I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 800: Getting Married?!
Time flew.
On this day, the heavy alloy door of the laboratory slid slowly open to either side.
Jie Ming assumed it was the Black Giant priest handling logistics bringing the handover manifest for a new batch of plane origin. He did not even raise his head, his gaze still on the floating light screen, his fingertips adjusting the last few redundant structures in the array before him.
Rune trajectory after rune trajectory split and recombined as he worked, like countless glowing star tracks interweaving through the air. And then.
A crisp, hurried clicking of high heels broke the laboratory’s habitual quiet.
Click, click, click…
The steps came faster and faster, very nearly at a run.
Before Jie Ming could react, a slender pale hand came down on the experiment bench with a slap, landing squarely on the very rune curve he had been about to modify.
At the sudden interruption, the whole light screen froze.
Immersed in his research, Jie Ming could not help frowning.
“The old man is getting married.”
The voice came out of nowhere, carrying a note of urgency she could not quite suppress.
At that voice, Jie Ming finally raised his head.
Only two people could come and go from his laboratory that freely, and beyond any doubt the one standing on the other side of the bench was Viola. Today her long silver-gray hair was not bound up high as usual but spilled loose over her shoulders, a few strands slightly disordered from hurrying over.
Clearly she had come the moment she got the news. Even the collar of her robe was crooked, without time to straighten it.
But what genuinely surprised Jie Ming was her expression.
Viola ordinarily wore the air of someone entirely at ease, fond of teasing others and of watching others come off badly.
There was always a faint smile hovering at the corner of her mouth, as though nothing could genuinely disturb her mood.
But now her eyes churned with a complicated look Jie Ming had never seen before.
It looked unsettled, like a still lake into which someone had suddenly thrown a boulder.
“Who?” Jie Ming blinked.
“Who else?” Viola glared at him irritably. “The old man, obviously!”
“What?!” Jie Ming shot to his feet in shock.
His first reaction was to check whether the Astral Mortal Dust Barrier around him was still intact.
“Hiss… it has not been breached. So that was not a hallucination after all?!” Jie Ming could not help drawing a cold breath.
“Is the world about to end?!”
Nor could Jie Ming be blamed for reacting so strongly, because that was Mentor Clark they were talking about.
To call him cold would be a compliment to that wizard. If he could say something in one word, he absolutely would not use two.
It was hardly proper for a student to say so of his own mentor, but Jie Ming still felt Clark and the word “marriage” were two parallel lines that could never intersect!
Watching Jie Ming’s reaction, the corner of Viola’s mouth could not help curving. Evidently his response satisfied her.
But she had business to attend to, so Viola regretfully cut his flight of imagination short:
“How is it impossible? Do not forget Teacher Kastilla, the seventh-level witch of the Crimson Court who specializes in the Law of Life.” Jie Ming stared a moment, then understanding came. “So it is her. Well, that explains it. That explains it.”
Of course he knew Kastilla.
A seventh-level life-system wizard of the Crimson Court, and an old friend Mentor Clark had known for tens of thousands of years.
The two of them could fairly be called childhood companions, and their relationship was unquestionably good.
After all, the one ordinary object Mentor Clark carried was a metal bracelet Teacher Kastilla had given him.
Back at their first meeting in the parallel plane, he had already understood there was something distinctly going on between the two of them.
Only… Jie Ming genuinely had not expected it to develop suddenly to the point of marriage.
“When was it decided?”
Jie Ming waved the experiment screen closed, asking with great interest.
“I am not sure of the specifics. I only got the news today.” Viola let out a long breath.
“To be precise, just now.”
She came around the bench and sat down in the chair beside it with practiced ease.
Her long legs crossed naturally, one hand propping her chin while the other absently wound a strand of silver hair at her shoulder.
“Teacher Kastilla sent me the message herself. The old man did not tell me at all.”
She waved the magic network terminal in her hand.
“She said she and the old man have already agreed that once the research each of them has in hand is wrapped up, they will hold the wedding formally, and we should prepare in advance.”
“And since Teacher Kastilla does not have your contact details, she asked me to pass it on to you.”
Jie Ming could not help a smile. “That does sound like something that wizard would do.”
He had not spent long around Teacher Kastilla, but Jie Ming knew her character well enough.
Compared with Mentor Clark, who could go a day without saying more than a few words, Kastilla was warm and cheerful, kind to people and very direct in how she did things. In daily life, at least. In a fight she would probably be a different person entirely.
But whatever else, Kastilla had never liked to hide a decision once she had made one.
Mentor Clark, on the other hand…
“Repressed old thing!” Jie Ming grumbled inwardly.
His mentor would very likely not volunteer a word to anyone right up to the day of the wedding.
At that thought, the corner of Jie Ming’s mouth lifted slightly.
When it came down to it, this was something worth being happy about.
But when he looked at Viola again, the smile gradually faded.
Because her state… was clearly wrong.
By rights, in the whole Noren Workshop the person who most enjoyed teasing Mentor Clark was Viola.
She was also the one who most enjoyed shouting at that research maniac to spend less time in the laboratory and get out and meet people.
Now that she had finally heard her mentor was preparing to marry, she ought to have been the happiest of all.
But though a smile hung at her mouth, a gravity she could not shake lingered between her brows.
Even that once-smooth strand of silver hair had very nearly been wound into a knot.
Jie Ming watched her a moment. “What has happened?”
Viola did not answer at once. She only went on winding her hair, thinking about something.
Jie Ming did not press her, and simply waited.
The laboratory returned to quiet, with only the faint hum of distant alchemical apparatus echoing softly through the air. She was silent for a dozen breaths, then finally let go of the hair she had crumpled and rubbed lightly at her brow.
“Jie Ming,” she asked suddenly. “Do you think two seventh-level wizards marrying is a matter of only two people?”
Jie Ming did not answer. He only looked at her steadily, with the expression one reserves for an idiot.
Viola, incensed, brought a hand down like a blade on the puppet’s head, denting the skull in.
“Exactly. We high-level wizards very often represent more than ourselves.”
She leaned back slightly, looking up at the laboratory’s white dome, her voice dropping.
“The old man represents the Noren Workshop. Kastilla represents one of the large wizard powers within the Crimson Court: the Crimson Mother Nest.” “Two seventh-level wizards marrying across factions means shared resources, technical exchange, a redistribution of interests, and possibly even a shift in the future balance of power.”
She tapped lightly at the experiment bench.
“The interests tangled up in it are large enough to fill dozens of standard contracts. So… this is no longer simply a question of who likes whom.” Jie Ming frowned slightly, understanding what she meant.
“Someone objects?”
“Of course.” Viola nodded. “And it is the most troublesome kind.”
She waved a light screen open, and the image of a middle-aged wizard in a dark red robe surfaced slowly.
The man’s expression was calm and his features fine, but he had a pair of gray eyes that seemed capable of devouring life itself.
Even as a mere image, it conveyed an inexpressible aura of decay.
“Azrael. A peak seventh-level wizard, specializing in the Law of Decay.”
“The Law of Decay… is it?” Jie Ming stroked his chin, beginning to understand the situation.
Viola nodded helplessly. “Yes. Life and decay are one of the combinations of law the wizard civilization acknowledges as most compatible. Sustained law resonance between two such wizards greatly improves the research efficiency of both.”
“Azrael has been studying that system for several thousand years. And Kastilla is the one master of the Law of Life he has found who perfectly matches him.”
“Over the years he has kept hoping Kastilla would establish a long-term law resonance research partnership with him.”
“As he sees it, that is his only chance of advancing to the eighth level.”
Jie Ming felt his teeth ache. “So once Kastilla marries Mentor…”
“His research road is cut off,” Viola said, shaking her head lightly.
“Or rather, the door to the eighth level has been closed on him by human hands.”
The laboratory fell quiet again.
After a moment, Jie Ming spoke slowly:
“So… does this Azrael love Kastilla?”
Viola shook her head without the slightest hesitation.
“No! Quite the opposite. He does not love her at all.”
She looked at that utterly untroubled image of Azrael, something complicated in her eyes.
“Beyond any doubt, this fellow is the standard wizard. Everything proceeds from reason.”
“He feels neither love nor possessiveness toward Kastilla. In his eyes she is simply the most crucial and irreplaceable piece of the puzzle on his road to the eighth level.”
She sighed lightly. “And that is precisely why he is the most dangerous.”
Jie Ming narrowed his eyes slightly, agreeing with her:
“That is troublesome. If it were only a matter of feelings, something could be worked out. But this fellow is entirely rational, so the moment his calculations tell him that stopping this wedding is the highest-yield option…”
“Then…” Viola raised her head and met Jie Ming’s eyes, her voice slow and low.
“He will do it without hesitating for an instant!”