Chapter 216

216 An Equal Exchange

Selma Payne’s POV:

“A stone tablet that contains the remnants of powerful magic fluctuations.” Master Mary showed us the stone tablet in her hand.

It was a stone tablet in Renaissance style, but its pattern was slightly different – thirteen kinds of flowers surrounding a moth with broken wings and fine vines firmly bound them together like a round shield.

The style of the stone tablet was extremely torn. The fresh flowers were beautiful, round, and warm, like a simple drawing left by a young girl in love with romantic thoughts and vitality.

However, the moths were sculpted in a strange and ugly way, like discarded food by sparrows, pecked to pieces by sharp beaks, exuding a strong sense of despair.

I noticed that twelve of the thirteen types of flowers matched the pattern on the red shawl.

“Yes, we also suspect this. Maybe there should have been thirteen red shawls.” Master Mary said, ” But we didn’t find the thirteenth shawl in the ruins of the witch clan. It’s a coincidence, or the thirteenth shawl has been taken away.”

“Or perhaps it was destroyed?” Dorothy suggested.

“I’ve also suspected it,” Master Mary said. “But look at this.”

A flame gushed out of her hand and burned the red shawl on the table!

Before we arrived, the scorching flames quickly began to devour the bright red cloth. However, after almost half a minute, nothing happened to the red shawl, as if the flame was just a shadow that was bluffing.

“Any external force cannot destroy the red shawl.” Master Mary explained, “This is an unexpected conclusion. This morning, a team member accidentally dropped his red shawl into the bonfire, but it was unscathed when he took it out. We’ve tried all means of attack, but without exception, we can’t damage the red shawl at all.”

Now, I was even more convinced that the red shawl had something to do with the moths and stone tablet. At the very least, they all contained powerful magic.

In the design aspect, no one present could compete with Master Hayley, but even she had never seen the design on the stone tablet.

‘Flowers and moths are very common elements,” she carefully traced the lines of the stone carving. “But I’ve never seen this combination in any known classics or cultural relics, let alone such a disharmonious style. I even suspect this stone tablet has been processed twice, and some think that the moth and the flower have been combined.”

“In other words, the moths and the flowers are not the work of the same person?” I asked.

Master Hayley nodded. “Judging from the style, that’s right.”

That was all we knew about the stone tablet. Maybe there would be some records in Mullwica’s notes, but we’d have to find them from the mountain of words.

Mullwica was a supreme witch and a knowledgeable scholar and practitioner. Her notes recorded many unique and original sorcery, formations, runes, and theories. Not only did it include sorcery, but it also included the power theories of many other races. It even had alchemy and human theology.

On the second day after Frank left, Dorothy found clues about the Eye of Insight.

Surprisingly, Mullwica had already discovered a way to control the Eye of Insight!

“How could this be?” Dorothy was calmer than anyone else. “If she could control it, why would she waste her life in vain?”

We got the answer very quickly.

“The Eye of Insight is an unexpected mutated power. I believe that when the goddess of fate gave her descendants the ability to pry into fate, she did not expect such an accident to happen. Therefore, the Eye of Insight could not be considered a pass that the goddess of fate had granted. That is why, for fate, it was not allowed to spy on oneself through it. This also means that it wasn’t the Eye of Insight that took away my life force but fate. This is its punishment for thieves.

“I used a forbidden spell and met an ancient ancestor. It was said that she was the first witch who knew how to control the Eye of Insight. She said that it all started in an accident. She was injured and lost sight while avoiding the pursuit of a group of human knights, and her sister, unfortunately, died in the battle. To save her, the witch with her used a kind of sorcery to exchange her broken eyeball for her sister’s.

“Since then, I’ve known that everything was a joke of fate. The ancestor said, ‘Ever since I put on Dahlia’s eyes, I found that my life force, which was constantly losing, had inexplicably stopped. At first, I thought I had found a way to escape the tragic cycle of reincarnation, but when I exchanged the two sisters’ eyes, I realized that the gift of fate was never free. Only one of them will survive. Even if I swap their eyes, only the first one will survive.’

“This is an exchange of equal value without a choice. Losing your blood kin, bearing sin, when fate is certain that you have received enough punishment, fate will no longer meddle in other people’s business. It will only hide behind the misty veil and watch you fall into the abyss of self-destruction.”

The solution to everything was in the notes.

As long as one found a blood relative with the Eye of Insight, he could exchange his eyes with the relative.