Chapter 548: A Heart Full of Justice

Sonya had realized she was in serious trouble several days ago.

It was the night the Meteor Calamity ended. She had gone to the Secret Garden with the Claw Stretching Club to celebrate until dawn. Even Professor Trosan and Professor Nidala had taken time out of their busy schedules to drop by and share a few drinks with her. More people arrived to admire her and make connections, while representatives from various merchant associations showed up to discuss business.

Sonya skillfully worked the room, expanding her network of valuable contacts more than tenfold in a single night.

Naturally, she knew her social charm was merely icing on the cake. Her Sacred Realm combat power provided the true foundation for her confidence. Her overwhelming strength made people marvel at her humble, polite smile, and the respect she showed them despite the difference in status made them feel deeply honored.

Thus, keeping that deliberate strategy going, she sized up the crowd for every advantage she could leverage for the future.

Thinking back on it the next day, the village girl felt she might have gone a bit too far. Louisa leaving without saying goodbye made complete sense.

While Sonya had resolved to keep a lower profile, she still wanted to tell Masha about her achievements. Knowing her mother's work schedule, she deliberately called while her mother was working at the factory. She described, in the simplest terms, how amazing she had become, how much money she had earned, how her mother could finally quit her job, and how she would soon bring her to Cailleach to settle down.

To put it bluntly, she wanted to make her achievements crystal clear to the other factory workers. Without such a simplified explanation, they would not have understood a single word.

Naturally, her mother declined the offer. Sonya had already sent the money she'd earned from selling spirits home two months ago. The cost of living in their small town was low enough that Masha could have quit long ago. But it was the off-season for farming anyway, and the factory work was not exhausting. Masha simply treated it as a chance to chat with her coworkers.

As for moving to Cailleach, she felt intimidated by the unfamiliarity of a big city. She had spent her entire life tending the family fields and had no desire to change her way of life.

Even if Masha preferred to stay, Sonya understood the values of an isolated rural town, where the strong were respected, and the weak were bullied. Naturally, she wanted to give her mother some prestige. Over the past few months, she had gradually purchased various things for Masha, making sure everyone knew that her daughter had made something of herself in Cailleach.

For now, the only thing left was to build a brand-new house towering over every other building in the village. Then Masha would finally realize just how friendly the world could be.

Feeling refreshed, Sonya allowed herself to relax and wander around Sword and Roses University. Everywhere she went, students looked at her with awe and admiration. Though she had already decided to continue studying and cultivating, she still felt a flicker of pride as she basked in all those admiring gazes.

A good mood naturally sparked a desire to share it. Yet Sonya, whose rebellious mind resisted easy answers, began calmly examining her own feelings.

She genuinely wanted to find the Watcher and tell him all about her happiness. She also wanted to share it with her mother, Leona, Trosan, and the others.

She worried about the Watcher's safety alongside the safety of her roommates. She wanted to meet the Watcher while also eagerly anticipating shaking Didarose's hand. Yes, the Watcher mattered to her, but just how much?

I am already a Sacred Realm sorcerer, a Sword Saint with a limitless future. I need to learn how to handle my feelings properly. I cannot act like those silly, naive heroines in romance dramas who just throw themselves into a relationship and give everything away. Besides, the Watcher has plenty of flaws too.

As Sonya analyzed his shortcomings to keep herself grounded, she headed to the cafeteria for lunch. The kitchen lacked her usual nutritious dishes, so she casually picked out a few plates of meat.

The moment she sat down and took a bite of the fish, she immediately gagged. This is awful! How did they manage to make such good fish taste this terrible? Little trumpet! I have to remember to tell the Watcher about this. This is unbelievably bad!

With a look of disgust, Sonya pushed the fish aside, finished the rest of her meal, and went to train as usual.

During a break, she thought about that awful fish again. She was definitely going to tell the Watcher. It tasted so disgusting she would probably remember it for the rest of her life.

Huh? Sonya wiped the hot sweat from her face with a towel. Her cheeks flushed and she blinked in confusion. Only then did her realization hit. I am in serious trouble.

She had to become part of the Watcher's life, just as he had become part of hers. She refused to be the only one carrying this burden. And thus...

***

Back in the Distant Sky Domain.

"If you run into any problems you can't figure out, I might be able to look up some information when I get back and help you solve them," Sonya said. "Besides, you're caught up in the situation, while we're on the outside looking in. We might be able to give you better advice."

"Yeah, yeah!" Dia hurriedly chimed in. "I can go back and find someone to help analyze it too!"

By someone, she really meant the Gospel System. Yes, even the Empress had to pay its fees. That being said, with the staggering wealth of imperial points at her disposal, finding out the exact number of children she and Ashe would have in the future wouldn't even cost a ten-millionth of her balance. Unfortunately, the Gospel System could not extend its influence into the Myriad Continent. Otherwise, she would have simply had it prepare a tailor-made walkthrough for Ashe.

"Then I will have to start from the beginning," Ashe said. "There is one thing I did not mention earlier. I became a half-Sense of the Four Pillars Cult."

"A half-Sense?"

Ashe briefly explained what a half-Sense was. Sonya and Dia initially showed little reaction to the Four Pillars Cult, but they immediately grew serious when Ashe mentioned that becoming a full Sense would fundamentally alter a person's temperament.

They could accept Ashe becoming the leader of a band of villains. What they couldn't accept was someone turning Ashe into one.

"Come to think of it, when I became a half-Sense, I also saw something that felt like a prophetic dream. I saw eight figures shrouded in darkness. The first one died in a pool of blood. Then the second one followed, dying on top of the first. It wasn't bleeding, but a tiny white soul crawled out of a wound beneath its body and lifted the corpse up."

"That sounds like a fairy tale," Dia remarked.

Sonya frowned. "Could it be some kind of mental contamination? Don't dwell on this dream anymore."

Weiser had remained silent throughout the exchange. Then, suddenly, she had a flash of insight. It really was a flash of light passing through her mind! She said, "The Insight spirit really is useful. I do not think that was a prophetic dream. It was probably a glimpse of the Four Pillars Cult's worldview."

"Their worldview?"

"There was the first corpse lying in a pool of blood, then a white soul above it, lifting up the second corpse," Weiser said. "Does that not sound familiar?

"If you asked me before, I probably would not have understood it either. But after hearing what you told me about the Rainbow Tail Secret Poison, I used the Insight spirit to connect the dots. Suddenly, everything lined up."

Everyone was stunned by her deduction.

Sonya immediately realized. "The Virtual World!"

Dia exclaimed, "The Golden Fish beneath the sea, the White Ox on top of the fish, and the Continent of Time above the White Ox. It really is exactly the same!"

Ashe could not wrap his head around it. "So... is the Virtual World actually a world made up of one corpse after another? Is the entire Virtual World just a pile of corpses?"

"That is only the perspective of the Four Pillars Cult. It does not necessarily mean it is the truth," Weiser said. "There are plenty of sorcerers trying to decipher the secrets of the Virtual World. Other cults might have even more outrageous theories. They could claim sorcerers are actually Virtual World bacteria, and that reality created sorcerers to kill the Virtual World, or all sorcerers are merely pawns of reality. You could come up with an endless number of theories like that."

Ashe nodded. Besides, the truth behind the world did not mean much to a sorcerer at his level. It certainly would not help him travel between kingdoms. He continued, "We almost caught Silver Lamp two days ago, but she managed to escape. I doubt we will have much luck catching her again."

"Why not?" Sonya asked. "If you managed to catch her once, you can catch her again."

"We were able to set that trap for her because the town had already been infiltrated by the Four Pillars Cult. I could use their intelligence network to track her down in advance," Ashe explained. "She is on guard now. More importantly, she entered Music Day Alliance territory. The Four Pillars Cult's influence does not extend there, so we have to rely entirely on ourselves to find her."

"The Music Day Alliance?"

"It is a religious alliance that formed rapidly after the Four Pillars Cult rose to power. Their alliance was what slowed the cult's expansion. Once we enter their territory, we cannot expect any help. If anything, they see us as outsiders and are openly hostile toward us. Silver Lamp can manipulate minds, so she can move around much more freely than we can.

"We eventually tracked her to an underground building. We know she is somewhere inside, but we have no idea where."

"There can't be that many people inside a single building, right?" Sonya asked.

Ashe gave a helpless smile. "Two hundred thousand people are living inside. The building has a hundred floors. It's a relic from the Gray Fox Age, with everything they need to live there. There isn't even a single building above ground."

Dia immediately understood. So it's the Senheiser Building all over again.

In the Gospel Kingdom, where all kinds of social systems had flourished, it was genuinely difficult to find one that the Gospel did not already have.

"That building is the main stronghold of the Music Day Alliance's Transcendent Temple. We only managed to get inside by disguising ourselves as merchants, and we've been under surveillance ever since. At this point, all we can do is wait for Silver Lamp to make her move."

Sonya shook her head. "That's too passive. Can't the Four Pillars Cult help you with a prophecy?"

"They can give us a general area, but Silver Lamp is cunning. She didn't even leave us her real name, and her appearance is fabricated too. The Four Pillars Cult still needs information from other sources before they can pinpoint her location," Ashe spread his hands. "She started preparing for interference from mysterious classes like Prophecy long before we even came into contact with one. She'd been preparing to defect from the very beginning, whether from the Temple of Calamity Flame or the Four Pillars Cult."

He let out a heavy breath. "That is not all. The appearance she's disguised herself with seems incredibly charming. Other than us, the people hunting her down, everyone who meets her comes away with a favorable first impression. The moment we launched our ambush, she immediately melted into the crowd to hide herself. Then she attacked the surrounding buildings to create chaos, blowing up a gas station and triggering cave-ins to block our pursuit. She escaped our ambush only because she was willing to unleash the kind of destruction the rest of us would never dare cause.

"Instead, we were blamed for all the destruction. If the Four Pillars Cult had not helped us, we would have had no choice but to fight our way out of the town. She is ruthless, reckless, and relentless. I would not necessarily call her cruel. After all, we are the ones chasing her. We have no right to expect our prey to cooperate with us. But..."

Ashe paused for a moment before asking, "Have you ever played a video game? Players know that everything in a game, including companions, bystanders, and enemies, is not real. Some players will do whatever it takes to achieve their objectives. That is how Silver Lamp feels to me. It is as if she treats reality like a game. As long as she can achieve her goal, she does not care about anything else. None of it is real to her.

"Rather than call her evil, I would say she is a disaster. At the Sacred Realm level, someone like her is practically a walking natural disaster."

Weiser could not help glancing at him. Though Ashe had information from the Four Pillars Cult to aid him, she was still impressed by how accurately he had assessed Silver Lamp after only a handful of encounters. It's no wonder he has the potential to become a Sense.

"She is just a vicious old hag who looks sweet on the outside and rotten on the inside," Sonya said.

"I think she is more like one of those evil witches from fairy tales," Dia huffed. "For all we know, her real body is some hunched-over old crone with pus-covered skin, a hooked nose, and half her teeth missing."

A bloody light flashed in the Swordswoman's eyes. "If I were by your side, I could kill her with a single Blood Moon Shattered Lake. Then she could crawl a few meters while dragging her intestines behind her."

The Witch's voice echoed ominously. "No way. Killing her in one move would be letting her off too easily. Let me handle her; I would use Aqua Lines to tear her into hundreds of pieces."

They exchanged glances. After being reunited for so long, they finally reached an understanding again.

Ashe looked at them in surprise. "I never knew you two had such a strong sense of justice."

Sonya did not shatter Ashe's beautiful illusion. Instead, she turned to the silent Weiser. "Weiser, you are the smart one. Any ideas?"