Don't Solve Trouble, Make Trouble (4k)

"That sounds like good progress," Yize said.

After his glimpse, his questions about Xie Yu had only multiplied, but he was not particularly inclined to investigate the details.

He had heard Xie Yu say some strange things that ordinary people would find hard to understand and recite several void-domain spells. He had reached only one conclusion: Xie Yu's skill at casting void-domain magic was greater than he had expected.

But that was not something a Magister like him needed to spy on Xie Yu personally to discover.

A mass of Void Twist sat in plain sight on Xie Yu's shoulder.

Earlier, when Xie Yu first met the Chapter of Teleportation, void power had also fluctuated around him, but it had been weaker then, and the Chapter of Teleportation seemed to have swallowed it in one gulp.

"It can teleport me, not just when I'm in danger, but also when I ask it to. Right, Chapter of Teleportation?" Xie Yu described his progress in winning it over.

[Yes! Of course.]

Although everyone present was puzzled by Xie Yu "talking to himself" while addressing a Sealed Artifact, they did not find it too strange. Boys his age all liked to fantasize, and they themselves might have chatted with dolls and toys when they were young. They simply took the smile Xie Yu had deliberately given the Chapter of Teleportation as childish behavior.

In fact, this was not uncommon among adults either. Many mages liked to cultivate affection for their staffs, weapons, magic hats, and the like, saying a few affectionate words to them before casting a spell. However, no research had shown that this behavior could increase a spell's success rate.

And in the field of Sealed Artifacts, because the artifacts themselves could respond to prayers to some extent, many researchers also tried talking to them.

"Let's try it. Back to the room," Xie Yu instructed.

As soon as he finished speaking, Xie Yu vanished from the inn's corridor, leaving only the Void Twist [Dali] floating there by himself.

Two or three seconds later, he reappeared, clutching a book in his hand: [The Book That Is No Longer Lonely (Void Magic) (Affection 100)].

"I really like this book. I want to spend more time reading it, but I forgot to bring it with me earlier."

In a short time, Xie Yu had teleported twice, entirely of his own volition.

"That's a little different from what the file says." Mr. Fry turned around and found the marble box that had held the Chapter of Teleportation. The research records for Sealed Artifact 3-2152 were tucked beneath it.

The research records had originally been prepared for Xie Yu too, but he had picked up the Chapter of Teleportation and walked away.

"'To make the Chapter of Teleportation teleport according to a mage's instructions, sincere prayer is required, preferably in a friendly, humble tone. The initial probability of success is approximately 30 percent. Attempts are recommended no more than once every three hours. The probability of success may increase after a long period together. Users of void-domain magic can increase it more easily,'" Fry read from the file.

The way the Chapter of Teleportation behaved with Xie Yu was clearly very different from what the file described.

"I see. I'm a user of void-domain magic, so the probability increased. That makes perfect sense."

Understanding dawned on Xie Yu.

"..." Fry had no answer.

The brat had not prayed at all just now, much less used a friendly, humble tone, and he had not followed the principle of using it only once every three hours.

At first, its evasion of the fireball could have been explained as the artifact acting out of its own inherent traits and friendliness, activating its ability to help Xie Yu avoid danger. This time was completely different: Xie Yu had made the choice himself.

The greatest principle in the field of Sealed Artifacts was that they could never respond in a fixed pattern the way the rules of magic did.

Xie Yu had naturally seen Fry's expression and understood that he could not play dumb too much, so he put away his look of realization.

Smiling, he walked over to Fry, took the file from his hand, glanced at it once or twice, and handed it back.

"An excellent file. Now it's scrap paper. Mr. Fry, forget about it. You can burn it if you like."

Xie Yu's smile was supremely confident.

He treated the researchers' cases from over a decade in that file as nothing, laughing at those fellows as mediocre fools, every one of them.

Ordinarily, no mage would have liked to see a junior wearing a smile like that. It was arrogance, a challenge to the experience and efforts of one's seniors. But at this moment, Fry felt no particular dislike.

He only felt that this was how Xie Yu should be. He had earned the right.

What exactly had this boy just done?

Yize could not see it clearly.

As far as he could tell, Xie Yu had merely said a few strange things and fed the Chapter of Teleportation some magical products of the void.

Normally, that was nowhere near enough to change the state of a Sealed Artifact. There were plenty of mages more skilled at spellcasting than Xie Yu. "Feeding" a Sealed Artifact in hopes of winning its friendliness was also common, but the difficulty was that every artifact was different. The hard part was finding what it liked; without a long period of getting accustomed to each other, feeding it the wrong thing would only have the opposite effect.

How had this boy found exactly what the Sealed Artifact liked?

Could it be that the strange things the boy had said had also been precisely to the Chapter of Teleportation's liking? As soon as the thought appeared, even someone as experienced as Yize felt the corners of his mouth twitch slightly. He found it hard to believe.

He believed that Xie Yu truly was a genius in the field of Sealed Artifacts. After all, the facts were right before his eyes.

His doubts about Xie Yu vanished, but Yize felt that he was getting farther and farther from the truth, and that he could see the boy less and less clearly.

He looked at Xie Yu and began giving him some advice.

"We plan to arrange an exclusive interview for you, but we haven't settled on a subject yet."

"Sealed Artifacts, void magic, or magical knowledge-you can choose one yourself, or show them all."

"But the interview may not be friendly. You need to prepare yourself for difficult questions. The more extraordinary something is, the more solid the observations needed to prove it. This wasn't much of an issue in previous years..."

At that point, Yize felt that he had lost a little face as an Education Bureau official, and was somewhat embarrassed.

In previous years, once the names of the high scorers came out, hardly anyone asked whether they were genuine. Everyone chose to trust the scores first, and only questioned them if there was a clear reason for doubt. This year, it was completely reversed.

He explained the situation to Xie Yu.

"In the past, scores were trusted. They spoke for themselves. But this year, that trust is disappearing. You can probably guess why."

"The high-ranking people who know the inside story are keeping silent and remaining skeptical. The mages who have noticed something amiss are angry and unwilling to believe it... The loss of trust is silent and imperceptible, yet extremely frightening. The scores haven't actually been made public yet; only some inside information is circulating in a small circle. But we need to prepare in advance."

"Our protection of you has also come under suspicion."

"And there's some malice in that suspicion, from candidates and from nobles... Somehow, this seems to fit the divination I did for you the night before last. It fits very, very well! That result I couldn't make sense of at the time-the outcome that could be good or bad."

As Yize spoke, he recalled the vague prophecy he had made when he first met Xie Yu. As a diviner, he rarely felt the wonder of fate anymore. He saw that insubstantial thing more clearly than others did, and it had gradually lost its mystery.

But since meeting Xie Yu, this was the second time he had found himself looking at fate anew.

Good or bad meant a vortex, a clash, the meeting of victory and defeat.

Everything depended on... the choice of the person involved, Xie Yu.

He was distracted for a moment, the wonder he had felt at his first divination as an apprentice returning to him.

"I understand. But with you overseeing things, I'm not worried at all."

Xie Yu nodded.

Just now, he had already felt the Education Bureau's "suspicion" and undergone the scrutiny of several mages, including Yize the Magister and veteran mages like Fry.

He had long been mentally prepared for everything Yize had said.

As someone who felt guilty about getting a perfect score by "cheating," Xie Yu had always been preoccupied with how to turn his score from false to genuine.

Winning over Sealed Artifacts was for that purpose, and his motivation to study magic on his own came from it too. He had been working at it all along.

Besides that, there was something else Xie Yu was concerned about.

He asked:

"Have there been any developments since last night?"

What had just happened at Kaiming's clinic, that three-story wooden house?

Yize had not originally paid much attention to the matter. He cared more about the overall situation. Whether Wig Brown had died in Black Pine City or Fry had nearly fallen into the nobles' trap, both were minor matters in essence. What Yize truly cared about was the overall conduct of the Northern Plains Province Education Bureau to which they were connected.

Hearing Xie Yu bring it up, Yize gave a brief account.

"I arranged for Mr. Virgil of Black Pine City to take charge of Wig Brown's funeral. That should be appropriate. I also intervened in the Pine Nut Chamber of Commerce's information channels in advance and made sure they would receive the news of Wig Brown's death 'later.' That should stabilize the situation."

After learning that Sealed Artifact 3-0771 was in Xie Yu's hands, Yize naturally understood what the "inheritance dispute" he had divined earlier was about.

The so-called inheritance was 3-0771, which had previously been taken from the Pine Nut Chamber of Commerce and was in fact already in Wig Brown's possession.

Avoiding this little farce was simple: just keep the Pine Nut Chamber of Commerce and the Brown Family apart. As for the Sealed Artifact's whereabouts, Wig Brown was dead on the surface, the fake Kaiming had vanished, and the artifact had concealed itself and gone missing. They could guess all they liked.

Xie Yu had no intention whatsoever of returning the Fate-Substitution Talisman Doll.

Yize was even less likely to help either side demand it from Xie Yu. He would only help Xie Yu cover it up.

He was happy to see the Brown Family suffer a hidden loss.

More importantly, if the matter was verified, 3-0771 could serve as evidence of the Brown Family's crimes. Even if it might not be enough to convict anyone, it could never simply be returned to them.

Xie Yu did not say outright that something might already have happened. He merely steered the conversation toward the wooden house and reminded the confident diviner:

"Kaiming's disappearance might put them on alert. They might go and investigate his clinic."

The wooden house's Affection had reached its maximum earlier. Although he did not know what had triggered it, outside interference was most likely involved.

Yize said:

"They won't find anything substantial. The Brown Family only sent two people: a male three-star mage, Roman Brown, and a five-star mage, Cynthia Brown. I've already seen them... They're speeding through the streets of Black Pine City..."

As he spoke, Yize's voice grew quieter.

A golden light like sunlight welled up in his eyes, his red robe stirred slightly, and fate seemed to flow around him.

He saw an unexpected scene. The two Browns were not heading for the funeral at the Forest Magic Academy. Instead, they were going toward the factory district on the outskirts of Black Pine City, where the Pine Nut Chamber of Commerce was located.

"They're searching for 3-0771. Their conflict with the Pine Nut Chamber of Commerce is unavoidable. Xie Yu, your premonition was correct," Yize murmured.

It had actually been more accurate than his divination and intervention.

"I didn't have a premonition. I was just worried."

Xie Yu was modest this time.

"They went to the clinic and investigated it. They approached the Pine Nut Chamber of Commerce of their own accord and contacted an elder of their family... I had already divined that they valued this Sealed Artifact highly. I knew that, but I overlooked the possibility that they would jump to suspicions."

Yize frowned, plainly somewhat annoyed.

He had personally intervened to settle the matter, but now trouble had surfaced again, and somehow it had returned to the divined outcome he had wanted to avoid.

"I have to deal with this. We can't just leave it alone. If it blows up, it'll affect the Education Bureau's internal investigation, and it'll affect you too..."

Yize exhaled and looked toward Fry, evidently intending to assign him a task.

"Perhaps I have an idea," Xie Yu said.

"What idea?" Yize asked, puzzled.

Xie Yu observed him.

Mr. Yize seemed to be the defensive type, someone who liked to put out fires and always preferred to "resolve" things when they happened.

That was a good disposition, of course. People like that were the foundation on which the kingdom and society functioned.

But under special circumstances, always thinking about "resolving" things could make one overlook something more important.

After understanding the exam paper, reading the books, hearing about the bizarre exam results, and experiencing the events of the past two days, Xie Yu had come to regard the nobles as enemies.

Perhaps they were not enemies of the kingdom or of Northern Plains Province. They were mixed into the workings of society, occupied certain industries and positions, and might even be on their side. But Xie Yu did not care about that. All he saw was rot, the rot of the kingdom, and the root of that rot was the nobility.

When dealing with an enemy, merely thinking about "resolving the problems they cause" was clearly not enough.

The better one was at solving trouble, the more trouble one became entangled in. Mr. Yize's approach would only make things worse and return the initiative to the mastermind behind the Brown Family.

Only by learning to make trouble would trouble have no time to come looking for you.

Xie Yu said seriously:

"We have two seemingly unrelated matters in our hands right now. One is the nobles cheating on the major exam. The other is the Brown Family's maneuvering over the post of spiritual and soul inspector at the academies in Northern Plains Province. Perhaps we can put the two together and make use of them."

"Put them together?" Yize was taken aback.

Aside from both involving nobles, the two matters did not seem to have much connection. One involved the descendants of dozens of families, while the other involved the Brown name itself.

It was not as though there was no connection at all. Both matters involved the selection and training of the kingdom's young mages. Perhaps there really was a connection beneath the surface... Yize waited for Xie Yu to continue.

He was even somewhat eager to hear what the young man was about to say. He had a premonition: it was a storm.

"What if I said that Wig Brown intended to use life substitution on me and take my place as the candidate with a perfect score, and that Mr. Kaiming sacrificed himself to save me and buy time, causing Wig Brown to kill him first?"

"Then, thanks to your warning, Mr. Yize, Mr. Fry arrived in time and joined me in taking the Fate-Substitution Talisman Doll. I used knowledge and wisdom to tame it as quickly as possible, and afterward we secretly killed Wig Brown. We thought that after this, the nobles would accept their loss and care enough about appearances not to make more trouble, but we were clearly wrong."

"Mr. Fry, Mr. Yize, and I together foiled the Brown Family's plot to kill and replace the only candidate in Northern Plains Province to achieve a perfect score, and put a stop to the nobles' encroachment in a remote city of Northern Plains Province."

"Perhaps the Brown Family caused all the problems with this year's major exam in Northern Plains Province."

"How does the Education Bureau view this issue?"

"How do the other nobles view this issue?"

"What would you all think if I told that story in the exclusive interview and brought up the Brown name? As long as my safety can be guaranteed, I really do dare to say it."

Xie Yu looked at Magister Yize and said without the slightest fear:

"You can think it over. There is evidence for every sentence I've said. How about we destroy the Brown name entirely, together?"