My Wife and I Became Sages in Another World
Chapter 305: The Palace’s Attic

Chapter 305: The Palace’s Attic

During the night that Lord Bao told us that the Scarlet Trio and the mage Sinoc had been moved from the guarding posts to patrol the city, I found it hard to believe.

I didn’t think that it was Lord Bao who was lying to us. Actually, it seemed more to me that he was the one being lied to.

It just wouldn’t make sense for them to leave the old man Yushan without protection, considering how important of an asset he was for the empress and the nobles.

The empress was the one who gave the order to kill any commoner in the outskirts if the guards saw a commotion. She probably thought that she could trap us by doing that, so we went for enslaved villagers inside the city walls.

By doing that, she understood that her orders were being leaked, so I thought that she was giving wrongful information on purpose to catch the mole.

When I explained my thought process to Lord Bao, he seemed a bit wary of the fact that the empress suspected him.

"Lord Bao, did you personally see Sinoc and the others patrolling the streets?" I asked.

"No, I didn’t. It was the empress who told me..." he replied, widening his eyes as he realized something.

"She did share that information with me only..." he continued.

Lord Bao told us that it was common for the empress to share her thoughts in front of the other government officials, but after I told him the reason for my worries, he started to connect the dots himself.

It was evident that the empress had given different information to the nobles they suspected of being the mole. Whichever event happened, then they could figure out who it was.

For example, if we were to look for the old man Yushan that night, they would conclude that Lord Bao was the traitor, as he was the only one who would’ve known that Sinoc wasn’t there.

"We can’t be 100% sure that this is what they are doing, but I think it would be better to play it safe for now..." I commented.

I said we were playing it safe, but we were thinking about going to the palace, so that wasn’t completely true. However, as long as nobody saw us, then everything would be fine.

A few minutes after our conversation was over, Melina and I used a window that looked to the backyard and used it to leave so that the empress’ guards at the gates of the residence wouldn’t see us.

After flying high enough, we started making our way towards the palace, located on the northern side of the city.

The streets were even emptier that night, with mostly groups of soldiers walking along the roads and checking every alley they passed by.

When we finally reached the palace, we admired it for a moment as it was the largest we had seen. It wasn’t a tall structure like the palace in Kyotora, but it was much more expansive.

To be fair, the guys in Kyotora had to build theirs on a mountain, while the capital of Guanghua was primarily flat.

Still, it was absolutely brimming with soldiers walking all over the area. I’m talking at least a hundred of them.

Realistically, Melina and I could probably take them on, but the point was not to cause a commotion.

We drank a little of the invisibility potion and descended to the rooftop, where we noticed a small window that led to some sort of attic.

I thought it was strange for a palace to have an attic, but I didn’t question our only way of getting inside.

When I used gravity magic to open the lock, the window only opened slightly as we saw the extra chains that were holding it.

"Why would they chain this? What the hell, man..." I muttered, using the same type of magic to open the lock that held the chains together.

For an attic, the stuff that was inside looked quite valuable, and as we carefully inspected the dusty statues, we heard someone’s breathing coming from one side of the room.

It was quite an ample space for an attic, and the amount of things they had stored inside made it difficult to transverse, so after I knocked my foot with a statue, I created a light mote to illuminate the place.

As soon as we were able to see everything around us, we spotted a woman chained to the side of the attic.

Only one arm was chained while her other arm rested on her legs with a book in hand. The woman was sleeping in a sitting position, her neck aimed at the ground and her clothing shredded.

When we got closer to her, she suddenly opened her eyes and looked up at us with an expression full of genuine fear and despair.

Noticing that the woman was about to scream her heart out, I quickly muted all sounds from leaving the attic while Melina gently calmed her down.

"Shh, it’s okay. We are not here to hurt you..." Melina said as she caressed the woman’s head.

Using earth magic, Melina pointed her palm at the chains on her wrist and shattered them, turning them into dust, surprising the woman.

Her name was Lania, and she used to be a citizen of Balinesia who worked directly under the last empress—Empress Chunhua.

She explained that Empress Chunhua wasn’t truly dead like everyone in the country made her out to be. In fact, she was terminally ill and was being kept in the palace’s dungeon along with the other political prisoners.

Of all the things we expected her to say, that was definitely not it.

Lania said that she knew that Empress Yulian was the one who poisoned Chunhua, and when she rose to power, Lania confronted her.

Obviously, this didn’t play out well for her, but instead of being instantly executed, Yulian decided to toy with her.

As punishment, Empress Yulian told Lania that she would be chained to the attic where she could read all of the medicinal books she wanted, and if Lania ever felt like she could cure Chunhua, then the empress would allow her.

Evidently, Empress Yulian wasn’t going to let that happen, and if she gave Lania the option to look for a cure, it was because there probably wasn’t one.

’It’s probably a curse...’ I thought.

However, my holy panaceas worked wonders against devil curses, so I thought that we had a chance of saving the empress, who was supposedly dead.