The Military Princess Won’t Fall in Love with a Magic Scientist

Chapter 215. Old Secrets of the Palace

At the same time, elsewhere, the moment the white mist swallowed her vision, Sylvia instinctively reached out for the person beside her.

She grabbed nothing.

What her fingertips touched was not Logaris’s coat, with its faint metallic chill, but an icy, rough stone wall.

That coldness was sinister and bone-piercing. It crept up through her fingertips and into her marrow, carrying the stale, moldy stench of something that had been fermenting in a cellar for decades.

It was very quiet around her.

So quiet that it made her ears ring.

In that absolute stillness, only the sound of her own heartbeat echoed heavily, like war drums.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Sylvia stood motionless, one hand clamped tightly around her sword hilt, her silver-gray eyes sweeping over her surroundings with icy vigilance.

It was a corridor.

A dark-red carpet ran along the floor, filthy and stained, like a blood vessel long since dried up, stretching silently into endless darkness.

On both walls hung oil portraits of the successive kings of the Astrelian royal family. No matter where she stood, the eyes in those paintings seemed fixed on her, brimming with scrutiny, contempt, and undisguised loathing.

Every five meters stood a full suit of knight’s armor holding a halberd. Beneath each hollow visor lay nothing but a heart-stirring void.

The air was thick with the stale smell of old wax, mixed with the bitter odor of medicinal broth that churned her stomach.

It was far too familiar.

That smell had been branded into the scars on her soul like a red-hot iron.

This was... the western corridor of the Astrelia Palace.

The passage leading to that bedchamber that had been sealed off for more than ten years.

“An illusion?”

Sylvia let out a derisive laugh, using deliberate contempt to suppress the faint tremor buried deep in her heart.

She yanked her sword from its sheath.

Clang!

Moonfall’s edge smashed hard into the nearby stone pillar, sending sparks bursting into the air. The sensation was incomparably real, and the recoil numbed the web between her thumb and forefinger.

This was no simple visual deception.

It was a reconstruction of a scene acting directly upon consciousness itself.

She immediately tried to mobilize the Battle Aura within her body, only to discover with a jolt of alarm that her dantian and sea of qi were utterly empty, like a torn sack with everything drained away.

Worse still, strands of thick, ink-black mist began to seep out from the cracks in the carpet. Like venomous snakes with minds of their own, the black fog coiled around her ankles at astonishing speed, cold and slick.

She realized she could not move.

Or rather, she had completely lost control of this body.

In the next instant, her viewpoint was violently yanked upward, and a sharp sensation of weightlessness swept over her.

She became a ghost floating in midair, a powerless observer forced to look down upon the “herself” below.

It was a little girl of only six.

She wore a black formal dress that was obviously too large for her. Her tiny body was curled up in the shadow of the corridor’s corner, clutching a shabby rag doll in a death grip.

One of the doll’s button eyes had fallen off, and a black thread dangled there all alone, just like the child trembling in the shadows.

“So this is what you keep hidden beneath your armor?”

A voice abruptly sounded beside Sylvia’s ear, carrying a nauseating intimacy, as though it had risen from the deepest part of her own throat.

She whipped her head around.

At some point, another figure had appeared beside her.

It was a vague mass of black mist, its features impossible to make out. All that could be vaguely seen was the outline of a person in silver armor, identical to her in form.

“Who are you?” Sylvia asked coldly, though she already knew the answer in her heart.

“I am you.” The shadow’s voice was low and hoarse, like a serpent slithering over sand. “I am the truest fear hidden in the deepest part of your heart.”

“An obvious fake.”

Sylvia forced herself to remain composed and looked away, sneering inwardly.

A cheap psychological profile.

“Do not be so quick to deny it.” As though it had seen through her thoughts, the shadow gave a light laugh and drifted behind her. “Watch carefully. This is the original sin you will never wash away in your entire life. It is the poison flowing in your blood.”

The air around them suddenly grew thick.

The scene before her began to shift.

That heavy oak door was pushed open by an invisible hand with a drawn-out creak that set her teeth on edge.

The setting changed from the corridor to that bedchamber—the place that suffocated her.

There was a huge bed draped in layer upon layer of white gauze, like an enormous spiderweb waiting for prey.

A woman lay upon it.

She was very still, as though she were asleep.

That face, once praised as the “Ice Flower of the Kingdom,” was now so pale it seemed nearly transparent, like a sheet of thin ice that would shatter at the slightest touch. The living color of earlier days was gone, leaving behind only a heartbreaking, sickly whiteness, as if all vitality had been completely drained from that body.

It was Sylvia’s mother.

And beside the bed stood six-year-old Sylvia.

The little girl’s complexion was unnaturally rosy, her entire body overflowing with vigorous life completely at odds with the deathly stillness of the chamber.

So abundant was the tyrannical power she had possessed from birth that even the air around her was faintly distorting, forming visible ripples that were both gorgeous and cruel.

Esmeralda was kneeling half beside the bed, carefully feeding the woman medicinal broth with a silver spoon. The bitterness of the medicine was overpowering.

“Do you see it clearly now?” The shadow pressed close to Sylvia’s ear, whispering like a demon, filled with vicious delight. “She was dying, and you were living.”

“Everyone said you were a genius, born with your meridians and circuits open, with a transcendent sensitivity to Battle Aura. But they did not know how that talent came to be, did they?”

The shadow’s voice suddenly turned sharp and cruel.

“You stole it.”

“You began plundering while you were still in the womb. Not only did you absorb all the nourishment, you also greedily drained your mother’s vital blood and mana like some ravenous beast. The moment you were born was the beginning of her withering. For six years, she lingered on her sickbed, day after day, her life stripped away inch by inch. And you?”

Sylvia floated helplessly in the air, her fingers instinctively trying to curl into fists, only to close around emptiness.

“Shut up,” she said, her voice dry and hoarse.

“Admit it, Sylvia.” The shadow let out a string of sneering laughs. “You ate her. You were the tumor parasitizing her body. You were the murderer who killed her with your own hands. You sucked the mother who bore you and raised you dry until she became this living corpse!”

“That is why Father looked at you with such indifference! Because every time he saw you, healthy and whole, he did not see his daughter. He saw... the murderer who killed the woman he loved most!”

In the scene below, the dying mother turned her head with immense difficulty. Her hollow eyes brushed past little Sylvia before finally settling on Esmeralda. Trembling, she stretched out a hand and clutched Esmeralda’s sleeve with all the strength she had left.

“Esmeralda...” Her voice was as faint as smoke. “Promise me... take care of her. She is not a monster... she is only... my child.”

The young Esmeralda’s eyes were red-rimmed. She clasped that icy hand in return, her voice firm yet hoarse. “I swear it, Your Highness. So long as I still draw breath, the shadows will guard her forever.”

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