Yes, Madam Prime Minister

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In the kitchen, Ronan was frying dough sticks.

Zhao Yingqi had just fallen asleep when he got up. The weather was still a bit cold, and these days there was no efficient fermentation process to make fluffy dough. It would just take more time to ferment the dough needed for frying dough sticks properly.

Unfortunately, there was no soy milk, so Ronan substituted beef broth, which he also started cooking late at night.

In the kitchen, Ronan glanced at Zhao Yingqi, who was wrapped in a bathrobe that looked like a blanket, and continued frying dough sticks, saying, "You're up."

Zhao Yingqi was deeply moved. How could she not be touched that a man who had led a country to become a strong nation was getting up in the middle of the night to prepare breakfast for her? Of course, she felt an even greater sense of accomplishment.

“It’ll be ready soon, you can go sit over there,” Ronan added.

Zhao Yingqi hummed in response, but didn't leave. She stood there, watching Ronan cook with a smug and sweet feeling in her heart. For a young girl, sometimes a sense of accomplishment and happiness are one and the same.

Chapter 599 Return, Invitation, The Essence of Magic

After resting for a day, Ronan took Zhao Yingqi back to the capital.

Aside from inquiring about Isabel, Ambrina, who never asked about other women's relationships with Ronan, for the first time asked about Zhao Yingqi with a hint of gossip.

Ronan said a few things, but not in too much detail. Ambrina then asked Ronan how he felt. Ronan replied that everything felt normal, but something felt off, probably because he really didn't understand women.

Dinia knew what was going on from the beginning, but she never expressed any opinion or showed any interest in asking anything.

Three days later, Ronan received an invitation personally delivered by Stefan. The person who invited him was Ursel Artes, another surviving seventh-tier mage in the Kingdom of Phos, and a cousin of Ronan's great-great-grandfather.

The invitation only mentioned two things: first, he had some ideas he wanted to discuss with Ronan; and second, he was going to deal with his estate and wanted Ronan to be his witness.

Ronan didn't think too much about it and prepared to go to the appointment.

Unfortunately, Astrid found out about this and insisted on going along.

"Old man, you've succeeded in dating a young girl, and I deserve some credit for that. Consider it a reward for me. Take me with you," Astrid said. From birth until now, she has only been interested in two things: reading and studying, and fighting. In fact, you could say she has only been interested in one thing: magic.

Ronan remained silent in the face of his daughter's request.

"Please, Daddy," Astrid blinked and began to whine and act cute.

"Hmm?" Ronan raised his head slightly.

"Dad, please take me with you." Astrid changed her way of addressing him. She hadn't called him "Dad" since she was three years old. She would either call him "old man" or Ronan directly. When she was in a good mood, she would call him "old man." In any case, calling him "Dad" in a friendly way was out of the question.

In her eyes, Ronan was a decent friend, while her mother, Elena, was not very capable, but she was the woman who gave birth to her.

"Uh," Ronan said with a soft "uh."

“My esteemed and great father, I beg you to take me with you,” Astrid said, though it was an act, her attitude was still quite good.

“Lily,” Ronan called his daughter by her nickname.

Astrid sensed her father suddenly becoming serious and solemn, and asked nervously, "What's wrong?"

“You’re used to being disrespectful and arrogant, but that’s fine with your mother and me. We know you’re a good boy despite that,” Ronan said. “However, you should be polite to others, understand?”

“Dad, I’m fifteen years old, of course I understand,” Astrid said.

"Forget it, I won't say anything more." Ronan didn't want to say anything more. His youngest daughter had been like this for so many years, and there was no point in talking to her.

"When do we set off?" Astrid asked excitedly, eager to discuss magic with the world's top magicians.

“The day after tomorrow,” Ronan replied.

"Then I'll be going now, goodbye." Astrid waved and left after receiving the reply, disappearing in a flash, no one knew where she was going to run off to cause trouble again.

A day later, in the morning, Ronan and Astrid set off in Stefan's motorbike carriage.

Years ago, after the "White Tower" fell, Ussel built a tower on a hillside platform on the outskirts of Ates, which served as both a research institute and a residence. This tower was Ronan's destination on this trip.

Years later, Ronan saw Ursel again, the seventh-tier mage. He was still the same as before: a neatly dressed, fair-skinned young man with messy but not oily hair, droopy eyelids but clear eyes, clean yet giving off a reclusive, slovenly, and somewhat silly vibe. Of course, the strange youth was only his appearance; in reality, he was over a hundred years old.

"You've arrived, have a seat." These were Usserl's first words.

“I have almost figured out the nature of magic.” This was Ussel’s second sentence.

Then he began his stream-of-consciousness narration.

Ussel has never been a good talker, and he rarely interacts with people. His speech is entirely based on his own logic and jumps around.

He was Lawrence's classmate and had extraordinary attainments in magic. Many of his children had achieved considerable success, and many of his students were also quite prominent. However, this was not because he was a good teacher; on the contrary, he was terrible at teaching. His children and students had only learned a little bit of the basics. Otherwise, there should have been at least more than one sixth-level among his children and students.

This is Stefan's assessment of him.

Of the three people present—Ronan, Stefan, and Astrid—only fifteen-year-old Astrid could keep up with his train of thought.

Ronan has devoted too much energy to politics in recent years, and his thinking about magic has long since stagnated. Stefan had been studying immortality for the past one or two decades, and it was only after he met "another Ronan" that he picked up his magical research again in recent years. Only Astrid has a solid foundation and quick thinking.

However, Ronan could still understand what Ussel had said.

Initially, it was said to be the demonic body, or you could say the soul.

This raises a question that people have been pondering for two hundred years, but for which no one has yet provided a convincing answer.

Everyone has a soul, but why can't everyone learn magic?

Some people are talented, and some are not? Within the circle of magic theory research, although the word "talent" is used, it is never acknowledged because top magicians believe that there is no essential difference among humans.

Ussel offered an answer: a system, without external influence, must evolve from chaos to order. When a person is born, their magical foundation is in a chaotic state. By the time they reach the age of six to eight, the chaos will have ended, and they will have completely returned to an ordered state. Theoretically, such a person will never be able to use magic in their lifetime because magic is a self-complete system composed of continuously ordered chaos, and only chaos can communicate with chaos.

However, in reality, there was a seed within the Demonic Core that conflicted with the system and violated its logic from the very beginning. This can be considered a system error. Everyone has a soul, so theoretically everyone does. It's just that for some people, during the period when everything was completely back in order, this error had a strong effect, causing the Demonic Core to fall into a state of chaos again.

The probability of such errors manifesting is around one percent, which is why people with magical talent make up about one percent of the population.

During this period, if some spontaneous human intervention is carried out, it is possible to maintain a state in which one learns magic.

Next, Ursel talked about the two original types of magic: ritual magic and summoning and elemental magic.

The magic base is both a magic system and a consciousness. Therefore, under certain circumstances, whether it is due to the strong influence of the unconscious mind or the chaotic state of the magic base, a kind of cohesive distortion will occur, thus forming a magical power, which is the summon.

That's how natural-born summoning mages are made.

What is inherited is not the summoned creatures, but this "mental illness." Therefore, the noble families brought about by summoning magic since ancient times do not inherit noble bloodlines, but rather mental illness.

Chapter 600 The Differences in Magic, The True Method of Immortality, Apprenticeship

Elements, on the other hand, are the opposite.

Elements are in a chaotic, dispersed, and disordered state; this is the normal state.

Therefore, most magicians are elemental magicians.

When a erroneous seed manifests, it instantly affects the entire demonic body. It is too chaotic and difficult to communicate. After all, when your whole body is a port, you can also say that there is no port. At this time, a communication port is needed, which is "sacrifice", by demonizing some organs of the body.

Theoretically, elemental magic sacrifices are unnecessary, but in practice, they are unavoidable.

Once a person masters a certain elemental magic, the magic they use becomes the most natural magic.

Afterwards, Ussel spoke of the oath of heaven.

The essence of the Heavenly Oath is the twisting and condensation of the spirit, which causes the chaos of the system to undergo a cohesive distortion under the influence of an acquired spiritual force. It can be described as a kind of artificially created and controllable "mental illness".

Theoretically speaking, anyone who has not yet mastered another type of magic can learn the Heavenly Oath.

However, whether or not one succeeds is a matter of mindset and willpower.

Elemental magic is easier in comparison.

Divine magic and mutation are simply two branches of the application of spiritual power. Divine magic is the direct application of spiritual power, resulting in strange and bizarre magic, often with illogical and rule-based power. Mutation is the application of spiritual power to the demonic body, thereby affecting and strengthening the physical body, causing abnormal changes in the body.

Then, Ussel spoke of fate.

Fate is simple; it is simply influenced by external forces.

As mentioned earlier, the transition from chaos to order is inevitable. Everyone has internal causes for making mistakes, but these internal causes may not necessarily manifest. In addition to internal causes, external causes can also disrupt this inevitable process.

Those who awaken the magic of destiny are influenced by external factors; it is a pure coincidence.

Therefore, the awakening of the magic of destiny is also a matter of luck. Some people are born with it, while others awaken it after they reach a certain age.

Both manifestation and transformation clearly exhibit the characteristic of external influence.

This raises a new question: why are there other extraordinary powers that share the same origin but are different, besides the magic prevalent in the Western Continent?

The witchcraft of the New World natives and the totem strengthening of the Lag people were results of their low level of civilization.

Any kind of magic requires learning, otherwise it's useless. Even if it's innate summoning or natural awakening, the natives of the New World, the Rag people, took a "shortcut" by simplifying their learning. In addition, their special physical constitution, which is different from that of ordinary humans, made it easier for them to get started, but they would soon encounter a bottleneck that they could not break through.

As a result, wizards in the New World and warriors among the Rag people were indiscriminately slaughtered by high-level mages from the colonists of the Western Continent. The New World people themselves did not send out high-level mages because everyone had high-level mages, and fighting each other would be too risky for anyone. But if you don't have a high-level mage, then don't blame me.

It's like how countries that possess weapons of mass destruction promise each other not to use them, but those countries are incredibly unscrupulous when it comes to countries that don't.

However, the Western Continent was originally inhabited by barbarians, far inferior to the Mediterranean region, Egypt in the northern part of the Southern Continent, the city-states along the coast of West Asia, and even more ancient cradles of civilization.

This is thanks to the Aegean civilization's ability to learn from others. While learning from other civilizations, it also adopted the elemental magic that West Asia excelled at and the summoning magic that Egypt excelled at, and through the development of philosophy and mathematics, it advanced to a new level.

It then spread to the Vena region, where the old empire rose to prominence and reached a new level.

The old empire influenced the entire western continent, and over thousands of years, it developed into the three systems and six types of magic we know today.

That desert peninsula civilization was a late-developing civilization; it copied a part of the western continent and a part of the eastern continent, thus forming its own unique combination magic.

But in reality, it's nothing more than a hodgepodge of misfits.

Seris truly took a step further in the exploration of magic, and did so very early on.

They take the condensed, twisted chaos of summoning, or the dissipative, released chaos of elements, as their foundation, then hone their mental strength, and use that mental strength to control this power. They no longer use summoning or elemental magic, but instead use this as the basis to wield divine magic, or to mutate.

While reducing constraints and mitigating backlash, it also boasts greater endurance and stability than mages using Heavenly Oath magic in the Western Continent.

The only drawback is that progress has been somewhat slow.

Finally, Ussel also mentioned a place called India, where people have completely gone astray. Their extreme divine magic only follows the path of mutation, claiming divine power, and all sorts of bizarre things exist.

Of course, Ussel's explanation was not that simple; his words were more detailed, more in-depth, and more disjointed. Ronan only roughly pieced together his content.

“Everywhere there is a special existence, and that is destiny. Under the interference of external forces, one can directly become a magician who uses destiny magic. One is born with the ability to summon, and there is a way to switch to other magic. Seris is proficient in this. Therefore, even the Seris royal family does not use their own summoning magic.”

"As for fate, it is extremely difficult."

Ussel said.

“However, all of this is just useless nonsense, hmm.” Ursel scratched his head and suddenly switched to Chinese. “What we really want to talk about is the method of immortality, the true method of immortality, which is also what the Six-fold Magic of Seris is really pursuing.”

Ronan was surprised to discover that Ussel could speak Chinese, and that he spoke it just as well as Ronan.

"Stephen 'liquefies' his magic base, but eventually, his physical body will age to its limit and he will still need to use Lawrence's soul transfer technique to get a new body. However, after the soul is liquefied, the power will not degenerate when changing bodies."

"As for you, Ronan, it's just luck. Your 'solidified' soul is the same, except that you have another power within you, which is why you don't need to reincarnate."

"Only by merging the six into one and then 'vaporizing' the soul can one achieve true immortality. Unfortunately, it seems that only legends tell of people in Seris who have reached this level."

"I don't have much time left, and this is my only goal for the rest of my life."

"I will donate all my research data to the country, since it's not of much use anyway. I will donate half of my wealth and give the other half to my children. I have already planned how to distribute it. If they are not satisfied, then go ahead and kill them. I have no interest in them."

“There’s one more thing I’d like to ask of you: find my son, Heath. Well, he’s not bad, someone whose name I can remember. It’s a pity he’s too focused on those trivial things I did in my middle age. If you happen to run into him, give him this.” As he spoke, a notebook fell from the void and landed in Ursel’s hand. Ursel then handed the notebook to Ronan.

At this moment, Astrid, who had been listening silently, finally couldn't sit still any longer. "Master, I want to learn from you."

Chapter 601 Willful, Ministry of Magic Business, When to Retire

Her original goal was to become a seventh-tier elemental mage, and she also wanted to achieve immortality, specifically through the vaporization of her magic-based body.

Since Ussel himself is a summoner, he must have found a way to master the six types of magic as a summoner mage.

Upon hearing Astrid's words, Ussel, who looked rather foolish, gave the tall, blonde girl in front of him a look as if she were an idiot, and retorted, "I gave the notes to your father, why don't you just take a look?"

Ah, this...

Ussel seemed to have thought of something, and rubbed his chin. "You can handle the heritage matter for me on behalf of the country, so as not to waste my time. I'm preparing to leave here and go to the ruins of that calamity between the East and West four hundred years ago. That's it, you can do whatever you want."

Not long ago, he was still endlessly spouting what he considered nonsense, but suddenly he changed completely, unwilling to let anything unnecessary waste even a tiny bit of his time.

Without hesitation, Ussel left his residence.

Then, not far from the tower, a straight crack appeared on a flat area, revealing an underground door. As the door opened, something that looked like a ship or an airship rose up and came into view.

Ronan suddenly remembered that, in addition to his research on magic itself, Ussel was also a person with extremely high attainments in human body modification and magical creation.

"Goodbye."

After saying that, the spaceship took off, and Ussel jumped inside. The next moment, a gale hit the ground, and the aftershocks swept outwards, raising dust in an instant. When the dust settled, the spaceship had already gone far away, turning into a small black dot in sight.

If you were to ask Ronan what he was thinking at this moment, he would only have one thought: Ussel was right, all summoners are mentally ill, and he himself was a summoner.

Ussel himself is gone, and his legacy certainly needs to be dealt with.

Ronan himself doesn't need to worry about this; he can simply give a notification, and the entire Ministry of Magic will mobilize.

The Ministry of Magic is supposed to supervise and manage magicians, but in reality, they neither supervise nor manage them. Aside from some routine tasks, their main duties are twofold: first, assisting in the arrest of criminal magicians. As the saying goes, "He who possesses a weapon will naturally harbor murderous intent," and when magicians' emotions run high, they tend to resort to violence to solve problems. In the Kingdom of Phos, even after the invention of the magic pistol, lower-ranking magicians are no longer as arrogant as before, but the frequency of magician-related violence is comparable to the frequency of shootings in another, less desirable country in another timeline.