Chapter 95: The Father Arrives
The wooden door slammed violently in the faces of the boys, who stood frozen in the hallway outside, completely isolating Amelia from their noise and shouting. She was now in total solitude with Cathy inside her gloomy bedroom. The young girl immediately headed toward her massive wooden wardrobe, opening its doors and searching through the folds of her neatly folded clothes, attempting with her simple childish mind to recall the dark spot where she had stashed those abandoned volumes.
Meanwhile, Amelia’s eyes scanned the room, her senses landing upon the broad wooden desk overflowing with an assortment of manuscripts and books piled high in utter disarray.
Amelia leaned over slightly, her attention caught by an open book with crumpled edges that Cathy had been deeply absorbed in reading moments ago. She inspected the title: Haslot’s Manual on the Principles of Star Energy Control.
The volume was merely a standard, highly ordinary university textbook—taught to final-year students in the grandest magical academies. Had it simply been a case of a seven-year-old child reading a complex university text, Amelia—the former Empress—would not have been overly astonished, for extraordinary intelligence exists in the world. But what was truly staggering and deeply disorienting was that Cathy was not reading it to memorize it or quote from it!
Rather, she was—quite literally—drawing strict, precise red lines and highlights over the subtle theoretical and mathematical errors buried between the lines, writing the correct mathematical equations directly above them in her tiny handwriting! In fact, she had gone beyond that, altering the fundamental formulas and hypotheses that an ordinary university student would view merely as simplified illustrative examples!
A seven-year-old child was modifying and correcting a university curriculum taught by senior professors!
Amelia asked her, a mixture of tension and awe lacing her voice as she turned the pages of the book, "Cathy... what is your goal with all this meticulous highlighting and correcting?"
Cathy turned toward Amelia, her fresh face bearing an expression of serene, utterly shocking innocence: "It’s just a simple activity for fun, Miss Amelia... These books are actually quite entertaining, but they are full of grave errors anyway... I thought the author would correct them in the next edition. Surely people and scholars aren’t foolish enough to fall for such obvious oversights! I assumed the book followed a style of intentionally placing deliberate errors for students to extract as an exercise, so I just found it to be a fun challenge..."
Amelia sighed deeply and sorrowfully in her heart, wishing at that exact microsecond that she could return to her former imperial body and absolute power for one single reason: to claim official guardianship over this child and adopt her on the spot!
Conflicting thoughts warred in Amelia’s mind; the more she dwelt on it, the more she felt a profound disgust and suspicion toward Cathy’s parents... What on earth was wrong with them?! Did they never enter this room?! They were nothing short of a absolute disgrace to the entire scientific community!
Amelia stood up, speaking in a voice heavy with stifled rage: "Cathy... do your father and mother never enter your room at all?! Have they never seen this research and these corrections before?! This behavior is strange and deeply suspicious... Are they truly scholars? I cannot believe how they managed to pass the Imperial Scientific Licensing Examinations!"
Cathy pulled one of the thick volumes from the bottom of the wardrobe, dusting off the layers of accumulated dirt with her small palm, then opened its pages and spoke in a low, resigned tone: "No... they never enter my room. Perhaps when they finish their busy work at the ministry and find enough spare time... only then might they come in."
In that moment, Amelia understood everything. Cathy, despite her phenomenal genius that surpassed adult minds, was a delicate and extremely sensitive child. Amelia had been interacting with her blindly as if she were an adult, whereas in reality, she was the exact same innocent child who had been easily tricked moments ago by Albert’s games during the card match! She was no superhero—just a child.
Rage began to ignite like wildfire in Amelia’s chest. Though she loathed the idea of separating a child from her parents, she felt that if Cathy were in her hands, she would prepare a complete magical laboratory equipped with the finest technologies for her to unleash her creativity. Even worse, Amelia realized a bitter truth: if Cathy’s parents discovered the extent of her genius now, they would not love her for who she was; rather, they would exploit her brilliant mind in the harshest ways imaginable to serve their own research and personal interests! Thus, exposing her true nature to the public might be tantamount to throwing Cathy into an unforgiving abyss.
Cathy brought the volume she had retrieved from the wardrobe closer, extending her hands to offer it to Amelia, speaking in a tender voice: "Since Miss Amelia is interested in these astronomical sciences, I wouldn’t mind giving you all these volumes and booklets if you want them."
Amelia’s heart squeezed with pain. She looked into Cathy’s eyes and said in a hoarse voice, "Cathy... you know nothing about the nature of human beings yet... Do you truly love your parents? They do not care about you, nor do they even acknowledge your existence! Why do you love them with such excessive devotion?... Oh, what am I saying? I’m asking a child why she loves her parents!... Have you lost your mind, Amelia?"
Cathy gazed at Amelia in complete wonder, while Amelia opened the volume in her hands to read the title of the first page written in elegant handwriting:
The Observable Reality and Beyond: Concepts of Thermal Emission from Stars — As Observed and Analyzed by: Cathy Arthur Stronghold
Amelia’s magical vision darted with lightning speed between the lines, extracting information and scanning ideas in a matter of seconds.
A genuine smile of admiration formed on Amelia’s lips... an exceptionally cohesive scientific structure, raw and original hypotheses, and illustrative diagrams drawn with extreme precision and beauty!
Amelia could not contain herself. She grabbed the magical quill from the desk and began writing new equations and deductions alongside the paragraphs. She was not correcting Cathy’s mistakes—there were none—but was bolstering Cathy’s bold ideas with ancient Imperial sources that explained those colossal concepts.
Cathy said as she watched Amelia’s hand in wonder, "Miss Amelia is truly well-read and a real researcher!... Does Lady Amelia also possess broad knowledge and interest in the concepts of celestial body heat?"
Before Amelia could open her mouth to reply and reveal part of her secrets, the sound of heavy, rushed footsteps running down the outer hallway hit their ears with chaotic urgency, accompanied by a sharp, childish shout:
"Wait, mister! You can’t just go in like that... this is the girls’ room!"
"Get out of my way right now, boy!"
BANG!
The bedroom door was violently shoved open, and Arthur entered with his tall stature, his thick, disheveled beard, and features heavily masked in exhaustion and turmoil.
Arthur stopped in the center of the room, panting heavily. His sharp gaze bypassed everything else to point his trembling finger directly at Amelia, who was sitting composedly on the seat beside Cathy. He asked in a loud, agitated voice: "Are you... are you the girl who spoke through the crystal and gave us that code?!"
Amelia stood up calmly, stepping off the chair with imperial dignity, ignoring his frantic gaze, while the father’s eyes scanned the corners of his daughter’s room in utter shock, as if he were seeing the papers, the desk, and the geometric diagrams for the very first time in his life!
Amelia said in a cold tone: "So... you are Cathy’s father."
On the other side, little Cathy stood frozen on the spot, her eyes wide with unbelievable shock... Had her father truly come?! Had he abandoned his Imperial research and personally come to her room?!
The situation felt surreal and illogical to Cathy... Amelia had uttered only one simple concept over the crystal and made her father run all the way here, whereas Cathy herself had previously given him entire volumes explaining everything in detail, and he hadn’t even bothered to look at them!