Kaelan spreads his soul sense fully, focusing on his daughter with unwavering attention. His body is taut, coiled like a drawn bowstring, ready to intervene at the slightest sign of danger. Her advancement to the official wizard realm is, in truth, inevitable—her physique has already reached the First Stage of Transcendence, and the power of his blood flows within her. Any ordinary bottleneck would shatter before her.
Yet he remains tense.
Because she is his daughter.
Within her sealed room, Kaelan perceives fire elemental energy gathering around Qiumei. It does not condense into a single stream. Instead, it splits cleanly into two distinct currents. One begins to draw in life-element fluctuations, warm and vigorous. The other attracts death-element fluctuations, cold and absolute.
Slowly, deliberately, the two fires transform.
One becomes Fire of Life.
The other becomes Fire of Death.
Kaelan's pupils narrow.
Qiumei draws both flames into her body.
She does not attempt to merge them. Her realm, her understanding—of fire, of life, of death—is nowhere near sufficient to reconcile two absolute opposites, even with a balancing element present. She knows this. Instead, she guides both fires into her dantian, keeping them separate, forcing them into coexistence.
The two flames begin to rotate.
They cycle within her dantian, distinct yet interlinked. Power surges violently where their influences collide. Cracks appear along the inner walls of her dantian. Pain explodes through her meridians.
Qiumei grits her teeth.
She does not scream. She does not retreat.
Kaelan's fingers twitch.
His daughter has chosen an extreme path.
By doing so, she is laying a foundation that will erase all bottlenecks up to the Spiritual Wizard realm. In the entire official wizard stage—Bronze, Silver, Gold—she will not even need to engrave magic circuits into her body. The opposing fires alone are sufficient to refine her mana continuously.
But that same extremity carries risk.
One mistake. One imbalance.
And the two fires would collide.
An explosion at that scale would pulverize her from within.
Isla, standing beside Kaelan, watches silently before speaking.
"Your daughter's courage surpasses even mine."
Kaelan snorts softly.
"This isn't courage," he says flatly. "It's confidence."
He does not look away from the door.
"She believes that if anything goes wrong, I will save her."
Isla smiles faintly.
"It still takes courage to entrust your life to someone else."
Kaelan answers without hesitation.
"I am not someone else. I am her father."
Inside the room, Qiumei stabilizes the rotation.
The two fires settle into a precise cycle, mirroring one another like yin and yang fish, forever chasing yet never touching. She redirects the violent conflict between them outward—not against her dantian, but into her mana.
The clash annihilates impurities.
Her mana collapses, breaks apart, and reforms—denser, purer, sharper.
Her body becomes a vortex.
Magic energy floods in from the surrounding environment, pouring into her like a tide drawn toward a singularity. Refined mana surges through her meridians and flesh. Her body, already at the First Stage of Transcendence, shows no further qualitative change.
But when the refined mana enters her spirit space—
The change is explosive.
The visualization map within her spirit space lights up, radiating brilliance. Its glow pushes outward, forcing the boundaries of her spirit space to expand. The space grows larger, more stable. Her spirit power surges.
The feedback loops back.
Spirit nourishes mana. Mana strengthens the spirit.
The cycle repeats again and again until the spirit space reaches its limit and the two fires can no longer refine her mana further.
Only then does Qiumei exhale.
She slows the rotation, stabilizes her cultivation, and consolidates everything she has gained.
The aura settles.
She has succeeded.
Official Wizard.
Bronze Wizard.
Outside, Kaelan finally releases the breath he did not realize he was holding.
At the same moment, Declan feels the shift.
He turns toward his sister's room, eyes bright with resolve.
"My turn," he says quietly.
He steps into his own room, closes the door behind him, and begins his preparation.
Kaelan straightens, his attention shifting once more.
This time, his attention is on his son.
Declan's breakthrough to the official wizard realm is even more certain than An Qiumei's. If Declan were to fail, then no one in the world would ever succeed. Like his sister, his physique has already reached the First Stage of Transcendence—but unlike her, he stands at the third realm of that stage. The difference lies in their origins: Qiumei's mother is an ordinary human with a special physique, while Declan's mother is an innate demon whose cultivation has reached the Great Wizard realm.
In addition, Declan carries something far more dangerous.
His mother's authority of desire.
If he wished, he could brute-force his advancement—burning vitality, drawing directly upon Kaelan's bloodline, or invoking Ariel's authority. Any of those paths would guarantee success.
But like his sister, Declan chooses his own way.
Thunder-element energy gathers around him, sharp and violent. It does not remain singular. It cycles, transforming continuously—fire thunder, earth thunder, metal thunder, water thunder, wood thunder—before returning once more to fire thunder. Unlike Qiumei, Declan does not draw these transformed thunders into his dantian.
He lets them circulate.
The thunder cycles endlessly around his body, each transformation refining him in turn. His flesh, bones, and meridians are tempered again and again. The magic energy entering his body is altered mid-cycle, transformed before it can even settle. His mana changes composition, becoming denser, more stable, and faintly resonant with all five elemental thunders.
That refined mana feeds back into his spirit space.
His visualization map begins to glow, its aura slowly intensifying. It presses against the walls of the spirit space—but at first, the force is insufficient. The boundaries hold.
Then the aura grows stronger.
Gradually, inexorably, the walls begin to expand.
A full day passes.
When Declan opens his eyes, the transformation is complete.
He has advanced.
Two days later, both children finish consolidating their cultivation. They meet Kaelan in one of the tower's rooms. Kaelan and Isla sit on one side of the table, while Qiumei and Declan sit opposite them.
The children eat ravenously.
Advancement has drained them, and the fastest way to recover is simple, primal nourishment. Kaelan watches quietly, a faint smile flickering in his eyes.
Once their energy stabilizes, he speaks.
"What are your next steps?"
He already knows the answers, but he wants to hear them.
As expected, Qiumei intends to continue nurturing her twin fires, using them as the foundation to break through to the Spiritual Wizard realm. She plans to skip engraving magic circuits entirely during the official wizard stage—her two fires, she believes, surpass anything a first-stage magic circuit could provide.
Declan, on the other hand, chooses the orthodox path. He will engrave magic circuits and advance step by step into the Spiritual Wizard realm.
Kaelan listens, then turns to his daughter.
He advises her to follow the traditional method—for now.
The twin fires are powerful, but the risks they carry are immense. He will not always be nearby to intervene. That part, at least, is not entirely true; the blood within her will react instinctively to mortal danger. But Kaelan does not tell her this.
He knows her too well.
If she knew, she would push herself even further.
Qiumei's face shows clear reluctance, but she does not argue. Kaelan does not encourage her to pursue the twin-fire refinement path yet. Once she reaches the Spiritual Wizard realm, the risks will diminish. Then, and only then, will that path become acceptable.
After some time, the children leave.
Kaelan and Isla rise as well.
Together, they step out of the tower—and soar straight into the sky.
As they pass through the clouds, a metal eye hidden within the vapor locks onto them. Information streams instantly back to Nyxarin.
At that moment, Nyxarin is deep in preparation. His Puppet Way has already reached the god stage; only one final step remains. Once he absorbs the power of his original divine body, he will advance to True Godhood. Everything is ready.
And yet—seeing Kong Wuya and Isla traveling together stirs his curiosity.
He frowns.
Why would the God of Storm and the Goddess of Day move together now, of all times?
Nyxarin rises into the sky, issuing silent commands. Puppet eyes scatter across the heavens like invisible insects, tracking every fluctuation. He ascends rapidly, pierces the cloud layers, and passes beyond the sky-island stratum.
Then he feels it.
The inner barrier of the world.
His puppet eyes report that both Kong Wuya and Isla have already crossed it.
Nyxarin's curiosity sharpens into suspicion.
What could draw them into the Inner Void Layer?
He follows.
The moment he passes through the barrier, void energy surges against him—cold, heavy, and corrosive. This is the Inner Void Layer, where the world stores void energy siphoned from beyond, slowly refining it for its own use. Here, the void is calmer than the true outer void, yet still lethal to any being below the third stage.
Nyxarin ignores the assault.
His body has already reached the third stage; the void gnaws at him but cannot tear him apart. His expression remains calm as he advances deeper, searching.
But something is wrong.
The moment Kong Wuya and Isla entered this layer, his puppet eyes lost them completely. No visual feedback. No energy traces. No echoes in the rule network.
Only emptiness.
He searches blindly.
There is no sense of time here. No up or down. No past or future. Even Nyxarin cannot tell how long he wanders. Moments—or perhaps ages—pass as he sweeps the void again and again.
Nothing.
At last, irritation flickers across his face. He considers retreating. Whatever secret they are hiding, he can uncover it later—after he ascends.
Then he stops.
Far away, in the endless darkness, a point of light appears.
Small.
Steady.
Unmistakable.
Nyxarin's eyes narrow as the light grows clearer against the void.
And for the first time in a very long while, a trace of unease stirs within him.