Chapter 279: Who?

The Old Mage denied the Queen's speculation, and Luo Qi felt a moment of confusion. He trusted the Queen; he understood the abilities and visual range of a Telepath. Yet, looking through the Queen's eyes, he could tell that the Old Mage did not seem to be lying either.

Luo Qi pondered silently, as if sitting in a courtyard pelted by freezing rain; for a long while, the only sound between heaven and earth was the illusory noise of heavy rain drumming against the Jiangnan roof tiles. Unlike the heavy rain in the rainforest from the Alien's memories, this rain was the final downpour before the northern freeze, and it was much colder and harder.

There were some truths he should have perceived long ago; scattered details had already revealed themselves. He simply had never connected or combined these details.

1. The Progenitor Mages lived during the period when Magic was at its most powerful.

2. The Progenitor Mages were gods, existing as long as heaven and earth, and they could even evade the sickle of death.

3. Luo Qi was certain that even now, the world of Mages contained Magic for longevity.

4. The Progenitor Mages no longer exist.

These four points were both connected and contradictory. Luo Qi had always firmly believed that the Progenitor Mages had left. The Progenitor Mages were almost gods; if an existence was as transcendent as a god, it was perfectly normal for them to ignore those struggling hard to survive. But what if the Progenitor Mages were not gods? What if they were just Mages, and their only difference from him and Du Zhengyi was that they were born in an era with different magical resources?

Once divinity vanished, things were very easy to explain.

By putting the four points above together, Luo Qi could reach a conclusion: the Progenitor Mages were indeed immortal, and they used the same soul (Yajian) to be reborn continuously in the world of Mages. The Progenitor Mages were not omnipotent gods either; they were just lucky to have been born at the beginning of the world when Magic was abundant. They still existed now, but as the world withered, they could no longer manifest god-like power.

In some legends, Mages originally had nine Ancestors. To cherish their memory, Mage society followed the old system and established a Committee system with nine highest Venerables. That was the origin of the High Committee, and the initial source of the Nine Venerables. Luo Qi had always thought the Nine Venerables were elected, but if the Nine Venerables had never changed, if they had been the same nine Mages since the beginning of creation... Luo Qi suddenly thought that he had once believed that if Du Zhengyi did not die and had not been severely injured, he would become a Venerable in the future. But since he had such weight, yet the Head Venerable stood by and watched him die without helping, that was illogical, and Luo Qi had always been unable to fathom it. But now it seemed that those who said Du Zhengyi would become a Venerable in the future were either telling a lie or unknowingly repeating someone else's lie.

A bitter taste welled up on the tip of his tongue.

If Fan Shi were a Progenitor Mage, he would be far inferior to Du Zhengyi. If the Head Venerable Mage Pei Shu, whom Du Zhengyi respected, were a Progenitor Mage, that would be simply cruel.

If that were the case, then which one was the Old Mage before him? Luo Qi stared at his appearance; although he was decrepit, Luo Qi could still recognize that the face was neither Pei Shu's nor Fan Shi's.

However, the Old Mage had already denied his identity as a Progenitor.

Luo Qi pondered the contradictions in this; perhaps he shouldn't be splitting hairs over this at all. Regardless of what he had discovered now, the huge secret behind it already made his spine go cold. As for what the accurate answer to the riddle was, that was not so important after all. Tens of thousands of years were too long. For the two-hundred-year lifespan of a Mage's body, tens of thousands of years were as long as an endless cycle of reincarnation. In such a long time, anything could happen. People who lived for seventy years were still constantly changing; Luo Qi had no way to guess what it would feel like for a person to live for tens of thousands of years. Perhaps they would be constantly twisted, perhaps they would begin to forget the past, and perhaps they would eventually become people completely different from who they were at the beginning.

Dust to dust, earth to earth; the departed finally find peace, and the living find release.

Luo Qi murmured this sentence in the world of Yajian, a memory and cognition he could no longer definitively attribute to anyone.

But he did not care about any of this; he had never thought about living as long as heaven and earth, he only wanted to live happily. It was just that for him to live happily, his friends had to be able to live a little longer. He could not understand why Fan Shi could live, why the old man in the Black Market could live, and why Du Zhengyi, who was better than them, had to die early. The Old Mage kept telling the Alien Queen that this was not fate, but merely an arrangement. Whose arrangement?

Luo Qi stood up in the world of Yajian, raised his head, and cursed.