Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

  When Baiyi arrived, Vice President Grant hurried forward, ready to greet, and shook the Soul Armature’s hand. “Everyone’s almost here; please take a seat,” he said before nodding courteously at Tisdale, who stood beside Baiyi.

  Afterward, without further ado, he turned and led the pair into the hall.

  ‘Huh. To go straight to the point like that, he really is worried,’ Baiyi observed. VP Grant loved to prattle incessantly — in an attempt to appear amiable and easygoing. To Baiyi, making “small talk” with the man in no way indicated that the conversation would be short.

  Today, however, VP Grant had skipped all of that, leading them into the hall instead. It was a subtle change, but it was enough to highlight the urgency.

  Baiyi took note of the number of important organizations that had been invited by the Sorcerers’ Association. He could make out the Master Sages from the Doors of Conundrum alongside representatives of the Blacksmith Association and the Alchemists’ Association. Baiyi even spotted a prince that he thought represented the Imperial Household, as well as two representatives from the Knights’ Association. Baiyi could not help but wonder if the Knights’ representatives were cut out for meetings that were intellectual and magic theory-laden in nature.

  The absence of a Church representative stuck out like a sore thumb. The Church had to have been informed of the emergency, and Baiyi could bet that they must have been the first party invited to the meeting. The Church’s conspicuous absence was a big, red flag of their role in the disappearance.

  The Sorcerers Association had arranged seats for each representative, and as there were slightly more people than the hall was made to contain, the surrounding was quite crowded. Despite that, the chairs beside Baiyi’s were empty, giving the impression that he was being singled out. Even the sages from the Doors of Conundrum did not sit too close to him.

  Ever since Baiyi flexed his dangerous, taboo power in public — forsaking any pretense of civil disagreements with the Church — even other academic institutions chose to limit their interactions with him, as much as possible.

  “We’ve gathered every information related to our latest anomaly, and we compiled it into this,” VP Grant began, beckoning one of his assistants to distribute reports to everyone there.

  Baiyi leafed through the pages, skimming through the alarming records of strange happenings mentioned in the report.

  Most of the cases were disappearances of either people or objects. For example, an excavation team had gone missing in a micro-realm filled with rare raw materials. Then, in another micro-realm, a large number of goods stored in a secured warehouse had vanished without a trace.

  Some cases were even stranger . An explorer was investigating a realm that had just been discovered when he suddenly realized that half his arm, from his elbow to his hand, had vanished into thin air. An even more gruesome case befell a nobleman, who owned a micro-realm that he used as his private estate. During a party he had thrown for several guests and maids, the nobleman’s partner was bucking her hips against him. Suddenly, his vision was clouded by a veil of hot, sticky liquid. When the steam cleared, a fountain of blood could be seen gushing out of the nobleman’s partner’s waist, as her torso, which was nowhere to be found, seemed to have been cut clean off. [1].

  After the nobleman recovered from the shock and wiped the blood away from his eyes, he realized that his partner was not the only person to be missing a torso. His mansion was missing its top half. It was as though someone had sliced it cleanly in half.

  Baiyi did a quick calculation and realized that a total of thirty-three abnormal cases had occurred overnight, and the victims, who were from diverse social classes, seemed to have been chosen at random. The cases happened too quickly and followed no conceivable pattern. Even before the meeting began, the number of casualties was still unavailable.

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  There was some good news, though. For example, a fair amount of money in one of the Sorcerers Association’s many vaults mysteriously vanished, only to reappear in a construction site in another realm as a shower of gold coins. The elated workers at the construction site had considered the bizarre event a divine miracle, and they had rushed to catch as much as they could. A maid that had been working in a noble’s estate vanished and reappeared in an uninhabited realm. She was at death’s door when a group of explorers found her and saved her.

  The report contained a record of two robbers that had a strange villain team-name. Students from Da Xue had suddenly emerged from one of the nobles’ private plantations, and one of them was a Northerner! The fiasco began with a heated dispute, and it soon escalated into a messy fight, which ended with several people injured. However, the two robbers were subdued. Their real identities were still under investigation.

  Ten of the thirty-three cases had, more or less, ended with a slightly more hopeful note. The other cases had bizarre endings, and the accumulated loss — both people and possessions — was immense.

  Da Xue used micro-realms as their faculties, labs, training grounds, and quarries. As the school’s reputation soared, it inadvertently encouraged the public to also invest in micro-realms. Nowadays, no noble would dare call attention to themselves if they did not yet own a micro-realm to use as their private estate. Furthermore, organizations and major businesses could easily fall behind in their respective industries if they lacked the ownership of several micro-realms that contained precious raw materials.

  As micro-realms helped fuel the nation’s economy, the state leader publicly encouraged the fervor. Tabloid news had even reported that the Emperor owned a dozen micro-realms, which were abodes for his great harem.

  The only conglomerate that was not caught up on the craze was the Church. It had yet to excavate any realms willingly. All it had done was build chapels on realms that had begun to accumulate human communities. This was no different from the missionary work that it carried out in the main realms.

  To Baiyi, the Church’s reluctance to excavate micro-realms was suspicious. This reason must have stemmed from its knowledge of the summoning of Angels and its consequences. Previously, when the utilization of micro realms had yet to gain widespread traction, the effects of the Church’s summonings were kept under wraps, and the public knew nothing about it. However, even under the current zeitgeist of micro-realms usage, which then allowed every single anomaly to be observed and reported, the Church still decided to forge ahead and summon its Angels.

  Its brazenness and complete disregard for the prospect of public condemnation were, at the very least, entertaining to Baiyi; he was sure that this would help his cause, too. He rose from his seat, ready to rile the public up.

  The hubbub in the meeting room died down almost instantaneously, and everyone paid attention to the Fifth Voidwalker.

  “No need for wild guesses, ladies and gentlemen. I know the perpetrator behind everything recorded in this report. Now, let me show you what happened,” Baiyi said.

  He then recounted the War God’s explanation, and he even copied the god’s demonstration to illustrate the phenomenon better. However, Baiyi purposely left out the War God’s warning to not forcefully terminate the ritual.

  The reason for that omission was simple: he wanted these people, who had all suffered tremendous losses, to band together and focus their outrage at the Church. There was a chance that the joint condemnation would force the Church to stop the ritual on its owns accord. The War God had warned Baiyi not to forcibly stop the ritual, but if the Church discontinued of their volition, would that not be fine?

  The scrutiny might make it think twice about so brazenly summoning an entire army of Angels. If the Church continued its ritual, it would have to reduce the number of Angels being summoned into order to remain discreet. This meant that Baiyi would have to fight fewer angels.

  This was a great strategy with which to weaken his opponent. To make sure that the plan worked, Baiyi did not plan to let the lily-livered nimrods in the room go soft on the Church and reveal the fact that the ritual could not actually be stopped.

  Baiyi was also not naive to believe that these people would rally behind him, as they also had important and profitable ties with the Church. All he expected them to do was stand beside him and give the Church a few stern words.

  He was not really sure the weaklings could provide any help to him if he were to actually fight Angels.

  Baiyi’s attempt to drive a wench between this group and the Church did not work immediately. As the Church had built a reputation, which the public respected it for, those in the room did not seem to believe Baiyi, despite the fact that he had told them the truth.

  “Preposterous! It’s hard to believe that the Church would do something this malicious and harmful,” said the prince, who was first to voice out his disbelief.

  Baiyi skimmed through the report in his grasp for a few seconds and retorted, “Please, your precious son was teleported to someone’s plantation. Do you know that he’s scrubbing that noble’s floor right now?”

  “Meh, I’ve got eighteen sons!” The prince rebutted smugly. “Who is that kid again?”

  A Sorcerers Association representative stood up and said, “Look, this isn’t the first time the Church performed an Angel-summoning ritual, yet there are no records of events like these in history.”

  “Back then, we had yet to own so many micro realms. It is only natural that most of the signs went on unnoticed and unrecorded!” Baiyi replied.

  “Master Hope, with all due respect for your knowledge and judgment, I can’t help but wonder how you managed to obtain such detailed explanation. Could you please divulge the source of your intel and corroborate the intel with hard evidence?” A Master Sage from the Doors of Conundrum asked politely, in deference to Baiyi’s honorary title.

  “Look around: did the Church send anyone here?”

  “I…… I’m afraid that that is merely circumstantial evidence, Master Hope. Perhaps they are absent because……”

  The sage hesitated and shot Baiyi a meaningful look, and everyone else in the crowd did the same. The sage had not completed his sentence, yet many understood what had been left unsaid: the Church may not attended the meeting because it knew that its enemy, Hope, would be there. The very same Hope that might vaporize them suddenly, because he could , and no one would be able to stop him.

  “Well, if substantive evidence is what you want, how about this? To start a summoning ritual of that magnitude, the Church would have needed a lot of materials. As these spatial-magic materials are heavily regulated by the Sorcerers’ Association, I’m sure there’s a record of their purchases. Shall we look at that?” Baiyi said, looking at VP Grant.

  “Hold on for a moment, please.” Grant nodded solemnly and muttered to an assistant.

  A few moments later, the helper returned with a few documents and began to thumb through them. A short later, he handed a book to the VP, who quickly opened it. VP Grant’s expression visibly darkened as he flipped through the pages; it was just as Baiyi had said.

  One simply could start a fire without fuel. To build such a gargantuan spatial channel, faith alone would not cut it; the Church required real materials that could only be obtained from the Sorcerers Association. Although Baiyi did not know the spell that an Angel-summoning ritual may need or the materials required to cast it, there were still only so many spatial magic materials under the sun.

  ” Since last year. the Church had been mass-purchasing all kinds of spatial magic materials from us!” When VP Grant finally broke his silence with a voice laced with trepidation. His gaze remained glued to the astronomical numbers in his record. “Their excuse was that they wanted to set up a series of personal teleportation portals to ease their missionary outings. However, the amount they have ordered is way beyond that……”

  “And so all of these really happened?” A Knights’ Association representative asked as he waved the report in his hand. He was clearly not magically-educated.

  “Yes. Set up too many teleportation portals without professional consultation, and you’re basically welcoming all manner of deadly accidents. This is one of the reasons why the Association regulated those materials in the first place,” Grant explained.

  He frowned, though. “If it had been any other organization or individual, we would have immediately terminated their purchase,” Grant said. “But it was the Church, so……”

  The air felt heavy as silence fell. Everyone, excluding Baiyi, wore expressions of shock. The evidence they needed right now had been staring them in the face for a few months.

  No one questioned Baiyi now, so he went ahead and upped the ante. “Well, now that we nailed our perp, I’m sure all of you know what to do next, yes?”