Of course, Cyra and I both knew about Judith's special identity of being from a hundred years ago. We had even heard that she once had a son. However, I didn't really know the details about this so-called son. I only vaguely heard that when Judith left the Sage Council to study the phoenix at the Sulide Volcano, he had just become an adult. Apparently, he didn't have any special magical talents and was just an ordinary young man.
So the whole thing became very bizarre. Think about it, Judith is over a hundred years old. If her son could really live until now, his apparent age would actually be on the younger side.
And don't forget, we are now using Reed's trump card! We didn't see any sign of the expected weapons. Instead, a middle-aged man suddenly showed up claiming to be her son. No matter how you look at it, it doesn't seem right. Could his identity actually be reinforcements?
But it doesn't really seem that way either...You have to know that only this one person came out of the teleportation channel. I watched as the spherical space entrance gradually lost its elemental supply and then completely disappeared. This made me even more astonished.
"No way...could it be..."
As for Judith herself, although the other party's action did make her dazed for a while, after slowly coming back to her senses, she seemed to have discovered some clues. She widened her eyes and stared intently at the face of the visitor, as if trying hard to verify his claim.
"He does look a bit like...could you really be Adonis? But it's a bit..."
In the end, this mother couldn't completely confirm, but she didn't completely deny it either. She looked at the other party with mixed feelings while seeking our help from Cyra and me.
"What do you think?"
It's not that I couldn't understand. You have to know that Judith's actual age is only around thirty, but this "son" standing in front of her is much older than her. Anyone wouldn't dare to admit it rashly. But by the same logic, we two outsiders couldn't give any constructive opinions either! We could only shake our heads in response. Let the parties involved worry about this awkward plot themselves!
"Of course it's me, I am Adonis Cael. I have evidence!"
Seeing the "mother's" reaction, the middle-aged man didn't panic. It seemed that he had been prepared for this scene. He immediately took out a pocket watch with a woman's portrait from his neck and handed it to Judith. At the same time, he rolled up his sleeves to show her a red birthmark on his arm.
"This is a birthmark, and this is the pocket watch you gave me, though it's been broken for a long time...Oh yeah! And this...this..."
He hurriedly took out a few rather old pieces of paper and handed them to her, explaining repeatedly.
"These are the missing person bounties I issued at the Adventurer's Association when you first went missing. Unfortunately, the bounty amount wasn't that big at the time. So after I became a Councilor, I raised the bounty amount again, which caused quite a stir. But even so, there was still no definite information about you. So all these years, I thought you were dead until an angel flew over this morning and told me..."
"An angel? Flew over this morning?"
I immediately became suspicious and caught the key point in his words. Reed was with us today, so it's unlikely that he used flight to go far away. But the other angel definitely had that time possibility as she was passing through Crescent City on her way to the Crestal Republic.
"Was that angel named Mia?"
By now, even Cyra had guessed who it was. Now the truth was revealed - Mia had gone to Crescent City for this reason back then.
"If I'm not mistaken, you must be the angel companions the other party mentioned. The angel who came to find me did indeed seem to be this name. Although she only mentioned it once, I can confirm that she is an eight-winged angel without a doubt! After all, only angels of this rank can pass the guards of Crescent City unhindered and fly directly to my office balcony..."
Adonis nodded at us and answered casually while describing what happened at that time, taking advantage of Judith's excitement in verifying the family items.
"Actually, no matter how high or low their rank and status, it's rare for angels from Edenmere to use this method to seek an audience. In general, they go through official diplomatic processes. So at first, I thought she might be here to negotiate on some urgent matter from Parristol. Little did I know that as soon as she came in, she asked me directly: 'Do you want to reunite with your mother? She's not actually dead, I can let you two reunite!'"
"..."
Hearing this, Cyra and I couldn't help but look at each other. When did Mia become so cunning? She had known who Judith's son was but didn't say it earlier. She doesn't seem like someone with that kind of deviousness and intelligence, right? So the only explanation is that Reed told her to do it. Of course, Adonis soon told us the purpose of doing this.
"That's right, our mother-son reunion had an additional condition! That angel kindly introduced my mother's current situation and ordeal, and then gave the only condition for the exchange - that I patiently wait in the room for the teleportation channel to open, at most one or two days. My task then would be to go help defeat the enemy threatening my mother and her companions."
"But strangely, I haven't seen any enemies threatening your safety here..."
After Adonis finished speaking, he looked around in confusion and then turned to Judith in surprise.
"Of course, more than that, I'm more curious about how that teleportation magic array that sent me here worked. If I remember correctly, you're an earth mage, mother. Could it be you who..."
"Of course not!"
Judith cut him off directly. After looking through the various items, her face quickly showed an extremely excited expression. She rushed over and hugged Adonis, unexpectedly bursting into tears.
"None of that matters. I'm sorry I didn't recognize you right away...I knew you had to be alive!"
"It's okay, Mom!"
"...Son"
Helpless that the son in front of her was much older, it took Judith a while before she finally squeezed out the word "son". The long-separated mother and son then embraced each other again without saying a word.
To be honest, this kind of dramatic family reunion scene should be very touching in theory. But standing by and watching this pair of protagonists with reversed ages pour out their affection, I felt they looked more like father and daughter instead. This experience was just bizarre.
In order not to ruin the atmosphere by suddenly laughing out loud, I could only drag Cyra away to another room temporarily to avoid disturbing them.
"So this Adonis is the reinforcement Reed specially found for us? But he doesn't seem that formidable, and he's even human..."
While musing, Cyra's disappointment was also slightly revealed in her words.
"Yeah, I can't sense any elemental aura from him at all. He definitely can't be a light or water mage. Even if we say he awakened his Battle Qi, he looks older than Mike, so his strength is probably about the same as Mike's at most!"
I also chimed in. According to Cysper's "lecture", the General Mike of the Star Glory Knights was already someone who awakened his qi relatively late in life. In general, after qi awakening, the physical appearance changes gradually and slows down, so one can usually judge a person's approximate awakening age from their looks. The general rule is the later the awakening, the less potential, so compared to Mike's level of six and a half, even if this Adonis had reached the seventh stage, it wouldn't be as much help for us as we imagined.
The gap between each stage after the seventh is extremely huge. Like that mysterious man at Sun Lake before, I felt he had far surpassed the seventh level already. I need much stronger reinforcements.
As for reinforcements at the seventh level, I would need at least a dozen or so... Never mind, better than nothing I guess? Maybe he could really help a bit.
After about ten minutes of family chitchat, the two protagonists of the family drama finally slowly regained their normal emotions. When Cyra and I went over to ask them what to do next, Adonis was very determined to take Judith and leave this place.
"Wait! Reed...Mia didn't ask you to come help us by taking us away from this city!"
This couldn't be right! I got anxious all of a sudden, it was completely different from what was agreed upon!
"You may have misunderstood something! With my abilities, I can barely take one person away. Even if you two want to leave, I'm powerless..."
As his emotions gradually recovered, Adonis slowly revealed the calmness and composure expected of his age. He stared at me meaningfully with bright eyes, pondered for a while, and then answered.
"You...must be Feliciana, right? My mother just told me the general situation. This is the Sky City of New Parristol. Actually, I only recently received news of this city...Let me just say it straight! When I discussed with Mia initially, we had already talked about how this Parristol independence incident would definitely be involved. But the Sage Council cannot openly intervene against the agreement. So as a compromise, I chose to help in my personal capacity, and I can't stay for long either. But now it seems you don't have that need, and my mother is also safe and sound, so the agreement is considered fulfilled! I'm going to take her and leave this dangerous place immediately."
"That's not right, I promised to help Feliciana and the others!"
Hearing this, Judith immediately stood up, expressing her desire to stay with us, scolding her elderly son very unhappily.
"I've been wanting to ask, how can the Sage Council do this now? Parristol was the original birthplace of the Council, I can't just leave like this!"
"Mom...the current Council is no longer what it used to be, there aren't many people who still hold your kind of thinking! Now it's not just the issue of the territory promised by the Empire, but also..."
Seeing her reaction, Adonis seemed a bit helpless. Halfway through speaking, he glanced at Cyra and me, hesitated for a moment, and then continued.
"And for this incident, the highest-level astrologers have already made divinations in advance, foreseeing that things will ultimately be resolved perfectly! And I can see almost all the details of the divination. At that final decisive moment, neither of us are on the battlefield. This also shows that you simply don't have the opportunity to move forward with them to that moment. If you insist on being willful, you might even die, so...you should just give up!"
"So that's how the astrology results showed it..."
Seeing her son reach out his hands to her again, this time Judith finally didn't insist as much after hearing it. After hesitating for a moment, she finally followed his words and walked over to him.
"Wait a bit more!"
Although I didn't know how they planned to leave, as an outsider listening to these words, I couldn't help but have some thoughts. I quickly called out to stop them both again. Whether Judith stayed with us or not wasn't that important. The key was what the other party said about the divination...If he hadn't mentioned it, I almost forgot the Sage Council even had this astrology stuff.
"You called out my name earlier, it wasn't through Judith that you knew it, right? From what you're saying, you must have seen Cyra and me at that so-called final decisive moment?"
"Damn it! Why bring up this stuff again, didn't we already agree?"
Hearing this, Cyra immediately interrupted me to stop me. The previous foresight incident in Makalan City was simply torturous. Nobody wanted to experience that again, so we agreed not to inquire about any so-called foresight results from then on.