130: Chapter 130 The Empress's Audience!

Imperial Capital, Imperial Palace.

Su Bai stood beside a pillar at the entrance of the side hall, looking down at his clean school uniform, which he had specially changed into. The collar was turned down, the cuffs were fastened, and he had even wiped away the Card Creator studio dust from the soles of his shoes beforehand.

"This should be formal enough, right?"

Kyubey was perched on his shoulder, its red glass eyes scanning the magnificent, golden corridor.

"Su Bai, your heart rate—"

"Well, meeting the Empress, it's normal to be a little nervous."

"It's less than five beats higher than usual, which doesn't count as nervous. However, your right index finger has been rubbing the hem of your uniform, and that part of the fabric is already fraying."

Su Bai looked down. It was indeed fraying.

"...Can't you just pretend you didn't see that?"

"I am Kyubey. Honesty is my default setting."

Su Bai couldn't be bothered to reply. He turned his gaze toward the tightly closed vermilion hall doors at the end of the corridor, where a faint buzzing of discussion could be heard. It wasn't the main audience hall, but the side hall—the place where the Empress usually summoned Card Creators and forgers. He had heard that dozens of the top geniuses in the entire Dragon Country had been summoned today.

Before coming, Li Qingyue had only thrown one sentence at him: "Dress neatly. Don't embarrass me."

That was it. Nothing more.

Su Bai had replied with an "Alright," but it would be a lie to say he wasn't nervous inside. After all, the person he was about to meet wasn't some guild master or military commander, but the supreme ruler of the Dragon Country. The lord of all people. The holder of the Imperial Throne. The most powerful person on the entire continent.

He took a deep breath. The hall doors opened.

The side hall was at least three times larger than Su Bai had imagined. The dome was absurdly high, with twelve golden dragon-coiled pillars reaching from the floor to the ceiling, each one covered in dense defensive formation runes. In the center hung a holographic projection screen comparable to a cinema screen, and the image on the screen made Su Bai pause.

Magical Girl. It wasn't a static image, but combat footage. In the scene, a twin-tailed girl in a pink puffy skirt was holding a flaming halberd taller than herself with one hand, slaughtering her way in and out of the demon tide in an abyss rift. Bullet comments were scrolling wildly at the edge of the screen, and the view count was marked with the number "eight billion."

Behind the beaded curtain directly opposite the screen, a seated figure could be vaguely seen. The Empress.

The two sides of the hall below the beaded curtain were filled with people. The row on the left was full of white-haired old men, their chests pinned with various high-rank forger badges; some of them had beards long enough to wrap around their waists. The row on the right consisted of young faces, around thirty years old, with the core Card Creator certifications of various major guilds embroidered on their collars.

Su Bai scanned the room. Roughly counting, there were at least forty or fifty people. At this moment, they were all staring at the screen. A few old men were watching with tears in their eyes, their fingers trembling on their knees like sieves.

"...Remarkable," the purple-robed elder at the head of the left row, whose white beard reached his chest, spoke first. Su Bai recognized the badge on his chest—the Royal Chief Forger, Rank 9. There were no more than three people in the entire Dragon Country who could hold this title.

"A Rank 1 Rainbow Card, a system core, independent spellcasting, and an indestructible soul gem. I have lived for nearly two hundred years and have never seen anyone capable of sealing a Causality Contract into a Rank 1 circuit. The designer of this card—is a true genius."

Another gray-robed old man next to him nodded vigorously: "That's not all. Look at the mana output curve of the Magical Girl in this footage; the peak multiplier increase is completely unrestricted by the material rank. What does this mean? It means the underlying logic of this system bypasses Equivalent Exchange!"

"Bypasses Equivalent Exchange!" a third person chimed in, their voice cracking, "The iron law of the entire Card Creator academic field! Broken by a Rank 1 card! This is no longer just genius; this is someone sent by the gods to rewrite the textbooks!"

The young Card Creators in the row on the right were also whispering among themselves. A proud genius from the Imperial Capital with slicked-back hair crossed his arms, his expression like he was appraising a museum's prized exhibit. "I heard he registered for the National Competition." "Registered as a Rank 2? Quite bold."

"Bold? He only dares to play like that because he has the strength. Think about it, he dares to sign up for a competition with a Rank 5 limit while only being Rank 2; could he not have any trump cards? I bet he has definitely prepared an advanced version of the Magical Girl—a Rank 2 Rainbow Card, or even a Rank 3 Rainbow Card."

"That makes sense. The Magical Girl System crushes regular cards below Rank 3 even at Rank 1, if it were upgraded to Rank 2..." The slick-haired Card Creator gasped half-way through his sentence. Several colleagues around him also fell silent simultaneously. Because they had all arrived at the same conclusion—if Su Bai upgraded the magical girl card from Rank 1 to Rank 2 or even Rank 3, paired with the stage of the National Competition, the mere thought of that scene made his competitors' backs go cold.

"Besides," the slick-haired man lowered his voice, "I heard that the War Emperor's daughter, Wei Xiaoyu, previously rejected all Imperial Capital Card Creators, yet she took the initiative to seek out Su Bai. Although it seems it didn't work out in the end, the fact that such a snobbish young lady personally visited him—think about it, really think about it."

There was a chorus of sharp intakes of breath all around.

The purple-robed chief stroked his beard and laughed heartily: "This kid, he's hidden it well. But no matter how much he hides it, he can't come empty-handed to the main hall, right? I have already deduced all the advancement directions for the Magical Girl: installing Rank 2 defensive formations, embedding a Star-Destroying Cannon module into the magic wand, using Space Folding to compress the transformation time to 0.1 seconds—no matter which path he takes, it is destined to be an epoch-making work."

He set his teacup down on the table and concluded with a full, resonant voice: "Gentlemen. What we are fortunate enough to witness today will be the founder of the next fifty years of the Dragon Country's card creation world."

The whole hall nodded. Behind the beaded curtain, the Empress's seated figure leaned forward slightly. She seemed to be listening, and listening very intently.

When the hall doors opened again, the discussions in the hall stopped in unison. Su Bai followed Li Qingyue into the side hall.

Everyone's gaze focused on them. Those gazes contained curiosity, scrutiny, expectation, and the uncontrollable jealousy in the eyes of a few young Card Creators. Su Bai swept his gaze around—they were all big shots. Any one of those old men in the left row could independently establish a sect, and the young people on the right were at least Rank 4.

But he didn't have time to observe for too long. Because Li Qingyue had already bowed in greeting. Su Bai realized this and whispered: "Master, do we have to kneel?"

Li Qingyue was a Rank 9 Card Creator, so she definitely didn't need to kneel, but he certainly wasn't. Even so, Su Bai had a resistance to kneeling. "No need, a fist salute is fine," Li Qingyue said softly, "Kneeling is a thing of a hundred years ago; modern people aren't that constrained."

Su Bai raised an eyebrow and hurriedly copied Li Qingyue's bow. However, due to his height, it looked like he was bringing his younger sister along, which made Li Qingyue couldn't help but pout.

"Subject Li Qingyue, accompanied by my disciple Su Bai, requests an audience with Your Majesty."

Li Qingyue's voice returned to that cold, formal tone she used during meetings at the Sanctuary. She was wearing that deep blue high-rank Card Creator robe today, her silvery-white hair combed meticulously; her entire person, from her physique to her aura, fit the words "9th-tier Supreme" perfectly.

A soft sound came from behind the beaded curtain. Then, a hand lifted the curtain. The fingers of that hand were slender, the nails painted with pale gold nail polish. This single movement alone caused everyone on both sides of the hall to lower their heads simultaneously—including the purple-robed chief whose beard could wrap around his waist.

The Empress walked out from behind the beaded curtain. Su Bai looked up. Then he froze.

Not an old lady. Nor the dignified and solemn middle-aged empress image he had imagined.

The person before him looked at most twenty-five or twenty-six years old. Her waist-length ink-black hair was tied back with a simple jade hairpin, with a few stray strands falling by her ears. Her facial features were on the cold side, but those dark golden eyes held a kind of calm that commanded respect without anger. She was not wearing court attire, but a plain white, modified dragon robe, with pale gold dragon patterns embroidered on the cuffs and collar.

Standing before the beaded curtain, when she wasn't speaking, she looked like a cold and beautiful lady who had stepped out of a fine brushwork painting.

Su Bai had only one thought in his mind. —This is completely not the same person as the portrait in the textbook.