What is the Curse Deity’s true strength, the bone under the skin of legend, the storm behind the eyes?

Or rather, after the bloodline wakes, how far can it climb, like a tide racing the moon?

Aileaf knew her own power, not just strings on a puppet’s shell, not just moving limbs like wind through reeds.

The Curse Deity’s core was the grip on life’s matter—its quality and its core—like hand on clay and hand on fire.

The core was mana itself, a sun under the skin; the quality was the body’s state, a field that can bloom or wither.

State meant growth and decay, spring shoots and autumn rot, like green buds and falling leaves.

In handling living matter, the Curse Deity stood shoulder to shoulder with the Dragon Deity, the king of beasts in a crown of scales.

In the training yard, Aileaf tried simple control first, like a painter testing strokes on rice paper.

She made a single hair on Cerqin’s arm slip free, like a leaf letting go in late wind.

Then she pushed growth, and a new hair sprouted, like dew beading on soil at dawn.

After a few repeats, Aileaf made a tiny patch on Cerqin’s fingertip rot, like a speck of mold in ripe fruit.

“Ah! That hurts…”

The finger stabbed like a needle of ice, and Cerqin hissed, breath sharp as frost on glass.

Her body below the neck was locked by control, still as a pond under winter, unable to move.

“Aileaf, what are you—”

“No, that’s odd. I targeted a very small spot,” Aileaf murmured, curiosity rising like smoke.

She leaned in, eyes narrowed like blades, and checked the finger with a frown like rainclouds.

“Not even pinprick-size and you felt it?” she asked, voice flat as stone.

For a practitioner, so small a wound should be a whisper, a moth’s wing against armor.

In truth, without restrictions, a Fifth Rank body would mend such a nick fast, like grass closing over a footprint, if mana didn’t interfere.

“This hurts way worse than a needle,” Cerqin muttered, rolling her eyes like a cat flicking its tail.

The pain wasn’t flesh-deep but breath-deep, a thread of death leaking from the tiny break like cold mist.

Cerqin, who could read emotions like scents on the wind, felt it scorch her like dry lightning.

Aileaf reversed the flow and closed the wound, and Cerqin gasped as life-force burst from the fingertip like a spring thaw.

It rippled through her body like warm rain washing stone.

Aileaf watched Cerqin’s body and took notes, each line neat as bamboo stalks.

After a long while, Cerqin wrested back control, exhaled like a wave falling, and flopped onto a chair.

The training room was spare as a monk’s cell: a mat at the center array, chairs cushioned like soft moss.

It was standard Sanctuary kit, plain and steady as carved beams.

The imperial capital sat over a main leyline, a dragon vein humming like a buried river.

Its mana density and precision rivaled Eastern Sea City, two mirrors catching the same moon.

The only big difference was this Sanctuary’s arrays gathered less mana, a net with wider mesh.

Costs of building and running the formations weighed like stones on the ledger.

Once Cerqin settled into the chair like a cat in a sun patch, Aileaf turned tests toward Spring Tide.

“This room won’t stomach a Seventh Rank mana surge, right?” Cerqin said, voice cautious as a hand on a hot kettle.

“It’s a proper training room,” Spring Tide answered, steady as an oar. “Even simple sparring, it should hold for a bit.”

Aileaf struck without warning, like a hawk stooping through clouds, and Spring Tide froze for a heartbeat like glass in cold.

Then her body erupted with mana, a geyser under pressure, instinct blazing like wildfire.

“Uh—” she grunted, and the surge ended in a breath, the tide pulled back by a firm moon.

She mastered herself at once, folding power tight like a fan.

“Better than I hoped,” Aileaf said, eyes bright like frost. “Against weaker Sevenths, we can sell this even harder.”

In a fight, a single instant decides the fall of the blade, and cross-rank sway hit like a bell in fog.

“Directly steering mana is easier than steering flesh,” she added, excitement quick as sparrows. “Next, motion interference.”

Spring Tide only shot Cerqin a stare, sharp as a thrown pebble, suspecting mischief in that pink hair.

She was right; a heartbeat before the jolt, Cerqin had winked, a firefly signal in dusk.

Aileaf caught the idea at once, like a fish snatching bait; truth was, she’d planned this test anyway.

After hours of prodding and ink, Aileaf had her data, a basket filled to the brim.

“You two can head back,” she said, waving them off like leaves on a stream.

They traded a look, equal parts speechless and resigned, and slipped away without fuss, quiet as slippers on wood.

Aileaf returned to the lab with fresh numbers twinkling like stars, and took a few drops of Spring Tide’s blood before parting, red beads like garnets.

“Feels like Aileaf’s edging toward witchcraft,” Cerqin murmured later, humor dry as winter bark.

“Using human blood as an auxiliary… kind of witchy,” Spring Tide said, tone level as slate.

“Aileaf’s a proper alchemist, no doubt,” she added, like a stamp on wax.

“But when she’s serious, she’s a different person, like a mask changing at a festival.”

“It’s not the first time,” Spring Tide said. “Back in the carriage, she was the same—once it’s her field, she turns strict, upright, and not shy at all.”

“Looks like new potions are coming,” she finished, confidence like a kettle beginning to sing.

Right now, Spring Tide was Aileaf’s biggest partner, a sail catching the East District government’s orders.

Among their brews, the refined Key was the crowd’s darling, a bright coin in a dark purse.

They got back to their room, and before Cerqin could start chattering like a sparrow, Spring Tide pushed her down, swift as a wave.

She taught Cerqin a lesson without a word, stern face like a magistrate’s tablet.

While “teaching,” she asked, voice cool as a well: “A Fifth Rank should be fully suppressed, right? Mid-ranks aren’t like Six to Seven. How’d it feel?”

“It hurt,” Cerqin said, honest as a bruise, the memory of that death-breath like a cold finger on her spine.

Then it flipped to life, a warm river through bones, and it stirred her own gift of conversion like a mirror in sunlight.

They were similar in weather, different in earth, kin in form but not in seed.

“You know what to do now, huh,” Spring Tide hummed, sly as a fox behind reeds.

She hadn’t even finished when Cerqin, same as always, opened the door to invite—play ended like a fire slipping to embers.

Next morning, Spring Tide went to work early, cutting through backlogged reports like a sharp blade through bamboo.

Cerqin woke to an empty room, silence like frost, and headed to the palace for today’s talks.

Today was the final stage of the experiment, like tying the last knot in a great net.

After opening several nodes, they’d attempt the first stable long-distance call, a bridge of wind between cities.

Leaving the Sanctuary, Cerqin spotted Baili and Qianli returning on duty with a small squad of knights, their boots like drumbeats.

Qianli looked much better, color like peach blossom—until she saw Cerqin, and the air went stiff as taut string.

They’d traded each other’s most private things, secrets like pressed flowers, awkward but not shameful.

In the grand tally of the Sanctuary, compared to the Law Enforcement Hall’s storms, this was a ripple in a basin.

“Cerqin, heading to the palace?” Baili called, eyes catching her like hooks.

He paused at a side door, pulled back his left foot, neat as a penned line.

The biggest victim of that mess might not be the two involved, but Baili, with a light cleanliness quirk like a dust-averse cat.

Over days he’d loosened up, knots untied like wet rope.

“Yeah,” Cerqin said, simple as a nod.

“The interface rig’s installed,” Baili said, words steady as cartwheels. “We need to send our Sanctuary team over. Want to go together?”

“Sure,” Cerqin said, tossing the last crumbs of awkwardness to the wind like chaff.

For the first long-distance comms test, every faction sent people like banners to a parade.

The Sanctuary sent Cerqin, one of the device leads, plus several magic scholars, minds bright as lanterns.

Once assembled, they headed for the palace, wheels humming like bees.

In the knights’ carriage, Qianli ignored the techs across from them, their whispers like moths.

She muttered to Cerqin, voice low as rain under eaves: “You really got me in trouble this time.”

“I didn’t cause it,” Cerqin said, shrug in her tone like falling ash. “Shouldn’t you blame Ming Duo?”

“Of course,” Qianli snapped, anger like a struck match. “If I wasn’t afraid of an accident or the beating, I’d punch her now.”

Her righteous fury flickered like a torch, and her old liveliness came back like birds after rain.

“So why couldn’t you hold back?” Cerqin asked, eyebrow up like a drawn bow.

“In your shoes, you might not have either,” Qianli said, then fell quiet, words perching like sparrows on a branch.

“The worst part is, it was just Ming Duo’s nasty fun,” Cerqin went on, disgust like bitter tea.

“How can someone whose feelings have almost faded still keep that instinct?” she asked, a thorn in her voice.

“Spring Tide says she wasn’t like this back in the Sanctuary.”

“No,” Qianli said, eyes flat as iron. “She was twisted before, just hid it under silk.”

Qianli had grown up in the Sanctuary of Eastern Sea City, roots in that soil like pine on a cliff.

She knew Ming Duo well, shadow to footstep, age close, almost peers in the same season.

Baili and Qianli were both prodigies, at Sixth Rank young, and stalled there like arrows stuck in a target.

They were trying to advance, eyes on the Seventh, a peak under snow.

But normal genius can’t match monsters; without a dozen years of tempering, breaking through is like cracking granite with a spoon.

They bantered, and the convoy rolled to the imperial walls like a slow river meeting the sea.

The initial comms node sat in the imperial capital, a natural mana nexus like roots knotted under an ancient tree, perfect for data.

As people gathered, a special room held a massive black box, nearly two meters a side, faint light breathing like moon on ink.

It was the comms hub, the master base point, a heart in a lacquered chest.

Smaller base nodes along the roads served as relays, like milestones feeding echoes forward.

Beside the box stood a short pillar, and on it a pure black crystal ball, a night trapped in glass.

That was the part Cerqin disliked most, tradition heavy as incense smoke.

Using a crystal ball for display was old mage habit, an antique cup at a modern table.

It was only a prototype, and the old men were stubborn as oxen; she had no cleaner swap yet.

Later, she planned to pair the communication stone’s voice channeling with mana light-screens, a lantern of sound and sight.

Now everyone was here, and the test began, like laying a plank bridge across mist.

A historic link that could tilt the future, a thread from city to city, took its first step like a child on a threshold.

[This is the camping-site test point. Link established.]

The voice from the crystal ball rippled out like a thrown pebble, and the whole hall erupted like thunder breaking.