Kingdom of Avalon, Glass Island, White Queen's Office of Supervision.
The Supervisory Bureau was still extremely busy this morning.
Men and women in light or leather armor hurried by. On the wall of Director Kent's office, there was still a majestic silver-white dragon head portrait - the silver-crowned dragon was watching them all the time.
Director Kent, now in his forties but still in good health, sat in his leather chair.
He had a straight back, and his round shoulders and arms held up his loose clothes. His bronze skin and the fat on his face gave him a fierce and tough look. A deep scar stretched from above his left eye to his lips, and he wore a black eye patch, looking like a one-eyed pirate.
As a ritual and etiquette, even though Director Kent had not participated in frontline combat for more than ten years, he still had to wear armor to work, his sitting posture must be standard, and his demeanor could not be shaken at all. His upper arms, abdomen and calves, which were not burdened with heavy loads, were all covered with silver-white metal armor. Other parts were hung with shiny armor plates.
If he wasn't also a transcendent of a high level, he would probably be exhausted just sitting here for a whole day.
As early as four hundred and twenty years ago, Lancelot I, the founding monarch of the Kingdom of Avalon, established three major legal institutions.
The Inspectorate is responsible for "supervising and protecting the people", the Inspectorate is responsible for "supervising knight officials", and the Arbitration Hall is responsible for "deciding right and wrong". At the beginning of their establishment, the status of these three major legal institutions was equal to each other. The Knights of the Round Table who could enter the Senate played an important role in all of them.
The national emblem of the Kingdom of Avalon is a green eye nested in a silver triangle that symbolizes power.
The eye means the royal family, symbolizing their old queen Sofia I, who is nearly eighty years old and still in good health.
The silver triangle that protects the royal family refers to the Supervisory Bureau, the Inspectorate and the Arbitration Hall.
However, as time went by, the Inspectorate became responsible for more and more matters, including taxation, safety, sanitation, fire protection, public security, inspection, imprisonment, etc. As a result, the Inspectorate gradually divided into many sub-departments, and established branches in various places, recruiting a large number of trainee inspectors, inspectors and inspectors-general to take charge of local affairs, and power was thus divided.
The Inspectorate and the Arbitration Chamber did not expand in size because they had to deal with more difficult and specific matters. The former became an organization similar to a secret service agency - responsible for examining whether officials of all ranks were loyal, whether hereditary knight families were morally deficient, whether grassroots supervision had violated discipline and regulations, and monitoring spies from other countries, or collecting intelligence alone abroad; while the latter became today's court.
The common point is that they are now one level higher than the Inspectorate.
As a result, all talents who could reach the fourth level in the Supervisory Bureau were transferred to the Inspection Office and the Arbitration Office. The reason was that "you don't need such talents anyway." Even in the core area of White Queen District, which is adjacent to the glass steps, its director Kent is only at the third level.
The young girl named Haina who was recently transferred here is only in her early twenties, and her strength is comparable to that of Director Kent, who is now approaching fifty.
Kent knew without even thinking that the Inspectorate would definitely come to ask for someone.
This is an era of genius. Whether it is Haina or Sherlock... these new generation of geniuses are much better than the old people who grew up in a peaceful era.
This is unlucky, Kent thought.
This may be a sign of trouble to come...
He picked up the phone on the table and spun the wheel. 0-1-2, the call was connected.
"Ask Haena to come to my office."
Director Kent ordered: "Also, ask someone to call our consultant as well."
After hanging up the phone, he threw the Glass Steps newspaper on the table, stood up and walked to the bookshelf.
The front page of this newspaper was a photo of Haina and the young master of the Moriarty family.
The handsome young man with a gentle smile was sitting calmly in a wheelchair in the style of Elf art, with a blanket covering his knees and his hands folded in front of his abdomen. He was talking about something in a gentle, natural and generous manner. And Haina, who was standing behind him, stood straight, holding the hilt of the sword at her waist, with her muscles tensed.
It seemed as if he noticed the photographer, or as if he was greeting some acquaintance around the photographer.
The young man was halfway through his speech when his eyes suddenly shifted from the reporter to the direction of the camera.
He smiled gently, as bright as the sun, and raised his hand slightly to wave over here, giving people the feeling that he was smiling and waving at the readers who were reading the newspaper.
The next moment, the scene jumped back to the beginning. Aiwass continued to sit in the wheelchair and said something seriously to the reporter.
—This is the "magic painting" ability from the path of "beauty".
In theory, the path of beauty is a path that is prohibited by law in Avalon, but Master Janis is an exception. The "Glass Daily" founded by this world-renowned elf painter is the largest and only official newspaper in Avalon.
The Glass Daily Newspaper will compile the most important intelligence of the Kingdom of Avalon every day and summarize it for the royal family and the ministers of the Round Table Hall. The three major legal institutions will also provide free "Glass Steps Newspaper" for their employees to read.
Perhaps it was to follow the trend, perhaps to keep up with the policies of the upper echelons, or perhaps just to express their concern for the political situation in the kingdom. Some wealthy people who neither participated in politics nor worked would also join in the fun and buy the Glass Steps. Soon after, some college students would also buy it as a topic of conversation among young students.
Although each issue has a "magic painting" with a total length of 15 seconds, and the material cost of each newspaper is as high as one red coin, its price is not high. Because Master Janice does not need to make a profit from it. The retail price of "Glass Steps Newspaper" is only two red coins and five copper coins per issue - these five copper coins are the profit left for the distributor, and sometimes there will be a discount. Anyone with a decent reputation can afford it.
This kind of newspaper that can read animation is a very novel experience. Although it has no sound and is in black and white, at least the pictures are animated - this is basically a way for ordinary people to truly feel extraordinary power in the cheapest way.
In this issue of The Glass Steps, the cover of the newspaper with Edwards Moriarty alone took up a full twelve seconds, leaving only three seconds for a bicycle advertisement.
Director Kent highly suspected that it was because Aiwass was too handsome and his smile was so charming that Master Janice gave him twelve seconds.
"Smiling so beautifully... You can tell at a glance that he is not a good person."
Director Kent, who had the instincts of a wild animal, curled his lips and muttered in a low voice: "I don't know whose girl he is planning to harm..."
… But he saw it clearly.
Being able to solve such a big case on his own at this age, he will definitely become a much bigger figure than himself in the future.
This time they got a great credit for no reason, so they must be given enough rewards - originally this big job should have been given to the Inspectorate, and it would not be their turn anyway.
Moreover, this is also an opportunity to get in touch with Professor Moriarty.
Therefore, the selected rewards must be good enough, otherwise they will be rubbish to the Moriarty family. If you give them something that they don't like, it will be a disgrace to the Supervisory Bureau.
… What a hassle.
"A dedicated minister... a seminary student..."
Chief Kent muttered under his breath, searching the bookshelf.
Suddenly, he stopped and looked towards a corner.
There was a book with a dark cover and no name on the spine.
The director picked it up with one hand and flicked the cover with the other. Sparks flew off the pages like a hammer hitting an anvil.
"This one might work."
He murmured softly, reading the title: "The Pastor's Secret Sutra... Judging from the name, it should be related to 'priest'."
This entire bookshelf is filled with good stuff that the people down below collected when they were confiscating banned books.
The Kingdom of Avalon strictly prohibits accepting bribes in any form, because that is enough to shake the "authority". But on the other hand, appropriate profiteering within the scope of authority is tacitly accepted. This is also to prevent officials and ministers from being bribed by foreign spies, especially spies from the Kingdom of Star Antimony, when they are short of money, or from selling important intelligence and internal resources to the public. This will also shake the "authority".
One of the tacitly accepted ways of making a profit is to sell the confiscated banned books to the Knight family - from this perspective, this bookshelf can also be regarded as Director Kent's personal property.
Kent is not a pioneer on the path of dedication, so he certainly cannot open this book.
But judging from the name and the sparks that are bursting out, this is definitely a mysterious book on the path of dedication.
After the death of the extraordinary, their souls will fall into the "Nine Forks River" in the dream world and flow to the farthest path they have traveled. The power in it becomes the "path characteristics" obtained by the later practitioners in the advanced ceremony, and their memories and knowledge will be scattered all over the place, falling randomly into the natural existences such as flowers, fruits, sea of clouds and waves in the dream world, becoming part of the materials for constructing the dream world.
Those dream monks who are proficient in the way of wisdom can capture and collect these scattered and esoteric knowledge from the dream world.
They would collect them and compile them into books. These mysterious books containing magical knowledge were called "original books".
The text of the "original text" is written in Gupta, a language that has long been extinct and is incomprehensible to ordinary people. It often requires local translators of wisdom to use mysterious techniques to forcefully translate it before it can be understood.
According to the convention of the translation community, this kind of original text that records the knowledge of the dream world in Gupta is uniformly translated as a certain tantra. What the prefix is depends mainly on the translator's understanding of the content of the original text.
In a tantra, one can usually obtain a complete mysterious skill - although it is possible that it will be reproduced by people in later generations, there is also a high probability that it will be a lost skill.
Although it may not be useful, it is a lost technique after all.
In other words, it is something that cannot be obtained through normal means...
"Then it's decent enough to be a prize and a 'gift'."
Chief Kent muttered to himself.