Silent Crown

It was like this for seven days.

An almost unrealistic sense of peace fell over the entire Ultimate. The fighting was confined to a very small area, almost ten times smaller than before.

Although Ye Qingxuan himself didn’t think there was anything wrong with this peace, most of the people there thought that he had spoiled things for everyone.

When it came to blows, nobody wanted there to be somebody left behind them scheming. Especially since that guy would not only be scheming towards his own goals, but they had to waste thirty years working for him, even going so far as to…

“I said, aren’t you ashamed, Your Excellency the Grand Inquisitor?” The Master who had been forced into such a desperate situation asked.

But Ye Qingxuan felt nothing. “Ashamed? Of what? What’s wrong with maintaining the peace? Have you ever even really thought about what I’m doing? Haven’t I already given you a way out by not having your burned at the stake?”

After having experienced those days of constant struggle with Shi Dong’s group of old b*stards, this level of questioning seemed no more serious than a drizzle.

The joke was that he was the Grand Inquisitor.

He held the Staff of Fate. He knew that he was righteous.

I’ve killed people, I’ve set fires, I’ve sold indulgences, but I know that I’m a good friar.

Even if he were to kill all the Masters, at the most it would cause a little bit of trouble for him. But more importantly, in the long run it would quite a good thing.

Of course, most people wouldn’t want a good thing like this to happen to them.

However, he only had about five days for his most important actions.

For five days, he had run around in the Ultimate, rummaging through every corner, and had “saved” twenty Masters. That is to say, at least seventeen or eighteen of the mainstream Schools had signed his contract and been tricked into ganging up with the Inquisition.

After the five days were up he had occupied a large building on the east side of the Ultimate and had not gone out anymore. He and the twenty Masters had hunkered down in there and not opened the door.

Things had already exceeded Ye Qingxuan’s expectations. He had not thought that he would be able to capture everyone in the Ultimate in one fell swoop. It was a happy accident that he was now able to take advantage of their misfortune.

It was best not to push his luck.

Even though the Masters who had signed the contract were all angry at him, they weren’t stupid. Upon seeing the chaotic situation, they realized that although they had to work for him for free for thirty years, at least they were still alive. If they were to die, they would be left with nothing.

Ye Qingxuan could only be regarded as a profiteer, but at any rate he did not lie to himself about the consequences and the costs of his actions.

Moreover, he treated them rather well. There was no shame in working for the Inquisition.

As long as the contract was strictly enforced the Masters would not be suffering too much. At most it would amount to a bit of bother. If they had let Ye Qingxuan take advantage of them even more, that would truly be a loss of face.

He had saved their lives.

So now it was time to get to work.

But they never would have thought that their first job as members of the Inquisition would be to…make up classes.

“Pig head!”

“What kind of a fool are you? This is utter rubbish!”

“Was your music theory class taught by a martial arts teacher?”

“How are you still confused about this?”

“Disgusting! Disgusting!”

“How did I teach it to you last time? What you’ve written here is garbage!”

Mabel stood in the corner of the main hall of the ruins, gazing at Ye Qingxuan with eyes full of schadenfreude as a group of old men surrounded him, heaping abuse upon him.

Indeed, their first job was to make up their boss’s missed lessons.

Upon first hearing Ye Qingxuan’s request, the Masters had thought that this was another scheme of his. After all, he was the founder of a School of Magic, the strongest musician below the Scepter level. What could they teach him? He had already taught himself almost everything.

But after closely examining him, the old Masters nearly collectively burst a blood vessel.

Ye Qingxuan was simply…hopeless!

Each of them had but one question in their heart: “Your Excellency the Grand Inquisitor, how can you still be so muddled?”

“You can’t blame me for this!” Ye Qingxuan explained himself. “It took me a year to become a musician. Half of that was spent in class, but of those six months I only studied music theory for one! The other five months were spent fighting with the freaking school board and saving Avalon! And my circumstances were so hard that I didn’t have an easy time learning a way of deciphering. And that’s not to mention my other studies, which I don’t know if you’ve heard…”

The Masters looked at each other. Their hearts were troubled, but they could not find anything to say.

It could be said that no one ever had in the past or would in the future achieve as much as he had in just one year. But his basic musician skills were still so sloppy…so sloppy that they couldn’t bear to see them…

“Simply awful.” Auden sighed and gave up completely. “Your Excellency, I simply can’t teach a student like you. Please excuse my lack of talent.”

“That’s right, please find someone more qualified.”

The other Masters also admitted defeat, and handed over their own movements and ancient books. “We can’t do it, please teach yourself. After only a few hours our poor hearts can’t take it anymore. If we keep going our Symphonies of Predestination are going to collapse.”

“Hey! Don’t be so dramatic,” Ye Qingxuan yelled. “Isn’t this just an “arrangement”? What do you think you’re doing?”

The Masters looked at each other and then sighed in unison. “To be honest, Your Excellency, we’ve taught so many disciples over the years, and you are the first one we’ve ever seen to be so terrible.”

“Of course I’m terrible!” said Ye Qingxuan as he copied a stack of manuscripts. “Look at all this homework? How could anyone hope to pass all this?”

The Masters were silent for a while.

After such a long time, everyone knew each other quite well. They all knew that when it came down to it the Grand Inquisitor was an excellent speaker, and they wouldn’t be able to out argue him. So, after hesitating for a while, they stopped trying to allow him to save face, and began to grade his papers.

30 points, 30 points, 30 points.

The results came back.

Ye Qingxuan’s face went green.

Nine assignments, and he had not passed a single one of them.

“Hey! You aren’t doing this to get back at me, are you?”

Auden shook his head and stood up. “To tell you the truth, music theory and music creation are two completely different fields. Your understanding and application of music theory has already reached a level that we can hardly hope to attain. But in the field of writing music…In my honest opinion, you have no talent to speak of.”

“…”

“What’s more, we even doubt that you’ve ever taken a formal musician course. Your strength is clear for all to see, but to be honest, it has left us all very perplexed. Because in our experience, the more power a musician has, the longer it has taken them to accumulate that power. But it seems like this is not the case for you. So, is it true that you’ve never walked the path of a true musician?”

“…”

“Before one can become a formal apprentice, they need to build their foundation for at least five years. And for four of those years they must undergo copious amounts of training.”

“Seven years for our school,” interjected another one of the old men.

“That’s right, seven years.” Auden sighed and looked at Ye Qingxuan, implying that his meaning was self-evident.

Seven years.

Based on a normal rate of progress, you haven’t even completed your apprenticeship yet, Your Excellency.

Ye Qingxuan could well understood what he meant.

To be honest, in order to not damage Ye Qingxuan’s self-esteem the old men had been too tactful.

If he had not done it himself, Ye Qingxuan would not have believed it was possible to reach the level of Master in one year without the aid of evil methods. And he already had so many wonderful items; any one of them would be enough to make all the musicians in the world go crazy.

In one short year, Ye Qingxuan’s level had been like an airship, soaring ever higher.

And what was even more terrifying is that he could turn external forces into his own power. Ever since his apprenticeship began, he had mastered more than ten times his own power.

And now that he had the Staff of Fate, on top of his already prodigious talent, he could pull far more than that from the realm of aether.

His talent for applying external things to his ability was quite frightening, to be honest.

And it had not hindered him that he had never completed most of the musician courses.

For example, the extremely important course on “arrangement.”

Even his Symphony of Predestination was based on a blueprint created by Ye Lanzhou, Hermes and Abraham.

The “Symphony of the Bright Moon”, the “stone of sage” and the “catastrophe resonance” could be combined together without any conflict between them. This combination would run smoothly and even multiply the effects of the individual components. The effort that it took to be able to do this was certainly no less than what it took to create something anew.

But the problem was…he didn’t know how to do anything else.

The ancient people of Romulus had said that all roads lead to their city. But of all the thousands of roads, Ye Qingxuan was only good at one them…

At times like these, Ye Qingxuan would have liked to dig up Ye Lanzhou.

In all the history of the East, out of all the countless people there, there were only a handful with talents like those of Ye Lanzhou.

With the Jiu Xiao Huan Pei in his hands, and the Heaven Ladder crossing the seven systems, he could create any kind of music with but a wave of his hand. He had all that he needed right at his fingertips. He was not limited by any objects or forms.

No matter what kind of music it was, he had but to glance at it once or twice and he could understand its very essence and its changes. With a little research, he could add in his own movements and make it even better!

Ye Qingxuan was nowhere near his match in this mode of spiritual creation. He could not even hope to narrow the massive gap between them.

He knew this well.

He had not set out on the proper path. Although he possessed such power, he had never sought out the Great Originator that every musician dreamed of.

He knew very clearly that all along he had been nothing but a “copyist.”

All of his talents lay in application and integration rather than creation and exploration. He might never in his life have the ability to compose a movement.

When all was said and done, Ye Qingxuan had never been a musician.

A knight who was a master swordsman would not necessarily be able to create a new sword-style out of nothing.

And this was the biggest dilemma that he faced now.

His Symphony of Predestination.