Rain hammered against the outpost's weathered tiles like a barrage of iron arrows.
Inside, a few guttering flames danced violently in the draft, casting grotesque, elongated shadows against walls piled high with rusted cast iron and massive Mana-Suppressing Stones. The air was a thick, cloying cocktail: the sharp ozone of magic, the heavy scent of brine and sweat, and the faint, lingering trace of lavender from Sylvie.
"Ah... it hurts..."
Sylvie lay prone across a wooden bench, her porcelain back heaving with ragged breaths. Following the day's extreme weight training, the mana circuits beneath her skin were flaring a bruised, rust-red—like thin, white-hot wires slithering through her flesh and blood.
"Endure it. This is the magical dregs in your body searching for an exit."
Lu Cen's voice rumbled from the shadows, sounding like a dull blade rasping over sandpaper. He rolled up his sleeves, revealing arms that looked as if they had been forged from raw pig iron.
He extended a finger, pressing it with surgical precision beside the third vertebra of Sylvie's spine.
[System Notification: Aether Waste accumulation detected within teaching target. Concentration: 45%.]
[Physical Intervention Suggestion: Deep fascia deconstruction. Initiate forced drainage.]
The moment Lu Cen's finger made contact with her skin, Sylvie's entire body went rigid. The sensation was surreal—it held no warmth, yet it was as heavy as a mountain being forced into the cracks of her bones.
"Your... your hand is freezing..." Sylvie gasped, her voice trembling.
She felt that Lu Cen's finger wasn't merely massaging her; it was "peeling" her apart. With every surge of his strength, the flickering sparks beneath her skin seemed to encounter a black hole, driven forcibly toward a specific outlet.
"Lu Cen... what exactly is it that you practice?" Sylvie asked, turning her head with difficulty. Her long hair cascaded down, veiling the confusion in her eyes.
"In this world, your kind believes magic is the ultimate will."
Lu Cen moved his finger expressionlessly, carving a deep crimson track across her delicate back muscles. "But to me, magic is nothing more than 'surplus energy consumption'—a waste product of a body too weak to contain its own power."
"If your muscles and organs are strong enough, the Laws of the World have no choice but to walk around you."
His words were short and punchy, carrying a philosophy that bordered on the barbaric. Sylvie bit her lip, the pride of a genius mage sparking an instinctive urge to resist. She curled her fingertips, silently condensing a ball of azure cold-fire in her palm.
If this man claimed his flesh could ignore magic, she wanted to see if he could remain unfazed by a point-blank mana detonation.
"What do you think you're doing?" Lu Cen's voice dropped an octave, turning dangerous.
Sylvie whipped around, slamming the ball of cold-fire directly against Lu Cen's bare chest, right over his heart. "Let... go of me!"
Ssss—!
The expected explosion never came. Sylvie's eyes widened in pure horror.
She watched as the cold-fire—mana powerful enough to burn through a fortress wall—let out a dying hiss as it touched Lu Cen's muscle, like a hot coal dropped into a frozen lake. The fire didn't detonate; instead, it turned into a feeble mist, "swallowed" directly into the tight, iron-like fibers of his chest.
Lu Cen didn't even flinch. Not a single red mark was left on his skin.
[System Notification: Polar Mana impact absorbed. Stamina Conversion Rate: 100%!]
[Feedback: Host granted instantaneous "Physical Inertia" buff. Explosive Strength +5.]
Moreover, Sylvie felt an unprecedented, staggering jolt of recoil surge from her fingertips up her spine. It wasn't pain, but a visceral, physiological pleasure—a rush of electricity that followed the physical draining of her mana. It felt as if a heavy shackle she had carried her entire life had suddenly snapped.
"Ah..." Sylvie let out a short, nasal sigh, collapsing limply onto the bench, her eyes unfocused and glazed.
"Don't play with fire, Mage," Lu Cen said coldly, withdrawing his hand. But in the next second, his gaze froze.
He saw it.
There, on the back of Sylvie's elegant, sweat-slicked swan neck, hidden in the shadows of her hair. A microscopic, shimmering blue-purple array was clamped onto her vein like a parasitic leech. It wasn't the traditional circular shape; it was a distorted, pulsating gear that throbbed in time with her breath.
"Sylvie, what did Cedric give you to drink?" Lu Cen's voice turned deathly cold.
Sylvie's mind was still hazy. She answered instinctively, "It was... 'Saint's Manna'. My teacher said... it was to stabilize my circuits..."
Lu Cen leaned down abruptly. His left index finger snapped the rawhide wrap away, the silver tip gleaming with a bloodthirsty chill in the dim light. He used the edge of his nail to gently pry at the skin bordering the array.
SCREECH—!
The array let out a piercing, high-pitched shriek that only Lu Cen could hear! Countless hair-thin, blood-red tentacles erupted from the array, lunging toward the gaps under Lu Cen's fingernails.
[System Alert: Maternal Sub-station parasitic array detected! Initiating interference...]
[Clue Updated: This is no stabilization potion. This is a "Mana Refining Valve."]
Lu Cen felt his blood boil instantly—his system's primal hostility toward a rival program. Cedric wasn't cultivating Sylvie; he was using her body to refine a fuel called "Sanctified Waste." And that fuel was all flowing toward the massive "Black Shadow" in the Capital that Lu Cen could sense.
"He treated you like a disposable battery," Lu Cen whispered, staring at the writhing array.
Sylvie, now fully awake, saw the abnormality on her neck through a nearby copper mirror. Her face turned ashen. "No... Teacher wouldn't..."
Before she could finish, the heavy drumming of the rain outside stopped abruptly.
A dull, rhythmic thumping—so heavy it made the heart feel compressed—began to roll in from the horizon. Lu Cen stood up and shoved open the outpost window.
In the distance, the darkness of the wasteland was torn apart by rows of perfectly aligned towers emitting a blinding purple light. The sound of tens of thousands of metal treads crushing the mud made the entire outpost shudder.
[System Alert: Large-scale "Mana Sovereignty" Purge Legion approaching! Target: Extreme Limit Academy.]
[Warning: Commander—Imperial First Prince, Lu Xiu.]
Lu Cen watched the mana-tanks advancing like mountain ranges, his lips curling into a cruel arc. He turned back toward the trembling Sylvie and began to unwrap the remaining rawhide from his left hand.
One by one, the segments of his fingers began to glow with pure silver veins in the dark.
"The gambit is over," Lu Cen sneered. "Now, I'm going to teach my dear elder brother the meaning of a true physical collision."