In a relatively quiet lounge area on the other side of the banquet hall.
Eldest Princess Diana elegantly swirled the wine glass in her hand.
Her gaze swept past the prominent pillar in the corner, a hint of amusement playing at the corners of her lips.
She turned her head to whisper to a stern-faced, luxuriously dressed middle-aged noble beside her:
“Duke of Wales, it seems my ‘brother-in-law’ has a more complicated identity than you thought.”
“I’m afraid your plan to ruin Elvia’s engagement is going to fall through.”
This Duke of Wales was one of the key pillars of the Eldest Princess’s faction.
He frowned upon hearing this and said in a deep voice, “Your Highness, it is still too early to draw such a conclusion.”
Before his words could even fade,
a young man beside him, dressed in an exquisite formal suit and reasonably handsome, immediately grew restless.
“Father!”
“You promised me that you would find a way to ruin Elvia’s ridiculous engagement!”
“You know how I feel about her... I can absolutely never accept her marrying some dirt-poor mage of unknown origin!”
This young man was none other than the Duke of Wales’s only son, Aaron Wales.
His obsession with Elvia was almost universally known in the noble circles of the Royal Capital, bordering on madness.
He had publicly declared countless times that he only wanted to marry Elvia.
He had even rejected several arranged marriages with families of equal social standing for her sake.
The Duke of Wales glared displeasuredly at his son and scolded him in a low, harsh whisper.
“Calm down, Aaron! Look at yourself right now!”
“Besides, what I promised you, I will definitely fulfill.”
“Now, behave yourself!”
He then turned to Diana and analyzed.
“Your Highness, I have had the honor of meeting a few genuine Holy Saints.”
“Without exception, they all possessed fanatical gazes, and their every word and action was filled with boundless devotion to their deity and a self-sacrificing obsession.”
“But this Holy Saint...” He glanced at Lin Gui, who was sleeping soundly in the distance, his tone laced with disdain.
“Sluggish, lazy, and practically oozing the aura of a lowly adventurer. Does he look even remotely like a Holy Saint?”
“If you ask me, he is at most a rogue mage who accidentally awakened a bit of the light attribute.”
“He’s merely using the title of a Holy Saint as a shield to bluff everyone.”
The more he spoke, the more convinced he became of his own judgment.
“If he is not a Holy Saint recognized by the Church,”
“then a High Rank mage with no background is nothing in front of my Wales family.”
The Eldest Princess shrugged indifferently.
She actually quite acknowledged her seventh sister’s capabilities.
Unfortunately, Elvia was too slippery, always wavering in the factional struggles.
Sometimes she would lean toward her side, and other times she would make deals with the Third Prince’s faction.
If she could use this opportunity to force Elvia to marry into the Wales family,
it would undoubtedly bind this highly capable sister completely to her own chariot.
However, what none of them knew was that
Lin Gui and Elvia had already completed the marriage registration process through the administrative agency of the commoner district yesterday.
This kind of marriage procedure for commoners would never even enter the sight of top-tier nobles like them.
As a result, everyone assumed that tonight’s banquet,
just like the Third Prince’s, was merely an engagement announcement ceremony.
The Duke of Wales pondered for a moment, a cold gleam flashing in his eyes.
He whispered a few instructions to a trusted aide standing in the shadows behind him.
“Go, let in that ‘mad dog’ who also harbors delusional thoughts about the Seventh Princess.”
“Remember, give him a little ‘hint’ to make him think the guy on the stage is just a rogue vagrant mage who got lucky and has no backing.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Soon, a small commotion arose at the entrance of the banquet hall.
A tall young knight wearing polished knight armor, his face flushed red with anger,
barged in aggressively under the guidance of an attendant.
His name was Kyle Bryce, the second son of a viscount, and his strength had reached the Mid-tier Transcendent Rank.
“Look! It’s that ‘mad dog’ Kyle from the Bryce family!”
A young noble lady covered her mouth with a handkerchief and whispered to her companion.
Her tone was filled with schadenfreude.
“Tell me about it. His fanatical pursuit of Her Highness the Seventh Princess is famous.”
“When he heard the news of the princess getting married outside, he almost tore the tavern apart.”
“Tsk, tsk. A Mid-tier Transcendent knight against a Mid-tier High Rank mage...”
“How badly do you think that mage named Lin Gui is going to get thrashed later? Do you think he’ll kneel and beg for mercy on the spot?”
These young noble lords and ladies discussed with great enthusiasm,
looking forward to a grand show of an “angry knight punishing his love rival.”
This was far more interesting than boring socializing.
Under the subtle guidance of a servant, Knight Kyle’s bloodshot eyes immediately locked onto Lin Gui, who was hiding in the shadow of the pillar.
Like an infuriated bull, he strode over with giant steps, his armor clanking loudly with each movement.
However, just as he was seven or eight paces away from Lin Gui,
his feet seemed to be pinned to the ground, and he came to a sudden halt.
The anger on his face drained away, replaced by an unbelievable look of shock and horror.
He stared intently at the front of his neck, as if an invisible sharp blade were hovering right there.
Lin Gui, his eyes closed, did not even seem bothered to lift his eyelids. He simply spat out three words in a flat tone:
“Three seconds. Get lost.”
His voice was not loud, yet it carried a chilling, piercing force.
Knight Kyle shuddered violently and, without a single word,
turned around and fled the banquet hall as fast as his legs could carry him.
He didn’t even bother to pay attention to the astonished stares directed at him from all around.
No one saw that on the skin of his neck, a tiny, almost invisible red line had quietly surfaced, slowly oozing a bead of blood.
This sudden and bizarre scene plunged the banquet hall into a dead silence once more.
Lin Gui half-opened one eye, glanced at the wretched figure of Knight Kyle fleeing in panic, and muttered a curse under his breath.
“Coward.”
What he had done was incredibly simple.
He had merely split a sliver of his mind to control a small steak knife on a nearby dining table.
He had perfectly covered it with his max-level 【Shroud of the Gloomy Night】, concealing its physical form and aura.
Then, the moment the knight rushed over, he manipulated the knife
to swiftly and precisely trace a circle on the skin of the knight’s neck.
It only broke the skin, not even qualifying as a light injury.
If a random small knife could easily slit the throat of a Transcendent knight,
then commoner rebellions wouldn’t be so easily and bloodily suppressed and purged by the knight orders every single time.
Commoner rebellions numbered in the hundreds of thousands, yet the knight orders sent to suppress them only needed a hundred Transcendents.
Before closing his eyes again, Lin Gui’s gaze swept seemingly casually toward the Eldest Princess Diana, his eyes slightly cold.
The guy who just led that idiot in to pick a fight... seemed to be one of hers.
He silently made a mental note of this.
Once I pry the information about Roger out of her mouth... I’ll have to pay a visit to her family’s treasury and ‘patronize’ their business.
Lin Gui did not care about the reason why they were looking for trouble with him out of nowhere.
He only needed to remember it, and as long as it did not interfere with his letter delivery, he would strike back ruthlessly.
The other party was a noble, so Lin Gui had no psychological burden whatsoever.
Rate on N.U.
