"These threads should represent my contract with Four Seasons Garden! Now they've all snapped — the agreement between me and Four Seasons Garden has been unilaterally broken…"
A hint of delight surfaced on Raelin's face.
A unilateral breach of the contract was even more beneficial to him! It meant Raelin could break free of the contract's constraints, harm Four Seasons Garden's interests at will, even openly murder their members!
Meanwhile, Leono, who had signed the contract on Four Seasons Garden's behalf with Raelin, would still be bound by its terms — unable to make a move against Raelin without concrete evidence!
Moreover, with this kind of unilateral destruction, Leono on the other end of the contract would feel nothing at all. This was one of the effects of the Defiled Bird's chaos properties.
*Gulp!*
The Defiled Bird circling overhead swallowed the Eye of Judgment in one gulp! Raelin could even see a spherical bulge form at the bird's throat and roll all the way down to its lower abdomen.
*Chirp chirp!* After devouring the Eye of Judgment, the Defiled Bird let out a cheerful cry while sending a stream of information directly into the depths of Raelin's mind.
"Judgment shall perish! And chaos shall endure forever!"
"More! More summons! I will erase every trace of the Eye of Judgment from your body!"
Mysterious messages appeared one after another directly in Raelin's mind, automatically converting into meanings he could understand.
"I will!" Raelin bowed deeply. Though he didn't know whether the creature could truly understand him, Raelin had always excelled at going through the motions.
The Defiled Bird nodded with remarkably human-like mannerisms, then let out a long, piercing cry.
Amid the terrifying shriek, its body exploded into billowing clouds of grey mist.
The grey mist quickly faded, dissolving entirely into the air until not a trace remained.
At the same time, Raelin sensed that the aura of chaos that had shrouded this area ever since he opened the vial had also dissipated.
The Eye of Judgment was an existence on the same level as the Defiled Bird! If not for the fact that the solution had automatically released a burst of chaotic energy that engulfed the entire area — blocking the Eye of Judgment's detection and cutting off the transmission of the phantom imprint on Raelin's body — it would have long since attracted the Eye of Judgment here.
But now, once the Defiled Bird had vanished, Raelin probed carefully.
His contract with Four Seasons Garden had been completely destroyed. Some residual contract force still lingered, but it seemed to have forgotten everything that had just happened, showing no reaction whatsoever.
"Chaotic power! Truly formidable! The ancient Defiled Bird truly lives up to being the mortal enemy of the Eye of Judgment. I wonder how that Black Wizard behind the Giant managed to obtain this solution?"
Raelin murmured to himself.
On the South Coast, contracts sealed with the Eye of Judgment were extremely common and carried tremendous credibility — there were almost no instances of one being broken.
And the feathers of ancient Defiled Birds had been extinct on the South Coast for over a thousand years!
Therefore, even Leono would never have imagined that Raelin could use this to break free from the Eye of Judgment's contractual binding.
"Such power! Truly terrifying!"
Being able to collect such a long-extinct solution, Raelin couldn't help but raise his assessment of the dark wizard organization known as the Thousand Leaf Hand by another level in his mind.
"However! Even within that organization, this kind of thing definitely won't be abundant..." Raelin was very certain; otherwise, the Thousand Leaf Hand would have already used it to stir up massive waves on the South Coast by now.
……
Night fell. Although they were inside the secret realm, the moonlight overhead was still brilliantly bright, no different from the outside world.
At this moment, a black figure draped in a dark robe, face concealed beneath a hood, quietly slipped away from the Four Seasons Garden's quarters, moving steadily toward the outer perimeter.
"Tssk!"
At the foot of a peculiar magic flowering tree with three strange forks, the black figure stopped and ignited a wisp of blood-red flame in their hand.
"You've finally come!"
The surface of the magic flowering tree rippled and distorted, and a male face emerged from the trunk. The face suddenly opened its mouth and spoke to the wizard: "Come down through here!"
Crack! As the wooden face spoke, a gaping maw suddenly split open from the base of the tree's roots, revealing a deep, dark passage.
The wizard nodded and descended quickly into it.
Thud! After his figure vanished into the passage, the entrance snapped shut rapidly. The face then swept a wary glance all around before slowly sinking back into the tree trunk.
The area returned to absolute calm, as though nothing had happened at all.
The passage was long. The wizard walked for over ten minutes before finally reaching its end.
At the far end lay a spacious underground chamber. Faint earthy-yellow wizardry light flickered continuously around the walls — it had clearly been carved out only recently.
Inside the vast chamber, a single towering figure stood wreathed in dense green mist, a hazy giant. Upon seeing the wizard, the giant seemed to smile: "You've come!"
"Mm!" The wizard nodded and pulled back his hood, revealing a strikingly handsome young face.