Unlike the rest of the continent, the Snow Country basically only had two seasons throughout the year: winter and sumr. In the short sumr, the weather ward briefly and the ice and snow lted; in winter, the cold was long and bitter, and the land lay buried beneath endless white.
February was the coldest ti of year in the Snow Country. Snowstorms raged two days out of three, and even one’s breath froze in the air outside. Yet even so, on this morning, a large crowd had gathered outside Icehamr City—this was the welcoming party ford by Icehamr Clan Chief Turt, the elders, and the Ritual Council’s witch-priests, waiting for the arrival of the Academy of Truth’s dean, Tertia.
They didn’t have to wait long. A little after eight in the morning, the mbers of the welcoming party saw a shadow appear on the distant horizon, rapidly approaching until it resolved into the outline of a young girl.
Brown, shoulder-length short hair and round-frad glasses; beneath a fine, cleanly beautiful face hung a black mage’s robe over a white underskirt; on her feet, a pair of small, pitch-black leather shoes with hidden lifts inside, and no other adornnts.
This was none other than the dean of the Academy of Truth, the fad Madam Tertia.
“Thank you all for coming out so far to receive .” She landed lightly. Her voice was not loud, but it carried clearly to everyone’s ears.
“Your Excellency the Dean gracing Icehamr City is our clan’s great honor. Your residence has long been prepared. If you would, Dean, please step inside and allow the Icehamr Clan to offer you the hospitality you deserve.” Clan Chief Turt said with a broad, beaming smile.
Tertia imdiately fell in step, nimbly boarding the coach pulled by four snowfield cal beasts. Warmth and fragrance rushed to et her. She leaned back in the seat, looking out through the ice-crystal-inlaid window at the monotonous snowy landscape outside, feeling no waves in her heart at all.
This was a necessary ritual every ti she ca to the Snow Country. It wasn’t that she personally demanded such pomp from the Icehamr Clan; rather, this was in itself a political signal between the Snow Country and the Academy of Truth.
In a ti far more distant than the era of the Legendary Mage, back when the gods still walked the earth, this was how all deities personally took part in mortal politics. The True Gods’ terrestrial divine kingdoms were also fully open to their believers. Only in the five hundred years after the Day of Finality, perhaps in order to rest and heal, did the gods begin to withdraw from the world, ceasing to show themselves. Only then did the gods slowly beco as distant and mysterious as they are today.
After she finished the economic and trade talks, night had already fallen. Tertia walked alone through snow that rose to her ankles, heading to the summit of the holy mountain behind the Snow Emperor Temple.
There she saw Shuanghua’s figure. She seed to have been waiting there for quite so ti already. She greeted Tertia and said, “Senior Sister, long ti no see.”
“Five years now, isn’t it?” Tertia walked over, reaching out to gently brush the snow from her junior sister’s shoulder, then rubbing her soft snow-white hair. Slowly, a smile appeared on her face.
“Mhm.” Shuanghua nodded lightly.
“You called here because of that church?”
“Senior Sister, you already know?”
“I heard from Turt,” Tertia said. “He kept dropping hints again and again. Once he’d confird that the Silver Witch Church wasn’t an official church supported by the Academy, he started hinting that I should help put pressure on them—” Her tone suddenly turned cold as she asked, “Do you need to knock him around a bit for you?”
Perhaps it was because the Silver Witch Church’s expansion had put them under trendous pressure. During today’s talks, Icehamr Clan Chief Turt had been consistently trying to probe Tertia for information about the relationship between the Academy and the Church. When he finally learned the two had nothing to do with each other, he poured out his woes, complaining bitterly and hoping this strongest powerhouse of the Eastern Continent would put pressure on that girl Throne and force that inexplicable upstart church to rein itself in.
That was obviously impossible.
In fact, from the clan chief’s reaction, Tertia even ford a hypothesis: that one of Shuanghua’s major reasons for inviting her to visit the Snow Country was to lend the Silver Witch Church her support and clear away obstacles. Knowing Shuanghua’s taciturn personality, if it weren’t for sothing important, she would never have invited her of her own initiative.
If that really were the case, Tertia would be more than happy to oblige. After all, it was a great chance to spend ti with her junior sister.
“No need.” Shuanghua didn’t feel there was any need to trouble her Senior Sister over sothing this small.
“All right.” Tertia was a little disappointed, but said nothing more. She asked, “Then the reason you called is…”
“Senior Sister, Grandmaster has co,” Shuanghua said.
The mont these words left her lips, the air around them suddenly fell silent, leaving only the icy wind howling as it swept the flying snow.
Tertia said nothing. In truth, she had faintly guessed sothing on her way here. But a guess was only a guess; to have it confird as fact by her junior sister still left her deeply shocked.
Several minutes later, she finally spoke in a complicated tone. “Truly?”
“Truly.”
“Where is she?”
“At Snowmist Lodge,” Shuanghua said. “Senior Sister, I’ll head over now.”
She had barely finished speaking before she prepared to turn into wind and snow and depart. Just thinking of that warm, cozy scene put a faint smile on her face, like an icefield thawing in the spring.
But to her puzzlent, even after she had already cast her divine art and was about to leave, her Senior Sister still hadn’t moved. The little leather boots with hidden lifts on her feet might as well have been welded to the ground; there was no sign of her wanting to follow.
Shuanghua turned back into wind and snow and re-ford at her side, tilting her head in confusion. “—Senior Sister?”
Tertia still didn’t reply. Shuanghua didn’t know if it was just her imagination, but she seed to catch a fleeting trace of… was it hesitation?… on her Senior Sister’s face.
Shuanghua decided she must have seen wrong. Her Senior Sister was the Eastern Continent’s strongest powerhouse—even the True Gods had to give her so face. Everyone else feared her; when had she ever feared anyone?
After a long ti, Shuanghua finally heard Tertia’s response. Sounding a little uneasy, she asked, “Junior Sister… what kind of attitude does Grandmaster have toward ?”
Shuanghua blinked in confusion, then shook her head.
How could she possibly know what kind of attitude Grandmaster had toward her Senior Sister Tertia? She had never even thought to ask that question.
Tertia hesitated for a mont, then finally explained what had happened. “Half a year ago, back at the Academy of Truth, I… with Grandmaster—at the ti I didn’t know that was Grandmaster—and I had so doubts about her identity, and I accidentally attacked her… She left imdiately afterward. So I don’t know what sort of attitude she has toward now…”
After listening to Tertia’s halting explanation, Shuanghua opened her mouth, but had no idea what to say.
She hadn’t expected her Senior Sister to have actually raised a hand against Grandmaster!
Even if it had been to verify her identity, attacking outright was a bit too reckless, and frankly, extrely disrespectful.
“I know that part is my fault.” Tertia turned her eyes away from her junior sister, pushing up her glasses and saying awkwardly, “What do you think I should do to make it right?”
This was, one could say, Tertia’s greatest worry over the past half year. As the Eastern Continent’s strongest powerhouse, she was invincible so long as no True God descended. Precisely because of that, she was used to maintaining a strong stance toward everyone. Whenever she encountered any suspicious person of unknown origin, her first instinct was always to suppress them with overwhelming strength, and then talk about right and wrong.
This approach had never been a problem in the past, because no one had ever managed to keep their secrets when faced with the dean of the Academy of Truth.
Until that day, after that mysterious bronze statue vanished, she later learned that the other party also possessed a ans of spell hijacking—and that was when everything began to grow delicate.
Now the thing she had feared had actually co to pass. That legendary Grandmaster had truly descended into the mortal world—and Tertia had badly offended her the mont they t. What was she supposed to do now?
“Grandmaster isn’t a petty person. If you apologize properly, Senior Sister, she’ll definitely forgive you,” Shuanghua said after a mont’s thought, trying to encourage her.
Tertia felt that sounded reasonable, then asked, “How should I apologize?”
Shuanghua shook her head. She could barely manage small talk with strangers, let alone apologizing; she had no experience with that at all.
In similar situations in the past, her usual approach was to go hunting sowhere else for sothing valuable, sneak it back as a gift, and then pretend nothing had ever happened.
But the problem was, that thod didn’t really seem suitable for her Senior Sister. In front of a being like Grandmaster, what compensation could her Senior Sister possibly offer that would satisfy her? Grandmaster probably didn’t need anything at all, right?
For a while, long silence blanketed the summit of the holy mountain. The two of them just stared at each other, completely at a loss.
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