Chapter 1: The Saintess
The icy water was invasive, the chill bone-deep.
Located within a dark cave, a frost pond, a pool of water as clear as a mirror, floated with pale, ice-blue petals. This was the sacred spring, a holy place where only the Saintess of the Sea Concubine Palace could bathe and purify herself. Others were strictly forbidden to enter.
At this moment, ripples gently stirred the water’s surface. A petite, blue-haired girl soaked in the frigid pool, washing her soft hair that bloomed like an ice rose.
Since ancient times, love-struck maidens with heart-shaped eyes were common, but strange pupils in the shape of teardrops were unheard of. The girl’s vacant, ice-blue eyes looked like two falling teardrops. On each cheek were three identically shaped, water droplet-like beauty marks, flowing from the corners of her eyes down to her chin in a neat row. A total of eight teardrops gave her the appearance of being in a constant state of sorrowful weeping.
After soaking in the freezing spring for about half an hour, the teardrop-eyed girl sighed a puff of deep blue cold air and slowly rose, stepping out of the pool. Her wet, water-blue hair swayed as she walked out of the cave, stark naked and expressionless. Two long-skirted maids approached with respectful expressions, wiping her body and dressing her.
“Reporting to Saintess, the Saintess of the Ice Shield Palace is slandering you again behind your back… However, everyone just laughed it off.”
“Saintess, not only the one from the Ice Shield Palace, but a certain Saintess candidate here also slandered you at a banquet.”
“Oh? What did they say?”
“Well, she, she said… that Saintess Gong Lianyue’s spirit beast is actually just a high-ranking Mimic Holy Ice Dragon.”
“Oh.”
Hearing this, the blue-haired girl simply responded indifferently with a completely unconcerned expression that seemed to say: Is that all?
Both maids breathed a sigh of relief, their expressions once again becoming respectful and adoring.
As expected of Gong Lianyue, the most aloof and indifferent woman in the Sea Concubine Palace, she disdained the rumors and slander of other petty individuals. Even when her awakened companion spirit beast turned out to be the lowest-grade Water Element the year before last, she didn’t show any wavering or panic, maintaining an unfathomable and compassionate appearance. Truly inscrutable.
Logically, according to those novel plots, Gong Lianyue should have fallen from grace long ago, mocked and bullied. But she hadn’t. The people around her still revered her as a Saintess, and the higher-ups of the Sea Concubine Palace remained unmoved, precisely because of her indifferent attitude.
Even a fool could see that something was amiss. Gong Lianyue must be hiding something. She must be that kind of hidden genius from those fantasy novels!
Perhaps a super Spirit Master had already taken her as a disciple, concealing her terrifying talent during the awakening period to prevent anyone from discovering her excellence.
After bathing in the sacred spring, Gong Lianyue returned to her courtyard with an indifferent expression. All the Sea Concubine Palace apprentices she encountered along the way were extremely respectful.
The blue-haired girl returned to her room, gently closing the door behind her with a nonchalant air.
“A bunch of brain-dead idiots, spouting inexplicable bullshit all day long,” she muttered, her delicate lips letting loose a string of surprisingly vulgar words that filled the room with an unexpected fragrance.
Gong Lianyue, back in her private quarters, unleashed some incredible remarks. If outsiders heard them, they’d surely be shocked, unable to imagine the Saintess cursing and using such… colorful language.
After all these years, she had gotten used to it. Whenever she heard those rumors outside, her heart remained unmoved, even finding it somewhat amusing.
What the hell was a Mimic Holy Ice Dragon? Gong Lianyue herself didn’t even know such a thing existed!
The Water Element was real; the master-disciple thing was fake. She had indeed, one hundred percent, summoned the most ordinary Water Element as her first spirit beast during the awakening ceremony.
In this world, strength was everything. Spirit Masters with powerful spirit beasts could control everything, deciding the world’s rules and resource allocation. Spirit Masters themselves had almost no combat ability, and under normal circumstances, could only summon one spirit beast at a time. It was kind of like everyone was a summoner.
Thanks to the help of memories from two lifetimes, she managed to feign an aloof demeanor and become the Saintess. Even summoning a low-grade spirit beast like the Water Element hadn’t aroused much suspicion.
The reason? This world also had all sorts of fanciful, brainless novels circulating, and almost everyone was filling in the blanks, imagining a terrifying power hidden behind her seemingly ordinary talent.
For example, it looked like a Water Element, but it was actually the legendary Variant Water Emperor, merely using its ability to control water flow to disguise itself as a common Water Element.
This speculation had also been unanimously agreed upon by the higher-ups of the Sea Concubine Palace. Every so often, someone would come to discreetly inquire, wanting to know the specific variety of Variant Water Emperor.
Variant Water Emperor… my ass!
This was a plain, ordinary Water Element. How the hell was Gong Lianyue supposed to know about varieties of Variant Water Emperors?!
As for the Mimic Holy Ice Dragon fabricated by that Saintess candidate, although its rank was much lower than the Variant Water Emperor, it was still infinitely stronger than a Water Element. Utterly baffling.
“Help me clean up.”
Standing in her empty boudoir, Gong Lianyue commanded, speaking to herself.
A few seconds later, the aura of flowing water slowly condensed, and a liquid elemental water spirit covered in dark blue splashes appeared behind the blue-haired girl, floating amidst swirling waves.
The emotionless Water Element followed the instructions and began to clean. It used the water sprayed from its palms to quickly wash Gong Lianyue’s entire body.
“Tssssss, splash splash splash~~~”
It was a Sea Concubine Palace tradition. As the Saintess, Gong Lianyue had to soak in that cold spring once a month for purification. That cold spring, which had existed for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, who knew how many people had bathed in it? What if someone had had an accident or been constipated? So, every time she returned, Gong Lianyue had to thoroughly clean herself.
“Pwah! Cough, cough, cough!!”
Lost in thought for a moment, Gong Lianyue ended up with water sprayed all over her face. Liquid flowed into her nose and mouth, causing her to choke and collapse on the floor, coughing violently.
The Water Element, the most common of water-type elemental spirit beasts, was considered average among low-level water types.
If she were just an ordinary apprentice of the Sea Concubine Palace, it wouldn’t matter, but Gong Lianyue was the Saintess! For a Saintess, this was an unimaginable, inferior spirit beast.
If the truth were exposed, she would definitely end up like the protagonists in those fantasy novels, only able to redeem herself thirty years later.
Her current disheveled appearance was completely different from the absolutely aloof and mysterious Saintess she presented in public. She never wavered due to external circumstances or gossip, remaining steadfast at all times.
She met all the criteria of a chosen daughter of heaven: temperament, beauty, grace, modesty, purity, and the sea-god-favored blue hair along with her innate, enigmatic teardrop pupils.
This was the Sea Concubine Palace’s Saintess as seen by outsiders: Gong Lianyue.
“Ding-dong!”
Just then, a ringing sound suddenly echoed in Gong Lianyue’s mind. She immediately scrambled up in alarm, quickly smoothing out her water-soaked skirt.
Then, she took out a small pebble from her bosom and tossed it gently into the air.
Just as everyone speculated, she was indeed hiding something, but it had nothing to do with the rank of her Water Element. It was another, completely unrelated adventure.
[Soul Prison Trial, Session 207, commencing shortly]
Swish, swish, swish!
A second later, Gong Lianyue’s body vanished as if teleporting, disappearing from a small corner of the Sea Concubine Palace.
Her figure was gone, and the small pebble traced a parabolic arc in the air before slowly falling.