So that’s how it is; your method veers off the river of human transmutation like a skiff cutting into fog.

In truth, turning into a girl wasn’t just an accident; it’s a new star blooming in the night of Alchemy.

By sheer development, you may have outstripped your teacher, Jero, like a sapling already shading its elder.

If I had to rate it, on complexity alone, I’d pin five cold stars to your Master rank.

Zhuoyue wore glasses; lamp-light pooled like amber around the desk while he listened to Lingcai and leafed through her midnight notes.

This wholly new Alchemy made even the Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries draw breath, like seeing dawn break after snow, and trust she’d changed by accident.

He finished, slipped off his glasses, rubbed lids heavy as shutters after rain.

Regret flickered first; action followed.

I haven’t done these steps myself; most designs read like storms to me.

I can’t stop your accident.

But you can try to reenact the art on me; if I’m struck too, I’ll help refine it, like tempering steel inside the fire.

With the Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries beside her, Lingcai’s heart-storm eased, a caged sparrow settling its wings.

The Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries looked a touch rakish at rest; yet under the lamp, a researcher’s aura rose like a furnace kindled.

That was Zhuoyue’s true face, frost peeled back to glow.

He took up a pen; the stroke bit paper like a blade.

Here, don’t use the green neutralizer—use blue.

Blend the blue neutralizer with milk to give it an overheating trait and drown the overflow like tide over sand.

It won’t be fully stable.

Try it.

Working Alchemy beside the Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries felt like being invited onto a sacred peak; her original purpose—just borrowing a cauldron—floated off like a cut kite.

He finished, clapped once; the sound cracked like dry bamboo.

All right, let’s begin.

The victory formula felt set, chalk-lines locking into place like runes on stone.

Facing an unfamiliar reaction pattern, even the Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries only made small tweaks, trimming branches without touching the trunk.

After careful tuning, Lingcai and Zhuoyue began their Alchemy together, two currents feeding one river.

Zhuoyue, apothecary and Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries, lifted his Alchemy staff and stirred; the staff moved like an oar over a molten lake.

He studied the notes and asked, voice steady as a mountain stream:

According to your plan, what should this art do?

Lingcai felt a flutter, then reached for tools; emotion first, motion next.

While laying out neutralizers and aids, she answered softly:

It should work like true human transmutation—create a real human, clay to flesh, wick to flame.

Zhuoyue shook his head, a pine shedding snow.

You erred at materials; at best, you’d make an empty shell, a tide-less shore.

Before harmonization, you need Soul Droplets as the medium.

But Soul Droplets are under the Forbidden Arts, a locked gate for you.

Lingcai glimpsed thick white smoke curling off the cauldron rim like coiling silk moths.

Her heart thumped like a drum; her fingers trembled.

Sage, please—watch the cauldron!

The reaction is—

Zhuoyue glanced, calm as a winter lake, and stopped her from pouring the neutralizer.

He drove the staff to the bottom; metal scraped like a rake over scales.

The white smoke settled like snow; the reaction eased, wind dropping to a breeze.

Don’t panic.

Cobalt bluegrass with the blue neutralizer forms a colloid; it sinks like silt to the riverbed and won’t mix.

To scrape up the clots, skip the wooden spoon; the staff’s an iron reed made for it.

As the Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries, his experience stood like an old pine against gusts, more seasoned and steady than Lingcai.

Under his hands, the reaction smoothed out, storm to drizzle, thunder to distant hum.

He paused and showed her the surface, mirror-calm as a pond.

See? With enough experience, it turns out like—

The cauldron answered his words with fate’s drum—

A big explosion.

Boom—rumble—!!!

This blast roared louder than Lingcai’s, like thunder rolling over the royal capital’s roofs.

Foaming alchemical steam surged and wrapped Zhuoyue, a tide of bubbles swallowing a lone figure.

In that heartbeat, he flashed seals; water magic rippled like serpents from a well.

Water Bind!

Eightfold Ghost-Binding Array!

Whirlpool walls rose from the floor and cocooned the shrapnel and the Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries, a shell closing around its pearl.

Because of his shield, the fragments didn’t bite Lingcai.

Lingcai felt fear spike like ice, then dropped prone, arms over her head like a hedgehog curling, riding out the shockwave’s tiger-paw.

Zhuoyue wasn’t so lucky; to guard her, he caged the blast, and took the full force bare.

She curled there a while; when the roar faded and the water walls ebbed like tide, she peeked toward where the Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries had stood.

Empty, as a winter pond.

Great—Sage—!

From the steam, not the sickly youth’s voice, but a faint, still-sickly loli tone drifted out, reed-pipe thin:

Cough… cough, cough… huh? What…?

…Not dead.

Relief loosened her chest like a knot undone.

Then it’s fine.

It was an explosion again, but the reaction had still bloomed; the legendary Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries, Zhuoyue, had become a girl under Alchemy, chrysalis splitting to butterfly.

It still exploded.

But the function arrived.

Right?

If it works, it works.

The Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries lingered in the new body’s wonder, thoughts flickering like fireflies; now, she.

Lingcai rose, hand slicing the mist like waterweed, and asked the small silhouette:

Sage, are you hurt?

Zhuoyue didn’t answer; she tested her voice, silver notes tossed like pebbles.

Ah—ah—one two three four five, up the hill to hunt a tiger.

Five four three two one, you’re a big dummy…

Not quite the sound I imagined…

When the mist thinned, a sickly beauty stood by the cauldron’s wreck: ash-white hair to the knees like frost under moonlight, red eyes glowing like embers.

She pressed her throat, gauging tone.

Lingcai stepped up and measured; her palm skated from the Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries’ gray-white little head to her own neck, bamboo segments marked in air.

Mm. Shorter than me.

She smiled, proud as a cat, and then—through the Great Sage’s loose pajamas—she glimpsed white collarbones and a full moon of a chest.

Her smugness froze to ice.

Why?

Why am I a flat-chested princess, while the Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries gets to be a busty loli?

The Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries seemed to notice; she glanced down, blush blooming like peach petals, hands fluttering like startled sparrows.

No way… wait, don’t look—don’t look yet!

Cough, cough…

Her crystal-white legs and little feet trembled on the floor, a birch sapling shivering in wind, still unused to a girl’s softness.

I get it, I get it.

I was like this at first…

Lingcai nodded, a crooked crescent for a smile, and thought, not bad, right?

At least the Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries had seized a wish—Alchemy had turned her into a cute girl, lantern lit against night.

Still, what we did today feels a touch like defying master and ancestors, a reckless spark against an old shrine.