Silent Crown

by Feng Yue

  In the long silence, a door in the great hall opened, and an old musician walked in. He shook his head at his long awaiting companions, his eyes full of bitterness.

  As soon as they saw him enter, the other musicians rose to their feet.

  “What is the situation, Master Ambrose?”

  “What did His Highness the Prince mean?”

  “Is it impossible?”

  Master Ambrose sighed. “I haven’t had a chance to meet with the Prince. The one who told me everything was His Highness’s assistant, Lady Kraft…”

  “What! That…that’s too arrogant!” The other musicians were stunned. “You represent all the musician schools in the Anglo Kingdom. How could he not even be willing to meet you in person?”

  “I’m afraid he he felt it was beneath his dignity to do so.” Ambrose smiled bitterly.

  He saw things more clearly than anyone else.

  The youngest of the Masters turned red and whispered, “His Highness is not willing to rescind his order? Does he know what he’s doing? Isn’t he afraid of becoming a pariah in the Anglo Kingdom by driving all the schools away?”

  Ambrose stared at him like he was an idiot. “Do you think he cares?”

  The mood in the room darkened as everyone sat back down dejectedly. Some of them were filled with indignation, “He insists on placing the Anglo Kingdom on the road to ruin!”

  But more of them looked sad. “This situation must not be allowed to spread. Our schools have already lost half their apprentices!”

  “What can we do?” Someone sneered. “With three months of his training they can receive the same results as ten years of ours. Seems like a clear choice for the apprentices.”

  Which of the schools could pat their chest and say that they could definitely help apprentices clear the hurdle of becoming an official musician? But all that guy had to do was nod his head, and it would be perfectly clear which side was more attractive.

  “What kind of musician is he?” the old musician roared. “If you just rely on that d*mn thing you will be controlled by it too, and then how can you follow the path of the Originator?”

  “Who cares about the path of the Originator anymore?” someone sighed faintly. “Did you think about pursuing the Originator when you were fourteen? When I was that age all I cared about was becoming an official musician. But no one liked me, so I had to study by myself…I would have even been willing to become a Dark Musician if it had let me advance.”

  Everyone was silent.

  Wasn’t the reason that Dark Musicians had been prohibited for so long because it had been so easy for them to achieve success?

  As long as you could give your heart over to hate and kill enough people you could increase your strength.

  And evil spirits and catastrophes were easier to bargain with than usurers, and sometimes they even paid in advance.

  And wasn’t the path that was now revealed by the Net of Aether was ten times more attractive than becoming a Dark Musician?

  It was a hundred times more attractive! A thousand!

  They did not have to pay any price as long as they offered their loyalty and signed the contract to serve the Anglo Kingdom for thirty years. If you regret it, they wouldn’t even take your life, you would just lose your power.

  Some musicians would use the Net of Aether to break through their own barriers, and then after being cut off from it, would break through them themselves. Having experienced it the first time, doing it again would be practically certain.

  In ten short days all the schools in the Anglo Kingdom…no, all the schools in the West had been thrown into chaos by this sudden tornado. According to the lighthouse’s statistics, more than a quarter of apprentices had already left their schools and headed for the Anglo Kingdom.

  Of the remaining three-quarters, one quarter of them were painstakingly trained by their teachers and did not need external help, and the others had been forced to stay by their schools.

  But for people to stay when their hearts weren’t in it was of no real use, it was only effective for the time being. His Highness the Prince had even informed the nations that he was willing to provide interest-free loans to those apprentices who could not leave due to the high cost of terminating their contracts! They could even travel to the Anglo Kingdom for free!

  In four short days he had already squandered half the Anglo treasury! The fleets flew back and forth from the Anglo Kingdom over the ocean.

  The Royal Musician’s Academy had been expanded to four times its original size and still could not meet demands. The Royal Family had approved six satellite islands around Avalon to be used as extra campuses for the Academy, and the construction there was already in full swing.

  In just fourteen days the number of Royal Musicians had expanded to an incredible 40,000 people!

  40,000 official musicians!

  At their greatest height the Royal Musicians had never numbered more than 3,000. Now they were more than ten times more than that!

  Even if 35,000 of them left the Net of Aether to return to their original apprenticeship, it would still be a force to be reckoned with!

  40,000 official musicians!

  That was enough to fill a small country!

  Obviously there was no lack of spies sent by the various schools, but Ye Qingxuan didn’t care. He was generous enough to open the outer connections of the Net of Aether to them.

  He wasn’t worried about what secrets they might steal.

  Soon, the higher ups at the other schools would discover that the Net of Aether was not an artifact. It was a poison, and if they stole it it would only harm them.

  Not only would their spies not bring back many secrets, but much of the backbone of their own school would be sent back by counter-intelligence as many of their spies became double agents and they could no longer trust them.

  The nations had already issued a warning to the Anglo Kingdom: for each day that the Net of Aether was not brought down, they would impose trade and economic sanctions on them. But the results were not what they expected: many people continued to do business privately with the Anglos.

  In Ye Qingxuan’s hands even the smuggling business had grown ten times better!

  Others had done everything they could do short of declare war, but the Anglos would not so much as bow their heads, not to mention limit the spread of the Net of Aether. Their attitude had not softened one bit.

  All the schools within the Anglo Kingdom had gone to the palace to force an abdication, but they had not even been able to see him as they were casually dismissed by Lola.

  “What does His Highness mean by this?” Some of them had completely lost interest in continuing to be caught up in this. “Can’t he even give us a definite answer?”

  Ambrose was silent for a moment, then he said, “There are two choices. Either merge with the Net of Aether and offer up our core music theory and His Highness the Prince will grant us with mid-level authority to freely upload and modify the movements of our own schools, or we get the h*ll out.”

  This last sentence was obviously Ye Qingxuan’s direct words.

  He had no patience for those old b*stards who sought to take advantage of their seniority and did not care about the current situation.

  Actually, he had said one more thing. “If you get the h*ll out, the Anglo Kingdom will pay all your expenses, and will not hinder you from leaving the country in any way.”

  These two choices were placed in front of everyone.

  Everyone was silent and began to think once again.

  The general trend of the times was that if you couldn’t beat them, join them…so, did they want to surrender to His Highness the Prince? It was not that there was no precedence for this. The four schools that had sought refuge with Ye Qingxuan had in this short time already expanded to six times their original size!

  And once they reached six times the original size it was not that they had not wanted to keep expanding, it was that they couldn’t take anymore!


  Although they had lost their freedom, they had gained strength and growth. Ye Qingxuan had even corrected their core music theory for them, which improved their inheritance efficiency by more than ten times!

  And once they had received mid-level authority, they could also view the important music theory of the other schools at will…although it wasn’t core music theory, in bygone days if even one note of it had leaked out countless people would be locked in a life-or-death struggle for it.

  And right now it was at their fingertips.

  As for leaving the Anglo Kingdom, no one was being forced onto this dead end road. Almost no one even considered it. No one had the temperment of the School of Magic of one hundred years ago.

  So many years of contacts, so many years of operations, so many generations spent planting the roots, building the school buildings, creating a good aether wonderland…

  They could lose it all with a single sentence, which would be incredibly foolish.

  Before the schools of the Masters who came here today had set out, their schools had drawn a line in the sand past which they could not accept anything and authorized the Master to make decisions on behalf of their school.

  Staying behind would be like boiling a frog in warm water. Sooner or later their schools would become part of the Net of Aether and their independence would disappear. But for many schools there was still a question of if they would even survive. Now they had a chance to keep moving forward, so even just a little bit of thinking would make it clear what the right choice was.

  Everyone looked at each other and felt powerless as the wheel of history rolled on.

  -

  -

  In the principal’s office, Ye Qingxuan heard a knock on the door.

  Lola unceremoniously pushed the door open and sat down in the chair across the desk. She took off her glasses, threw them onto the table and poured herself a cup of tea from Ye Qingxuan’s teapot, drinking it down in one gulp.

  Since in her job as secretary Lola had to walk between various offices around Avalon, Lola no longer wore the cumbersome formalwear and long dresses of days past, and had changed to wearing simple and serious attire.

  She wore glasses now, and her long hair was pleated behind her back, revealing her slender, pointed ears, no longer hiding the fact that she had moon spirit blood.

  Anyway, no one who grasped this fact dared to say anything.

  The result was a strange scene in which a moon spirit strolled through the Inquisiton every day. The purification musician who guarded the door had to show her respect, making people think that public morals were declining day by day, and that public morality was not what it used to be.

  It seemed that she noticed the trouble in Ye Qingxuan’s heart. She rolled her eyes at him.

  “The old men figured it out.” She pulled something out of her pocket and threw it to him. “This is the finished terminal that the Royal Institute of Research made at your request.”

  Ye Qingxuan caught it, then looked at the thick, heavy piece of iron the size of his palm. He could not help but raise his eyebrows.

  “Interesting…”

  700 Goodbye

  The corners of the black iron plate were round and polished. Although it was a prototype, it was not crudely made. An extremely thin, transparent layer of metallic glass covered its exterior. Under the refraction of sunlight, the alchemy array integrated into the iron plate could be seen faintly. Complicated notes flashed, and as Ye Qingxuan twirled it around, the iron plate danced deftly between his five fingers.

  As requested by Ye Qingxuan, it was solid and durable, and its size was small enough for it to be carried around on one. It could be put into any pocket, although there was a risk of losing it.

  But if someone was careless enough to lose it, one could only say that he deserved it, no?

  Ye Qingxuan nodded. “Looks good, how is it used?”

  “It’s just like using an aether ball.” Lola replied, “Other than being the connected terminal of the Net of Aether, it can be totally be seen as a variant of the aether ball.”

  Lola took the terminal from Ye Qingxuan’s hand, held it in her hand, then awakened and activated it, and a projection appeared in the air, emerging from the iron plate. Detailed icons showed the aether waves in the surroundings and various other values.

  All the functions of an aether ball were available, and unlike the aether ball, within it was a very thin layer of black gold, which served as the core. It could store plenty of small-scaled movements, making it convenient for them to be used at any time.

  The demonstration was the Tetris movement that Ye Qingxuan and Charles composed back then. Since the game was created, it had become widely popular, and many musicians liked to have one or two goes at it when they were killing time.

  After demonstrating the various effects, Lola flipped the terminal and showed Ye Qingxuan the golden alchemy array on the back — the music theory of the Heaven Ladder.

  “It has been locked in resonance state with the Net of Aether. Users just need to carry it on them and activate it when necessary. Like banks, everyone is differentiated based on their individual accounts. Users can set a password and bind it to their sound of heart for two-factor authentication.”

  As the array of the Heaven Ladder lit up, the glow of Jiu Xiao Huan Pei traveled through the air and emerged, connecting the terminal to the vast system of the Net of Aether. Then, under the guidance of Lola, strands of music theory interwove. In the gentle melody, a warm light spilled from her hands onto Ye Qingxuan’s body.

  Chorale movement.

  Through the Net of Aether, even hybrids with demon blood like Lola could use the music theory of the school of choir, which was opposite to their own music theory, without any hindrance, and they need not worry that the music theory in their bodies would be ignited.

  This alone was enough to ensure that the Sacred City would never let him off.

  But in this regard, Ye Qingxuan still couldn’t care less.

  At most the Sacred City would just hate him a little more. One wouldn’t feel itchiness after having too many lice on one, and one wouldn’t worry about one’s debt after it accumulated too much.

  Instead, he was more concerned about the upcoming demonstration.

  “What about communication capabilities?” he asked. “I remember making requests regarding this aspect to Newton.”

  “With the Net of Aether as a channel, it isn’t a laborious task to achieve such functions.”

  Lola showed Ye Qingxuan the serial code at bottom of the Heaven Ladder of the terminal. “Every terminal has its own serial number. As long as you have the serial number of the other party, you can transfer information through the Net of Aether any time you like. Other than sound, you can also transfer images, but the transfer of images occupies too much resources, and the system will fail to cope if everyone uses it.”

  Ye Qingxuan frowned. “Is there a solution?”

  “It is easy to resolve.” Lola said, “Newton asked me to tell you that we can introduce different permission levels. Those of a high permission level can use the function any time, whereas those of a low permission level must apply when necessary, and the function will be made temporarily available for them.

  In terms of operation and maintenance, according to your order, Heaven Ladder Communications Company has been registered. Congratulations, you are about to monopolize the future communication industry, you’ll simply be rolling in money.”

  Ye Qingxuan couldn’t help but smile bitterly. “The income is just a number, and the main point is to promote the Net of Aether.”

  Newton had strongly protested to him in the report. According to calculations, the communication function of the Net of Aether was expected to occupy one-fifth of the total resources. In other words, one-fifth of the power would be wasted on it.

  In comparison, the communication function was not what musicians needed most, because the products that had such a function had alread
y existed for a long time. Large-scale instruments of harmonious melody could send and receive information to and from the outside world at any time, not to mention various movements of revelation.

  Although the communication function of the Net of Aether was easy to use, it was not necessary for musicians.

  But conversely… What about non-musicians?

  What about civilians?

  The average person who were still stuck with writing letters to communicate with their relatives and friends, often waiting for three or four months, or even half a year, for a letter…

  Ye Qingxuan could say with certainty that as long as the terminal of the Net of Aether was made available to civilians, a large number of people would definitely be willing to use up their last resources and spend a relatively expensive amount of money to purchase a terminal of the Net of Aether.

  Even if it was just for this one function.

  Then, the number of loyal followers of the Net of Aether would increase significantly, among them, many might have the talent to become apprentices and later on musicians. Their contributions to the Net of Aether alone would be enough for Ye Qingxuan to earn back the amount he had invested.

  From the very beginning, Ye Qingxuan did not place any restrictions on the independence of the Net of Aether, nor did he intend to turn the Net of Aether into something that was solely his.

  The nature of the Net of Aether meant that it must be open-sourced, and permission of usage must be made available. The more people using it, the stronger its power.

  It had no direct ability to attack, nor could it be used for defense, not to mention the lack of various wonderful effects. As a catastrophe, it could be considered the weakest, but it had unlimited potential in itself.

  Every user would become part of the Net of Aether, making it stronger and stronger, and also sharing its burden.

  As the load testing of the Net of Aether came to an end, Ye Qingxuan also gained a certain level of understanding of its limits at the moment.

  At any instant, it could support 40,000 formal musicians who were using movements simultaneously. If the number was exceeded, confusion would occur.