After Aurora, the other guests took the stage one by one, reports dropping like pebbles into a dark lake, and nine o’clock crept close like frost.

“Lastly, please welcome Miss Yekase, chief disciple of Ms. Fenxi, the Witch of Crystals!”

At that, the audience almost boiled over like a pot left on flame.

“Crystal?”

“That old monster took a disciple...”

“And let her close the show...”

“So cute...”

“Is the disciple nonhuman too?”

“I want a disciple that cute...”

“A new-gen prodigy?”

Unluckily for them, Yekase’s boosted hearing caught it all like a net catching rain.

By that measure, she figured she counted as a flesh-and-blood Flash Energy user, the only one in the world, a comet alone in the night.

“Cough, cough...”

She planted herself behind the lectern, tapped the mic with two feigned coughs, two stones tossed to still water, and waited until the whispering died like embers in ash. Then she slowly, deliberately swept every face, like wind combing a field of wheat.

“Hey, everyone. I’m Yekase. Before I present results, I want to say this first:”

She looked around again, a hawk’s circle over a valley, and finally spoke—

“—No one here understands Ancient Alchemy.”

The hall erupted, a thunderhead cracking open.

Protests, curses, doubts, and jeers burst at once, a storm trying to rip the roof off like leaves in a gale.

Standing in the eye, Yekase couldn’t hold it in; a trollish grin bloomed like a spark catching dry straw.

Finally said it, finally a chance to say it—her scientist’s top one-liner, a blade she’d sharpened under her tongue.

After savoring the uproar, Yekase pulled the Witch Workshop from her transit case, like drawing a lantern from a chest.

Sandryon had urged her to publish it; she weighed the tide and the rocks, then chose the channel.

Magical Girl Icarus’s combat power was enough; before the alchemical keyboard, seen only once, got glued to “her” image like paint to silk, she cut clean, a surgeon’s stroke, and used it as her knock on the Alchemy circle’s gate.

She wanted in, to become one of the titled “guests,” a named star in that constellation, and let that strange, lively circle feed her new ideas like a spring feeds a river.

From those dazzling works, she’d seen it: the truth of Ancient Alchemy was this—born from Sorcery, yet not shackled to Sorcery, a tree fed by one river but drinking rain from the sky.

If, one day, all Infinite Power could fit a simple, elegant formula—a snowflake with hidden symmetry—

Its bedrock should be Ancient Alchemy, the old mountain under the new snow.

She pressed the first key.

Luminous white runes rose from the floor at her feet, drifting into the air like moths drawn to moonlight.

Then a second key, a third, tapping like rain on tiles.

People began to notice: runes that should demand focused casting were appearing like movable type, each glyph blooming where her fingers roamed the keyboard, butterflies lifting from her wake.

With each link key added, strands crossed and braided, threads touching and fusing, a pattern’s sprout breaking soil.

It looked no different from the arrays they drew by hand, a mirror lake reflecting a familiar sky.

In every chest, something like old gratitude stirred—when they’d been apprentices, they too had watched order rise from chaos, a dawn breaking over fog.

Whether they’d glimpsed fame, wealth, strength, or the sheer beauty of truth, they’d once thanked fate for letting them touch Alchemy, a fire cupped in two hands.

But.

That dream-soft awe lasted a heartbeat, a bubble kissed and gone.

“You’re casting with that thing...?”

“It’s fake, a con!”

“Impossible!”

“Typing’s just a mask!”

“A mask? You think this is a mask?” Yekase nodded, the motion a cat’s lazy flick. “I thought my face looked spaced out enough. Guess you’re even less serious than me.”

She simply mirrored her phone to the lectern’s screen and started a mobile game live, thumbs dancing like fish under clear water.

A very anime-sounding announcer boomed from the side speakers, a carnival voice echoing in Alchemy’s temple like neon in an old shrine.

Yet no one stood to protest, their chairs suddenly anchors on a windless sea.

They couldn’t argue anymore, couldn’t keep lying to themselves, like men staring at a cracked compass.

“Machines can trigger Alchemy.”

That hit harder than any high-tech demo before, a hammer on bedrock; common sense, once a lighthouse, flickered, and after the shock, one tide rose in every heart.

“Terror.”

“Can Ancient Alchemy run on other carriers?”—no one had asked that, because the only question was “Why not?”, a bird asking why the sky won’t open.

For centuries, no one had doubted, as if asking “Can people grow wings?”—to speak it felt shameful, a stone tossed at your own glass house.

But now someone had asked, someone had tried, and then... brought back the answer like a branch with fresh leaves.

The answer was “Yes.”

Silence flooded the hall, a snowfield under a breathless moon.

Everyone watched Yekase log in, dump stamina, raise a character, then roll a ten-pull, eyes like lanterns in still air.

“...Ah, purple glow from the east... never mind.”

In the middle, she paused, plucked a cheat sheet from the air like a card from a sleeve, and typed along its edge.

At last, the final link key fell into place, the loose ports found their homes like birds to roost, and everything connected.

A clean, beautiful circle formed, a halo drawn on water that wouldn’t break.

“Master Spark...”

“...styled flashlight.”

Five beams of light swept the lecture hall ceiling like lances across cloud.

That was enough; no more words were needed, like a bell after prayer.

Yekase ended her debut here, stepped down satisfied, a fox with feathers on its muzzle.

After two steps, she doubled back, as if a thought tugged her sleeve, grabbed the mic, and added her sign-off:

“Welcome to the future. Too bad—you can’t stop anything. No one can stop me.”

Yekase strolled out looking cool as drifting snow, but inside she winced; show’s over, and suddenly she remembered her worry about a words-to-fists turn. She fled the hall like a rabbit into brush.

Sandryon walked beside her, mood bright as morning sun.

“Did you see a few faces? Especially Alice, that plastered smile cracking like ice!”

“Uh, I thought you two were on decent terms.”

Not that it was hard to get, really. That aloof, stuck-up air—skill or not—it rubbed like grit in a shoe.

Aside from the expected old-school Alice Alicia, the other titled guests—Chubu Risa and Aurora—really were the standouts Yekase had sensed. They showed huge interest in the alchemical keyboard on the spot, no offense taken at the spicy barbs, like seasoned sailors shrugging off spray.

Luzhixing never showed, a pigeon that didn’t even circle.

As for the German cannon-mage Yekase hadn’t researched at all...

She directly invited Yekase to develop in Germany and proposed a one-on-one live test, an iron glove tossed on stone.

Yekase refused both without blinking, like blowing out a candle.

Why? She didn’t speak German, for one, a gate with no key.

And that “test”? Call it a test, it smelled like picking a fight to vent; on a good day she might play along (she’d lose, worst case she’d play dead), but now was special. Emerald Pool Industry faced a looming foe, a thunderhead on the horizon; war could break any day. Better to conserve strength, sharpen the blade under cloth.

Sandryon asked if she’d attend the ball after, and Yekase thought, then decided to go, a stone rolling downstream.

They’d had their cool-down window; if someone wanted to throw hands, hiding later wouldn’t help. Might as well thick-skin it, dance a bit, and sip a few free drinks, like catching snowflakes on the tongue.

“That Natasha—you didn’t study her dossier either. Know why her title is ‘the Kingmaker’?”

“Why?”

“Because in the German civil war twenty years back, she ended the North–South split by herself and crowned her sister, Nelly von Wagner.”

“Uh...”

“Since then, Germany split into South Germany, ruled by the Wagner sisters, and North Germany under the old government. In the south, the sisters enacted extreme matriarchal laws and expelled protesting men for ‘failing male virtue.’”

“Pfft.”

What a pun of a policy... Wait, weren’t they all German in that story? This was a Huaxia-only hell joke drifting across oceans.

Knowing it wasn’t exactly moral, Yekase still laughed, a hiccup in church.

That punchline was vicious. Good thing I’m not German... Oh right, I’m not male anymore. Then it’s fine.

“Hold up, Master—don’t tell me you’re the weakest fighter among the international guests?”

Suspicion colored Yekase’s look toward Sandryon, a cat peering at a sleeping dog.

Luzhixing was top-tier in the Quan-yuan circuit, finals would have eaten Yu Yunxiu alive, a tiger with a deer.

Yu Yunxiu could fight Lu Yao to a draw despite a bad matchup, a boat rowing upstream and not slipping.

Chubu Risa, in her occasional Quan-yuan runs, placed from top four to champion, and now she’d put together a seven-unit combine, a dragon made of engines.

Natasha was heavyweight—fought a country in live combat, an army of one—worth more than the above, a meteor punching sea.

Aurora and Alice had no public records, but their shadows were long on the wall.

And Sandryon? What did Sandryon do?

Sandryon stayed in her workshop watching crystal TV, a hermit with a glowing cave.

“Nonsense! My Goddess Alulu could crush that blonde brat, even in a five-unit combine!”

“She’s at seven units now.”

“At most a draw—”

Sandryon snapped back on reflex, blinked, then pursed her lips and fell quiet, a candle guttering.

After a moment, she sighed.

“Being with you young ones, I feel a bit of my old spark returning, a coal catching again...”

“Your youth—the Renaissance?”

“...Yes.”

Sandryon’s gaze slid to the window, not to Shangyin City’s night lights, but through time and space, toward that golden age when art and science burst like spring.

Leaning on the rail beside her, Yekase murmured, “Oh, one more thing—I’ve always been curious. We’re close enough now. Time I asked.”

“What is it?”

“Are you a born Longlifer?”

“...That question.”

“If it’s inconvenient, forget it.”

Sandryon shook her head, a willow in a small breeze.

“We’ll talk when we’re back.”