Sonia had confirmed she was in big trouble several days ago.

It was the night after the Meteor Disaster had ended, she went to celebrate overnight at the Secret Garden with the Claw Club. Even Professor Trozan and Professor Nidara took time out of their schedules to come and have a few drinks with her. There were even more people who came wanting to connect with her, or who simply admired her, including representatives from the merchant guilds for negotiations. Sonia skillfully utilized her social skills; her network of quality contacts expanded by multiples in just one night.

Of course, she knew her social prowess was just the icing on the cake; her combat power in the Holy Domain was the real source of her confidence. Because she had reached the realm of the Holy Domain, her humble and polite smile earned great admiration, and her equal and respectful gaze made everyone feel highly honored.

In the Secret Garden, the Crimson Empress patrolled her territory.

The next day, looking back, the Village Girl felt she might have gone a bit overboard; Lois's departure without a farewell seemed only natural. Although she had resolved to tone down her sharp edges, she didn't forget to report her achievements to Martha—she knew her mother's working hours and timed her video call during her mother's factory shift. She described in the simplest and most basic terms how amazing her own achievements were, that she had earned a lot of money and her mother could stop working, and that she would soon bring her mother to settle in Jiale City.

It had to be phrased crudely, or the other factory workers wouldn't understand.

However, her mother naturally refused her offer. Two months ago, Sonia had already sent home the money from selling the Technique Spirit. The cost of living was low in the small town, and her mother could have quit her job long ago. But now, as it was the off-season for farming and she had free time anyhow, and factory work wasn't very taxing, her mother treated it as a chance to chat with her colleagues. As for Jiale City, her mother was filled with fear of the unknown big city, and having managed the family fields all her life, she wasn't eager to change her way of life.

But whether Martha was willing or not, Sonia was well aware of the small town's values of bullying the kind and fearing the wicked. She naturally needed to give her mother some face, so in recent months, she had been buying a lot of things for her family, letting everyone know her daughter was making something of herself in Jiale City. All that was needed next was to build a new house that would be the envy of the entire village, and Martha would see that the world could indeed be a friendly place.

Refreshed, Sonia allowed herself a rare moment of relaxation as she strolled through Sword Flower University, meeting students along the way who looked at her with both reverence and longing. Although she had already decided to continue her martial arts training, basking in such admiring gazes, the Village Girl couldn't help feeling somewhat proud.

A cheerful heart naturally sought to share with others. Yet the rebellious Sonia began to calmly scrutinize her own emotions—yes, she wanted to analyze this happiness with the Observer, but she also wanted to share it with her mother, Reonie, Professor Trozan, and others.

She was worried for the Observer's safety, but she was also concerned for her roommates' well-being.

She wanted to meet with the Observer, but she also really wanted to shake hands with Dedarose.

The Observer was important, but how important?

I am now a Holy Sanctuary Mage, an aspiring Sword Saint with a promising future. I must learn to handle emotional matters carefully, and not be like those silly and naive heroines in romance dramas who know nothing but to foolishly give their all!

Moreover, the Observer actually had many flaws…

As Sonia analyzed the shortcomings of the Observer to clear her head, she went to eat at the dining hall. With her usual nutritious meals unavailable, she casually grabbed a few meat dishes.

When she sat down and took a bite of the fish, she immediately retched it out.

So disgusting!

How could such good fish be made to taste so awful!

Little speaker, I must remember to tell the Observer about this— it's too disgusting!

Sonia disdainfully pushed the fish aside, finished the other dishes, and then, as usual, went to train in swordsmanship.

During a break, she remembered the distasteful fish again, thinking she definitely needed to tell the Observer about it, that this fish was so inedible she would remember it for a lifetime…

Huh?

Sonia wiped the sweat from her face with a towel, her cheeks flushed, and blinked in bewilderment.

It was then that she realized.

She was in big trouble.

So, she had to be involved in the Observer's life, just as the Observer had become a part of hers.

Because it couldn't be just her in trouble.

"If you come across any perplexing problems, I might be able to look up some information and help you solve them," she said. "And since you are in the middle of things, we Observers may even be able to offer better advice."

"Yeah, yeah!" Diya chimed in eagerly. "I can go back and ask for help analyzing it!"

Saying she would ask for help was referring to the Gospel System. Although Diya needed points to use the Gospel System, even if she calculated precisely how many kids Ash and she would have in the future, it wouldn't cost even a fraction of a billionth of the Royal Points. It was a pity the Gospel couldn't extend to the Kingdom of Senluo; otherwise, she could have designed an easy strategy guide for Ash.

"Then I need to start from the beginning." Ash said. "There's something I didn't mention just now—I've become a Half-Touch of the Four Pillars God Sect."

"Half-Touch?"

Ash briefly explained Half-Touch, and Sonia and Diya, who initially had no reaction to the Four Pillars God Sect, became serious only when Ash mentioned that becoming a Half-Touch typically resulted in a significant change in one's disposition—they could accept Ash becoming a bad person, but not being changed.

"Speaking of which, when I became a Half-Touch, I also saw something like a premonition dream," Ash said. "I saw eight things in the darkness, the first one died, its body lying in a pool of blood. The second one died and its body was on top of the first one without any bleeding, but a tiny white soul crawled out of the wound beneath the body, and the white soul lifted the second body."

"It sounds like a fairy tale," Diya commented.

"Could it be some kind of psychic contamination?" Sonia frowned and said, "Stop thinking about that dream."

At this moment, the usually silent Weiser suddenly had a flash of inspiration—not just a figure of speech, but an actual flash of spiritual light across her mind.

"Spiritual Light Technique Spirit is quite useful," she said. "This isn't a premonition dream, but likely the worldview inherited from the Four Pillars God Sect."

"Worldview?"

"Upon the blood pond lies the first corpse, atop the first corpse is a white spirit, propping up the second corpse... Don't you find this familiar?" Weiser continued, "I wouldn't have understood before, but after hearing about the Seven-Colored Tail Secret Poison and using the Spiritual Light Technique Spirit to make connections, I find everything matches up."

Everyone was stunned, and Sonia immediately responded, "Void Realm!"

Diya exclaimed, "Above the sea there are golden fish, atop the golden fish is the White Bull, and upon the White Bull is the Time Continent... It really is identical!"

"So, is the Void Realm actually a world formed by corpses?" Ash couldn't imagine, "Is the entire Void Realm really built from the remains of corpses?"

"This is just the worldview of the Four Pillars God Sect, and it's not necessarily the truth," Weiser said. "There are too many mages trying to decipher the Void Realm, and other heretical sects might have even more outlandish conjectures, like mages are actually the bacteria of the Void Realm, and reality produced mages to kill the Void Realm, with all mages being pawns of reality... There's no shortage of such fanciful theories."

Ash nodded, knowing that the true nature of the world held little significance to a mage of his level—it wouldn't allow him to traverse realms. He continued, "A couple of days ago we almost caught the Silver Lamp, but unfortunately, she escaped. It will probably be hard to catch her now."

"Why?" Sonia asked, "Since you could catch her once, naturally you can catch her a second time."

"The only reason we succeeded in setting a trap for her was because the town was infiltrated by the Four Pillars God Sect, and I could use their intelligence to pre-locate her," Ash explained. "But not only is she on guard now, what's more important is that she has entered the territory of the Qinri Alliance, where the reach of the Four Pillars God Sect doesn't extend, and we can only rely on ourselves to chase her."

"Qinri Alliance?"

Ash said, "That is a religious alliance formed rapidly as the Four Pillars God Sect rose to power, and it's their union that has contained the Sect's expansion. So not only can we not obtain any aid within their territory, we will be seen as outsiders and face hostility, whereas Silver Lamp, with her ability to bewitch hearts, will be able to move about more freely than us."

"We're now tracking her to an underground skyscraper, we only know Silver Lamp is inside but have no idea where exactly she could be."

"There aren't that many people inside the building, right?"

Ash said helplessly, "There are two hundred thousand people living in there—the building has a hundred floors, it's a product of the Gray Fox Era, housing all living facilities, with no buildings above ground."

Diya immediately understood, the full embodiment of the Senheiser building. In the flourishing Kingdom of Gospel, it truly is hard to find social systems that Gospel does not include.

"This building is a major stronghold of the Transcendence Temple within the Qinri Alliance. We barely managed to get in by disguising ourselves as merchants, but we are under surveillance day and night, and now can only wait for Silver Lamp to make a move."

Sonia shook her head, "This is too passive. Can't the Four Pillars God Sect help you with a prophecy?"

"The Four Pillars God Sect could indeed provide us a rough location through prophecy, but Silver Lamp is cunning enough that she hasn't left even a name behind, and her appearance is also fabricated; the Sect also has to rely on other sources of intelligence to pinpoint her," Ash spread his hands. "Before we even make contact with the Prophetic Faction, Silver Lamp had already started to guard against intervention from these Mysterious Factions... She was well-prepared for her defection, whether it was from the Holy Sanctuary or the Four Pillars God Sect."

He exhaled heavily, "What's more, the façade she has crafted seems to be full of charm; aside from us pursuers, everyone's first impression of her is favorable. When we launched the attack, she immediately hid among the crowd to cover herself and attacked nearby buildings to create chaos, detonated gas stations, and caused earthquakes and collapses to block us... It's exactly because of such destruction we dare not commit that she luckily escaped our ambush."

"Instead, we were blamed for all the destruction. If it weren't for the assistance of the Four Pillars God Sect, we would have only been able to fight our way out of the town."

"Heartless, unscrupulous, relentless. It can't be said she's cruel, after all, we are the pursuers; we have no reason to expect cooperation from the pursued... It's just that..."

"Have you ever played virtual games?" Ash said, "Players know that everything in a virtual game, including companions, bystanders, enemies, is fake, so some players will stop at nothing to achieve their goals."

"The impression Silver Lamp gives me is that she treats reality like a game. To reach her goals, she completely disregards everything else, as if it's all just a farce."

"Rather than calling her evil, it's more fitting to say she is a disaster. At the level of a Holy Sanctuary Mage, she can be considered a natural calamity."

Weiser couldn't help but glance at him.

Even with the intelligence provided by the Four Pillars God Sect, the fact that Ash could make such accurate judgments about her from just a few encounters showed why he had the potential to become a Half-Touch.

"She's just a treacherous shrew," Sonia said.

"I think she resembles those evil crazed witches in fairy tales," Diya huffed, "Perhaps her true form is a crooked maniac covered in pus with a hooked nose and missing teeth."

The Sword Maiden's eyes flashed with bloodlust, "If I were there, I could sever her with a single strike of Blood Moon Shattered Lake, making her drag her intestines for a few meters."

"No, killing her with one move is too easy; it should be me." The Witch's voice came with echoes upon echoes, "Let me use waterborne threads to dissect her into hundreds of pieces."

Their eyes met, and after such a long reunion, they finally reached a tacit understanding again.

Ash said curiously, "I didn't know you guys were so full of a sense of justice before."

Sonia didn't break Ash's pleasant illusion and turned to look at the silent Weiser, "Weiser, with your intelligence, do you have any suggestions?"

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