Miss Witch's Forbidden Book Secret

Among the tombstone-like mountains, spirits also revealed their spirituality, stirring restlessly towards the east.

If you fly at an altitude of several thousand meters, you can see the edge of the eastern ice field. The white snow gradually turns into dark and green, moss, lichen and various shrubs cover the swamp, and on the rugged rocky hills stand watchtowers more than ten meters high, as well as tent camps and houses built from mud and stone.

This is the temporary outpost that the Empire built on the Great Icefield.

But Avina doesn't care about this place.

The prophet she was concerned with was located 30 kilometers north of the outpost, where he was surveying the vast ice sheet.

The sky was filled with swirling cold mist, and the multi-headed giant serpent Palam emerged and flew down beside Avina. The hissing and screeching of its heads gave Avina a headache.

Param's cold, vertical pupils swept over Avina as he said:

"Sulph! Dongya and Merlin have arrived. When do you plan to resolve the turbulence and take them back to the deep sea?"

Avina laughed and said, "Palam, you want to go back to the deep sea?"

"..."

"Or do those high-sequence demons I summoned want to return to the deep sea?"

"..."

"Look, this is it. So many extraordinary beings, it's a rare feast. During this time, many of your spirits have tasted the sweetness of victory by attacking those barbarians and imperialists. Not to mention that both Sequence Twos have come this time."

"...Sulph, were you really human?"

Avina shrugged and said, "Don't you spirits also kill each other? How come I've never seen humans kill each other?"

Param said quietly, "Spirits killing each other is because some spirits have a killing instinct. I've never heard of you having a killing instinct—are you a witch?"

"Witch?"

Avina smiled and wrinkled her nose, saying, "I'm an angel!"

Param shook his head, ignoring her, and hissed, "What about Merlin and Bahram?"

"I'll deal with Dongya."

“Then we’ll leave the Sorcerer Supreme to you, Miss Angel.”

The giant snake stared intently at the distant outpost camp, its eyes gleaming with a crazed greed.

They were indeed a bit weak to lose a nine-on-five fight last time, but the main reason was the curse of the Great Icefield. The curse of the outer tundra can almost make spirits below Sequence 7 lose their combat power, and the power of spirits below Sequence 5 in the Icefield can be suppressed by almost half.

As for the extreme cold regions—even Palam, who was once very spiritual, could not utilize even seven-tenths of his abilities.

The prophets, on the other hand, were well-prepared. They not only used various rituals to adapt to and weaken the curse of the Great Icefield on themselves, but also made ample preparations against spirit attacks.

The last battle took place in the extreme cold region.

Of course, Avina and Palam's confidence in confronting the Prophet and even defeating Dongya and the Sorcerer Supreme was not based on some absurd theory that defeated armies are bound to be pitiful and pitiful armies are bound to be victorious.

Instead, after the spirit riots drove out the original prophet, the prophet had already suffered a major strategic defeat.

The battlefield has shifted from the frigid zone to the tundra, and many balances of power have been reversed.

.............

.............

Meanwhile, on the vast ice plain not far away, behind the prophets who were clad in white robes and trekking through the snow and ice, rows of alchemical puppets were carrying cubic-cubic-meter wooden boxes in pairs, following closely behind.

Dongya, with her short brown hair and black eyes, walked at the front. She was wrapped in a wool shawl to keep warm, and a round-necked long-sleeved sweater covered her chin.

Dongya took a few steps, and the world in front of her was like a video with messed-up editing. Sometimes it played the plot ten minutes later, sometimes it rewound to half an hour ago, sometimes it was like pressing the fast forward button to speed up three times, and sometimes it was like pressing the pause button, and the whole world stopped.

In the instant she stopped, countless slices of the future simultaneously covered the world she saw: the boxes carrying ritual materials and star maps carried by the alchemical dolls, the already set-up projection ritual, the attacked projection ritual, the prophet moving forward with determination, the prophet suffering heavy casualties, the remains of spirits, her corpse, and Avina's sorrowful cries appeared at the same time.

The whole world was in chaos, as if it were filled with all sorts of things, in complete disarray.

Click.

Dongya blinked, and time continued to flow.

At the very front of this slowly moving serpent, Dongya raised her hand in a gesture.

"No need to go any deeper, and no need to retreat. The intensity of the curse here is just right. Let's set up camp here and have the Imperials help us advance."

"Then... wait for the prey to take the bait."

Chapter 514 The Transformation Ceremony of the Sulph School (Part 1)

Tia was completely unaware of the turmoil on the Great Icefield. She only learned about the escalating spiritual disturbances on the Great Icefield from Rashina after returning to Westerburg.

Upon arriving at Westerburg, Rashina heard that the Iris Flower support force and Tia had arrived, so she immediately led several researchers to the castle to greet them.

But you won't believe it until you see it, and what you find will shock you.

In the blink of an eye, she saw Tia leading a noble young lady from outside the castle—she had long, white-streaked hair, wore a small top hat and a gradient dark blue trailing dress, and looked like a fairy from an opera, with watery eyes like two teardrop sapphires.

—Frinna Bonaparte, the Great Guardian.

The moment Rasina saw Eleanor, she recognized this once-powerful figure from the Iris Party. Though a homebody, she enjoyed reading and still kept up with the newspapers.

Tia was tidying up Eleanor's clothes and hair, which had been rather impolite as she had slept on her lap the whole way, with a mixture of disdain and affection.

Rashina's expression faltered slightly. She pulled Tia into a side hall and asked, "Tia! What's wrong with you? You are a noble saint, and no one can demand that you be chaste. But how can you be so intimate with Iris's Funina after only two days away? If you go away for a week, won't you have another lover? If you go away for a year, you'll have forty-eight more lovers? Were you an octopus in your past life? Octopuses only have eight arms!"

Tia sighed helplessly and whispered, "Aunt Rashina, that's Eleanor."

"I don't go out much, don't lie to me!"

“Why would I lie to you? It’s a doll—it’s complicated, and I’m having a headache about it too. I don’t know how to send Eleanor back. Destroying the doll to keep Eleanor away won’t work either; the doll is very important to Iris. It wouldn’t be good if their people found out their Great Guardian was gone.”

Tia removed the parts of Eleanor's story that Rashina shouldn't know, and explained the whole story clearly.

Rashina exclaimed in surprise, "Who allowed Eleanor to possess this doll? Wasn't Eleanor always in Silver Castle? How did she come into contact with the Iris Flower Doll and become the Great Guardian? Surely some witch couldn't have bewitched her to do this?!"

Tia: "......"

Hard to say.

However, the witch can't reveal the truth right now; after all, she can't very well say that the so-called Fernina Bonaparte never existed in the first place, and was just a shared account for a small group of four...

Tia said tactfully, "Who knows? In this world, what's so bad about witches? Maybe you'll even see angels."

"But before that, I need to go to the ceremonial room. Is my ceremonial platform in good condition?"

Rashina said with a headache, "Let's not talk about the ritual platform for now. Ugh, everything's been so troublesome ever since you came to the Great Icefield!"

I'm really sorry...

Tia silently apologized, looked around, and was about to run away.

Rashina asked, "Wait, should we ask Ms. Bernice for help so she can...?"

"I'm going to the ceremony room now!"

Before Rashina could finish speaking, the girl pushed open the door and vanished instantly.

................

................

The ceremony room was on the third floor, not far from Bernice's room. Fortunately, Ms. Bernice was currently negotiating with the Iris Flower Man and had no time for anything else.

The entire workshop was filled with alchemy equipment: philosopher eggs, reaction vessels, crucibles, heating furnaces, distillation apparatus... everything was there.

Anne is mixing cold medicine here; she is one of the few extraordinary individuals in Westerburg who has mastered the art of forging potions.

There are only four paths to potion-making: Earth Oak, Alchemy, the Holy Grail, and Hammersmithing, but the potions produced by each path are different.

Druid potions are evolved and enhanced versions of herbal concoctions. Alchemist potions are miracle items like philosopher's stones. Grail potions are like magical holy water that says, "Never mind whether it can cure you or not, I figure the Father of All Things will bless you if you drink it."

The potions made by the forging hammer are essentially the same as modern pharmaceuticals made after the development of Earth's chemical industry, extracting or artificially synthesizing active ingredients to mass-produce drugs. However, unlike modern pharmaceuticals, the extraordinary individuals who forge hammers can truly bypass chemical synthesis using various equipment and directly shape the potions by hand in one step.

The drawbacks are also obvious. It works well for common illnesses, but it's not very effective for injuries to extraordinary individuals. For example, when Tia is injured and near death, both Eleanor's herbal potions and Vera's holy water are more effective than conventional medicine.

However, because the drugs can be mass-produced to a certain extent, Ansu has not been expensive for ordinary people in recent years. In the early years, Tia did not have much market space to sell herbal medicines and could only make money by selling beauty and aphrodisiac health products, commonly known as selling fake drugs.

That's just idle talk, let's leave it at that.

Several rituals inside the philosopher's egg took effect, emitting several circles of white light. Soon, the raw materials were transformed into granular compound drugs that relieved fever, pain, inflammation, and cough under the influence of the rituals.

The Great Ice Age is extremely cold, and these kinds of drugs need to be processed almost every day.

When Tia arrived at the ceremony room, she saw that Anne had finished her work. She briefly told Anne about Eleanor, and Anne was also surprised to hear this.

But Eleanor had done this kind of thing more than once or twice, so the two girls didn't react much, making a few complaints and continuing what they were doing.

Tia said, "I need Annie's help later. I just caught a spirit."

"A spirit? A transformation ritual? Is there a new idea?"

Anne still remembered the several proposals that Tia had mentioned, especially the last one, which added a "threshold" for spirit beings.

Tia pondered, "There is a possibility, but I'm not sure if it will be successful."

Tia then instructed Annie to set up the maze locks on the altar. Among the maze locks was only a Sequence Four spatial lock ritual, but Annie only had a Sequence Five, and Vera, as a nun, was currently in the castle healing the wounded and performing sanctuary rituals and blessings on the extraordinary beings who went out to explore—so she hadn't sent any over yet.

She struggled to control it on her own, and only felt better after drinking two bottles of amplifying elixirs.

Tia then re-carved the ritual array on the mithril plating of the ritual platform. The original ritual array only reached a maximum depth of 35000m, which was some distance from her sanctuary. This time, she directly increased the depth to 70000m.

The five-centimeter-thick coating was almost etched through.

At depths of several thousand meters, the coating might not withstand the pollution from the ceremony.

Restarting the ritual, Tia anchored her sanctuary to the deep-sea coordinates and immediately pulled the Cyclops Gessar ashore.

Now, the Cyclops had completely lost its previous terrifying appearance. It looked like a fluffy ball with a vertical eye in front of it, but its eyes were vacant and its pupils were unfocused, indicating that it was unconscious.

Overall, it resembles a hairy glass marble.

This is Tia's complete transformation, but she hasn't yet used the ritual to artificially transform the spirituality into flesh and blood.

Annie thought that Tia would do what she had done before: first transform the scattered spirituality of the furball into flesh and blood, and then use the spatial lock to create a barrier between the material world and the deep sea, thereby severing the connection between the spirit and the deep sea.

But the next moment.

Tia squatted down and opened the briefcase with a clatter, taking out four scrolls cast in gold.

Chapter 515 The Transformation Ceremony of the Sulph School (Part 2)

"Is this... the ritual of the King's Path?"

Anne saw Tia take out several scrolls of golden pages from her suitcase, took a closer look, and seemed to realize what they were, but couldn't recognize them as ritual texts.

Tia said, "It was borrowed from Evernight Fortress. It's a scroll of laws given to me by the Sage Alexander of Solomon City."

"what?"

Anne didn't understand what Tia was going to do.

Tia picked up a golden scroll, laid it out on the side of the ritual altar, and stuck it there. In a serious voice, she said to her father, "Annini, only magic can defeat magic!"

That's absolutely right.

For Tia, in the realm of the extraordinary, the "threshold" is a very mysterious thing.

Although the deep sea, knowledge, and memories in the supernatural realm have an idealistic and a priori flavor, and rituals and alchemy are all black boxes, they are still too materialistic compared to the "threshold".

At least these things still have objective physical existence that can be observed and speculated upon.

Humans have five senses because they have eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and brain; they can walk because they have muscles, bones, and brain.

The “threshold” is formed by the prophet’s statement in the number 1 that “the vision of mortals must have its limits, and the depths of the depths are the limits of the boundaries” and the Holy Grail’s statement in the number 2 that “the Holy Grail provides protection to the masses, and the unreachable must not be touched.”

Tia could only look on with a puzzled expression.

—Who knows how these human traits came about? Tia had previously attended Saint Laurent's debate, where the scholars from Oakwood generally liked to cite evolutionary theory, saying it was the result of survival of the fittest, not that humans were born with these abilities, but rather that those with these abilities survived.

As for those who didn't survive? They probably became spirits.

But why are humans born with these abilities? The druids could only stammer, and in the end, the priests were completely stumped.

Indeed, it is another great creation of the Father of all things.

Therefore, when faced with this kind of metaphysical question, Tia felt that her previous thinking was completely wrong.

One should not try to modify the structure of the soul or create barriers in reality.

Instead, we should use magic to defeat magic.