Miss Wang Weina, even your cousin won't do!

Then, he looked at the Duke of Normandy before him, a hint of confusion on his face, and asked:

"Although I understand some of it, I still don't understand. Why don't you tell me yourself, Mr. Normandy? What kind of audacity do you have to openly rebel against Aslan!"

"Absolutely not!"

The Duke of Normandy sat bolt upright, leaning forward almost to the point of touching Wayne's face. Even then, he wasn't satisfied and jumped up from his chair with a thud, loudly explaining:

"You must be Prince Wayne. I recognize you. I held you when you were little—no, I held you when you were little too. You must believe me, I absolutely do not intend to rebel. It's all my damned son's fault!"

The Duke of Normandy was truly panicked. He never expected Wayne to appear here, especially wearing the uniform of the Royal Military Academy. What did this mean? It meant that he, the Duke of Normandy, had recently surrounded the Royal Military Academy's convoy, intending to blow it up to lure out Heidi and Vincent—in fact, he had almost blown up Prince Wayne!

Then he tried to use the nobles to control Lentinium, which almost escalated into kidnapping the royal family! And it was the royal family that was most likely to plead for him after the rebellion failed!

This has escalated significantly; it's no longer something that can be resolved by simply eating a lamp. The Duke of Normandy is no longer inclined to protect his son. One son is nothing to the vast Norman family; even if one dies, there are plenty more. The most urgent task is to explain things to Wayne and calm him down.

The survival of the family is the top priority!

Clenching his teeth, the Duke of Normandy said:

"It's all because of my unfilial son, Earl Princeton. You know him; he used to hang out with you back in the day. It was that fellow who started the rebellion. I only sought out Earl Vincent to deal with some minor matters within the nobility; I had no intention of making such a big fuss!"

The Duke of Normandy's eyes darted around, and he blurted out a perfectly reasonable reason.

"The Earl of Princeton thought that I wouldn't pass the dukedom to him after my death. That guy was insatiable, so he had evil intentions. I was out at the time, how could I have known that he would launch this rebellion in my name?"

He looked at Wayne, giving him the most sincere look he could muster.

“Your Highness Wayne, I am your father’s loyal old subordinate. You should believe that I would not do such a treasonous thing.”

The most accurate way to lie is to be nine parts truth and one part falsehood. He genuinely hadn't expected Princeton to launch a rebellion, especially under his name. He did indeed come to Earl Vincent for some trivial matter among nobles—to ask for the daughter of the president of the literary association in a remote earldom. Wasn't that a trivial matter for a Grand Duke like him? As for the claim that he was a loyal subordinate of the King of the North and had held Wayne as a child, such attempts to establish connections were either true or false. Wayne's memories of the North were all very vague, so he couldn't remember clearly and it was not a reliable reference.

The only lie in his words was the reason the Earl of Princeton had instigated the rebellion. It wasn't out of fear that he wouldn't pass the title to him, but rather because it involved the exposure of the secret society, the Republican Aristocracy. The reason he gave Princeton this title was simply because it was a convenient and difficult-to-disprove name. With Heidi dead and the evidence gone, this reason was virtually impossible to expose.

If it were the former Wayne, seeing the Duke of Normandy in such a tearful state, coupled with such a ridiculous yet perfectly reasonable reason, he should have followed the Duke of Normandy's script and believed him.

But the current Wayne isn't so easily fooled.

Moreover, Wayne always felt that this guy was implying something.

Fearing he wouldn't get the throne, so he rebelled and ruined his father? Who are you implying? Why don't you just give me your ID number? Does this person know anything about the death of the King of the North?

Wayne sneered. "You've chosen the wrong path." Regardless of whether the Duke of Normandy's rebellion was voluntary or a result of being tricked, Wayne had his eye on him.

"But as far as I know, this doesn't seem to be your reason for rebelling."

Wayne kicked the table, using the force to move his chair back a few steps, avoiding the Duke of Normandy's intense gaze, and said coldly:

"As far as I know, what did a young girl manage to get against you?"

The Duke of Normandy clicked his tongue slightly and shook his head, saying:

"Absolutely not. I act with integrity and honesty; how could I possibly have been caught red-handed!"

"Oh?" Wayne raised the corners of his mouth, looking at the Duke of Normandy's stubbornness, and couldn't help but find it a little funny.

He probably still thinks that his plan to assassinate Heidi has succeeded, and that the evidence and the witness have disappeared from the world.

Unfortunately, it was just a little short.

Wayne didn't speak, but turned to look at the unicorn beside him and clapped his hands. The unicorn nodded knowingly, then turned and left the interrogation room.

The Duke of Normandy felt a chill run down his spine; was he about to be tortured?

With Wayne here, he is undoubtedly a true member of the royal family and has the right to use torture on himself, the duke. That unicorn that went out just now, was it to retrieve the instruments of torture?

Taking a deep breath, the Duke of Normandy looked at Wayne seriously and said:

“Your Highness Wayne, whether you believe me or not, this is the only answer I will give: it is all due to my poor parenting, and has nothing to do with the Normandy family, nor with the baseless accusations you have made. No matter what kind of torture you inflict on me, I will not change my testimony.”

Wayne shrugged indifferently: "Still being stubborn at a time like this? Then I'll be wielding the whip of utter defeat upon you!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the basement door behind him opened again, and the unicorn led the girl with short pink hair, Felin, into the dimly lit basement.

Step by step, the lamplight gradually illuminated the newcomer's figure from below. The Duke of Normandy's prepared rebuttal was instantly choked in his throat. His mouth gaped open, and his eyes began to glaze over, as if the girl whose face was half-illuminated by the lamplight was a ghost or demon from hell, leaving him speechless with terror.

Heidi placed her right hand on her chest, lifted her long skirt with her left, and bowed slightly, performing a standard noble greeting. She then replicated this greeting exactly for the Duke of Normandy, and said softly:

“Witness, Heidi Thomson, greets Your Highness, Grand Duke.”

Chapter Sixty-Two: Give Me the Notes

"Heidi...Heidi..."

The Duke of Normandy stared blankly at the girl before him, then suddenly reached out to touch Heidi's face. But unsurprisingly, he was coldly stopped by the unicorn standing to the side.

"Criminals, please do not act recklessly."

"I am not a criminal!"

The Duke of Normandy snapped back to reality and loudly retorted, but his confidence was noticeably weaker than before. His gaze was fixed on Heidi, a look as fierce as that of a predatory beast, which made the young girl, Felin, take a step back in fear. But she quickly straightened her back, took another step forward, and glared back with a resolute look.

"I am the Grand Duke of Normandy."

As if to extinguish the last shred of hope in the Duke of Normandy's heart, Heidi spoke earnestly, enunciating each word clearly. The voice was identical, the appearance identical; the Duke of Normandy could no longer deceive himself. The person before him was not an illusion; she was Heidi Thomson.

"But...why?"

The Duke of Normandy murmured, and Wayne waved his hand, gesturing for Heidi to step back slightly. He then crossed his fingers into a pyramid shape and smiled.

"Are you surprised? Miss Heidi not only wasn't killed by the explosion on the mountain road as you imagined, but she also appeared here unharmed?"

The Duke of Normandy paused slightly, as if he understood something, and asked:

"You saved him?"

While Wayne didn't seem to care much about the lack of honorifics, the furrowed brows of the interrogation expert Unicorn and the psychologically savvy Ernest slowly relaxed. This indicated that the Duke of Normandy was under immense psychological pressure, to the point that he no longer had the leisure to concern himself with such trivial etiquette under the current circumstances.

This was precisely what shocked them. Ernest, a former comrade-in-arms who had fought alongside the Duke of Normandy, knew perfectly well that this Grand Duke, who had been the deputy commander of the Northern Army before Ernest's arrival, was no ordinary man; his mental fortitude matched his military prowess. Yet, Wayne had indeed shaken Ernest's mental defenses with three consecutive "surprises" upon his arrival, a truly astonishing feat. The Unicorn also felt a pang of regret; if Wayne hadn't been a member of the Aslan royal family, they would certainly have tried their best to recruit such an interrogation talent into the Clock Tower's intelligence organization, and he would undoubtedly have become a powerful figure in Victoria's shadow in the future.

Recalling the Duke of Normandy's confident and composed demeanor just minutes before, and comparing it to his current obviously feigned composure, Winster and Ernest couldn't help but chuckle. In just a few short minutes, His Highness Wayne had precisely seized upon the Duke of Normandy's weakness, delivering a crushing blow at his most triumphant moment.

As His Highness Wayne said, he lashed out at the Duke of Normandy with what he called the lash of utter defeat. The word "lash" is the most fitting way to describe His Highness Wayne's interrogation method, which was painful but not fatal, and more humiliating than killing the enemy.

For a unicorn who reveres torture and forced confessions, this method, which prioritizes aesthetics over practicality, is perhaps one of Prince Wayne's perverse tastes.

Wayne nodded:

“My men saved him.”

There is absolutely no doubt that Surtr and Mudrock are Wayne's men.

But to the Duke of Normandy, Wayne's relaxed expression and these words were a reminder that he had seen through Wayne's scheme long ago, and that Heidi had been under his protection from the very beginning.

No wonder, no wonder the Sarkaz mercenaries he hired always encountered unexpected events during their operations.

He glanced knowingly at the crowd and, sure enough, spotted the green-haired figure in the security guard uniform. His mood plummeted even further.

The Sarkaz mercenaries' plan to lure out Count Vincent using fanged beasts was flawed, but it "unexpectedly" encountered a swift and decisive attack from the manor's security guards. The mere beasts were instantly turned into fertilizer. The Duke of Normandy initially thought it was bad luck, that Count Vincent had foolishly hired a powerful security guard. Now it seems, as expected, that the guard was someone Wayne had already arranged. Otherwise, how could a mere servant have entered the place where he, the Duke, was being interrogated?

He recalled the battle scene he had witnessed on the cliff that shattered the mountain path. Searching through the crowd, he indeed spotted the figure standing guard at the distant gate, wearing a straw hat and a raincoat. Although there were slight differences in build, that unique attire could not be a coincidence; it belonged to one of the two sides that had triggered the mountain-shattering battle on the mountain path.

The Duke of Normandy assured him that he had never seen such a person or force in the North, and the fact that he was standing there so openly meant that he was also one of Wayne's men.

A faint sense of despair began to permeate the Duke of Normandy's heart. The feeling of helplessness—that he had been outmaneuvered from the very beginning and that he might not have even realized the truth if Wayne hadn't explained it to him—made even this once-renowned veteran of the battlefield feel a chill run down his spine.

He raised his head, looked at Wayne, and asked with his last glimmer of hope:

"That notebook too..."

Wayne raised an eyebrow.

What notes?

He turned his head to look at Heidi, a guess forming in his mind.

This notebook is probably the evidence that Heidi said forced the Duke of Normandy to resort to any means necessary, both overt and covert, to eliminate all those who knew about his rebellion.

But... it's just a notebook? Wayne had expected something like photos of the transaction or recordings of discussions about the rebellion—more direct and harder to forge evidence. A notebook is handwritten, and handwritten things are easily imitated by experts, greatly reducing its credibility.

The Duke of Normandy, a shrewd man, couldn't possibly have overlooked this. Why then does he seem completely unskeptical of the notebook's authenticity?

Wayne gazed at Heidi; only this young lady could give him the answer.

"Heidi, give me the notebook."

He spoke softly and extended his hand.

Unexpectedly, Heidi hesitated. She covered her handbag, looked at Wayne, pursed her lips, and then glanced at Kal'tsit beside her.

Wayne raised an eyebrow in confusion and repeated:

"Give me your notes."

Kal'tsit, standing nearby, subtly nodded to Heidi. She didn't know what was written in the notebook, but she sensed that what was hidden in it, causing Heidi to hesitate at this moment, was probably related to Wayne. But there was no time for Heidi to hesitate; handing the notebook over to Wayne was the only right thing to do.

Heidi finally sighed softly, took the notebook out of her bag, and handed it to Wayne.

The notebook was covered with a thick layer of hoofed animal hide, which looked quite old, yet showed no signs of wear. This type of hide, raised by the Minoan hoofed people and specialized in clothing, was similar to the cowhide of Wayne's previous life, but had a better feel and was much more expensive. In Victoria, it was not uncommon to use this leather to make boots and other clothing, but Wayne had never seen a notebook with such a high-quality hide used as a cover before, outside of the royal private library.

Those who used this laptop were all either very rich or very powerful.

Wayne was slightly surprised, and opened the book in front of the Duke of Normandy, who was covering his face and sighing in utter despair.

The handwriting that caught his eye was both unfamiliar and familiar. Wayne squinted as he searched his memory and read the contents of the notes.

"May 8, 1085 (Terra calendar), sunny."

"The operation to exterminate the wandering alien species that suddenly appeared in the Northern Territory has finally come to an end today. With the experience from last time, our combat methods against these infected beasts have become much more sophisticated this time, and casualties have been kept to a minimum. Moreover, unexpectedly, I also received an unexpected bonus."

"In the monster's lair, the Legion unexpectedly rescued a little girl named Vaiva. She was badly injured and couldn't even say her own name. I plan to take her home."

"That way, when I leave home to go to war, Wayne will no longer be alone."

Wayne closed his notebook. Looking at the Duke of Normandy before him, he said coldly:

"What else do you have to say now?"

The Duke of Normandy silently lowered his head.

Winster stepped forward and took over Wayne's position. His Highness Wayne's mission was complete. Unexpectedly, he hadn't used royal power to torture the Duke of Normandy, but the result was still perfect. The rest was up to them. Winster had plenty of experience in extracting the most valuable information from a near-desperate person.

Wayne nodded and made way for him.

He glanced at Heidi, then put the notebook back in his pocket. Frankly, the short passage he had just read contained no information about the reasons for the Duke of Normandy's rebellion. His final interrogation was merely an impromptu attempt at bravado, thankfully without backfiring.

But this does not mean that Wayne lost interest in the notebook; on the contrary, his interest in it greatly increased.