"Athene said… I am meant to grow old. And when the time comes… he will take me back... For his ritual."

"..."

"...?"

Wang Xiao's eye twitched violently.

'Athene… what nonsense did she feed this girl?'

Now he genuinely wanted to drag Athene back and beat clarity into her for spreading lies.

Ning Xue misread his expression.

"…Are you upset because you think you will die because of me?" Her voice was soft, strangely considerate.

He sighed. "I drugged you. How is it because of you?"

"That is true, You are… a manipulative man. But I will die as well, so it is fine. I won't try to kill you anymore, if we both die, it is… even."

She exhaled slowly. "But Vel… she adores you deeply. She will grieve."

Wang Xiao didn't reply immediately. He simply let out a quiet sigh. "You're too quick to assume. Did you ever ask him if he intends to kill you in that ritual of his?"

"…" A shadow crossed Ning Xue's face. "I… have never met him."

"Really?" Wang Xiao tilted his head, pretending to study her with exaggerated suspicion. "So is he actually your father… or are you bluffing?"

Ning Xue stiffened, "I am not lying. I've met my mother. You already know her, Aurora."

"Ah. That witch…" Wang Xiao closed one eye, feigning profound contemplation, then gave her a faint nod. "Fine. I'll believe you… for now."

Ning Xue felt wronged to her bones. She was clearly the victim, yet everyone treated her like the suspicious one.

But she lifted her chin anyway, voice turning smug:

"Whether he wants to kill me or not… he'll definitely kill you."

Wang Xiao blinked. "And you're pleased about that?"

She froze, caught.

Then, with elegant stubbornness, she bit her lip and nodded. "…Mn. Very pleased. You deserve it. You go around beating people and bullying them."

A genuine laugh slipped from Wang Xiao. "Didn't think anyone would dare say that to my face."

Then, without warning, he shifted her, pulling her from behind him and lifting her into a full princess carry.

The motion was effortless for him… but world-tilting for her.

Ning Xue's face bloomed red, soft and startled, like a ripe peach touched by frost. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

"Well… I'll wait for it, then," he added casually, as though he hadn't just turned her heartbeat into mess, "Just don't cry if I kill him first."

"…"

Ning Xue fell silent, but not gracefully, silently suffering, distressed.

"Put me down… I can walk."

She did not want to be put down.

But pride was a cruel thing, and her hands pushed weakly at him in a token struggle.

Wang Xiao arched a brow at her stubbornness and finally let her down.

Her bare, pale feet touched the road, shivering once, twice, before she steadied herself.

A small, embarrassed breath escaped her.

"Hmph…"

She turned away, following behind him with measured steps, too proud to argue yet too flustered to look him in the eye.

The silence grew full of too-many feelings, so she guided the mood elsewhere, her voice softening like wind sliding through winter bamboo.

"…You still haven't told me how you stopped that attack."

They were nearing the tennis court now.

Streetlights flickered alive one after another, stretching long shadows across the pavement as night traffic whistled around them.

Ning Xue walked beside him, still flustered from the princess carry, but trying her best to look dignified.

"… how you stopped that attack," she repeated, voice quiet.

Wang Xiao paused, and turned to her.

"Hit me."

"…Eh?"

"Just hit me once. Then I'll explain."

Her brows quivered. "That is… a strange request."

She inhaled deeply, like a woman mentally signing her own funeral papers, and threw a clean, controlled punch toward his chest.

Not full power, but enough that any normal human would've been turned into dust.

Her fist connected-

BANG!

"—?!"

—and the next thing she knew, a recoil slammed her backward as if she'd punched a trampoline made of rubber.

She flew across the pavement, crashed into the tennis court wall, and slid down with a soft groan, the players inside gasping.

Her eyes filled with tears and fury.

"You-! You said I could hit you!"

"And you did hit me," Wang Xiao shrugged. "Did I hit back?"

"…Then who sent me flying?!"

He ignored the question entirely, picked up a pebble, and flicked it at her.

She yelped, dodged, and the pebble struck the wall behind her and bounced back in the opposite direction like it had hit a hidden spring.

"What are you doing!?" she demanded.

"Did the wall hit the stone?"

"No, stop trying to fool me!"

"Then why did the stone bounce back?"

Ning Xue opened her mouth.

Shut it.

Opened it again.

Stared at the stone.

And her expression slowly shifted through: confusion → suspicion → dawning realization.

Wang Xiao gestured lazily.

"You don't always need power. Just use your opponent's force better than they do."

She blinked, genuinely impressed.

"So you… deflected her beam?"

"No. I cut it, deflecting wasn't enough."

Before she could process that, he casually took off his shoe and threw it at her.

It hit her foot.

She froze.

"…Why didn't you dodge?"

She stared at him, offended, as if saying: 'Why would I dodge a shoe?'

He sighed dramatically, picked up another pebble, and flicked it at her feet again.

This time she leapt back like the pavement itself had bitten her.

"Good," Wang Xiao said. "You're learning."

"Learning what!?" she exploded.

"How not to stand like a traffic cone."

He put his shoe back on.

Then continued, voice calm:

"A knife cuts. A stone smashes. Energy does whatever shape you force it into, if someone throws an energy beam at you, don't waste your whole reservoir trying to block it. Shape your output to make a knife... Make it efficient."

Ning Xue's eyes brightened with pure wonder.

"…Why didn't I think of that?"

A light smack landed on her head.

She closed her eyes in resigned suffering.

"…Just because you explained for one minute doesn't mean you can hit me."

"Then I'll stop explaining."

He turned to walk away.

Her panic was immediate, she grabbed his wrist and guided his hand back to her head, pleading and embarrassed.

"…Continue."

Wang Xiao's expression said he no longer knew whether to smack her or pat her.

The problem, as Wang Xiao saw it, was painfully simple.

Ning Xue was born with too much power.

Her energy pool was like a sea pressing against glass, endless, unrestrained. When she fought, she didn't think; she pushed.

Brute force worked because her enemies were beasts, not minds. But against someone like Fiona, disciplined, adaptive, surgical, raw strength would crumble before finesse.

Power meant nothing if one didn't know how to shape it.

"A hypercar still loses to a family sedan," Wang Xiao murmured, "if the driver can't handle the throttle."

He knew what he was saying, he had risen from weakness.

Energy-starved, hunted, and forced to innovate, he had learned that control was evolution.

His "spring defense" was born not from genius, but desperation, developed in the final days of Frostholm, where each mistake meant extinction.

Cutting instead of punching?

He learned that fighting a gorilla-type beast in the Graveyard of Gods; punching its hide wasted energy, but slicing the tension points consumed less and caused more damage.

His daughters grew up under this philosophy, he never allowed them to use more than the bare minimum of their energy.

Control first, innovation second.

Only then brute force.

Athene, in contrast, had raised Ning Xue like a proud teacher raising a prodigy: Push her power... Expand her limits... Harden her body... Toughen her soul.

But never teaching her the art of using power smartly.

The original guardians had lived too long, millions of years of stable cultivation, luxury, and time, they saw battles as carefully structured duels, not desperate survival.

Wang Xiao's growth was a violent sprint.

His first phase, from Xianthera to Frostholm, was only a few years.

By the time he left for the Graveyard of Gods, he already had enough raw strength to stand toe-to-toe with Eleanor.

But his battle efficiency was far above hers.

His second phase, inside the graveyard, was pure experimentation. He learned how to mold energy like clay. How to rewrite techniques.

How to steal systems from other universes and turn them into something new.

One of those stolen, reshaped systems became the modern Star System of power.

When Wang Xiao first forged it, he hadn't meant for it to become religion.

It was supposed to be a tutorial, a sandbox for soldiers learning Aether control.

He had observed that raw Aether behaved like vapor, too fluid to command directly.

But when a practitioner visualized points of focus, tiny "stars" suspended in the void of their consciousness, Aether began following intentional geometry.

A single star defined an origin.

A second created direction.

A third, curvature.

By connecting these "anchors," a cultivator formed an invisible 'vector field' where energy flowed without leaking.

The result was stable, reproducible, safe, perfect for training armies who would otherwise detonate themselves on the first day.

"Think of each star as a constant," he said to Ning Xue, letting three faint lights spin above his palm. "They tell Aether what rules to obey. Most people think the stars create energy, but they actually bind it."

Her eyes widened slightly as he expanded the constellation, letting hundreds of lines form shifting patterns, each pulsating with micro-runes of intent.

"The Star System is a map," Wang Xiao said. "Aether is the river. The stars are how you draw its banks."

But over time, mortals misunderstood.

Instead of using the stars as scaffolding, they built cages, memorizing constellations instead of composing them.

Even someone like Seraphina relied on preset constellations rather than inventing their own.

Wang Xiao sighed.

"My intent was to teach people how to shape aether. Not how to memorize star-diagrams like school textbooks."

"I built a ruler," he muttered, half-bitter, "and they worshipped it as a sword."

To demonstrate, he picked up a pebble.

"Think about that stone again," he said. "What's the most efficient way to handle it?"

"Stop it… and throw it back?" Ning Xue guessed.

"Too much energy wasted," he replied.

"Use its own energy and reflect it?"

"Efficient, but weak."

Then he explained something that made her eyes widen:

He tossed it toward the court wall.

It bounced back, rebounded, then rebounded again, trapped between wall and floor in a small oscillation.

"That," he said, "is the correct philosophy of energy."

He drew a quick diagram in air, two translucent shields facing each other, curving slightly inward like twin springs.

"When an external force strikes, the first shield doesn't simply absorb it—it compresses, then redirects that momentum into the opposite shield. For a few microseconds, the two layers bounce the force back and forth, a closed rebound loop. You let it cycle thousands of times in that tiny fraction of a second, adding just a thread of your own energy to amplify it each pass… until—"

He flicked his fingers.

BANG!

The imaginary "springs" snapped open, and the pebble shot upward like a bullet, vanishing into the clouds.

Ning Xue amazed. "You turned defense into propulsion…"

"Yes, not the cheapest method," he admitted. "But the most efficient when your goal isn't just to survive, but to retaliate..."