WTYTIAAN Chapter 214

Chapter 214

With Cornelia leading the way, the group quickly found the Bishop who had left the city and followed him all the way into the wilderness.

They also had to hide their tracks well, lest they be targeted by players. If players intervened in their crusade against the Eternal God Cult, things would become much more troublesome.

Thinking of the 40,000 new players who were about to come online, Yan Yunqing felt a headache coming on.

Just 10,000 players were already this troublesome; how terrifying would 40,000 players be?

Fortunately, he had game rules to restrict some of the players’ excessive behavior and could also harvest “leeks” from the players to level up painlessly. Otherwise, Yan Yunqing would really be driven to collapse by this game and its players.

But as they went deeper, Yan Yunqing felt something was wrong. “He’s going into the mountains?”

“Maybe the Eternal God Cult’s stronghold is located in the mountains this time?” Merlin thought for a moment and said, “Isabel and I encountered something similar before. They were all set up in the deep mountains. Although it’s more troublesome to get in and out, it’s safer.”

Because it was safe, the stronghold stored quite a lot of information. Merlin and Isabel even found many clues about the Eternal God Cult in that stronghold.

Was that so?

Sitting on Barros’s little black cat, Yan Yunqing wrinkled his nose.

Alice looked eagerly at the teacher in Barros’s arms, very envious, and really wanted to say, “Teacher, how about I carry you?”

However, reason still prevented Alice from saying these words.

The Bishop didn’t walk slowly, and the few people who were quietly following him couldn’t slow down either, maintaining a distance that was neither too close nor too far.

The sky was still gloomy, and no trace of the sun was visible on the horizon. In Yan Yunqing’s memory, ever since the two great empires went to war, the sky seemed to have been this gloomy.

No one knew what to say, so they silently hurried on.

Yan Yunqing thought for a moment and asked Cornelia, who was walking in the front right, “You told me before that you went to the royal city and even entered Fei Wu’s palace to find your sister. What about now?”

Cornelia, who was walking in the front, paused but didn’t turn her head. “I thought Mr. Ellis should have already told you.”

Ellis, the pronunciation was somewhat similar to Alice, but it wasn’t Alice being called, but Merlin.

Merlin’s full name was Merlin Ellis. Ellis was his family name. This was a family that had been passed down for thousands of years. Since the Era of Light, the Ellis family had been one of the slightly famous small nobles of the Empire of Light.

Merlin came from such a small noble family, and his appearance had brought the family to prosperity and glory. After all, it was the family of the greatest magician in Ermann history.

Merlin had many fake identities to the outside world, one of which was as an honorary professor at Sigret Academy, using the surname Ellis. The persona was very simple: a magician from a collateral branch of the Ellis family.

Merlin smiled but said nothing. When Yan Yunqing saw his smile, he knew that Merlin hadn’t revealed his true identity and was probably using the same identity as Professor Ellis from Sigret Academy.

“What’s wrong? Didn’t he tell you?” Cornelia looked back. “I thought you were all here, so your relationship should be good.”

Merlin said cheerfully, “Actually, I don’t know you very well. What should I tell Nolan?”

Cornelia paused, and the corner of her mouth curled up in an arc. “So, your name is Nolan.”

Yan Yunqing: …

Yan Yunqing shifted his eyes: “…Those are all my names. You can call me whatever you want. Oh, it’s best not to call me Joker in front of outsiders.”

He was afraid of being overheard. The identity of Joker was still wanted by the Bato Vita Royal Family!

Yan Yunqing didn’t want to find too much trouble for himself.

Cornelia didn’t follow up on Yan Yunqing’s words and just silently walked in the front, while Alice didn’t know when she had run to her side, following Cornelia.

Cornelia, who had been a bit cold, warmed up again when she saw Alice’s face. Thinking that she had indeed lied first, and that Yan Yunqing probably guessed something, she didn’t bother to continue pretending.

It could be said that the Cornelia that Yan Yunqing first saw was completely fake from beginning to end. What being locked in a water tank, being weak and helpless, helping others in distress, and even sacrificing herself to divert the patrol’s attention for Yan Yunqing’s sake…

All! Was! Pretending!

Even the way she smiled innocently like a girl next door after being rescued was also fake!

At that time, Cornelia was probably gritting her teeth in her heart towards Yan Yunqing, who had ruined her plan.

Only Cornelia herself knew these things.

“My sister didn’t actually disappear. I killed her.” Cornelia said casually, “And those who grew up with me, from the royal family branch, I didn’t let any of them go. I killed them all.”

Yan Yunqing quietly looked at Alice and found that there was no surprised expression on her face, so he understood that Alice was also an insider.

Probably when Cornelia became Alice’s godmother, she had already told her everything about the past. Since Alice still recognized Cornelia as her godmother in the end, and even relied on her in her words and actions, Yan Yunqing guessed that there was probably a hidden reason why Cornelia killed her entire family.

“But I didn’t actually lie to you before… not too much.” Cornelia said, “I did go to the royal city to find someone.”

“Alice’s biological mother?” Yan Yunqing said the answer he had already guessed.

Cornelia glanced at him and shook her head in denial. “No, at that time, I already knew that Bessie was dead. I went for Alice’s sake.”

“Oh?”

Although this was also within Yan Yunqing’s expectations, he was still very curious about the truth behind the lies.

Then Yan Yunqing heard a completely different story from the one he had initially heard in the royal city.

The protagonist of the story was Alice’s biological mother, Bessie.

In a small fishing village near the sea, there was a lively, cheerful, and generous girl named Bessie. She was born into a fisherman’s family. Her father and mother were both good at fishing, and she grew up on a fishing boat, following her parents out to sea to fish since she was a child.

Because of her family’s influence, Bessie, like most of the children in the small fishing village, had excellent swimming skills and often dominated the diving and swimming competitions among her friends. At a young age, she could help her parents catch fish.

At the age of fourteen, she met the other protagonist of the story, Cornelia, by the sea.

At that time, Cornelia was still a little mermaid baby, only six years old. Her mother died not long after she was born, and Cornelia was taken back to the ocean by her father—the current leader of the mermaid clan, or rather, the mermaid king.

Because she was a mixed-blood, Cornelia had been disliked by the mermaids of the same clan since she was a child. After all, every mixed-blood was ostracized in the clan, and Cornelia, a mixed-blood mermaid who was the result of a human and a mermaid union, was no exception.

Cornelia probably grew up being bullied—to be more precise, she should have been bullied—until she was six years old. Because she was ridiculed and mocked by the mermaid princess, her sister, she was saddened and threw the mermaid elders’ warning, “Mermaids who have not reached adulthood are not allowed to swim to the surface of the sea, let alone sneak ashore,” to the back of her mind, and secretly swam to a place far away from the mermaid clan to cry.

It was at this time that the two protagonists of the story met.

…

The little Cornelia hid behind a reef, secretly sniffing, using her hands to catch the pearls that kept rolling from the corners of her eyes. Because she was a mixed-blood, these pearls, condensed from tears of sadness, were also uneven in size and riddled with potholes, with no luster at all.

It seemed that even these pearls were telling her that she was just a mixed-blood mermaid not blessed by the ocean.

While dropping small pearls, Cornelia buried these defective pearls in the sand on the shore, not wanting these ugly pearls to be discovered by other mermaids, otherwise she would be ridiculed and laughed at severely again.

“Are you planting pearls?”

A voice rang out from above Cornelia’s head, startling Cornelia so much that she almost dropped the small pearl in her hand. She blankly raised her head and saw a face that had been tanned a bit dark appearing in front of her.

Cornelia widened her watery blue eyes, filled with tears, and looked in surprise at the human girl who didn’t know when she had appeared on the reef behind her.

Yes, a human girl.

Cornelia noticed the legs of the other party wearing slightly tattered shorts and was immediately nervous.

It was a human.

The mermaid elders had emphasized countless times that mermaid cubs who had not reached adulthood were too weak. If they were discovered by humans, they would definitely be caught and sold to the inland, far away from the ocean.

At that time, the mermaid cubs would not only not be able to return home but would also be abused by humans and even die tragically.

Although half of her blood was human, she had grown up in the mermaid clan deep in the sea since she was a child. Her knowledge of the outside world only came from the elders’ half-true and half-false scaremongering. Cornelia was very wary of humans, like other mermaids.

Hearing Bessie’s words, Cornelia’s first reaction was to quickly dive into the sea, only showing half of her head on the surface of the sea, looking vigilantly at this suddenly appearing human girl.

Seemingly amused by Cornelia’s reaction, Bessie covered her stomach and laughed heartily on the reef. Her short hair, which had been cut unevenly, was blown by the sea breeze, fluttering wantonly in the air along with her laughter.

Then the human girl ran up and dived into the sea with a beautiful dolphin kick, splashing water on Cornelia’s face.

Cornelia widened her eyes, not knowing why this strange human girl was imitating her actions and diving into the water, but she knew that a simple human could not live in the sea unless the other party was a mixed-blood mermaid like her.

The bright-smiling and somewhat dark human girl would be drowned in the sea.

The young, ignorant, and kind-hearted mixed-blood mermaid Cornelia panicked for a moment. She swung her fishtail and wanted to dive into the sea to save the human girl who smiled so beautifully, but she didn’t want to feel that she had touched something just as her tail moved.

A pair of hands wrapped around her fishtail, and in the next second, water splashed, and the short-haired human girl emerged from the water, wrapping her arms around Cornelia and lifting her high from the water in a princess carry.

Glistening water droplets fell from her hair, and the sunlight from the sky broke through the dark clouds and scattered on the sea, giving the entire blue sea golden scales. The gentle sunlight also quietly climbed onto the human girl’s unrestrained and cheerful smiling face…

“Hey, I caught you, shy mermaid princess.”

And Cornelia’s panicked little face.

Was she going to be caught back by the terrible humans, become their plaything, and then die tragically, as the elders said?

Cornelia’s beautiful watery blue eyes were once again filled with tears, waiting for an opportunity to burst.

As a mixed-blood mermaid baby with not much fighting power, Cornelia covered her mouth with her hands, almost crying out loud.

Cunning humans, they actually used diving into the sea to deceive her, and she was still caught, wuwu…

“Eh?” Bessie, who originally wanted to tease this especially pitiful mermaid baby, but didn’t know why the mermaid baby was crying even more miserably, was a little flustered and didn’t even have a free hand to catch the small pearls that kept slipping from the corners of Cornelia’s eyes. “Little princess, don’t cry, don’t cry. Won’t you go blind if you cry out so many pearls?”

When Cornelia heard that the humans even wanted to blind her, she was even more sad and wailed, “I’m not… wuwu, I’m not a mermaid princess…”