozan's tone carried a hint of gloating. "The Church activated the Stars Healing Array for him, and I was called over to supply sorcery power. If you weren't merely a Sword Baron, you'd certainly have been called as well."
Sonia hesitated for a good while before finally retrieving the name from her memory: "The president of Truth University, honorary advisor to the Gryphon Company, lifelong honorary sorcerer of the Star Pole Hall, Viscount Kalia, Master Kilian Morgan the King of Alchemy?"
"Are you in the habit of reciting an entire string of titles before someone's name? Miss Sonia Servier, second-year student of Sword Flower University, Meteor Tribulation champion, most-voted campus goddess of this year's masquerade ball, and Paw-Extending Sword Saint?" Trozan scoffed sarcastically.
Sonia couldn't help but be shocked. The King of Alchemy was the most renowned sorcerer of the past century, a man whose life was truly legendary. In a remote little town like her birthplace, the two celebrities the villagers knew best were Daidalos and Kilian the King of Alchemy!
There were far too many legends about the King of Alchemy to recount, as evidenced by his sorcery faction alone: the alchemy faction he specialized in had always excelled at creation rather than combat, yet in his hands it became a lethal weapon of war. His iconic miracle, 'Turning Stone to Gold,' inspired both yearning and dread. With this technique, he had once completely sealed off a five-tier Abyss, turning all the monsters and even the ground into gold. Even today, people still found gold left behind by his miracle in that Abyss.
As for why Trozan had such a poor attitude toward Kilian, it wasn't because of any grudge; rather, Trozan had a poor attitude toward everyone. She was inherently spiteful and sharp-tongued, never bothering to exercise emotional intelligence. Even if she offended a Legendary Sorcerer, was that Legendary Sorcerer going to beat her up? No. So what did she have to fear?
Although she seemed very close to Sonia now, had Sonia not become a Sanctuary Sorcerer and reached a comparable level of strength, Trozan would never have allowed her into her personal space and would have treated her as nothing more than a disciple at most. It was also precisely because Sonia was already a Sanctuary Sorcerer that Trozan would willingly gossip with her about Legendary Sorcerers.
The village girl didn't find her professor sister's disposition unappealing. People had their own ingrained flaws to begin with, and a minor defect like Trozan's—being sharp-tongued without causing actual harm to society—was already pretty good. Besides, when it came to simple and pure little rascals like Trozan, Lois, and Adele, Sonia actually found them quite easy to get along with.
"How could he have gotten hurt?" Sonia asked, puzzled. "Setting aside his Sanctuary, I saw the sorcerer survivability rankings in the Star Sorcerer Gazette—his vitality and defense rank in the top five among all sorcerers in the Starry Kingdom!"
"The chief editor of the Star Gazette is merely a Gold Sorcerer, which tells you just how unreliable that paper is," Trozan said. "Still, Kilian's defensive miracle, 'Dark Gold Giant,' genuinely ranks among the top five in the Starry Kingdom. It can hold its own against any Legendary assault... if it's only at the Legendary level, that is."
Sonia was taken aback. "Could it be Demigod-level?"
"It's god-level!" Trozan laughed. "When he was just fifty meters away from the summit of Ruby Mountain, he was corroded by the curse leaking from the Heaven of a Thousand Wishes! More than half his soul dissolved, and when he returned to reality, the only thing he could move was his eyelids!"
Fifty meters!
Sonia was stunned. Just yesterday in the Void Realm, they had barely broken through the fiftieth trial, yet the god's inheritance atop Ruby Mountain was already down to the final fifty-meter sprint?
Yet compared to that, another term captured more of her attention.
"The curse of the Heaven of a Thousand Wishes?"
Trozan arranged the tulips into a vase and said, "Every heavenly kingdom has its own curse. The longer a heavenly kingdom exists, the more intense its curses become, and the greater their variety. The curse Kilian suffered was allegedly merely a tiny trace of 'Boiling Blood Flies,' but it was enough to put him in agonizing torment. Who knows how many years it will take him to recover—the soul of a Legendary Sorcerer is notoriously hard to heal."
"A curse?" Sonia was thoroughly baffled. "Why would a heavenly kingdom have curses?"
"That brings us to the nature of a heavenly kingdom," Trozan said. "Simply put, gods must steal something from the Void Realm to sustain the existence of their heavenly kingdoms.
"Naturally, the Void Realm is not pleased when something is stolen from it, so it curses those thieves—unless they are willing to return what was stolen."
Gods, heavenly kingdoms, the Void Realm, thieves?
Moreover, this mechanism of stealing something from the Void Realm and thus being cursed by it gave Sonia a powerful sense of déjà vu.
"Why would a heavenly kingdom—"
"My dear student," Trozan interrupted her, "have you forgotten that your professor is merely a weak, ignorant Sanctuary Sorcerer?"
"I'm a Sanctuary Sorcerer too, but compared to you, Sister Trozan, I feel like an illiterate!" Sonia shook Trozan's arm with a pitiful look. "Tell me, please~"
"I don't know any more than that, so I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to, you genius student who nauseates people with false modesty." Trozan poked Sonia's forehead.
"Then how do you know all this, Sister?"
"Because you aren't the only one in this world who's had fortuitous encounters," Trozan said with an airy indifference. "Never underestimate any Sanctuary Sorcerer. Every Sanctuary and Legendary sorcerer had their time as the protagonist."
Sonia asked, "Sister, you seem to know a lot about 'Boiling Blood Flies'?"
"I just happen to know a little bit," Trozan said. "I ran into a Blood Moon sorcerer in the Distant Sky Realm who attacked me with a simplified version of this technique. As he attacked, he blabbered on about how this miracle originated from the divine miracle 'Boiling Blood Flies' created by the Blood Moon Ultimate Lord, and how even a speck of it would rapidly devour the soul and grow stronger... The moment he finished talking, I lopped off his head with a single slash."
Sonia found it strange. "Why would a divine miracle of the Blood Moon Ultimate Lord become the curse of a heavenly kingdom?"
"What follows is pure speculation without a shred of proof," Trozan said. "If sorcerers are the mightiest beings, and gods are the mightiest sorcerers, then an offensive divine miracle unleashed by a god...
"Wouldn't that be the most terrifying curse the Void Realm could possibly muster?"
Chapter 654