VAP - Chapter 50
Chapter 50: The Supreme Sage Hopelessly Obsessed with Beauty (9)
On the first day of enrollment, Rand Abio was on his way to the Imperial Royal Academy.
He was alone in the carriage pulled by a tame magical beast. It was terribly quiet, and he didn't have to maintain the radiant, sun-like smile he always wore in front of others.
"What are you thinking?" a gentle voice, audible only to him, asked from the necklace.
Abio said, "Just meditating. 'Don't miss any opportunity to train'—weren't you the one who said that?"
"Although I no longer have a body, my spiritual awareness is still intact. I can at least tell whether you're meditating or just spacing out. That was a rather careless dismissal," the voice complained.
Abio closed his eyes. "..."
He was clearly making it known that he didn't want to talk.
The Dharma Saint's soul sighed and retreated to the deepest part of the necklace's space, falling silent.
He had always known that the boy, Rand, didn't like to smile or speak when he wasn't around others. But even so, he was excessively gloomy today, as if someone had just angered him.
And today was the academy's enrollment day...
Could he be sick of school?
Abio had no idea what his personal mentor was thinking. In fact, right now, all he wanted to know was what had happened.
At this moment, his entire demeanor had changed, becoming cold and somber.
—Anyone who woke up to find they had returned to their weakest point in the past would not be in a good mood!
That's right. The current Abio was not the youth who had just broken free from despair and was full of hope for the future, but the man who, a century later, had already become a Dharma Saint.
After all the hard work of reaching the max level, he was back in the starting zone. Who could stand that?
He spread his fingers and silently recited the incantation for Fireball. As a Dharma Saint, the fire elemental energy produced by this spell would have been enough to incinerate the carriage and every inanimate object within a radius of dozens of meters.
But now, only a pitiful, goose-egg-sized fireball floated in his palm, as if mocking his current state.
Abio inhaled, exhaled, inhaled again, and exhaled again.
He still felt like he was about to explode with rage!
After a long while, the unlucky future Dharma Saint finally calmed down. He gazed at the faint outline of the imperial capital's walls in the distance, thinking about what was to come.
On the bright side, at least he could make up for some regrets. This trip back to the starting zone wouldn't be a complete waste.
"..."
But what regrets did he have?
While the fated protagonist was rushing to the academy in a bumpy carriage, Yue Du was still enjoying her breakfast.
The meal consisted of soft, toasted bread, a sweet cream sauce, well-paired roasted meat rolls, and fine wine. Maids and male servants stood in attendance on either side, and there was even an orchestra dedicated to performing music.
Without a doubt, both the servants and the musicians had been carefully selected for their handsome and beautiful appearances.
Yue Du ate quite happily.
No wonder the host insisted on choosing only handsome men and beautiful women as servants. Even if she had no other intentions, they were certainly pleasing to the eye.
Lord Nai Yin, however, was displeased. She glanced from one side to the other, her voice low and heavy. "All of you, leave."
The servants bowed and departed. The musicians, still lost in their soothing melody, continued to play. Nai Yin infused her voice with magic and said icily, "The musicians, too."
The artists, captivated by the charm of their music, were mercilessly shooed out the door.
Yue Du: "..."
Nai Yin: "You keep looking at them, not at me. Are they more beautiful than I am?"
Yue Du calmly pointed out, "You used to always watch them." So why are you calling me out now.
Still, she could roughly guess her ladyship's thought process: she liked to enjoy life, which meant hiring servants, but she didn't want any eyesores waiting on her, so she only chose beauties.
Other wealthy and powerful nobles wanted handsome youths and maidens to satisfy their carnal desires. She, on the other hand, just wanted them around as decorative vases.
It was truly something else.
Seeing that Nai Yin seemed intent on dismissing all the servants, Yue Du's eye twitched. She spoke up to dissuade her, not wanting to be the cause of unemployment for a thousand-some attendants.
Besides, wasn't it nice to be taken care of?
About an hour before enrollment began at the Royal Academy, Nai Yin was finally ready to depart.
Yue Du also got to see the legendary Dharma Saint's mode of transportation: a snow-white magical dragon.
Dragons were one of the most powerful and rarest races of magical beasts. They had no magic elements flowing through their bodies, but possessed formidable physical strength. Most appeared enormous and ferocious, and they were the partners that all of humanity's special practitioners dreamed of having.
The magical dragon before her, however, was a rare, slender, and elegant specimen, very much in line with human aesthetics. It seemed Lord Nai Yin's standards for beauty even extended to her mount.
"To the imperial capital," Nai Yin ordered with familiarity.
The magical dragon refused to cooperate. Its needle-sharp pupils stared at Nai Yin... and at Yue Du, whose arm she was holding. It let out a displeased growl. "You're actually letting someone else sit on me! I, the noble Snowfield Dragon King, absolutely cannot accept such an absurd act!"
Nai Yin smiled. "I could turn the Snowfield Dragon King into a dragon meat patty. Doesn't that sound lovely?"
The white dragon lowered its neck. "Please, come aboard, you two beautiful ladies."
...The magical dragon yielded faster than a snowflake could melt in one's palm.
It was public knowledge that Nai Yin was a dual-element mage of light and darkness, but very few knew she also had an affinity for space magic.
In other words, she could have easily used a spell to open a spatial passage and appear directly with Yue Du in the Royal Academy's VIP reception area.
But she clearly had no intention of doing so.
Sitting on the dragon's back, with the host maintaining a barrier to block the wind, the sensation of flying high in the sky was so pleasant it made one want to sigh in contentment.
"Do you like this feeling? If you do, we can go for rides like this often in the future," Nai Yin said, blinking suggestively.
Yue Du: "..."
This was a major difference between Nai Yin and Qi Jiu. Nai Yin clearly knew how to create small, romantic opportunities. If it had been Qi Jiu, she would have just said, "Teleport me and Yue Du to so-and-so," and then lazed about at home after the mission was done.
Nai Yin's timing was impeccable.
At the very moment enrollment officially began and Abio had just stepped out of his carriage, the white dragon landed in the Imperial Royal Academy's spacious Magical Beast Valley, making a sound that was far from deafening.
How difficult it must have been for a dragon to control its volume upon landing to avoid causing a tremor. Otherwise, the Dharma Saint on its back would have surely taught it a lesson.
The Archmage in charge of the Magical Beast Valley rushed over to see—whoa! Such a massive white dragon was standing there. He couldn't possibly handle it!
So he hurriedly sent a message summoning the old headmaster, the academy's strongest practitioner and a respected Grand Magus.
The Grand Magus himself was a space-element mage. The moment he heard a magical dragon had arrived—a serious matter indeed—he immediately opened a spatial passage to come and capture it.
It was enrollment season. What if the dragon decided it wanted a snack and casually gobbled up a few students? It wasn't as if such foodie dragons hadn't appeared in the past.
Then, the headmaster, who had rushed frantically through the passage, saw the white dragon.
The dragon looked somewhat familiar. Such a beautiful dragon was a rarity among its kind. Where on earth had he seen it before...
The old headmaster fell into deep thought.
The next moment, two people jumped down from the dragon's back.
One of them wore a blood-red robe, with silver hair and black eyes. She had a face that was one hundred percent tempting enough to inspire sin, yet she possessed an aura that made one one hundred percent afraid to sin.
The old headmaster shivered subconsciously.
He had seen this person before, and of course, he had seen that dragon, too.
Back when he was just a mid-rank mage interning under his mentor, this beautiful woman had already stood at the pinnacle of the continent and had subdued the leader of the dragon race.
The old headmaster sucked in a sharp breath, his face turning pale.
The First Dharma Saint, the woman who lived year-round in the western part of the empire, Nai Yin Galor—
Why was she here???
From the moment the dragon landed so brazenly in the Magical Beast Valley, Yue Du knew that Nai Yin had no intention of choosing the simplest, quickest method.
She wasn't going to kill Leo.
If she had truly intended to strike, Nai Yin could have appeared silently in the unlucky man's room and killed him in a single blow. No one in the Royal Academy would have ever known what happened.
Or she could have simply sent Tina or Bifula. Either of them could have killed the cursed Leo without leaving a trace.
But with Nai Yin arriving with such fanfare on a dragon, killing Leo would suddenly become one of the most troublesome options.
And Lord Nai Yin did not like trouble.
And indeed, that was the case. As Nai Yin leaped down from the dragon's back, leading Yue Du by the hand, the first thing she saw was the Grand Magus standing stunned not far away.
"Yo," Nai Yin waved. "Waltz, long time no see."
Waltz—the name's pronunciation reminded Yue Du of a certain dance, and she quickly recalled who its owner was.
Headmaster Waltz of the Royal Academy, a respectable old man. He didn't have a large role in the script, but he was easy to remember. After all, his name was rather unique.
The addressed Headmaster Waltz said with a tremor in his voice, "You... you are Lord Galor...?"
Nai Yin nodded.
"You are as young and captivating as ever, Lord Galor. If I may be so bold, for what purpose have you graced the Royal Academy with your visit?"
As he spoke, he glanced at the young woman beside her ladyship. Sensing her magical fluctuations, he guessed, "Are you here to enroll your child in the academy?"
The child, Yue Du: "..."
The parent, Nai Yin: "..."
The smile on Lord Galor's face vanished.
"Child? Yue—is the world's most captivating treasure. She is the one I am pursuing, and I would not want you to have the wrong impression of her."
The old headmaster was quick to correct himself. "My deepest apologies. Please forgive me, I'm getting on in years and have grown a bit muddled... Oh, by the Goddess of Time and Space, what a truly captivating young lady! I wish you success in your endeavor!"
Yue Du silently covered her face.
Perhaps because the old headmaster was such a smooth talker, Lord Nai Yin's expression brightened, and her arm linked with Yue Du's tightened slightly.
"I know there is an instructor in your academy named Leo. Three years ago, he was afflicted by a dark curse of unknown origin, correct?"
The old headmaster's expression turned regretful. "Yes, Leo is here."
"Have him come here."
The headmaster seemed to see an image of Lord Galor taking action a century ago. A chill ran down his spine, and he couldn't help but ask tremulously, "Has Leo done something wrong?"
Yue Du: "..."
To be this terrified, just how frightening must the host be?
Nai Yin scoffed and said nonchalantly, "Just have him come over. It's rare for me to be in a charitable mood."
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