The next moment, it was like a bubble being popped, and the chaotic galaxy that was flowing, brilliant and dazzling suddenly disappeared.
Everything before my eyes returned to normal and calm.
"Princess, please don't move!"
At the same time, Candice heard the cold and rapid shout of bodyguard Sarah.
Then, her back in simple clothes appeared in front of him, blocking him like a shield.
"here it is……"
Candice quickly looked around and was shocked to find that... this was actually a lush forest!
The two of them happened to be standing under the shadow of several large trees.
"Where is this place? How do we..."
She was a little confused and didn't know what to do except obey the bodyguard's request and stand there.
A hallucination? Some kind of mental spell that disrupts perception? Or some other spiritual phenomenon?
All kinds of guesses flashed through her mind chaotically, but she ruled them out one by one.
What surprised her the most was that, as an entry-level righteous mage, although her realm was not very high, she already had sufficiently stable inspiration.
If someone really had cast some spell on her, causing her to fall into her current situation... then it was unlikely that she would not be able to sense even the slightest spiritual fluctuation.
Besides, he had Sarah, a high-level righteous mage, protecting him. Who could cast a spell on him without being noticed under her nose? !
"…You usurper, surrender!"
At this moment, a sharp and familiar shout interrupted her wandering thoughts.
"brush!"
The next second, a figure so swift that only a phantom remained rushed out from somewhere in the woods and rushed towards the two of them like an arrow.
At this moment, Candice's inspiration felt very clearly... an extremely rich and strong spiritual fluctuation emanating from this person.
"Enemy attack?!"
Candice was startled and quickly hid behind her bodyguard Sarah.
The latter did not fail in her duty, she remained extremely calm and recited a silent spell at high speed. At the same time, the spiritual power in her body was in violent turmoil, imitating a specific complex rhythm.
"boom!--"
A round shield made of colorful fluorescent light suddenly appeared, keeping the attackers out.
The violent flames and explosions shook the sky and caused the ground to shake.
The attacker's figure paused slightly, and Candice took this opportunity to see the other party's figure and appearance clearly.
"Clayman?"
"…Ms. Sarah? Her Royal Highness Princess Candice?!"
Two exclamations filled with astonishment and surprise rang out at the same time, and the hostility between the two sides... also froze at this moment.
"Pfft!"
Clayman landed smoothly with a long sword on his waist. His eyes wandered in astonishment between the two ladies, one big and one small, before finally stopping on Candice’s face:
"Your Highness, why are you here?"
He looked the other person up and down carefully for a long time, comparing everything from his appearance and figure to the spiritual fluctuations in his inspiration with his impression one by one.
In the end, he couldn't find anything wrong, and he was sure that she was really his superior, Candice Octavius, and not a disguise or illusion created by someone with ulterior motives.
"I, I don't know either..."
Candice was also confused, with a bewildered expression:
"Just now we were in the square of Beiyuan..."
She recounted her experience in a disjointed manner, and finally asked:
"Clement, why are you here? Where is this place?"
After listening to the other party's statement, Clement's expression suddenly became much more serious.
He pondered for a moment with a gloomy face, and said slowly:
"Your Highness, this is the woods of the North Garden of the Imperial University... probably."
"Beiyuan Grove?!"
Candice frowned and thought for a moment:
"There seems to be such a place on the main campus, but I haven't been there very often..."
"You said, probably?"
Sarah, the female bodyguard standing next to Candice, keenly noticed some strangeness in the other party's choice of words:
"So you're not sure this is it?"
She had already used her spiritual perception to confirm that the other party was her colleague Clement, and realized that the attack was just a misunderstanding, so she did not pursue the matter.
“Well,” Clayman nodded slowly with a gloomy expression, “I’m pretty sure I came here from the Beiyuan campus, but I’m not sure if we’re still in that grove.”
Without letting the other party continue to ask, he explained tacitly:
"From what you and Her Highness the Princess said, you two were 'teleported' here instantly by some extraordinary means. And I also noticed something unusual just now... So, I can't guarantee that I wasn't 'teleported' like you."
He raised his head and looked around, carefully observing the surrounding vibrant trees:
"Perhaps, the four of us have been 'teleported' to some other place together, and are no longer in that small patch of woods."
"Wait, you said... four people?"
Candice glanced at Clayman with a strange look:
"Me, you, Sarah...who else?"
"And him."
Clement turned around and winked at someone behind him. Then a tall figure trotted out from the bushes:
"Her Highness Princess Shen, nice to see you again..."
Cooper had a slightly awkward smile on his face. He scratched the back of his head, then put one hand on his chest and the other behind his waist, and performed a simplified version of the court bow to Candice.
"Ah, you are, you are that...that someone..."
Of course Candice remembered Cooper's face. When she was doing some transactions that could not be made public in the alley behind the Hibiscus Bar, this guy was her client!
Moreover, this guy even exposed her disguise in front of her, so she was naturally quite impressed by him.
It's just that she didn't deliberately try to remember the other person's name, so she couldn't remember it for a while.
"Cooper, Cooper V. Stauffenberg."
Cooper wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and forced a smile to remind him.
"Ms. Sarah, please protect Her Royal Highness the Princess. I will go up to check the situation."
Clement could see that there seemed to be some grudge between Candice and this man that he was unaware of, but the current situation was urgent and it was not the time to dwell on these details.
He gave instructions to his female bodyguard, the mage Sarah, then leaped up easily to a height of three to five meters and landed on the crown of the nearest tree.
If you want to confirm whether this is still the Beiyuan Grove, the method is very simple.
All you have to do is climb to a high place and look into the distance!
Although the ecology of Beiyuan Grove is primitive and the terrain is complex, it only covers an area of a few miles. Without any trees blocking the view, the campus and the city outside can be seen at a glance.
"here it is……"
Clement stood firmly on the treetops, adjusted his sight, and looked far into the distance, taking in all the scenery within a radius of more than ten miles.
"……What?!"
But the scene he saw before his eyes was far beyond his original expectations!
Chapter 297 Illusion? Reality?
"Clement, what did you see?"
The bodyguard Sarah below was stunned when she saw Clement jumping onto the treetops, and realized that things might be more complicated than she had originally thought.
While mobilizing the spiritual energy in her body and putting it into a tense state ready to go, she quickly looked up and asked.
"I……"
Clement’s body froze for a few seconds, his eyes wide open, staring at the scene in front of him, as if wondering if he was hallucinating.
After a moment of silence, his lips moved slightly, as if he wanted to say something, to describe the scene he was seeing, but in the end, he couldn't utter a word.
It seemed that the scene he witnessed was so incredible that it far exceeded his ability to describe in words, and he was speechless for a moment.
"I... Damn it, I can't describe it. I'll print it out on the scroll and show it to you."
As he spoke, he reached into the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out a scroll with a texture similar to sheepskin, the middle of which was tied with a rough, old hemp rope.
Clement untied the hemp rope with one hand, shook his wrist, and unfolded the sheepskin scroll, revealing a large area of extremely complex and fine lines and patterns, exuding a complexity that made the onlookers dizzy.
They appear messy but actually follow some mysterious rules, drawing a dazzling pattern on the old parchment.
"Fuck!"
Clement spread out the parchment scroll, facing the side covered with runes forward, and then called upon the spiritual power that had long been active in his body, rhythmically injecting it into it through his arms and wrists.
At the same time, he slowly recited a word in the common language of mankind in a low, hoarse, and powerful voice:
"Rubbing."
The extraordinary power that had been contained in the scroll for a long time burst out in an instant, like a barrel of explosives with a lit fuse.
"brush--"
The colorful colors filled with spiritual radiance lit up one by one along the lines on the parchment, as if there was an order to the strokes, and finally filled the entire scroll.
"boom!"
The next second, the colorful luster on the scroll seemed to be a bonfire sprinkled with fuel. With a bang, the brightness skyrocketed and instantly engulfed the entire parchment, rising to a level high enough to hurt people's eyes.
"brush……"
This brightness lasted for less than half a second. Soon, it faded at a rate that was too fast for people to react, and was completely extinguished in the blink of an eye.
"All right……"
Clement turned his wrist and glanced at his empty palm, as if confirming something.
He clenched his empty palms and jumped down from the treetops swiftly. He landed steadily and came to Candice, the mage bodyguard Sarah and others.
"Everyone, Your Highness, this is... what I saw."
He spoke in a serious tone, opening his clenched hands with his palms facing the three people.
"This is……"
Cooper, who was farther away, came forward curiously and stretched his head to see clearly what was in Clement's palm.
A mini rune array emitting a light blue fluorescence was quietly suspended in Clement’s palm, and in the center of this small array, several pure and transparent white lights suddenly rose.
"call!--"
A colorful picture condensed above his palm and finally solidified into a vivid static picture.
"Ah, this..."
After seeing the content of the picture clearly, Candice took a breath and her pupils suddenly contracted involuntarily.
Cooper, who had not seen much, was stunned, his mouth wide open, his eyes showing disbelief.
In that extremely realistic picture, an extremely vast forest extends far into the lower half of the picture.
From this perspective, the green and uneven treetops seem almost connected, forming a long and vast green wilderness.
But if that were all, it would not have caused Clement, the emperor's confidant, Candice, the royal princess, and Cooper, the noble son, to lose their composure like this.
That vast expanse of emerald green field composed of countless tree crowns... did not extend to the horizon as it normally would, eventually merging with the pale or azure sky.
On the contrary, the farther it extends, the more it curves upward.
