Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 287: Sky Realm

“From here on, I’ll be leaving the Snow Country to you two.” At the very top of the Black Tower, looking down at a certain pitch-black semicircle below, Yvette said to Ice Rain and Shuanghua beside her.That black semicircle she was staring at was the anchor-point entrance to the Central Divine Realm. It looked like a black hole sliced in half, yet it was actually enormous, large enough for several engineering vehicles to drive in side by side, running straight into the depths of the Snowfields to construct a concealed underground logistics base.

And now that the spatial corridor was complete, she no longer had any reason to linger in the Snow Country. There was still plenty left to do here, of course, but leaving it in Ice Rain and Shuanghua’s hands was more than enough. She had other matters to attend to next.

“Leave it to me!” Ice Rain slapped her flat chest with great confidence.

Her new identity was that of the Mechanical Saint of the Silver Witch Church. She had already met once with High Priestess Sara. In order to blend into human society in the Mortal Realm, she used Light-and-Shadow Magic to disguise herself, masking the details of her mechanical automaton body. Her clothes had changed into a blue, gold-flecked gown, looking rather luxurious, like a noble lady from some great house.

Shuanghua’s outfit, on the other hand, hadn’t changed much. She still wore her usual gray cloak, exactly the same as the rumored Snow Priestess. She was somewhat reluctant to see her grandmaster leave, but still answered respectfully in the affirmative.

And thus, after a year’s interval, Yvette’s journey to the Snow Country finally came to an end.

Next, she would first return to the Academy of Truth, make contact with the holy relics Rosalyn had left sealed within the academy, then establish two anchor points—one in the City of Truth and one in Adelock—linked to the Central Divine Realm.

After that, once all church development affairs had been fully handed off, she would head to the neighboring Abyssal Continent to see how Moga and Lant were doing now.

……

At dusk, a long, low whistle pierced through the clouds as a massive airship descended slowly in the orange afterglow of sunset, easing into the aerial port of the City of Truth.

Following the crowd, Yvette walked down the passageway into the terminal hall. Together with the other travelers, she made a practiced gesture of prayer toward the statues of the two deities, then headed out. The streetlamps at the station entrance were already lit, casting dim yellow halos on the damp ground. She saw Tertia—who had long since received notice—standing by the roadside with a book in her arms, quietly watching the entrance.

She wore a plain dress and round-framed glasses, like a bookish girl who had stepped out of a classical oil painting. Among the passing pedestrians, a few had their attention caught by her delicate features and couldn’t help glancing back, yet not a single one of them would have imagined that this calm-tempered, dowdily dressed girl in glasses was actually the legendary dean of the Academy of Truth.

Yvette walked over. Tertia’s face broke into a smile as she quickly came toward her. Unlike during the trip to the Snow Country, Yvette wasn’t wearing her height-boosting little leather shoes this time, so she was a bit shorter than before, looking to be only a little over one-sixty in height—one of the rare people Yvette could literally look down on.

“Grandmaster, you’re here.”

“You must have been waiting a long time.”

“Not at all,” Tertia said, shaking her head lightly.

“But why did you go out of your way to come meet me?” Yvette asked. Her airship had been delayed by over an hour. It wasn’t anything serious, but Tertia was still the dean of the Academy of Truth. Having her waste time waiting out here felt rather unnecessary.

“Because I respect you,” Tertia replied with a smile.

Yvette didn’t quite know how to respond. Perhaps because they were now on her own turf, Tertia felt a little more familiar than usual today. After a short silence, Yvette changed the subject and asked, “Rosalyn’s relic—her… things—where are they?”

“In the Sky Realm. Shall I take you to see them right away?” Tertia answered at once.

“Alright.”

Soon after, the two of them found a deserted corner and shot up into the sky. In less than a minute, Yvette caught sight of the aerial garden floating above the sea of clouds—the “Sky Realm.”

It was a gigantic floating island, overall an irregular oval in shape, with a diameter of at least five kilometers. The underside of the island was a compacted layer of earth, from which thick plant roots emerged, swaying gently in midair like tendrils.

Yvette was almost certain this entire mass had been cut out and excavated from the ground in one piece—just as Shuanghua, when arranging the scenery inside the Snowwind Divine Realm, would simply use her domain-storage ability to move an entire snow peak as-is.

What surprised Yvette was that, now that she was drawing this close to the Sky Realm, she couldn’t sense any trace of wind-element being stirred. A year and a half ago, when she first arrived at the Academy of Truth, she had listened to the airship guide’s narration and concluded that the Sky Realm must be kept aloft by wind-element magic arrays. Given the mana density of the Mortal Realm, that setup was entirely feasible.

Yet now, that hypothesis had clearly been overturned.

The two of them landed on a circular platform at the edge of the island. Underfoot, the ground was paved with white stone slabs etched with dense, fine patterns. In front of the platform stretched a wide main avenue, broad enough for eight carriages to drive side by side. On either side of the road were carefully trimmed flowerbeds, filled with all manner of strange flowers and rare herbs that could only survive at this altitude. Their petals shone with a pearly luster under the glow of magitech lamps.

The main avenue extended into the distance, branching off midway into several side paths that led to different clusters of buildings. At the far end of her line of sight stood a huge official residence built of a mix of stone and timber. In front of the residence was a bronze statue that looked as if it were formed from countless concretized runes, all revolving around a long-haired girl at the center. Her face was left uncarved, a smooth, blank surface.

“Is that me?” Yvette stared at it for a few moments, feeling it looked oddly familiar.

Similar statues really could be seen all over the Academy of Truth, usually placed in pairs with the statue of the Legendary Mage. But here there was only this one, which let her immediately guess who had decided to place it here.

“Yes,” Tertia said, her expression tinged with reminiscence. “Teacher cast this statue personally. It was through this that I first formed a concrete impression of you.”

Yvette nodded slightly and continued walking toward the residence. After a while, she couldn’t help asking, “How is the Sky Realm’s levitation effect achieved?”

She had already examined it carefully. Although the entire Sky Realm was covered by defensive magic arrays, she couldn’t find anything in them connected to levitation at all. That surprised her and piqued her curiosity. This was her first time in the Mortal Realm encountering a form of magic—outside of divine arts—that she couldn’t see through.

After a brief silence, Tertia said, “The flight of the Sky Realm actually comes from a relic of an Ultra-ancient Civilization.”

“A relic of an Ultra-ancient Civilization?”

“Yes. Teacher was the one who found it. She called it… an ‘antigravity engine,’” Tertia said.

“Antigravity engine?” Yvette’s steps faltered for a moment.

She could clearly recall that, in the knowledge legacy preserved within the Fireseed Bases left by the Civilization Continuance Council, the antigravity engine was a super-technology later developed by the Liekong Group. Together with another space-gate technology code-named “Rainbow Bridge,” it was listed as one of Liekong Group’s two highest-level top secrets. Even the Civilization Continuance Council had only left written records about it and never obtained the concrete technical details.

So an Ultra-ancient Civilization had antigravity engines as well?

Could the technology behind the two… be connected somehow?