Chapter 75

 “How much do you know about the Pope’s ability?”

The topic shifted abruptly to the Pope. Ye Zheng thought for a moment and answered, “The Pope’s ability is 【Spring Hand】. It is an extremely powerful healing-type ability. I have personally witnessed him restoring a person who had been bitten until only half their body remained into a complete and healthy form.”

She could not do that. 【Stream】 could at most reattach a wounded person’s severed limb. It was impossible to conjure a complete body out of nothing for the injured.

“His ability cannot really be called healing. He can even create things out of nothing. As long as the person is not yet dead, he can save them,” Ye Zheng added.

Ye Zheng stared at Qin Lu’s increasingly silent face. She had a slight guess and took the initiative to bring up that taboo topic. “On the day the previous Empress gave birth to Sykes, it was said that the former Pope was in charge of the delivery. Was Wen Jian also present at that time?”

Otherwise, why would Qin Lu mention Wen Jian? Judging by age, when Sykes was born seventeen years ago, Wen Jian, coming from a minor noble background, was only in his early twenties and had just graduated from the seminary. It was unlikely he would have participated in something as significant as delivering the little prince.

Qin Lu finally spoke, her tone light and dismissive. “You mean the current Wen Jian? Of course he was not present. Back then he was just a nobody.”

Hearing Qin Lu’s words, Ye Zheng’s heart suddenly skipped a beat. She thought of a contradiction.

Until she was seven years old, Wen Jian had still been merely a priest in the lower district. As a minor noble from the upper district, he had been assigned to do unimportant work in the lower district. For a rare S-Class healer, this was impossible, unless Wen Jian himself was full of love and enjoyed helping commoners.

Clearly, Wen Jian was not that kind of person. As long as he had any opportunity to climb upward, he would seize it by any means necessary.

So why had Wen Jian, who possessed such a powerful ability, remained obscure back then?

There were only two possibilities. First, he had offended some important figure and been demoted. Second, back then, he simply did not have such an outstanding ability.

Ye Zheng raised her eyes to look at Qin Lu. She knew her teacher would give her the correct answer.

Qin Lu slowly smiled. “It seems you have also noticed something is off.”

“The Pope’s ability was originally called 【Mother of All Things】. I mean, the ability of every Pope.”

The room fell silent for a long while. Even the gears of thought in Ye Zheng’s mind seemed to jam. She mulled over Qin Lu’s words and arrived at an unbelievable conclusion.

“Are you saying that the Pope’s ability is passed down from generation to generation?”

The girl was so shocked that even her eyelashes trembled slightly. Qin Lu calmly nodded. “Yes. This ability is like the Pope’s staff. As long as one becomes Pope, one possesses it.”

The woman wore a bored expression, as if both the ability and the staff were some unsellable discounted goods that could not spark the slightest interest in her.

Meanwhile, Ye Zheng maintained wide-open eyes and an attentive listening posture, hoping her teacher would say more.

She only knew that every Pope in the church was healing-type. Not just the Pope, even bishops and priests tended toward healing types. The manifestations of healing abilities were roughly similar, with differences only in the level of healing prowess.

Ye Zheng had never heard of an ability that could be inherited. Moreover, this ability was originally called 【Mother of All Things】. The name inexplicably made her pay attention.

Without a doubt, some earth-shattering secret of the church was hidden behind this inheritance.

Ye Zheng blinked at Qin Lu. Seeing that the other party remained unmoved, she furrowed her brows in confusion.

“Why are you looking at me like that? That is all I know.”

“Teacher doesn't know everything either. You are the church’s Saintess. You should know more than I do.”

Qin Lu raised an eyebrow at the girl, her tone returning to its usual teasing manner.

Yet Ye Zheng could not smile. It seemed she truly was a Saintess in name only, a mere mascot. Even this idle Duke Qin Lu knew more than she did.

Qin Lu should not have known this much. She had no connection to the church at all. The only channel through which she could have accessed church secrets was her older sister, the previous Empress.

“So, back then, the former Pope also used 【Mother of All Things】 to deliver Sykes?”

Ye Zheng knew this was the biggest scar on Qin Lu’s heart. Yet to get closer to the truth, she had no choice but to repeatedly tear open this wound.

“【Mother of All Things】 is clearly so powerful. Reviving the dead and regenerating flesh and bone would not be an exaggeration. So why did the Empress still die on that day?”

The circulating story was that Sykes had awakened 【Destruction】 at birth. As a newborn infant, he had unintentionally used his overwhelmingly strong talent and killed his mother.

Although Sykes’s ability was unsolvable, anything his right hand touched would inevitably be destroyed, this explanation seemed reasonable. But looking at Qin Lu’s attitude, Ye Zheng felt it was not that simple.

Qin Lu laughed once, but there was no trace of amusement in her eyes. She shook her head. “I do not know either. Perhaps it was just as they said. The newborn Sykes could not control his own ability.”

Ye Zheng leaned forward, imitating Qin Lu’s posture by bracing her hands on the table. This stance carried a slight interrogative pressure as she faced Qin Lu directly and said, “Sykes killed your older sister the moment he was born. So you think he is a monster.”

“Ye Zheng, do you think my mindset is unreasonable?”

“It is very reasonable. But the Qin Lu I know would not torment herself for so long over a mere accident.”

Qin Lu withdrew her hands from the table, wiped her face, turned her head, picked up a cigarette from the desk, lit it, and held it between her lips.

Ye Zheng watched her desolate face. Teacher Qin loved to smoke, but whenever she saw a student coming, she would always consciously stub out the cigarette. Today was the exception.

“Sykes should not have been born.”

The woman murmured softly amid the thin smoke. She held the cigarette in one hand while the other unconsciously fiddled with the neatly arranged thin tubes on the table, the most orderly spot in the room.

“You should know at your age, right? A woman’s body changes in certain ways after becoming pregnant, so it is easy to tell. Especially since my sister and I were always very close. I went to the palace to see her every few days to play.”

“After the Pope confirmed that the Empress was pregnant, I became worried and visited even more frequently. She always looked melancholy and forced smiles. I knew this was common for pregnant women, so I could only accompany her more.”

“I could tell the emperor was not very pleased with my visits to the palace, yet he still indulged me. My sister always appeared as though she both hoped I would come and did not want me to come.”

Following Qin Lu’s description, Ye Zheng imagined a woman with the same chestnut hair as Qin Lu, always sitting quietly by an ornate window, like a bird in a cage, watching the chattering little bird from outside fly in and out.

“Until one day, I was forbidden from visiting the palace again.”

“Because I discovered that my sister, who was supposedly four months pregnant, was still having menstrual bleeding. Her belly remained completely flat, even thinner than before.”

A flash of shock crossed Ye Zheng’s face. The physiological knowledge she had studied told her this was impossible. Unless the Empress had never been pregnant at all.

Qin Lu exhaled another puff of smoke. “Five months later, she gave birth to Sykes and met her death.”

“Ha. Tell me. Where exactly did Sykes come from?”

Ye Zheng could only think of one possibility. “Sykes is not the Empress’s child?” Then he was placed under her name?

Qin Lu shook her head. “But on that day, I personally saw her give birth to Sykes. That devil-like child crawled out from her belly, as if he had sucked away all her vital blood.”

“Before I could even clearly see her final expression, her body completely dissipated.”

Ye Zheng seemed to understand. Sykes was probably not a child the Empress had conceived naturally. He was more like some kind of parasite that suddenly appeared in the Empress’s womb. And this parasite was something the Empress, the emperor, and the Pope all knew about, even personally arranged.

Why sacrifice the Empress to create such a monster? Thinking of Sykes’s SSS-grade ability and the abnormalities in his body, Ye Zheng already had the answer.

Qin Lu suddenly seemed choked by the smoke. She coughed several times, her tone growing lighter and lighter.

“I should have noticed earlier. She loved going to the church to pray back then. I always found it oppressive and boring, so I would run outside to wait for her.”

“Every time she came back from the church, her expression was even more sorrowful. She would say strange things. That this was the will of the God of Hope, the duty of the Empress, the future of the empire.”

“She said that child’s future would surely become that of a powerful yet compassionate hero, so I joined her in looking forward to Sykes’s birth.”

Qin Lu closed her eyes. After she noticed the abnormality, the emperor confined her to her residence. Five months later, on a certain day while she was at home, she suddenly felt her heart pounding as if it were about to stop. It was as though she had foreseen something. She rushed out of her room, forced her way into the palace, and burst into the Empress’s chambers.

She saw the Pope place his hand on her sister’s inexplicably swollen abdomen. She personally witnessed the birth of that little monster.

Ye Zheng listened quietly. In her heart, she had already roughly pieced together the full picture.

The inherited ability of successive Popes, 【Mother of All Things】, possessed extremely powerful creative force. Every bone in Sykes’s body shared the same origin as Dragon Bone. Sykes was very likely something the Pope had created using Dragon Bone… a living being?

As for why it was placed inside the Empress’s womb, even with the immense power of 【Mother of All Things】, it was probably impossible to directly nurture a true human from a single bone. Thus, the Pope chose an appropriate moment to implant the little monster into the Empress’s uterus for further gestation until it became him.

Throughout this entire affair, there had always been one person whose presence felt low-key yet loomed over the whole story like a shadow.

Ye Zheng asked in confusion, “What about the emperor? When you broke in back then and saw what you should not have seen, he seemed…”

“You mean he treated me quite well afterward? He let a woman with no achievements become a Duke of the empire and allowed me to live freely and unrestrainedly.”

Qin Lu laughed coldly. “According to his own words, it was because he loved my sister, Qin Tian.”

"Qin Tian hoped you would be well. I will fulfill her final wish, even if you have learned so many things you should not know."

"I will protect you, protect the family member she cared about most."

Seventeen years ago, a man in splendid robes, his face pale and his expression sorrowful, made that promise.

Upon hearing those words, Qin Lu only felt nauseated. She not only thought it, she actually vomited right in front of the emperor, following her heart’s impulse.

The filth splashed onto his boots. The emperor’s mournful expression changed instantly. He stepped back in unbearable disgust. The self-moved tenderness vanished from his face and voice.

“Qin Lu! Do you think I am heartless? Do you think I forced her to die? She was the woman I loved most in this lifetime!”

“Unlike a wild girl like you, she was kind, selfless, tolerant, and magnanimous. This matter was something she agreed to voluntarily. Everything was for the empire! For the future of humanity!”

The man standing at the pinnacle of imperial power suddenly began to weep bitterly. “She lost her life, and I lost her forever! I lost the ability to ever love again! My grief is no less than yours by even half!”

Pfft.

Realizing she had suddenly burst out laughing, Ye Zheng covered her mouth. After a moment, she suppressed her smile.

“I am sorry, Teacher. It really is a bit ridiculous.”

People who hold power inevitably love to perform, and they are skilled at it. But to perform so deeply that they immersed themselves in such bizarre logic was simply too laughable.

She had not yet met the emperor in person. She never expected him to be such a hypocritical man, so adept at self-pity and self-congratulation.

Qin Lu also laughed along. The corners of her mouth curved with cold killing intent, yet tears faintly shimmered in her eyes. “it's fine. I was also laughed into anger back then.”

“I do not care about any grand imperial cause. But I know my sister well. Once such a heavy title was placed on her, she would agree no matter what.”

“He understood Qin Tian so well. The moment he opened his mouth to her, he had already decided to send Qin Tian to her death!”

Ye Zheng’s eyes darkened slightly. For the future of the empire? It sounded quite reasonable. The previous Empress had thus been helplessly placed on an inevitable path of death, desperately comforting herself that it was a noble sacrifice.

But in Ye Zheng’s view, this was clearly nothing more than the exploitation of the weak by the strong, merely wrapped in a beautiful facade.

Since the ability of 【Mother of All Things】 was so powerful, the Pope and the emperor could have simply installed a uterus in themselves and personally nurtured the future of the empire. Was that not precisely the responsibility beneath their crowns?

Ye Zheng thought: how did they deserve to wield an ability called 【Mother of All Things】?

The moment she thought that this ability was now in Wen Jian’s hands, Ye Zheng’s heart sank even further.

Suddenly, the girl’s pupils contracted. She remembered Zhuo Ya, whom she had hidden in the lower district. Zhuo Ya’s body contained Dragon Bone.

The girl’s hand tightly gripped the edge of the table. The secret Zhuo Ya had refused to reveal seemed to have shown a corner. Could it be that those people were not satisfied with having only one Sykes?

“What is it? Did hearing too much today frighten you?”

“Good child, this is what you threatened me into telling you.”

Ye Zheng’s face had turned somewhat pale. She shook her head.

“Thank you, Teacher, for trusting me and telling me all this. Now I need to hurry to a place.”