A full night had passed, and Seraphine showed no signs of waking.

On one hand, it seemed normal to me—absorbing that much energy was bound to take time—but I still wondered whether she would be able to assimilate a power so different from what her soul was supposed to be able to use.

She looked like she was suffering a great deal. Having nothing else to do for so long also started leading my mind down other paths.

Ever since I arrived in this world, I hadn’t really thought about what I wanted to change. I knew I didn’t want to go back to being the way I was before, but at the same time... what exactly am I doing differently this time?

I still let every person who comes to me with problems drag me into them.

Even though I have no duty to fulfill and no greater good controlling my actions, somehow I feel that sooner or later those things will arrive.

I also left the others alone—they’re probably missing me... and here I am, selfishly getting involved in hedonistic situations with other women.

Although I really care about some of them, or they’re earning it, I don’t think they’re ready for what lies beyond this world.

...

A little more than eighteen years earlier, in a medium-sized world where immortal cultivation reigned supreme.

A scarlet castle with an imposing throne buzzed with activity. People came and went nonstop, preparing what looked like a wedding on a monumental scale.

"Hurry up! Faster! The son of the Immortal Emperor of this galaxy is about to arrive. Everything must be perfect for the marriage of these two great geniuses! The Lord will not allow any mishap to ruin the young miss’s wedding."

In another room, a woman in a crimson wedding dress stared with sorrow at the Stellar Law Arks that kept landing at the castle.

She clenched her fists tightly.

She was a genius who had reached the True Immortal level in just a hundred years; with a little more time, becoming an Immortal Emperor would have been more than a dream.

Two guards opened the door.

They looked at their young miss with pity, but they still had to escort her to where everyone was waiting.

Once there, she came face to face with her betrothed. He was a handsome man—for it was almost impossible to find anyone who wasn’t at this level—but the look he gave her sent chills down her spine.

She reached the altar, where an unbreakable union of souls was about to take place.

Before reciting the vows, she glanced at her family: her little sister, her father, her mother, and her grandparents. She knew they didn’t want this, but there was no other choice.

The helplessness on their faces was absolute.

She lowered her gaze to the man watching her with arrogance. But the sounds that followed were not those of a seal being placed on the marriage contract. Instead, there came the clash of swords and heart-wrenching screams.

She watched in horror as her entire family was massacred. She stared in disbelief at the man who now smiled at her with cruel delight.

"Forgive me, my beautiful betrothed, but I can’t let your family go knowing they hate me. We will marry and you won’t be able to do anything to me, but as for them... well, you know how it is," he shrugged with cynical indifference.

Her eyes flooded with blood. She lunged at him, screaming, "Coward!"

He watched her resistance with amusement, but at that moment she grabbed him tightly and began gathering energy in her core. Blood streaming from her eyes and a smile of absolute certainty on her face, she pronounced her sentence:

"I swear to you, I will not sign any contract with you today. We will both die here. I will return in the future—even if it takes me thousands of years—and I will kill your entire clan."

"You’re insane. Even if you commit suicide here, you know perfectly well that my father wouldn’t leave me without treasures for situations like this. And you really think you can come back? You have no idea where your soul will end up. If you get trapped in a low-level world, how do you expect to gather enough energy to recover your memories—or even a tenth of your current strength?" he asked mockingly, looking down on her with contempt.

His words did not break the woman’s resolve. Her core exploded in a deflagration of pure energy that consumed everything. The palace that had once stood so imposingly vanished without a trace, as if everything that had happened there had been nothing more than a dream.

...

In the present, inside the legacy, Seraphine’s eyes snapped open.

They were no longer the eyes of the insecure second-circle girl.

She sat up slowly, looking at her hands as if they didn’t belong to her, while the energy from the Lightning Tribulation she had just absorbed finished fusing with the memories that had been sealed in her soul since birth.

Cassian watched her from a few meters away, impassive.

Seraphine turned her gaze toward him. There was no confusion—only a terrifying clarity.

"So... this is the low-level world I ended up in," she murmured in a much more mature voice. "That bastard was really telling the truth; recovering my strength here is going to be pure hell."

"And you..." Her eyes seemed to be searching through her memories. At that moment, as if she had finally found who he was, the woman frowned. She looked both disgusted and unsure of how to handle a situation like this.

Cassian’s eyes darkened.

It wasn’t hard for him to realize what had happened—he had already suspected it a little since that time in the arena... but the annoyance was still there.

He had met Seraphine shortly after arriving in this world, and although she hadn’t always been perfect, her insecurity and her drive to improve had always appealed to him. Those were the mundane, insignificant problems he had never been able to have when he was young.

The two people stared at each other, studying one another as if they were meeting again for the first time.

"Ah!" A cry of pain escaped the woman. She pressed her hands to her stomach as she felt what was happening.

Then she realized there seemed to be two cores inside her. One she didn’t fully recognize, and the other that was forming with the energy that had awakened her.

Part of her soul appeared to be rejecting the qi core, while another part was assimilating it—and the same thing was happening with the mana core. She had to make a decision quickly, but if she destroyed both cores she would be crippled forever.

Then a calm voice spoke:

"You can try merging them. If you cultivated qi in the past and reached a level where you understood some laws, you should be able to see that the two cores inside you are ultimately the same thing. Mana and qi are similar energies; they simply manifest in different ways."

I stepped a little closer, observing the internal chaos that threatened to tear her apart.

"The part of your soul tied to this world will never win against the part belonging to a cultivator with many more years of experience. Use the mana core as fuel and assimilate it into the other one."

His words seemed to calm the woman, and she began trying to do what he said.

When she finally succeeded, she looked at the person in front of her with a suspicious gaze. The crimson glow in her eyes flickered as she tried to process the torrent of memories.

"Who are you?" she asked in a broken voice. "In my memories I only remember things that don’t add up. A useless student... but your words, your presence don’t sound like that at all."

"Your body is going to tear itself apart before you can get your answers," he said, approaching with predatory calm.

She tried to back away, but her legs failed her.

The heat from the newly formed qi core burned through her veins from the inside.

She stared at him intently, knowing she needed a way to stabilize her new power—which far exceeded what her current body could handle—hoping he would give her a solution.

Cassian looked at her with indifference, which only irritated her even more.

"It’s curious... I can see you’re still Seraphine," he commented detachedly. "You have the same look she gives me every time she comes across something she can’t solve."

The woman didn’t take those words well at all. Between being at her limit and him reminding her how the original Seraphine seemed to be innocently in love with this man—like a ten-year-old girl—a faint blush covered her face.

"Looks like you’re enjoying this," she said, breathing raggedly. "If I were still like her, I’d probably be disappointed that you’re willing to watch her suffer like this."

Cassian smiled and moved even closer, invading her personal space until he could feel the erratic heat radiating from her skin.

"Oh, but don’t worry. I have the perfect way to help you. I’m sure the Seraphine you used to be would have loved it."