Tian Lei accepted it with both hands, feeling the vibration against his palm—dense, ancient, and wild. "Appreciated," he said softly.
In this world, cultivation wasn't a single path. Some refined spirit energy through meditation and tempering; others raised contracted beasts that devoured cores to strengthen themselves. When a beast consumed a higher-rank core, the feedback it produced could surge through the master's meridians, granting days—sometimes even weeks—of progress in a single breath.
"Thank you. It will surely help me," Tian Lei said with a faint smile.
Of course, he couldn't actually use it—not yet. He hadn't awakened his beast. Physically, he was only six years old; the adult form he showed was nothing more than an illusion, crafted through Transfiguration magic.
Still, that was his secret. Su Liyue didn't need to know.
"Let's go," she said brightly. "We should grab something to eat. The qualifiers starts at noon, after all."
