"All right, if there's nothing else, you're dismissed!"
Leilin glanced at George, who seemed to want to say something but held back, and at the silent Besta and the others. He suddenly felt a sense of weariness wash over him.
Ever since his promotion to full
Though they still stood before him, they seemed utterly foreign — as if centuries had passed between them.
"As you command!"
The apprentices below bowed and backed out of the hall one by one.
Even George and Xirui bowed respectfully before tiptoeing out of the great hall.
Last was Besta, whose expression was complicated as she cast one look at Leilin, then quickly bowed and withdrew.
……
Late that night, having completed one cycle of the Kemoyin Pupil meditation, Leilin was lying in bed resting when his eyes suddenly snapped open.
A gentle knock sounded from outside.
"Come in. The door's not locked." Leilin sat up and spoke in a calm, flat tone.
The door creaked open, and a figure completely wrapped in a grey robe stepped inside.
"Besta. What do you want?" Leilin looked at the platinum-haired girl, a hint of amusement flickering in his eyes.
"Lord Leilin! Please forgive Besta's earlier offense!"
Besta's voice was soft and melodic as she spoke gently. Then she removed the cloak she wore over her robes, revealing her naked body beneath.
She had grown more mature since the first time Leilin had met her. Her figure was incredibly voluptuous, her skin snow-white and delicate, looking as though it might yield water at the slightest touch.
Besta gazed at Leilin and slowly sank to her knees, her ruby-like eyes filled with a light that wavered between pleading and fawning.
In the dead of night, a beautiful, naked girl kneeling before you, begging for your forgiveness — what sort of feeling was that?
Leilin was experiencing it firsthand.
But his expression remained utterly calm, as though Besta's alluring, youthful body was nothing more than a decayed skeleton in his eyes.
Leilin studied this clever, calculating girl.
"You're quite intelligent. It's just that sometimes, you're a bit too clever."
He extended his right hand and ran it across her face in a languid caress, trailing down to her chest.
"You want to seduce me? With these two pieces of rotting flesh?"
Leilin's right hand gripped and kneaded Besta's breast without restraint. The girl let out a soft whimper, pain flickering across her face.
A wave of overwhelming terror suddenly crashed over Besta.
As a Third-rank Apprentice, she was utterly powerless before Leilin. The only thing she had any confidence in was her extraordinary beauty.
But now, looking into Leilin's icy eyes, she suddenly realized that everything she had done before was so helpless and laughable.
Leilin's frigid gaze nearly suffocated her.
Her body trembled不断, cold sweat dripping down drop by drop. As time wore on, her skin flushed redder and redder while her face turned deathly pale, as though she might suffocate and die at any moment.
"But! Be grateful! In memory of the 'me' who once was, I've decided to give you a chance!"
Just as Besta was about to lose consciousness, Leilin's calm voice rang out.
She snapped back to reality, gasping desperately for air. Moments before, it had felt as though an invisible hand was clamped around her throat. Only when Leilin spoke did that suffocating sensation vanish in an instant.
Besta gulped down huge mouthfuls of fresh air, tears nearly spilling from her eyes.
She swore that never before had she felt so acutely that the simple ability to breathe freely was the greatest happiness in the world.
"Follow me."
Leilin shook his head, stood up, and opened a side door.
Besta's body shaking, she picked up the cloak scattered on the ground and draped it over her exposed body.
Moments ago she had seduced Leilin without the slightest hesitation, but now she felt a pang of shame. This strange feeling turned her face crimson, and she wished she could crawl into a crack in the floor.
After passing through the small door into the side chamber, Besta found herself in an enclosed secret room.
The room was not large, and traces of brickwork were still visible on the surrounding walls.
In the center stood a heavy iron platform, much like an experiment table, with restraints — rings for wrists and chains for ankles — fixed at each of its four corners.
The moment Besta saw the iron platform, her face drained of all color.
She wanted to retreat, but didn't dare. Only now did she notice the walls of the secret room were hung with all manner of strange objects.
Things like: a short black rod covered in granules, a massive syringe shaped like an injection needle, strings of assorted glass beads threaded together, and bizarre devices fitted with suction cups and handles.
Besta's heart sank deeper and deeper.
She knew, of course, that many full Wizards had peculiar hobbies — especially when it came to matters like this.
She had once heard about a girl from the same academy whose mentor toyed with her in every conceivable way, and in the end actually ate her alive!
"Don't get the wrong idea. This isn't mine — it's a little gift left behind by the previous Wizard," Leilin said, taking down what appeared to be a unique restraint made of cotton cloth and iron chains from the wall. "Though I have to admit, his particular tastes bear a certain resemblance to the old 'me.'"
The "me" of the past, of course, referred to the unfortunate soul whose body Leilin had transmigrated into.
Leilin had grown annoyed with Besta, having been plotted against by her before, and decided to teach her a harsh lesson.
Besides, the original Leilin had suffered greatly at her hands — and had ultimately died because of it.
Leilin figured that since he had inherited everything the original owner possessed, he might as well exact a bit of revenge on his behalf. It wasn't like it required any real effort.
"Everything in here has been modified a bit — absolutely the former 'me's' favorite type…"
Leilin looked at Besta before him, a sinister smile creeping across his face……
……
After venting to his heart's content, Leilin handled the castle's affairs the next morning as though nothing had happened.
Besta, on the other hand, didn't manage to drag herself out of the side chamber until the following evening.
By then her face was utterly devoid of color, her bones felt as though they had all turned to jelly, and her body reeked of blood. She then remained bedridden for an entire week before she could barely stand on her own again.
If this had happened before, the older apprentices would have filed all manner of complaints and grievances.
But now, even though Besta had been absent from her duties for seven consecutive days, they tolerated it with remarkable forbearance. After all, not every apprentice had that kind of relationship with a full Wizard, did they?
In the aftermath, she developed a lasting condition: whenever she saw Leilin, her legs would tremble involuntarily, as though she had come face to face with a demon.
Leilin paid little mind to any of it.
Having carried out every one of the original Leilin's methods on Besta — all drawn from the previous occupant's memories — he simply never sought her out again.
Leilin hadn't done it because he had any such perverse inclinations. He had purely wanted to punish Besta and, at the same time, avenge the original Leilin Farell.
So after that single, satisfying outpouring, he cast the matter of Besta entirely from his mind.
At present, Leilin was patrolling the sea of Dark Mandala flowers.
These black blossoms had petals the size of a palm, dotted with star-like blue speckles that emitted a milky-white glow at night.
The Dark Mandala was a major branch of the Mandala flower family. Its petals were an exceedingly rare treasure for any apprentice — or even full Wizard — who specialized in Negative Energy.
Outside, a single Dark Mandala petal could sell for no less than a thousand Magic Stones!
And here, what Leilin saw before him was an entire sea of them!!!
"The resources of the Ganges Secret Realm are absurdly abundant," Leilin murmured with a sigh, though it was far from the first time he had witnessed this.
Unfortunately, every Dark Mandala in this place had been tagged with an
Moreover, every entrance and exit to the secret realm was equipped with extremely precise detection arrays. Figuring out how to smuggle these resources out was an enormously tricky problem.
Now he finally understood why the
Securing a strategic position was only one reason — this vast sea of blossoms was another that the Four Seasons Garden simply couldn't afford to surrender.
Though the Ganges Secret Realm was impossibly vast and teemed with all manner of rare resources, a Dark Mandala sea of this magnitude was extraordinarily valuable even within the realm itself.
If the location weren't so terrible, the Four Seasons Garden would have stationed a full army here long ago.
"My lord! Our daily task is to gather as many of these Dark Mandalas as possible before the enemy arrives, then hand them over to the transport teams for removal!" an apprentice walking behind Leilin at the edge of the flower sea explained.
"By the Nine Rings — those wretched Dark Wizards have also discovered several major resource nodes, and they're clashing with each other over them. We'll likely be facing a full Dark Wizard army… Even so, every day there are still Dark Wizards and apprentices trying to sneak through the cordon to plunder resources. On top of that, some White Wizards are also worth guarding against…"
The apprentice spoke with a bitter smile.
"Understood. Our job is to extract as many resources as we can here, fend off any lone Wizards or apprentices who approach, and if we encounter anything we can't handle, simply send up a signal — right?"
Leilin's tone was flat.
"That's… essentially it," the apprentice said, his bitter smile deepening.
This approach was nothing short of treating the lives of frontline personnel as fodder — trading human lives for resources.
"I see." Leilin fell silent for a moment before speaking slowly.