Sensing the strange, malignant aura that had only just begun gathering suddenly dissipate into nothing, Theodore let out a mocking laugh.
"I thought you were actually going to descend in your true forms and let me see what those hidden horrors of the magical world really look like."
"So that's it?"
"You flared up in anger… and then merely stayed angry?"
Even so, Theodore's gaze shifted toward the golden-red flying sword in his hand.
It seemed the power of this merit-forged treasure truly was astonishing. The horrors lurking in the shadows had all recoiled and hidden themselves, unwilling to face its edge directly.
The next moment, Theodore reached out.
The golden-red flying sword immediately dropped into his palm, and a blood-deep sense of connection flowed back to him.
But beyond that intimacy, what Theodore felt even more clearly was the incomparable sharpness contained within the blade.
Now that merit had been refined into it, the sword-light originally born from the Sword of Slaughter had fully solidified, becoming almost completely real. The power of the Sword of Slaughter it carried had also risen by another great step.
Theodore poured the power of his Origin Sea into the sword.
At once, a murderous aura burst from the blade.
In an instant, layered clouds were swept clean, the stars and moon trembled, and the surrounding world seemed to plunge straight into the Abyssal Hell.
Even Theodore, its wielder, felt his heart shake.
That killing force—
even with the Eight-Nine Mystical Art, with the Adamantine Body, and with all the methods he possessed to strengthen his flesh—
would still be impossible to endure head-on.
The Sword of Slaughter was not something ordinary means could withstand. Unless he brought out the Purple-Gold Crown of Auspicious Clouds, he himself would not dare meet it casually.
And even then, under the edge of this sword, even the crown would probably struggle to fully block it.
If Theodore had forged this sword earlier, then when he faced the horrors within the underworld, one strike alone would have been enough to wipe them out completely.
Then, beyond this matchless killing power, Theodore opened his Microscopic Heavenly Eye once more.
And what he saw on the sword made even him wild with delight.
"To kill without incurring karma…"
"This sword has that trait too!"
At that moment, Theodore could not hold back his laughter.
"Even in the primordial world, this sword would be the sort of treasure to move immortals and gods."
"And if it were placed in the hands of a cultivator like me, someone who walks the Sword of Slaughter…"
"Then it would count as a true Dao-proving treasure."
"Destiny! Destiny! This is what it means to be favored by destiny itself!"
Strange light blazed in Theodore's eyes.
The Sword of Slaughter.
A Dao-proving flying sword.
If one day he could also obtain something like the Blood God Incarnation technique, then in the magical world he might practically become a second Blood Sea Ancestor in all but name.
Horrors?
Compared with the ancestor of the Blood Sea, what were they?
Still, whatever else might be said, the birth of this sword—combined with the Purple-Gold Crown of Auspicious Clouds—meant Theodore now held one treasure for offense and one for defense.
Peerless under heaven.
As long as he was not facing the true bodies of those horrors, then at this moment Theodore had enough strength to suppress everything and uphold this age before the ancient return.
Gently stroking the blade, Theodore murmured,
"Since you possess the makings of Yuantu and Abi…"
"Then I shall call you the Abi Hellscape Sword."
Then Theodore let out a long breath and slowly calmed the turbulent emotion in his heart.
His gaze fell on the still-unconscious staff, contestants, and on Hermione, Harry, and Ron.
What had happened here today had gone far beyond the level of the current magical world.
It was best if they did not remember it at all.
With that, Theodore raised the Ancient Staff and cast one Memory Charm after another upon the gathered crowd.
At Theodore's current level of magical attainment, almost any spell became easy the moment he laid eyes upon it.
His skill with Memory Charms was already masterful—far beyond even Lockhart in the original story.
In only a short while, he had selectively erased everyone's memory of what had happened inside the venue and replaced it with a newly tailored sequence of events.
Only then did he wake everyone up.
Harry looked completely blank.
"What happened?"
"Why do I feel like I slept for ages?"
"I remember watching Ron's final… then it got dark… then I must have been so tired I nodded off…"
"Wait, right—what happened after that?"
After a few moments of silence, everyone's memories settled into clarity.
The venue staff suddenly burst into excited cries.
"Just moments ago, first-year Hogwarts student Ron Weasley, after a grueling six hours and fifteen minutes of hard struggle, completed a comeback victory and claimed the championship of this wizard's chess tournament!"
"A champion from his debut appearance—the birth of an eleven-year-old champion!"
Under the guidance of the staff, Ron climbed onto the award platform with a dazed expression and found a heavy trophy being placed into his hands.
Of course, along with it came a money pouch full of gold Galleons.
The moment the pouch landed in his grip, Ron almost stopped caring about the trophy entirely.
He swore he had never held so many Galleons in his life.
Even after leaving the venue, a silly grin was still plastered across his face, and every so often he had to check the pouch again just to make sure he was not dreaming.
Before long, he had started muttering to himself, already planning how the prize money should be spent.
"I promised Theodore I'd treat him to a meal. That absolutely has to happen. And Harry and Hermione too. Definitely."
"The best restaurant."
"And Dad's watch hand seems a bit off lately. I should buy him a new one."
"Mum hasn't had new clothes in ages. And now that the weather's getting cold, she needs a new coat and gloves."
"Right—Ginny starts Hogwarts next year. Her new school robes can come out of this. And for now I can buy her a few nice hair clips."
"Charlie's already working and earns wages. Percy's a prefect. Fred and George always find some way to get spending money. Hmph, I don't need to worry about them."
"And then I should still have enough left over to get Christmas presents for Theodore, Harry, and Hermione…"
Ron felt happier than he ever had in his life.
"Merlin above, being rich feels incredible!"
"You can just buy whatever you want—I'm bloody wealthy!"
Then Ron suddenly realized he had been so excited that he had muttered all his thoughts out loud.
He immediately looked at Theodore and the others suspiciously.
"I didn't say what Christmas presents I was planning out loud, did I?"
"Hm?"
He noticed Theodore and the others were looking at him with rather strange expressions and grew tense at once.
"No way—I said it out loud?"
"Brilliant. Now I'll have to think up all the Christmas presents again."
"Wait. Or… did I miscalculate the money?"
Theodore shook his head, while Hermione and Harry both let out sighs.
"Ron, you didn't calculate the money wrong."
"It's just that you've bought something for everyone else."
"And yet somehow you forgot yourself."
"What happened to all that talk about getting yourself a broom and replacing your wand when you finally had money?"
Ron relaxed again, chuckled sheepishly, and rubbed at his nose.
"Well… I mean, it's not as though I'm that rich, is it? I still need to spend it carefully."
"A broom and a wand aren't urgent. The school brooms still fly, don't they? And my old wand works fine."
"Honestly, I feel pretty comfortable already. The things may be old, but I'm used to them."
"Next time, I suppose. When I win prize money again, then I'll buy something for myself…"
Theodore cut him off.
"No more 'next time.' At the rate you're going, Merlin knows when you'll finally end up with a proper new wand."
"A wand that doesn't fit you properly will affect your magic."
"After we get back, you still have to go through the challenge-game with Harry and Hermione. You're not planning to drag them down, are you?"
"You'll buy everything you were planning to buy exactly as intended."
"But tomorrow morning I'm taking you to Ollivanders to choose a wand that actually suits you. The money can be put on account for now. When you win your next prize, you can pay it back."
"Don't worry. I'm on excellent terms with Mr. Ollivander. You don't need to feel any burden."
Ron froze.
If this had happened in the past, then with his overly sensitive pride, he would never have accepted anything like buying on credit for his sake. Even help from a friend would have sat in his heart like a weight.
But today, after winning the first true fortune of his life, a great deal of that awkwardness had quietly melted away.
Even the look in his eyes had become more confident.
After thinking for a while, Ron finally nodded.
"Alright."
"Then the very next time I win prize money, I'll pay it back immediately."
"But we're agreed on one thing."
"Tomorrow, before we get the new wand and go back to Hogwarts, I'm treating all of you to an enormous meal."
Theodore, Harry, and Hermione exchanged glances.
Then all of them smiled and nodded.
Watching Ron brim over with joy, Theodore felt a wave of emotion rise in his chest.
Youth really was a fine thing.
In this life, he might only be eleven—
but the age of his mind had long since gone far beyond that.
To buy osmanthus wine and set out together once more—
but it would never again be quite like the journey of youth.
…
When they returned to the manor, Hermione and the others, worn out from the day, ate dinner and promptly fell into exhausted sleep.
Theodore, meanwhile, turned his attention to the other rewards he had obtained today.
"System."
"Claim both Deep Fortune and The Secrets of Heaven Can Be Measured."
At once, as the new lines appeared in the reward panel, Theodore felt an extraordinarily dense tide of blessing and destiny descend upon him.
His destiny, already blazing like a rainbow, rose yet another level. To his inner sight it became a vast majesty of purple-gold radiance—noble beyond words.
Even Theodore was a little taken aback by the richness of that blessing and destiny.
A moment later, understanding dawned.
"Of course."
"In the System's judgment, Ron corresponds to Lei Zhenzi."
"And Lei Zhenzi's blessing and destiny during the Investiture era were indeed exceptionally abundant."
"He was born in response to thunder and later adopted by King Wen as his hundredth son. After the Investiture War, he withdrew into the mountains and silently guarded the Zhou destiny for eight hundred years."
"It can be said that Lei Zhenzi's fate was intimately bound to the Zhou."
"The reason he brings me such powerful fortune and blessing must be because of that."
Delight flashed through Theodore's eyes.
He had already experienced thoroughly just how wonderful destiny could be.
The Abi Hellscape Sword's ability to kill without karma could not be separated from the vast destiny gathered around him.
Now that his destiny had risen even further, Theodore naturally welcomed it with open arms.
With the Purple-Gold Crown of Auspicious Clouds suppressing and stabilizing his destiny, he had no fear of it leaking away. The more of such a thing, the better.
Then Theodore turned his attention to the talent he had received from Dumbledore upon reaching sworn-friend level:
The Secrets of Heaven Can Be Measured.
Divination and the reading of heavenly secrets had always been among the deepest and most unfathomable of all arts available to cultivators.
Those who truly understood it were feared even by the great powers of the primordial world.
Because if one acted against heavenly secrets, then even a peak quasi-saint might perish in a single day.
And yet if one grasped heavenly secrets, then even a relatively weak cultivator could move with the flow of forces everywhere, borrowing momentum, changing fate, and letting the path of cultivation become as smooth as a fish in water.
As Theodore carefully felt out the talent, a dim and profound gleam suddenly flashed through his Microscopic Heavenly Eye, as though the workings of heaven and earth themselves were unfolding within it.
His face lit with delight.
"The Secrets of Heaven Can Be Measured and the Microscopic Heavenly Eye actually complement each other."
"Reading heavenly secrets now feels as easy as studying the lines of a palm."
Theodore casually performed a calculation.
"Tomorrow's weather…"
"The winning lottery numbers…"
In only a moment, the answers surfaced clearly in his heart.
"Tomorrow will be clear skies, with a light breeze."
"And tomorrow's winning numbers are… ah. Heavenly intent is telling me this is useless. Did I really think just because I calculated a set of numbers, I'd automatically win? Naive."
Theodore grew more and more intrigued, like someone discovering a surprisingly entertaining new game, and kept casting calculations one after another.
In truth, frequent divination was a great taboo among cultivators.
It consumed one's own destiny.
That was why cultivators of the path of heavenly calculation often said that both the one who read fate and the one whose fate was read grew thinner in destiny the more often they calculated.
That was the reason.
But Theodore's destiny already blazed like a rainbow, and what he was calculating was far beneath his current level. Naturally, every result came without error, and the loss of destiny was so slight as to be negligible.
More importantly, he had a destiny treasure suppressing and stabilizing it.
Destiny treasures were practically perfect companions for the path of heavenly calculation.
In this way Theodore played around with the new talent for a while, tasting its marvelous uses, before finally drawing himself back to seriousness.
He pressed the Purple-Gold Crown of Auspicious Clouds once more. Spiritual light descended, auspicious cloud hung low, and only after making these preparations did Theodore draw a deep breath.
"In the past, I had to gather all sorts of information and combine it with my own guesses and deductions just to piece together a few scattered clues about the hidden truth of the magical world."
"But if I now use The Secrets of Heaven Can Be Measured…"
"If I calculate the reason behind the magical world's so-called ancient return, and the root of those hidden horrors…"
"Perhaps everything will become clear."
The next instant, Theodore cast the divination again.
The Secrets of Heaven Can Be Measured—
calculate the source of the magical world's horrors!
At that very moment, an unfathomable fluctuation spread from Theodore, as though it pierced straight through the history of the magical world, reaching toward primordial antiquity—
and even further, toward the chaos before all things.
Then Theodore suddenly let out a muffled groan.
The spiritual radiance around him shattered.
His golden body-light dimmed.
Even the auspicious cloud twisted violently, as though it had suffered a terrible blow.
Theodore clutched at his eyes.
Droplets of golden blood began dripping from the corners.
The Microscopic Heavenly Eye, which had always been able to observe heaven, earth, and all things without obstruction, had actually collapsed for the moment, as though it had witnessed something far beyond what it could endure.
Gradually Theodore's blurred vision began clearing again.
But the shock in his heart had reached a level unlike anything before.
His gaze slowly lifted to the System screen.
Upon it there appeared lines of trembling text more chaotic than ever before—more chaotic even than when he had witnessed "Hongjun" and "Heavenly Dao" themselves.
[Beyond the primordial world.]
[Beyond the Heavenly Dao.]
[Within chaos itself.]
[You witnessed Pangu.]
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