699 The Wheel of History (2/2)

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...”