Time passed minute by minute...
Luo Wei endured the agonizing wait for the turning point to arrive.
Finally—
The moment Carlton attacked Eleya with a supernatural force that was neither magic nor divine power, his gaze suddenly froze, and he immediately withdrew all offensive actions.
That aged face, which had remained eerily calm since Luo Wei and Eleya arrived, finally revealed a trace of wariness. His brows furrowed as he stared intently at a certain spot in the darkness.
Luo Wei immediately looked in that direction but saw nothing beyond the shadows.
No...
Observing Carlton’s posture, it was clear he was gazing into the distance.
Through the suffocating darkness of the study, he was fixated on a location in Saint Callen.
And that direction was... southeast.
To be precise—the White Chapel District.
Had Ophelia succeeded!?
...
In the square before the grand cathedral.
When Ophelia closed her eyes, causing the surrounding air to ripple faintly...
All the young mages of the Hidden Order erupted into cheers.
Even Elder Roens couldn’t contain his excitement. Struggling to his feet in his weakened state, he turned to Tilis. "Guildmaster! She did it! It’s still faint, but magical power has truly returned! I can feel the mana stirring within my body!"
"I know." Tilis had sensed the resurgence of power the moment Ophelia succeeded.
"But it’s not enough..." Elder Margery frowned, conjuring a faint blue orb of light in her palm—so dim it was barely visible.
"It’s a promising start, as long as her progress isn’t interrupted." Tilis swiftly commanded the mages, "Protect the Fifth Princess! Do not let anyone disrupt the domain!"
As the domain stabilized, Ophelia excitedly opened her eyes and immediately searched the crowd for Tilis.
"Just as the Hidden Order’s masters predicted, the key to breaking this lies in ‘mana’—reintroducing this fundamental attribute into the laws of the world! In other words, this isn’t dismantling the existing domain but layering a new one atop it. I’ve created a smaller domain within his!"
Tilis nodded. After extensive deliberation among the elder council, they had ultimately abandoned the idea of dismantling the "anti-magic domain." Carlton’s decades-long construction of this field was far too intricate—nearly every conceivable supernatural force except "magic" had been nullified. The old emperor had indeed done his research.
Ophelia’s approach was akin to nesting a new domain within Carlton’s. In the small radius around her, magic could function again. As for other forces like "Vampire Magic," "heterogeneous talents," or "eldritch powers," there simply hadn’t been time to incorporate them.
Mana alone was enough. With this, the Hidden Order would instantly become the strongest faction among the contending powers.
"Well done, well done."
Tilis gave Ophelia an approving look. The operation might seem simple, but executing it was anything but.
Getting Ophelia—someone with no innate magical talent—to comprehend the essence of "mana" had been no easier than tutoring Luo Wei through his exams to avoid failing.
"Keep going. We don’t have much time," she urged the exhilarated Ophelia.
Ophelia nodded eagerly, but just as she was about to amplify the mana within the domain...
The sky darkened abruptly, and a tide of shadows surged toward the square.
The mages tensed at the anomaly, and Tilis reacted instantly. "They’re after Ophelia! Protect her!"
Yet, in the very next moment...
The darkness swallowed Ophelia whole, and she vanished from the midst of the mages’ protective formation.
"Guildmaster!" Elder Margery gasped in horror. "The Fifth Princess is gone! Was it Carlton’s doing?"
Tilis coldly stared at the source of the encroaching darkness—Heglitz Palace.
"Undoubtedly. He’s recognized Ophelia as a threat..."
"What do we do now?"
Tilis smirked. "What else can we do?"
"Gather everyone. It’s time we paid that old man a visit."
...
Heglitz Palace, the study.
After Carlton’s strange reaction...
Shadows writhed around them, and Ophelia suddenly materialized before Luo Wei.
The moment he saw her, Luo Wei knew things had taken a dire turn. He quickly warned Eleya, "Shield her! She’s the only one who can break this domain!"
Both Carlton and Eleya locked onto Ophelia, their overwhelming forces converging in an instant.
Ophelia let out a pained gasp, first wracked by a tearing agony, then enveloped in a soothing radiance of holy light. Only then could she finally catch her breath.
"Luo Wei..." Spotting him, her panic eased slightly.
Luo Wei rushed forward, positioning himself between her and the others.
There was only one reason Ophelia would appear here—and it was why Carlton had dragged her in so urgently.
"Luo Wei! I did it!"
Ophelia tightly grasped his wrist. When he turned, he saw uncontainable joy gleaming in her striking, light-colored eyes.
"I knew you could!" Luo Wei laughed, the weight lifting from his shoulders.
Together, they faced the master of this dark domain. Ophelia’s gaze grew profoundly conflicted.
This was the moment.
The moment she truly confronted her father—Emperor Wegener, Charlton II.
Carlton’s piercing, hawk-like eyes bore into Ophelia, his aged face unreadable.
"A miscalculation, then."
"My greatest oversight was allowing you to grow."
"Regretting it now?" Ophelia taunted. "Wishing you’d left me to rot in that rural estate instead?"
"No." Carlton’s voice was icy. "You should never have existed at all."
The undisguised killing intent sent a chill down Ophelia’s spine.
In all these years, she had never seen such an expression on his face—least of all directed at her.
Even after Luo Wei had told her about his orders to eliminate her, witnessing his ruthlessness firsthand still left her heart cold.
How ironic... Just during the Crystal Palace exhibition, she had exhausted herself rooting out threats—all to protect this man.
Now, it seemed almost laughable.
"To think someone like you is my father..." Ophelia took a deep breath, steadying the storm of emotions within.
No matter how much she had once feared him, from this moment on...
There could be no outcome but one of them dying.
Luo Wei tightened his grip on her hand.
Feeling the warmth of his touch, Ophelia lifted her head and met Carlton’s gaze without flinching—for the first time in her life.
"Even so," she said softly, a faint smile on her lips, "I still have to thank you."
"What is there to thank me for?" Carlton asked.
"For the lesson you taught me," Ophelia replied, her smile fading. "Though it will be the last one."
As her words hung in the air, the space around Ophelia began to distort.
"Luo Wei! Kill him!"
"Understood!" The moment Ophelia unleashed her domain's power, Luo Wei felt the surge of returning magic. Without hesitation, he unleashed the 6th-circle spell [Comet Shard], hurling it toward his opponent with devastating force.
pression Bureau] Transported to a fantasy world overrun by demons and monsters, Gu Qingfeng becomes a jailer in the Demon Suppression Prison of the Great Yan Dynasty's Demon Suppression Bureau. From this point on, bizarre cases frequently occur in the Demon Suppression Prison, once known as hell on earth and infamous for its gloomy, terrifying atmosphere! Why do the demons and monsters in the prison wail miserably every night? Why has the corpse demon, capable of transforming into various beauties, donned black stockings and switched careers to become a foot massage therapist? Why has the eye demon, expert in soul-snatching and illusions, turned into a VR headset? Why is the fox spirit performing otaku dances? Are all these occurrences a twisted expression of demonic nature, or a descent into moral depravity? After peeling away layer upon layer of mystery, all clues ultimately point to a jailer named Gu Qingfeng. Gu Qingfeng: "Hehehe... My dear demons and monsters, whose card shall we flip today?"
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
orn and Humiliation】【Forced Love】 In his past life, Lin Ran was betrayed and murdered by his girlfriend and family, while the yandere female aristocrat, who had treated him as a mere plaything, avenged him by doing in his enemies. Upon seeing the yandere female aristocrat lying in the same coffin, ready to die with him, Lin Ran realized how profoundly mistaken he had been. Reborn, he abandoned the fickle campus beauty and wholeheartedly embraced the yandere female aristocrat's arms. "Ran! If I dig out your eyes and turn them into a specimen, you'll only be able to look at me!" Lin Ran: "Darling, kiss me!" "Ran! If I break your legs, you won't run away anymore, right?" Lin Ran: "Love, hold me tight!" "Ran! If..." Lin Ran: "Hush now! Love me more!" Luo Yao: ... Seeing his scumbag dad: "Take him out!" Seeing his stepmother: "Get rid of her!" Seeing his brother: "Eliminate him!" Seeing his white moonlight: "Send that to Southeast Asia!"
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
