Pursuing Immortality - Chapter 381

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.

Back in 1996, when the daughter of the Old Xie family, Xie Wanying, said she wanted to be a doctor, many laughed.“Phoenix begets phoenix, dog spawns dog. A truck driver’s daughter becoming a doctor is as likely as a sow climbing a tree.”“I’m not just going to be a doctor, I’m going to be a female chest surgeon,” said Xie Wanying.Her words provoked even greater waves of disdain within the doctors' community.Relatives who were doctors ridiculed her mercilessly: “Do you know how high the admission scores are for medical students? Do you think you can make it?”“There are zero female chief chest surgeons in the country. Who do you think you are!”A bunch of people mocked her: “You'll probably only get into a third-rate medical college and end up as a health worker in a small county town. It's easy to imagine what sort of marriage you'll have.”After the college entrance exams, Xie Wanying entered the top surgical class in the country with the highest science scores in the province, with department heads in the Capital’s top-tier hospitals vying for her from her internship beginnings.“Student Xie Wanying, come to our digestive surgery department.”“No, she must come to our urological surgery—”“Pediatric surgery is in short supply of female doctors like student Xie Wanying.”Circles of relatives and friends: …At this time, Xie Wanying independently completed the youngest Tetralogy of Fallot surgery in the country, represented the national association of chest surgery at an international medical forum, and published the world’s first minimally invasive heart valve repair surgery, becoming truly the foremost surgeon in the field of female surgery!As for the marriage concerns that everyone “worried” about:A brother from the Returned Overseas Faction, a hot bachelor within the Capital, changed his QQ profile picture to Junior Sister Xie.The young CEO, a handsome man, came to the hospital every day with flowers, keen to offer a diamond ring.Not to mention, a whole host of suitors had long since worn a path to the Old Xie Family's doorstep...

In her last life, Qu Zhi tried her best to be a good wife who was sensible and did not cause trouble, a filial and good daughter who helped her family, and a good mother who accompanied her children. However, Qu Zhi worked hard and suffered all her life. When she was about to die, she realized that in the end, all she got back for her hard work were complaints. Her husband complained that she was an idle, rich wife all day long who wasn’t satisfied with her happiness at home, and that she was a greedy woman.

But after decades of marriage, her husband had a firm, deadly hold on all her money, and she didn’t even have a dime to her name, nor a property to call her own. Every time she asked for money, he would trample all over her self-esteem. Her husband’s cold and sarcastic words made her unable to lift her head, and his friends would demean her while drinking wine, making her tremble with anger. This man had once said he would take care of her, yet he turned a blind eye! Those people focused on her happiness as a topic, and made a joke out of it.

Even her three children resented her for her uneven love towards everyone, and their relationship only became more strained as time passed. She had spent her whole life as a loner, and she had nothing. Lying on the operation table, Qu Zhi thought that if she could do it all over again, she wouldn’t be a housewife. She wouldn’t have given her second daughter away, and she wouldn’t take care of her blood-sucking relatives.

She wouldn’t marry her indifferent, cold husband either! When she next opened her eyes, she was back to twenty years in the past. Her eldest daughter was still in elementary school, and her second daughter had been in her belly for several months…

Is magic really a wish machine?

No! In a universe where magic actually exists, the ultimate nature of magic must be as simple and beautiful as the laws of physics.

This is the story of a mass-produced magic warfare tool man who learned the ultimate nature of magic.

But so what?

Just as a bird can fly without understanding aerodynamics, so a wizard does not need to understand the ultimate nature of magic to use magic.

Knowing the ultimate nature of magic does not mean that the tool man can become a great magician.

But the desire for knowledge is human instinct, and curiosity is the first driving force of human civilization. Humans hope to understand the inner workings of magic, even if it is supposed to be unreasonable.

An inquiry into the ultimate nature of magic, without any justification!

The story in the book takes place in an age where steel dances with gunpowder.

Here, muskets are in the ascendant, armor is still the protagonist, military theories are changing with each passing day, and innovations in systems and craftsmanship are emerging one after another. And this world has one more thing than ours: magic.

The world is undergoing earth-shaking changes, and no one can stay out of it.

- Description from novelbuddy