The Eastern Witch chanted a string of incantations.
Bang, bang, bang, black mists surged.
The men, women, old, and young, who had just been laughing and talking, all transformed into fish.
These fish lay on the streets, unable to breathe without water, their gills trembling, flapping their bellies and tails, their eyes filled with terror, flopping and rolling on the ground.
"Why? Where are my hands? Where are my feet? What happened to my body?"
"I've turned into a fish!"
"Witch! This old hag is an evil Witch!"
"It hurts so much, I can't breathe!"
"Mommy, Daddy, where are you? I just ran out to play for a bit, why did this happen? It's so painful, why can't I inhale air? Save me, Mommy, Daddy!"
"Why? I've endured so many years of darkness in White Kingdom. The Slave Owners of the common people and the bullying lackeys didn't kill me. Now the Kingdom has finally welcomed a learned Sage, and the Queen has finally awakened. Dawn is about to break, yet I'm about to be killed by an evil Witch I don't even know? This isn't fair. At least let me see what the Kingdom will be like next year!"
"It's too painful, my consciousness is already fading! Will Sage and the Queen avenge me?"
"..."
All sorts of thoughts flashed through the fish's minds.
"Hahahaha."
Looking at the flopping fish on the ground, at their bulging eyes and agonizing postures, watching them struggle desperately, their movements growing smaller and smaller, the Eastern Witch laughed heartily, like a child pouring boiling water on ants.
She laughed and laughed until the last fish stopped moving.
"I feel a tiny bit better now. It's time to go see the Queen and that annoying Sage Rhine. If they displease me too, their fate will be no different from these fish."
The Eastern Witch gently clicked the heels of her silver shoe together three times.
A fierce wind blew, and the Witch's figure vanished.
At the street corner where the Eastern Witch had left, with the death of the cursed, the curse was lifted.
Bang, bang, bang, black mists burst open.
The colorful fish transformed back into human form.
Only, now they were motionless.
They could no longer gather, chat happily, discuss the Kingdom's affairs, or be amazed by a neighbor's rise to prominence, as they once had.
"Ah!"
In less than half a minute, several more pedestrians passed by and saw the dozen or so corpses lying in the street.
They were men and women, the oldest over seventy, and the youngest only four or five years old.
Without exception, their eyes bulged, their bodies were twisted, their faces purple, and their features contorted—indicating the unspeakable agony they had endured before death.
"Wow, murder, murder!"
"Who did it?"
"I've never seen such a death! What did they go through before they died?"
People screamed in terror.
Some scattered, spreading the news to others; some went to find the sheriff; and some timid children, seeing the horrific sight, fainted directly.
Guards, sheriffs, and the Royal City's guard corps arrived to maintain order.
"Please rest assured, we are contacting the victims' families. We will definitely find out what happened. King, Queen, and Sage will surely give everyone justice!"
A brave man who looked like a sergeant major said.
He lowered his head, staring at the tragically dead people, clenching his fists, veins bulging, teeth grinding audibly.
He was the main character of the earlier conversation, the artisan Karen, who had recently been exceptionally promoted by the Queen.
And these dozen or so tragically dead passersby were all his neighbors, with whom he had lived side by side. He knew every single person among them, from the youngest child to the oldest elder.
"What happened?"
"A while ago, I suddenly entered the best days of my life, I soared to success, and was just about to come back and boast to my friends and neighbors, and then this happened to them!"
"A new White Kingdom must not tolerate such murderers escaping justice."
The Eastern Witch might have simply followed her usual habit, casually killing a few passersby, without realizing the seriousness of the issue at all.
What she didn't know was that if it had been the White Kingdom of the past, the death of a few dozen commoners indeed wouldn't have caused a stir.
But for a White Kingdom that had finally welcomed dawn, where a new order was being established, and everything was moving in a good direction, such a tragedy could not be tolerated; it was a blatant provocation to the Kingdom's new order!
The guards and sheriffs cordoned off the scene, identified each deceased, and brought in their families. The cries of the families rose and fell.
"Stop, Pinocchio, stop, Pinocchio. You can't go there, they're investigating a case!"
Old Carpenter Geppetto and his adopted son, Hunter Angus, ran breathlessly, chasing the puppet ahead.
The puppet running wildly ahead was Pinocchio, animated and given the ability to move by Rhine. Old Carpenter Geppetto had just finished carving his limbs, giving him the ability to walk, and he immediately ran around impatiently.
"Hahahaha, you can't catch me, you can't catch me!"
Pinocchio laughed and ran wildly.
A Soldier stopped Pinocchio, grabbing the puppet's large nose:
"Little friend, there's been a big murder case up ahead. You can't go there… Wait, is this a puppet? A moving puppet?"
"Thank you for catching him."
Old Carpenter Geppetto grabbed the runaway Pinocchio and forcibly carried him back home.
"What's a big murder case?" asked Pinocchio, who had just come to life.
"It means many people died. They're all dead, they won't move at all," Old Carpenter Geppetto and Hunter Angus told the puppet.
Pinocchio, carried back home, turned his head, looked at the people gathered behind and the guards maintaining order, and heard the intermittent cries and sobs coming from there.
...
The Eastern Witch arrived at the palace gates and informed the guards of her purpose.
"Tell the Queen that the Slaver Witch has come to see her."
The guards, unaware of the major incident in the city, relayed the message normally.
Looking at the departing Soldier, the Eastern Witch narrowed her eyes.
"Queen, will you politely invite me in and host a banquet to welcome me? Or will you refuse me at the door?"
"The Queen hasn't said a word in the Witch Society's daily exchanges for over two months. I want to see if she's forgotten, or if she's deliberately distanced herself from the Witch Society!" the Eastern Witch thought.
Inside the palace.
The table was piled high with dense documents, and the scent of paper scraps permeated the room.
Rhine and Aurora were handling state affairs.
After this period of experimentation, they also discovered that the magic mirror's magical power ultimately had a limit and was not omniscient.
For example, for talents outside of White Kingdom, it couldn't display various attributes and other detailed information. Rhine had tried to teleport the magic mirror out of the Kingdom, but the result was the same.
Furthermore, for powerful figures like the several Witches of the Witch Society, the magic mirror didn't dare to look too closely, fearing a repeat of the previous problem where it triggered the opponent's defense mechanism, and could only provide brief intelligence.
"Teacher, has Prince Henry, the second Prince of the Summer Kingdom, not returned home yet?" Aurora asked, looking at the documents in her hand.
"Yes," Rhine replied, "He greatly regretted not seeing Snow White, saying he still wanted to wander around White Kingdom for a while."
"Heaven knows what he'll stumble upon while wandering," Aurora sighed.
She had a deep impression of the previous glass slipper incident and this unreliable second Prince.
More than a month ago, Prince Henry, Prince Eric of the Summer Kingdom's younger brother—that unreliable second Prince—suddenly arrived in White Kingdom.
When he heard that Great Magician Rhine had just left the Summer Kingdom and entered White Kingdom, and was then hired as the highly esteemed Sage of White Kingdom, he was extremely surprised, his jaw dropping to the floor.
"Lord Great Magician Rhine has become your country's Sage? It's only been a few days?"
At that time, White Kingdom's reforms had just begun, and Rhine was too lazy to see him, so he let King simply host a banquet for him and sent Prince Henry away.
Throughout the entire process, neither Rhine, Aurora, nor Snow White appeared.
Before leaving, Prince Henry kept muttering that it was quite a pity he hadn't met the beautiful Snow White of the neighboring country.
"Sigh, that fellow Henry is riding a white horse and wandering all over White Kingdom, I wonder if he'll cause any more trouble," Aurora said with considerable worry.
Recalling Henry and his white horse, Rhine suddenly had an idea:
"Prince Henry, he wouldn't happen to be the Prince Charming from the 'Snow White' story, would he?"
"The only thing Prince Charming ever did was… uh, kiss a beautiful corpse in a glass coffin?
"It seems Henry could really do something like that!"
"Well, now the Queen was taken care of by us right away, and Snow White is perfectly fine. Prince Charming has nothing to do."
"Heaven knows if he, as a child of destiny, will trigger any other plotlines by wandering around?"
Thinking of this, Rhine used a small spell to isolate the sound of their conversation, and without being heard by the magic mirror, he said to Aurora:
"The magic of that drop of 'Wrong Love' perfume will naturally end in a few days.
"According to the plan, we should find a suitable time to go to the Dwarf's wooden house and awaken the true Queen!"
Theoretically, if Aurora and Rhine wished, they could completely drop another drop of perfume and impersonate the Queen for another two months.
But they had no intention of staying in White Kingdom for a long time.
The final step of the plan was to awaken the true Queen!
"Is it really okay to let the Queen wake up?" Although she had already understood the full scope of the plan, Aurora still said with a slight worry.
This Queen's insidious wickedness and narrow-mindedness were deeply etched in her mind!
"We can't stay in White Kingdom forever. After completing the final work, it's time to set off for Oz, in the center of the desert," Rhine explained.
He could feel that the wish power of the entire White Kingdom, including Hunter Angus, Old Carpenter Geppetto, and Pinocchio, was converging, likely to condense and form corresponding rewards when he left.
"To enter Oz and find Maleficent's castle, we need to cross the Great Desert. This is a bit inconvenient."
"What a pity, if we could get that silver shoe from the Eastern Witch, we could go directly to Oz without crossing the desert," Rhine thought.
Just then, there was an urgent knock at the door.
It was the King of White Kingdom!
"My dear, Great Sage Lord Rhine, are you free?"
"There's an old woman dressed as a Witch outside, saying she's the Slaver Witch, and she wants to see the Queen of White Kingdom!"