[The Greatest Female Astrologer]

[Study Treasure II—The Greatest Female Astrologer]

Du Wei picked up a candlestick. After thinking for a moment, he took a weapon hanging from the wall as well. Naturally, considering his currently feeble strength, he chose a shortsword. After a brief hesitation, Du Wei tucked several fresh candles into his pocket.

Then Du Wei stepped into the secret chamber within the wall.

The faint candlelight illuminated only two or three steps ahead of him. Fortunately, Du Wei had been born with stronger mental power than ordinary people, and his perception of his surroundings was sharper as well.

This was a secret passage embedded within an enormous stone wall. Cold, hard stone lined both sides. Who knew how many years it had existed? The passage was full of dust. Although Du Wei did his utmost to make every movement as quiet as possible, he still could not avoid stirring it up, and sneezed repeatedly.

From time to time, he stepped on small pebbles beneath his feet. With the candle flame swaying, Du Wei could only hobble forward with great care.

Fortunately, this place seemed to have ventilation. Though the flame flickered, it did not go out from lack of oxygen.

After walking through the secret passage for some time, he came upon a flight of stairs. The spiraling staircase led straight underground. It was narrow and crudely piled together from stone, but thankfully sturdy enough. As he went down, Du Wei estimated that he had descended more than thirty steps before he finally saw a small door.

The metal doorknob had long since rusted over. Du Wei gripped it and twisted hard twice, only to find that the door was locked. It would not open at all. He sighed, and suddenly remembered the sentence carved backward on the bookshelf...

"The spoon is the key..."

Du Wei thought for a moment, then raised the candle and shone it around the door. At last, he spotted a pattern on the ceiling above the doorway.

It was an engraved design. Judging from its pattern, Du Wei could barely make out that it seemed to be a star chart. He did not know much about astronomy, but because he remembered the matter of the "spoon," he quickly found the Big Dipper, shaped remarkably like one, on the chart.

"The spoon is the key..." Du Wei muttered. The ceiling was rather high for a thirteen-year-old like him. Even standing on tiptoe, he could not reach it. By the dim candlelight, Du Wei carefully studied the pattern.

One candle was nearly burned out. As he lit the second, something suddenly stirred in his mind—he recalled an important question!

A key?

What a joke!

If someone discovered this secret passage, then even if they had no key, could they not simply find tools and pry the door open? Without a key, they could still smash the door down by brute force.

If that were the case, then the key was not all that important. Yet the clue had specifically emphasized the word "key," so it must carry some deeper meaning!

In other words, without the key, methods such as smashing or prying it open would all be useless.

This "key" probably could not be understood in its literal sense.

Du Wei sat and pondered for a while. When he stood again, he jumped with all his strength and barely managed to strike the Big Dipper pattern on the ceiling with his shortsword.

Bang!

Du Wei's eyes lit up! The sound seemed somewhat hollow.

He gave up on the idea of tampering with the door. Instead, he bent down, found a crack between the stone slabs on the floor, and viciously drove the shortsword into it, leaving the sword standing upright. Then Du Wei braced himself against the wall and stepped onto the sword. This raised him a little higher. Though he still wobbled precariously, he could barely reach the ceiling now.

A thick layer of dust covered the ceiling. Du Wei groped about for a while and could feel that the star patterns of the Big Dipper had a distinctly different texture from the surrounding area, raised and recessed in places. He tried all sorts of methods—knocking, twisting, turning, and so on.

At last, he did not know what he had touched, but he gave it a hard twist and actually turned one of the stones in the star chart. With a series of clacking sounds, a floor tile in the corner of the wall suddenly sank down!

A black passage appeared in the floor, with stairs leading downward!

It worked!

Du Wei cried out softly, then leaped down from the shortsword's hilt with a smile.

Just as he had thought—this was a trick meant to deceive! Du Wei was certain that his guess had been right.

The rusted door beside him was nothing but a smokescreen! The true secret was not behind that door at all! If whoever came here failed to heed the clue and notice the Big Dipper, then even if they forced that door open with brute strength, they would never find the true secret hidden here!

Du Wei was certain that the real secret of this place lay in the black passage that had opened in the floor!

He walked over to the passage. The entrance was extremely narrow, only barely wide enough for one person to enter. It was pitch-black inside. Du Wei first lit a candle and tossed it down. By the falling candlelight, he could see that the stairs below were not very deep—only two or three meters down. It should lead to a hidden room.

Du Wei did not go down immediately. Instead, he sat by the entrance and waited for a while. Only when he saw no abnormalities below did he carefully descend the stairs.

This was a completely sealed room, enclosed by stone walls on all sides. Rows of iron cabinets stood against the walls to either side. Many were sealed, and every lock upon them had rusted over. In the center stood a massive stone platform.

The platform was about waist-high on Du Wei. Its surface was engraved with many profound, indecipherable patterns. At its center was a large arc, surrounded by the positions of countless stars.

Du Wei studied it for a while but could make neither head nor tail of it. He simply gave up researching the patterns on the platform and focused on searching the iron cabinets beside it.

Every cabinet here was locked shut. Given their age, the locks inside had probably rusted solid long ago. Du Wei struggled for quite some time. Just as he was beginning to feel frustrated, he finally let out a cheer—he had found an unlocked drawer!

It was also the only unlocked drawer on all the cabinets!

When he opened it, a stone casket lay quietly inside.

The front of the stone casket bore the crest of the Roland Family!

Du Wei laboriously lifted the casket, sat down on the floor, and carefully opened it. Inside was a roll of parchment.

The parchment was densely covered in writing. When he unrolled it, a green, hexagonal crystal like a gemstone fell from within.

Du Wei patiently lit the third candle he had brought with him, then quietly began reading the words on the parchment...

"To the one who opens this letter:

"Dear reader, you must surely be a descendant of the Roland Family. Then the first thing you must know is that this is a letter left behind by your ancestor. I, who wrote this letter, am the wife of the seventh-generation head of the Roland Family—the astrologer Semel."

At the sight of these opening lines, Du Wei could not help feeling somewhat surprised.

The astrologer Semel?

Of course, Du Wei knew that in the history of the Roland Family, there had once been a peculiar family head. That head had been deeply interested in astrology and had even married a female astrologer. The tallest structure in the family castle where Du Wei now stood—a lofty white tower—had been specially built by that family head so that his astrologer wife could remain high atop the tower at night and better observe the stars in the night sky!

What Du Wei had not expected was that this letter had actually been written by the clan leader's wife, the female astrologer!

He continued reading.

"...When you read this letter, I hope you will understand that what lies before you is an adventure fraught with great danger. You may open a door that has been forbidden for countless ages, for behind that door may very well lie a forbidden realm beyond mankind's reach.

At the same time, this is the result of my life's research.

If you are prepared to embark on this adventure, take the gemstone wrapped together with this letter and carefully feel around the stone platform in the room. You will find a socket. Once you insert the gemstone, you will receive the most complete information I have left behind. To ensure that this information does not fall into outsiders' hands, activating it requires the blood of a descendant of the Roland Family. Drip your blood onto the gemstone, and the bloodline of the Roland Family will guide you to the information I have left behind."

At the end of the letter, there was another line of writing:

"May the great Roland Family flourish, for through my husband, I came to love this family deeply!

Your ancestor, Semel Chira Roland."

Du Wei finished reading it in one breath, and his heart could not help but tremble with shock.

According to the family histories he had read, he had a particularly deep impression of the name Semel Chira Roland—whose original name had been Semel Chira, and who had only taken the Roland Family surname after marrying into it.

This woman had been the wife of the seventh-generation clan leader, a renowned female master astrologer, someone worthy of reverence in the field of astrology. Du Wei's first teacher, the old scholar Rosiat, had also been an astrologer. During the year and a half he had taught Du Wei, whenever he occasionally mentioned this female ancestor of Du Wei's, his words had been filled with respect. He had even inadvertently remarked that this female astrologer named Semel seemed to have been the Empire's finest astrologer in nearly two hundred years!

Yet what had left such a deep impression of this name on Du Wei was not that Semel had been a great master of astrology, but another reason.

For in the Roland Family records Du Wei had read, this female master astrologer had also been a woman who had loved her husband deeply.

The seventh-generation Roland Family clan leader who had married her had not lived long, dying at around fifty. This master astrologer Semel had clearly been a woman of deep devotion. On the third day after her husband's death, she committed suicide in the tall white tower he had built for her during his lifetime, following him in death for love.

Before she died, the female master astrologer carved a sentence onto her tower:

"Because of love, we shall live forever."

It was precisely because of those final words that Du Wei remembered this famous woman in the family's history.

Without the slightest hesitation, Du Wei immediately crouched down and began feeling around beneath the stone platform. Before long, he found the socket mentioned in the letter.

The socket was almost exactly the same size as the gemstone. Du Wei immediately cut his finger without hesitation and let a drop of blood fall onto the gemstone.

As the gemstone slid into the socket, Du Wei instinctively took two steps back...

In the dim secret chamber, the patterns carved upon the square stone platform before him suddenly erupted with brilliant light, illuminating the entire room as brightly as day! The intense radiance was so dazzling that Du Wei could not even keep his eyes open!

Then the light gradually gathered together, finally forming a pillar of light atop the stone platform. At the center of that pillar, a human figure appeared!

This was not a real person, but an illusion formed from the light—one that looked astonishingly like a real person!

The illusion was the same size as a real person, and Du Wei could not help widening his eyes!

He suddenly realized something extremely important!

This Semel, this legendary female master astrologer, was likely also an outstanding mage! Everything that had just happened, as well as the illusion before him, was clearly a kind of magic!!

The glow of the illusion gradually dimmed until its brightness reached a level the human eye could bear.

At last, Du Wei could clearly see the figure standing within the pillar of light.

It was a woman clad from head to toe in a red robe, with silver hair as white as snow. Her entire body was shrouded in scarlet robes, and her face was exceptionally beautiful. Even her eyes seemed to carry gentleness, yet those black pupils gave Du Wei a faintly uncanny feeling.

"O one who has opened this information, I am your ancestor, Semel Chira Roland." The illusion spoke slowly. "This is the final magical message I left behind before my death. The magic array I left behind can only be opened with the magic crystal infused with my own magical power, together with the bloodline of the Roland Family. Since you are able to see this message, you are a descendant of the Roland Family. Thus, you are also entitled to receive every secret I have, without reservation."

Looking at the lifelike, beautiful woman before him, Du Wei could not help feeling shaken.

To preserve a message for a hundred years with a magic array! Such magical skill was already the mark of a supreme master mage!! This Semel actually possessed such ability!

"I have no way of knowing how many years will have passed by the time you activate this message, nor can I know how much magical power remains within the magic crystal I left behind. Therefore, listen clearly to every word I say, because there may not be enough magical power left to activate this magic array a second time."

Semel's illusion spoke slowly.

Though he knew that the Semel before him was not a real person, but merely an illusion she had left behind, Du Wei still could not help nodding.

"First, I must explain this: what I leave you may bring you endless benefits, or it may bring you boundless trouble. For the results of my life's research were known to no one but my husband. Since you, the one who opened this message, were able to come here, you must surely possess some understanding of astrology—at the very least, of astral phenomena. Then the first and most important thing I must tell you is this: every astrologer in this world is wrong! All of them, every single one, is wrong!

For astrology is absolutely not some shallow art that merely predicts the future through changes in the stars. Though everyone now believes astrology is nothing more than a form of divination, I must tell you... astrology is, in truth, a kind of magic—a powerful and profound kind of magic.

Astrologers should not merely be regarded as scholars of astral phenomena, much less as shallow fortune-tellers who mystify things with empty tricks.

True astrologers should possess power capable of standing alongside that of all mages!

Since mages can summon the power of wind, draw upon rain, storms, flames, and every force of nature, then why can astrologers not borrow the power of the stars?

Indeed, we astrologers can go even further! For I have discovered a power that even mages cannot—and perhaps never will—master... This is... the laws!"