At this moment, that tortured and exhausted woman felt as if she had returned to the front of the Sacred Cathedral over fifteen hundred years ago.
Holding her knightly longsword, she swore an oath to the Lord to defend the glory of the Holy Court until her death.
Seeing her shout so loudly, Morningstar smiled. “Don't waste your energy. His Holiness cannot hear you.”
Mira froze, then quickly looked at the young boy. Seeing him tilt his head slightly with a touch of curiosity in his eyes, her heart instantly sank.
“Since I dared to show myself to you, I naturally have a way to prevent you from speaking even a single word.”
Morningstar glanced at the boy behind her, and her smile turned gentle. She continued to Mira:
“But who can blame Him for being so generous and merciful? I will give you this opportunity. Try all you want before the moment of ‘deliverance’ arrives! It will also let Him see whether the person He chose can fulfill her mission.”
“You damned devil!” Mira gritted her teeth.
Just wait! She would definitely fulfill her mission! Just like fifteen hundred years ago!
But Morningstar ignored her. Under the gaze filled with fury, she turned around, reached out to gently pinch the boy's cheek, and then gradually dissolved into drifting feathers and vanished.
Was he... being taken advantage of?
Lu Li rubbed his cheek in bewilderment, not quite having registered what had happened yet.
Seeing the devil leave, Mira impatiently opened her mouth once again. She wanted to tell this boy everything that had happened, including the mission she bore.
“&%￥#￥...”
But the moment Mira spoke, she froze.
“&%￥#￥...”
She tried again, but she still couldn't say it.
“Your Holiness, can you hear me?”
Mira tried speaking of other, unrelated things, and this time she was finally able to speak fluently.
“I can,” Lu Li nodded, a trace of suspicion flashing in his eyes.
Hearing this, Mira opened her mouth again. However, the moment she reached the content she truly wanted to mention, she was once again unable to speak.
She suddenly realized that the devil had done something to her. She could not utter a single word about anything related to that matter.
“How can this be...”
Mira's face turned ugly. Noticing that Lu Li's gaze was growing stranger and stranger, she instinctively wanted to explain, but those words of explanation would inevitably refer to that matter, so she once again became completely speechless.
Lu Li had already faintly sensed that something was wrong, yet he couldn't put his finger on it.
Mira's change had started at a certain point, as if after someone had arrived... But he clearly remembered that from the moment he began talking to Mira, no third person had entered the room!
Could there be a problem with his memory?
No! That wasn't right!
Lu Li dismissed that judgment.
There couldn't be a mistake in his memory. Someone must have come, and the best way to resolve this was to ask the person in front of him.
“Did someone else come in just now?” Lu Li asked.
As if grasping a life-saving straw, Mira nodded desperately. But when she wanted to say that person's name, she was once again unable to open her mouth.
Lu Li nodded slightly. After thinking for a moment, he reached a conclusion: his memory was correct, and someone had indeed come just now.
The fact that he couldn't remember anyone coming was highly likely because that person had altered his cognition, making him mistakenly believe that no one had visited during this time.
The conflict between his memory and his cognition was what had caused him to immediately notice the discrepancy.
Seeing Mira trying to speak but failing, Lu Li asked, “Do you have something to tell me?”
Upon hearing this, Mira nodded again. She opened her mouth and finally blurted it out, but it was extremely loud, almost deafening.
“YES, YOUR HOLINESS!”
“Umm... you can lower your voice.”
Lu Li rubbed his ears. He realized that the things Mira wanted to say to him seemed to be under some sort of restriction that prevented her from speaking of them at all.
Thus, he called Julia over and had her bring people from the Bureau of Heresy Inquisition to untie Mira.
Despite Julia's reluctance, she eventually agreed under Lu Li's repeated insistence. However, to be safe, Mira had to wear a collar equipped with a red mercury bomb.
The red mercury bomb was the new weapon previously stolen from the Logos Foundry. To think that after a whole round of events, it ended up being used on Mira.
Although the bomb couldn't kill Mira completely, it could instantly destroy everything above her neck, temporarily incapacitating her.
As a safety device to restrict a vampire's actions, it was quite effective.
Lu Li's idea was actually quite simple: since she couldn't say it out loud, they would try writing it down with pen and paper.
Yet, when paper and a pen were placed before Mira, she took the pen and wrote down lines of characters, only for Lu Li to find that he couldn't understand what she had written at all.
If translated into the text of his previous life, it would probably look like “&%￥#￥...”
“It seems useless.” Lu Li shook his head, then handed the paper to Julia.
Julia took the paper and stared at the writing, her expression turning increasingly serious.
Seeing this, Lu Li thought she could read it, while Mira looked on with even more expectation.
Yet, after a long silence, Julia said in a strange tone, “I can't read it.”
“Damn! Why did you stare at it for so long if you couldn't read it!” Lu Li was speechless, having gotten his hopes up for nothing.
Mira was truly in despair this time. Fifteen hundred years ago, she could not explain her “sins,” and fifteen hundred years later, she could not speak of her mission.
Everything was like a loop, a shackle wrapped tightly around her, suffocating her yet impossible to break free from.
“Your Holiness... I...” Mira looked at the boy, tears welling up uncontrollably.
She felt she had failed the Lord's trust, and failed the mission she bore.
Seeing her burst into tears once more, Lu Li felt helpless too.
He could only comfort her in a low voice, “Alright, alright. You're already so old, yet you still cry at the drop of a hat. It's just that there are some things you can't say, right? You're not going to die from it, you're not going to die.”
Watching Mira sniffle before him, it was truly hard for Lu Li to imagine that she had lived for over fifteen hundred years and was once one of the strongest knights of the Holy Court.
After all, the origin of the Twelve Sacred Knights was highly likely derived from those twelve leaders of the Order of Light. Although the Holy Court had not left behind their names, it had recorded their achievements in another form.
Yet, this once-steadfast warrior was now crying like an aggrieved child simply because she couldn't utter a few words.
What Lu Li did not know was that, in Mira's eyes, she would always be a child in front of the Holy Father!
What did it matter if she had lived for over fifteen hundred years?
Fifteen hundred years ago, she was the Holy Father's child. Fifteen hundred years later, even though the world had changed beyond recognition, she was still that child favored by the Holy Father.
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