I have a long-lived pawn shop.

The Pope frowned slightly, but did not get angry immediately: "The child has grown up, and the father will naturally grow old. I hope Philip has not caused you any trouble."

He was already at the edge of the cliff, and another pair of shackles were thrown across him, locking his beloved children together with him.

But at the moment he saw things more clearly. After losing Rosalina, Philip could not remain a child forever.

His son was taken out of the delicately protected glass box in his heart. His color and importance changed and he was placed in the pattern hidden in his chest.

Wei Xi raised his eyebrows and said in a proper tone, which sounded like sincere advice: "The moment you swore allegiance to the gods, you belonged to no one. Even when facing your own flesh and blood, you should not show the slightest bias."

"The gods have fallen," Todd Rod answered, and paused after meeting Wei Xi's gaze, "Now it is humans who dominate the continent, and it is human desires that provoke war." He acted quite innocent, indicating that he had no chance to apologize to anyone for this.

Wei Xi finally showed a genuine smile. She bowed and sat down in an armchair with her back straight.

The Pope's attitude towards Wei Xi was extremely friendly. Although there was not much change on the surface, if you just observe the value of the information Wei Xi got, you will find something surprising.

In fact, everyone knew that without the Pope, Philip was a childish bird that could be bullied by everyone. And if he lost Abigail after leaving the Pope, Todrode could imagine his son's fate without anyone's explanation - after his glorious or dishonorable death, he would be secretly executed by his political enemies.

When he was young, he lost Innes because he had no power, so he clenched the power tightly and took revenge on the Monti family who took Innes away. But in middle age, because of power, he was going to lose his life and even everything he valued.

Todrode knew that Emperor Odin already had a candidate for the next Pope, Cardinal Williams - an idealistic Pope who only cared about the lives of the poor people, which made the emperor feel at ease.

Todd Rhodes looked at Abigail, who sat upright, with her thin, graceful face and eyelashes like moth wings, exactly as he had imagined in his youth that a child like Innes would be.

She really looked like Innes, but her expression was quite different.

He had already walked onto a dead end, while Abigail had stepped onto a thorny road from the decadence of life. The two of them were like two trains on the same platform but at different heights in an old train station. They could hear each other but could hardly see each other. They were both flickering and dimly lit, but going in opposite directions into the darkness.

Wei Xi put the book on the oak table and pushed it towards the Pope. Her tone was very polite, so as not to let anyone think that she had such deep murderous intentions in her heart. The Pope also took the book back personally, flipped through it, and asked a few questions. It was impossible to tell that he wanted to use this book to teach Wei Xi a lesson.

"How much did you read?"

"I wrote it all down." Wei Xi pointed to his head, "But many parts cannot be read in detail now."

This is where the Memory Palace comes in handy; she memorizes but doesn’t understand.

Although Wei Xi has been suffering from mental shock in the main world for many years, it is no longer so easy for him to lose the ability to move due to negative conditions. However, when he recalls the high-level ritual knowledge he has seen before, even if he just reviews it in his mind, he will feel tired.

After all, she is still just an ordinary person. After becoming a psychic, she should be more compatible with the laws of the ritual and find it easier to understand the composition of this world.

That was a key to open the door, and Wei Xi was just using brute force to push the door open.

"Knowledge is power. Rituals were a very broad field in the Age of Gods. People simply observed phenomena, and then used the observed phenomena to constantly explore the laws and conduct research to gain knowledge. Although it seems that a lot has been understood, there are always more parts that are still hidden in the fog and cannot be accurately answered. After the Dark Age, a large number of classics were lost, and many materials disappeared. In fact, now there are only two major countries that have the ability to perform large-scale high-level rituals..."

The pope tapped the pages of the book with his fingers. "The only high-level ritual that the Silver Moon Church has mastered and can guarantee the success of is called the Burning of Flesh and Blood. It can increase the strength and speed of everyone within the range of the ritual."

In this regard, Wei Xi could be said to be a beginner among beginners. Even though this beginner had already completed the intermediate ritual cast on herself, when she listened to the Pope's teachings, she still had a feeling of alternating confusion and enlightenment in her mind.

"If you choose to study the field of ritual in depth, you will find that the reasons why a ritual is effective can be roughly divided into two categories.

The first is to consume the power of the ritual material itself to produce the effect, and the second is to use the ritual material to communicate and obtain power from a specific object to produce the effect.

The Pope's gaze moved from inside the house to outside. The windows of the reception room were set up in the morning light. The air in the hall passed by people's temples briskly, as intimate as a vague kiss. He could only catch a glimpse of Wei Xi's shadow from the corner of his eye. He asked calmly: "Do you know which type of 'burning of flesh and blood' belongs to?"

Wei Xi fell silent. The answer to the two choices was not difficult, but she was silent for too long and too many times. Todro looked at her shadow on the pine floor and for a moment he almost thought that Wei Xi had left and just forgot her shadow in this room.

"'Burning' is the original ritual, and the cornerstone of all non-prayer rituals." Wei Xi's voice was very soft, as if he was afraid of disturbing something. "The burning of flesh and blood is the first type, but I guess that in this ritual, the person performing the ritual is also a consumable."

"From the beginning of the Dark Age to now, the few remaining spiritual ritual materials have been further destroyed. After the fall of the gods, most of the second-category rituals have been modified and transformed into variations of the first-category rituals. Only one-third of the remaining rituals can be successfully performed now."

The “gift of the generous” she had performed earlier was strictly speaking also a variation of the first category.

Wei Xi's voice still sounded calm as a visitor, but when she rubbed her brows, she looked like she was really tired. "High-level rituals should not be performed unless the ritualist pays an excessive price - super rare materials and flesh and blood soul."

The ritualist himself must be a skilled psychic and cannot just throw in any random soldiers to take advantage of the loopholes.

The Pope finally turned around and looked at Wei Xi seriously. His eyes blinked slowly, as if he wanted to imprint her in his mind. The intermittent silence was gentler than a frost, but noisier than a rain.

He stood up, put down the book and took out a bottle of wine from the cabinet: "You should know more than just this news."

Todrode opened the wax seal on the bottle, Wei Xi pushed the wine glass in front of him, and he filled each glass half full. The wine was quite old, and its color was like a rich eye wave in the morning light.

"Not any more. But you don't look surprised at all."

"what?"

"It was you who invited me here."

They simply clinked their glasses, each thinking about something amid the crisp sound of metallic collision. Todd Rod smiled as if he didn't want to argue with Wei Xi, and Wei Xi returned an equally indifferent smile.

Wei Xi swirled the wine in the glass, and the warm and lingering aroma permeated his head. Unexpectedly, footsteps came closer and closer, and finally stopped outside the door. Wei Xi sighed softly and put the wine glass back on the table with lacquer patterns.

"Your Majesty, the person who is here to pick up Count Monti has arrived." There was a tentative knock on the door.

The Pope glanced at the clock and handed Wei Xi a small jade seal. "If you can adapt, you can come to the Vatican on your days off. The database is open to you. This is the support that His Majesty Odin and I give you."

His tone was calm, and he tried not to show any emotion, but a little compassion flashed in his eyes.

"Come back alive, Abigail."

The word "alive" was pronounced with a decisive blow. Wei Xi raised his eyes, and Todd Rod saw a kind of bravery and decisiveness in Wei Xi's eyes.

It was just this one look that suddenly turned over a whole century in the Pope's heart.

The girls in the Monty family have always been stubborn and brave.

In today's circumstances, death has become something brief, vague, unprofessional, neither heroic nor complete. It is a process rather than a result, and far from a final conclusion. The death of a person is like pouring a basin of water into the sand, which is difficult to see and remember.

What’s funny is that the Pope, whom Wei Xi wanted to kill the most, was the one he least wanted to let die, because only if she was alive could his son live a good life.

Wei Xi smiled at Todd Rod. She was fair and slender, and her lightness only swallowed up the little red on her lips. At first glance, she looked like a normal young man, with a gentle and polite smile.

After taking the seal and opening the door, Wei Xi met an active-duty military officer who came to pick someone up.

A tall man in black military uniform, about thirty years old, with sharp green eyes and a missing piece on his left ear. Wei Xi noticed that there was a silver five-pointed star logo on his epaulettes, so he should be affiliated with the Imperial Killing Corps, similar to Allen Furston's early style.

They walked together among the silhouettes of tall buildings and towers, passed through one courtyard after another, walked in reverse the way Wei Xi came, and finally walked down the white porch steps of the Vatican.

There was a pure black car parked at the bottom of the stairs. After getting in the car and driving silently away from the Vatican for a distance, the green-eyed officer introduced himself seriously: "I am the captain of the sixth squad of the killing team, Peron Dan Brown, and I will be your chief officer in the future. Miss Abigail de Monti, please confirm again whether you fully agree with the content of the plan."

Wei Xi looked through the documents and found that they were no different from what he had learned two days ago. It was just training, training, tasks, training again, secret medicine assistance, training, and actual combat.

She nodded calmly and said, "I agree."

Veron put away the documents. He was like a marble statue, straight and stiff, seemingly without any emotion. He refused to say a word to her. Wei Xi had no intention of chatting with him either. The sunlight outside the car was blazing and dazzling. She closed her eyes in the light and let the person who picked her up take her to a training base in the suburbs.

Compared with the city of Yalai, this place is quite desolate.

A training ground, a wooden house, a stone house, a small forest, a pond, and a barbed wire fence were probably Wei Xi's entire life scene for the next six months.

"The wooden house is for accommodation, the stone house is for training equipment, and there is a shooting range in the woods. Someone will come to teach you how to shoot. There are several sets of training clothes in the wooden house. Go change into them. Physical training will start at 2 pm."

Wei Xi followed behind Belon and scanned the entire training ground calmly. He did not find other girls who were supposed to be training together. There were only a few female soldiers in military uniforms coming and going.

Solo special training, it seems that His Majesty the Emperor really has high hopes for her.

It was 11:00 AM, and there were still three hours before the training started. Veron asked Wei Xi to familiarize himself with the environment, and he himself was nowhere to be found.

Wei Xi tried to unlock the cabin.

With a click, the door opened.

The ordinary house is clean and tidy, and not crowded. The living room and dining room are used as two rooms, but they have everything you need for daily life.

She walked into the bedroom with the door open and found only a bed, a wall cabinet, a small desk, and a chair. In the bathroom, besides the bathroom equipment, there was only a mercury mirror.

Wei Xi's luggage had been delivered, a ash wood box with a big red wax stamp with cursive characters and a military note on the seal.

She placed the box on the table, tore off the seal, and pried open the lid. Inside were layers of green velvet, padded with four gold-painted walnut square boxes, all of which contained ceremonial supplies.