Ariel's next appearance is instantaneous.
One moment she is petals.
The next, she is seated within a stone chamber veined with black and ruby crystal, lined with torch-sconces of soul-fire.
Several figures are already gathered inside.
The moment they see her, they bow deeply.
"Greetings, Palace Master."
They remain bowed—shoulders tense, gazes fixed on the floor.
None of the men dares lift their eyes.
Even restrained, Ariel's presence radiates desire as an instinct, and they will not risk humiliating themselves before her. Only the female demons, whose natures shield them, raise their heads.
A woman of the Ice Dryad race—skin pale as frost-glass, hair like falling snow—steps forward.
Megin.
"Palace Master," she asks quietly, "why do you seek Master Kong? And in secrecy?"
Another woman speaks—Palma, a Ghost Snake, her voice cool and serpentine.
"Yes. If you wished to meet him, you could request an audience directly. He would not refuse the Palace Master of the Demon Palace."
Their logic is sound.
In the world's hierarchy, power is stratified:
First Tier — The Twilight Protoss Court.
Second Tier — Demon Palace, Demon Temple, Night Council, Divine Puppet Sect, Tian Ren Sect.
Second-and-a-half Tier — Ren Kingdom and Silver Treasure House.
Third Tier — The seven human kingdoms and the emerging Wizard Academy.
Master Kong may stand at the apex of living individuals—save for the Four Gods—but institutions matter more than individuals.
And if the Demon Palace wished, it could slow the Wizard Way's spread with a flick of its metaphorical wrist.
Tang and Chen may support the Wizard Way, but their combined power lies only between the Second and Third Tier. Still half a tier short.
Ariel listens to their concerns.
Then answers without theatrics.
"I have mastered all desires in this world," she says slowly, "save one."
Her gaze dims—just slightly.
"The desire of a mother for her child."
Silence tightens the room.
It is not a vulgar admission.
It is a philosophical desire—a gap in her priesthood.
A flaw in her mastery of Desire itself.
She continues, voice steady:
"I could not master it even by taking the body of a pregnant human."
Shock ripples through the chamber.
The demons know what she means.
Not a literal union—but the attempt to immerse herself in a mortal's experience, to understand a desire she cannot generate.
The male demons clamp their jaws shut. Some draw blood.
The females shift uncomfortably.
Not because of lust—
but because of the rawness of her vulnerability.
Megin speaks softly.
"So you seek Master Kong… to father your future child?"
Ariel answers without hesitation.
"I once considered the Dawn God and the Night God."
Her tone remains matter-of-fact.
"But the Dawn God is married. And the Evening Goddess is not one I wish to provoke."
A beat of silence.
Palma asks hesitantly:
"And the Night God?"
Ariel's eyes sharpen.
"Do you want me dead?" she asks bluntly.
Palma bows quickly, shaking her head.
Mentioning the Night God in that context is an invitation to catastrophe.
Ariel shifts topics herself.
Her gaze lands on a figure kneeling closest to her—a demon with red-rimmed eyes and a faint killing aura.
The Blood Asura Monkey.
Dan.
"Tomorrow," Ariel orders, "deliver five Seven-Colour Lotus Seeds to Soraya."
Dan bows lower.
"Yes, Palace Master."
He does not lift his head.
Not out of fear of temptation—
But out of respect for hierarchy.
Ariel sweeps the room with her eyes.
"Leave."
The demons obey at once.
Footsteps fade.
Doors close.
Silence settles.
Ariel remains alone.
She closes her eyes.
The aura she releases is not lustful, but contemplative—a being of desire meditating on the one emotion she has never mastered.
She waits.
Not with impatience.
But with certainty.
For Soraya's call—
And for the moment, she can meet Kong Wuya.
---
The next day, Soraya's cultivation is interrupted.
The disturbance is subtle but unmistakable—an intrusion into the carefully balanced flow of light and demon Qi around her body. Her eyes open instantly, sharp and alert.
She rises and steps out of her cultivation chamber.
Waiting in the courtyard is Dan.
The Blood Asura Monkey stands quietly, posture respectful, his violent aura completely suppressed. In his hands is a crystal bottle, sealed with layered restrictions.
Without ceremony, he offers it to her.
Soraya accepts it.
The moment her fingers close around the bottle, her hand trembles.
Inside rests a Seven-Colour Lotus Seed.
Light refracts through the crystal, splitting into seven hues that shift and overlap, each colour carrying a different resonance—warmth, clarity, expansion, purity, judgment, growth, and illumination.
This is not an ordinary treasure.
In the records of the Light Peacock Clan, it is written clearly:
They are descendants of an innate heaven-and-earth demon species—the Seven-Colour Peacock.
A lone species.
Equal in origin to the Heavenly Rose.
But the Seven-Colour Peacock was slain by the Dawn God, because it carried a fragmented priesthood of Light.
Soraya's breathing slows.
If she can comprehend the power sealed within this seed—
if she can resonate with the Law of Light hidden inside—
Then, when she advances to the Divine Mind Realm, she may awaken something far beyond her bloodline's natural limit.
And if she fails?
Then she will need the true Seven-Colour Lotus.
The Demon Palace does not give seeds lightly.
If they possess the seed, then they must possess the flower.
Dan speaks once more, voice-controlled.
"This is the advance payment."
He then hands her a small jade slip containing an address.
Without another word, he turns and leaves.
Soraya remains standing in the courtyard, staring at the crystal bottle.
She closes her fingers around it.
"Looks like I can't wait for Kaelan to return," she murmurs.
---
She leaves her mansion shortly after.
Light bends around her body, folding inward and outward in perfect harmony as she activates her innate ability. Her figure blurs, then vanishes entirely—no shadow, no reflection, no ripple in the air.
Invisible, she moves through the Demon Market.
She reaches the address Dan provided.
Before she can knock, the door opens.
Dan steps aside.
She enters.
Only minutes pass before another presence manifests.
Rose petals bloom from nothingness.
They swirl once—
And Ariel stands before her.
Soraya does not bow.
She meets Ariel's gaze directly.
"I'm going to the Chen Kingdom," Soraya says.
"I would like to invite you to come with me."
Ariel's eyes glint with amusement.
"So soon?" she asks.
Soraya lifts the crystal bottle slightly.
Ariel's smile deepens.
"I see," she says.
"Then let's not waste time."
They walk out together.
Moments later, two figures rise from the Demon Market, cutting through the underground sky before bursting upward into open air.
They turn east.
Toward the Chen Kingdom.
---
Far away, within the Chen Kingdom's territory, Jin Chao convenes a meeting.
Chen Zhenhai.
Yan Li.
He Yingli.
All are present.
Jin Chao's expression is grave.
"The headquarters has approved our action," he says.
The room stills.
"But there is a condition," he continues.
"The headquarters will first intercept Kong Wuya on his way to the Silver Treasure House."
Yan Li's eyes narrow.
"To confirm his identity," Jin Chao says.
"They suspect he may have created a clone capable of deceiving our sensing arrays."
He Yingli exhales slowly.
"So they want to know whether the Kong Wuya travelling is real, or a decoy."
Jin Chao nods.
"If he is real," he says, "they proceed with phase two."
No one asks what phase two entails.
They all understand.
They agree.
And they wait.
---
Meanwhile, Kaelan works.
Deep beneath the Chen Kingdom's capital, where the city presses down upon ancient stone and invisible currents, he stands within a spiritual node chamber.
Like the Tang Kingdom, the Chen Kingdom's capital is built directly above a world node—a fracture in reality where spiritual energy pours endlessly from the world's origin.
Kaelan has already decided.
Before his clones attempt refinement—
He will do it himself.
If something goes wrong, only he has the strength to suppress it.
If a backlash occurs, only he can survive it.
He brings all the prepared materials into the underground chamber.
Crystal metals.
Golden Iron Tree wood.
Condensed elemental cores.
Rune stones—hundreds of them.
The node is invisible to mortal eyes.
But to Kaelan's spirit sense, it appears as a roaring vortex—
a hole in reality spilling raw spiritual energy without pause.
He steps closer.
Then raises his hand.
The first action is not refinement.
It is control.
One by one, Kaelan throws rune stones into the node.
They vanish into the torrent.
Each rune stone activates mid-fall, its inscriptions lighting up as they anchor themselves to unseen points in space.
Control runes.
Shaping runes.
Stabilisation arrays.
The wild outpouring of spiritual energy begins to change.
No longer chaotic.
No longer explosive.
The flow bends.
Narrows.
Circulates.
Kaelan watches closely, eyes cold and precise.
This is only the first step.
If the foundation is wrong, everything after will collapse.
Once the node is fully under his control, he does not hesitate.
He throws more rune stones into the vortex.
They fall in carefully calculated positions, embedding themselves into the invisible structure already forming within the node. Each rune stone resonates with the previous ones, answering their call, locking into place like pieces of a grand mechanism.
Kaelan extends his will.
Thin mana threads stretch from his fingertips, weaving through the node, connecting rune to rune. The threads form temporary conduits, stabilising the structure while the array completes itself.
For a moment, the node is quiet.
Then Kaelan shifts his control.
He begins to withdraw his mana threads, not abruptly, but gradually. At the same time, he guides the spiritual energy flowing out of the node, forcing it to occupy the pathways his mana once held.
The transition is delicate.
Spiritual energy resists at first—wild, instinctive, unrefined.
Kaelan suppresses it.
He compresses it.
He reshapes it.
The array activates.
Runes ignite one after another, forming a vast, invisible formation layered directly onto the node itself. As the formation stabilises, the spiritual energy passing through it changes.
Its nature alters.
Its frequency shifts.
Its purity condenses.
Spiritual energy transforms into magic energy.
The torrent that once raged uncontrollably now flows in smooth, ordered currents, circulating through the array before pooling at the centre of the node.
A Magic Pool begins to form.
It is not liquid in the conventional sense, but a dense accumulation of refined magic energy, rotating slowly like a miniature star. Each cycle strengthens it, deepens it, makes it more stable.
Kaelan observes in silence.
This is different from a spiritual pool.
A spiritual pool nourishes cultivators.
A magic pool feeds structures.
Arrays.
Enchantments.
Wizard constructs.
And most importantly—
A wizard tower.
This is his intent.
Not a temporary formation.
Not a personal resource.
But a permanent anchor.
A tower powered by a magic pool born directly from a world node.
A structure that will amplify wizard cultivation, stabilise large-scale spellcasting, and act as a strategic pillar for the Wizard Way.
Kaelan lets the array continue refining on its own.
The foundation holds.
The conversion is stable.
Only then does he relax his control—just enough.
The Magic Pool spins steadily beneath the Chen Kingdom's capital, unseen by all, yet already reshaping the future.