The Cornflower Witch

Book 3: Chapter 33: Mushroom Silk Still Exists Among All Things

After the Silver Bell Festival, there were still ten days of vacation left, and Sylutia and her two companions planned to go on a trip.

"I asked some veterans and students at the school. They suggested going to the Kingdom of Seras at this time. They are holding a 'Horse Racing Festival' there, and it's very lively."

"Or, we could also choose to go to the Jianermi District to see the winter jasmine flowers. They are blooming all over the mountains and fields right now."

"Horse racing? Not interested." Aurora shook her head.

"Let's go see the winter jasmine flowers." Sylutia suggested.

"Then we'll go to the Jianermi District~" Lovier said, writing down the plan in the notebook in her hand.

"Let me think, how to prepare for it... First, we need to buy tickets, purchase things for the journey, prepare clothes to change into..." she thought aloud as she wrote.

"I'll go buy the tickets. How about Hedra and Aurora go prepare the things we'll carry on the road? Here's the preparation funds." As she spoke, Lovier went to her bedside, crouched down, took out the metal box from her bedside table, and pulled out a box full of gold coins.

Her money never seemed to run out. Someone would deliver more to her every month. It was truly unclear how vast her family's business was within the Harp Flower Union.

Afterwards, Sylutia and Aurora went out, while the Black Kite Puppet was left in the dorm to watch the house.On the way, Sylutia and Aurora sat in the Carriage, discussing the cost and uses of puppets.

"Currently, puppet making is still very troublesome and expensive, far less cheap than simply hiring people with money. So, they are only supplied to some upper-class people and those with special needs." Aurora said, her gaze looking out the window through the curtain.

"That puppet Hedra received yesterday would probably cost two hundred gold coins on the market."

"Two hundred gold coins..." Sylutia thought of those beastmen who also lived in the Asra District, who might not earn two hundred gold coins in their entire lifetime, yet their wage income was already far stronger than that of farmers in remote areas.

The disparity of the world...

After the two arrived at the shopping street, they encountered quite a few students their own age. Several of them were even from the same school, and they exchanged greetings upon meeting.

After purchasing the miscellaneous items and portable food needed for the journey, when Sylutia and Aurora finished buying, the two carried their packages and boarded the Carriage again, having it take them back.

As if remembering something, halfway back, Sylutia got off the Carriage early.

"Aurora, go back first. I'm going to take a look at Agate Street."

The Carriage left behind her. Sylutia straightened her clothes and once again walked into that ordinary street.

Come to think of it, people are always easily blinded by what's right in front of them. Because the classmates she interacted with and the teachers she met were all people living comfortable lives, it was easy to think the whole world was like this. And even if she encountered and saw some beggars and ordinary laborers on the road, she would inadvertently overlook them, as if they were just NPCs in life, not real living beings.

If she hadn't arrived at the Mage Alliance with some special mission in mind, she probably would have overlooked these ordinary commoners too.

People have limited energy and cannot care for too much. For ordinary students, just completing their studies well is already not easy. Where would they find the mind to pay attention to other things?

Walking on the street where puddles formed from the freshly melted snow were everywhere, Sylutia nimbly skipped over the wet patches, her small black leather shoes stepping on the solid stone bricks.

After arriving at Agate Street, Sylutia took a deep breath, then closed her eyes, concentrating all her attention on her hearing. Then, all sorts of faint sounds from within a hundred meters around flowed into her mind, which she continuously analyzed and processed.

...

"A total of 89 people, 68 adults, 21 children. Also, 147 various animals, 92 of which are rats..." She slowly opened her eyes, noting down the data she had just analyzed.

Then she continued forward, practically turning herself into a human-shaped radar, detecting data from the entire block.

"A preliminary estimate suggests over three thousand beastman subspecies and ordinary human laborers live here. Considering it's daytime now and many people are out working and haven't returned, the real data should be about double that, meaning nearly ten thousand people."

"The Mage Alliance enrolls about 200,000 new students every year, with about 70,000 assigned to the Asra District. Adding in students accumulated over the years, the total is about 350,000. Within the Asra District, there are eight streets specifically for laborers to live in, similar to Agate Street. Considering there are also laborers and servants who don't live in such streets, the real number might be around one hundred thousand."

Previously, someone told her that 80% of the people on the roads in the Asra District were students. That data was wrong because it ignored most of the ordinary laborers, and these people truly exist.

In a world possessing Transcendent power, ordinary mortals can hardly affect the overall situation. Probably no one else has the spare time like her to pay attention to these trivial details.

If it were purely for profit, she also didn't need to care about these. No matter how much resistance these people stirred up, under the suppression of high-level Transcendents, it would all dissipate extremely quickly.

Power... Sylutia sighed softly. This thing is far too attractive, making people easily ignore many things.

Involuntarily, she recalled what Scholar Hyde had taught her.

"Transcendents possess strength far surpassing that of ordinary people, but this strength also relies on the foundational support provided by the entire social system framework."

If these people weren't here to handle all kinds of massive, minute tasks, and everything was replaced with mechanical puppets, the Mage Alliance probably wouldn't have so many resources to sustain itself. Similarly, if it lost this massive base population providing a source of students, the Mage Alliance would have no way to select the best from the best, obtaining those rare, talented successors.

Currently, the wages and treatment of laborers in the Asra District are already among the top in the entire Mage Alliance, but their lifespan and population reproduction efficiency are lower than that of normal agricultural societies outside. This is actually a very bad sign. But currently, the Mage Alliance is still in a rising phase, with a continuous influx of outside population filling the gaps.

However, if one day this model is extended to the entire continent, with no massive agricultural population left to replenish it, the entire system would slowly wither. At that time, low-level Transcendents would also find it hard to gain the respect they have now. They would become the new generation of laborers.

The strength and continued existence of an Aspect are closely related to the Transcendents walking its path. If all the Gold Steam Aspect Transcendents in the entire world died, then the 'Gold Steam' Aspect would also rapidly decline, weaken, and even slowly disappear.

Because 'Gold Steam' is not a world-native 'Aspect', unlike 'Verdant Nectar' or 'Scorching Sun'. It is only a conceptual Aspect generated by the activities of intelligent beings like humans.

The rapid development of the Mage Alliance is precisely because the Gold Steam Aspect is being applied in more and more fields, and the number of related Transcendents is increasing.

But up to the present, the Gold Steam Aspect is still just a toy in the hands of a minority of Transcendents. It has not entered the lives of ordinary people, nor has it completely changed the operational logic of this world. Precisely because of this, it remains dispensable and has not given birth to an 'Hour', becoming part of the world's rules.

If the 'Hidden Grove Alliance', or rather the Fourth Continent, wants to carry out a comprehensive transformation, learning from the Mage Alliance's path of combining the 'Gold Steam' Secret Word and Castle, they will all ultimately face this problem. And once someone can solve this problem, whichever organization the Hour is born in, that organization will ultimately gain control of this continent and open a new great manor.

Instructor Hyde was right.

Subtle differences are often overlooked by people, but these countless subtle differences ultimately influence and change the entire world.

The connection of threads and strings, the accumulation of countless subtleties, gives birth to the Mother of Life that changes the world.

The mycelium still exists within all things.