Chapter 360: The Golden Radiance Magic Tower Master

After hearing the sudden commotion, the Academy Knights of the Green Corps—the lowest division tasked specifically with handling the academy’s ground-level disciplinary issues and crowd control—arrived on the scene. Four heavily armored guards rushed toward the grand junction, shouting commands and asking what exactly was going on.

Cedric looked at the approaching guards from a distance and stroked his long white beard. "Oh, dear. It would be troublesome for my old bones to get caught up in a bureaucratic incident report right now. Bye for now."

He snapped his fingers.

The very next second, the world around Solomon warped. The marble junction, the groaning nobles, and the shouting guards vanished entirely. Solomon blinked and found himself standing completely alone in a random, quiet courtyard somewhere deep within the academy grounds.

He had absolutely no idea where he was.

Meanwhile, Cedric vanished from the junction and instantly reappeared directly in front of the heavy oak doors of the Grandmaster’s office. He pushed the doors open without knocking and strolled inside.

Sword Pavilion Master Wu and the Grandmaster were currently bickering over administrative budgets when Cedric walked in.

"Ohohoho!" Cedric’s signature, booming laugh echoed through the office, instantly alerting both men to his sudden presence.

Wu looked back toward the door. A smile broke across his face. He immediately stood up from his chair and rushed over to greet the wizard.

Wu leaned back slightly, pulling his right hand low and behind his hip. Cedric mirrored the movement, leaning in and pulling his own hand up and back. The two veteran warriors stepped forward simultaneously and performed a loud, resounding, perfectly synchronized high-five that echoed like a thunderclap across the office.

They immediately pulled each other into a tight, back-slapping hug.

"Cedric, you old fool! It has been far too long!" Wu laughed out loud, clapping the wizard on the shoulder.

"Wu, my friend! You are looking as sharp as ever!" Cedric boomed, his eyes crinkling with joy. "I see the Eastern air is keeping you young!"

The Grandmaster sat at his mahogany desk, feeling ignored. He cleared his throat loudly, intentionally letting his annoyed presence be known since he was being completely left out of the nostalgic reunion.

Wu and Cedric turned and looked at the Grandmaster. They both burst into simultaneous, uncontrollable laughter, pointing their fingers directly at the frustrated administrator.

"Look at him, Cedric!" Wu mocked, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye. "He is buried under a mountain of boring paperwork while we are out here enjoying our lives and doing whatever we want!"

"It is a tragic sight, truly!" Cedric agreed, shaking his head in mock pity. "He is permanently stuck behind that desk, managing the tedious bureaucracy of this academy while we travel the realms!"

The Grandmaster’s face flushed red with fury. He hurled a string of colorful insults at both of his oldest friends. "Shut up, both of you! If you do not stop laughing right this second, I will kick you both out of my office!"

"Oh, calm down, Gustav," Cedric chuckled, leaning heavily on his wooden staff. "You were always the Founder’s favorite student. It is only fitting that he left the entire academy entirely in your capable hands when he departed. You were born for the paperwork!"

"You were not called here to reminisce and mock me!" the Grandmaster shouted, slamming a stack of files onto his desk. "We have an important, highly classified matter to discuss!"

Cedric stopped laughing, stroking his long beard as his demeanor shifted. "Ah, yes. Of course."

He walked over and took a seat in the leather visitor’s chair next to Wu.

The Grandmaster adjusted his cuffs. "I am not free like you two, so I will get straight to the topic." He looked directly at the wizard. "Cedric, did you look into the arcane theories I asked you to research?"

Cedric nodded, his expression turning deadly serious. "I did. I consulted the oldest forbidden archives within the Golden Radiance Tower. It is fundamentally, magically impossible to resurrect a soul that has already passed on using any kind of standard spell, divine miracle, or dark ritual. However, it is theoretically possible to summon one."

The Grandmaster leaned forward, his brow furrowed. "How can someone possibly summon a dead person back to the mortal plane?"

"As long as the soul hasn’t passed away and entered the ethereal cycle, it can be called back as a spiritual manifestation," Cedric explained, his tone grim. "And since we are dealing with the chaotic magic of the Eastern Realms, anything can be possible."

"Explain exactly how this ties into the current threat," Wu requested, crossing his arms.

"The Four Evil Sects are actively targeting royals and nobles for a very specific reason," Cedric began. "They are hunting them exclusively for their blood. As we are all already aware, royal bloodlines possess a small, diluted amount of divine essence, and high-ranking nobles possess a slightly lesser trace. What those cultists are desperately trying to do is physically extract that latent divinity from their blood."

Cedric leaned closer to the desk. "If they manage to successfully extract and combine enough of that stolen divinity, they can synthesize a concentrated vial of pure divine ichor. Anyone who drinks that refined ichor will instantly gain overwhelming power similar to, if not vastly more powerful than, an angel. They could achieve a state akin to a low-level god."

The Grandmaster and Wu were visibly shocked to hear the arcane theory.

"That is not how martial power works, Cedric," Wu argued firmly, shaking his head. "If someone could simply become the strongest being in the world just by drinking a synthesized potion, then no one would bother training or working hard. Everyone would just search for such shortcuts instead."

Wu provided a logical, martial example. "Take the legendary Thousand-Year Crimson Lotus Root, or the Supreme Heavenly Elixir, for example. If someone with no proper physical body constitution or refined qi foundation attempted to eat those legendary treasures, their mortal body would instantly explode from the overwhelming spiritual pressure. And even if they miraculously managed to somehow survive and absorb that power, almost all of the energy would naturally leak out of their unrefined pores, resulting in zero permanent gain. The mortal vessel simply cannot contain divinity without shattering."

Cedric shrugged his broad shoulders. "That is true for a normal vessel, Wu. But what if they have already found that specific ’someone’? What if they possess a unique, perfectly conditioned vessel capable of actually withholding and absorbing that massive amount of divinity?"

Wu fell completely silent. He stared at the floor, muttering quietly, "That could certainly be possible."

The Grandmaster rubbed his temples in deep frustration. "But Cedric, even if they manage to synthesize this divine ichor and create a low-level god, how does that meet the evil sect’s ultimate goal? Their stated objective is to revive the Heavenly Demon. Creating a new god does not revive the old one."

Wu placed his hand firmly on the desk, his eyes narrowing as he connected the political dots. "The ’Heavenly Demon’ is not a specific person, Gustav. It is a title. A mantle of absolute supremacy. Perhaps they do not plan to literally resurrect the old king. Perhaps they plan to feed this divine ichor to their chosen vessel, making that person the next Heavenly Demon. That ascension would effectively serve as the ’revival’ of the Heavenly Demon’s legacy."

The Grandmaster scratched his head in frustration. He cursed loudly. "What the hell is the Righteous Alliance of the Eastern Realms even doing right now?! How have they allowed this conspiracy to progress this far?!"

Just then, the heavy oak doors of the office swung open. Professor Balzac walked casually into the room, holding a tightly rolled document in his hand.

The Grandmaster was shocked to see him. "Balzac? Why are you here? I thought you demanded a two-week, uninterrupted vacation starting today."

"I decided to temporarily delay my vacation so I can forcefully negotiate for a much longer, completely uninterrupted vacation later," Balzac responded with his usual lazy drawl.

He walked up to the desk and tossed the rolled document directly in front of the Grandmaster.

"What is this?" the Grandmaster asked, unrolling the parchment. "Is this your updated list of ridiculous vacation demands?"

The Grandmaster’s eyes widened in horror as he read the contents of the document.

"Those are the officially submitted, global intelligence reports detailing every single royal and high-ranking noble who has been reported missing across the entire world over the last month," Balzac stated, his voice dropping to a grim, serious register. "The total number of missing aristocrats is currently over seven thousand."

The Grandmaster stood up abruptly from his leather chair, the parchment shaking in his hands. "Over seven thousand?! Does that mean the evil sects are not just hunting the royals and nobles inside the Eastern Realms... but they are actively abducting them from other realms wherever they exist?!"

"And the remaining two evil sects do not need to abduct any more nobles," Balzac added, his tone grim. "They have already secured enough sacrifices. Now, all they have to do is perform the grand ritual somewhere hidden within the Eastern Realms."