The alley behind the Mu Clan estate was silent except for the drip of melting frost. Xu Mang placed his palm against the ice wall again. The flaw in the barrier hummed faintly, like a crack in a bell. He could push lightning through it, force his way in, or try to slip past the detection glyphs.
All options were possible.
All of them were stupid.
The Mu Clan wasn't dangerous because of its walls.
The Mu Clan was dangerous because they had money, forbidden techniques, and a very specific talent for making problems disappear.
Xu Mang exhaled.
Time to do this properly.
He sat cross-legged in the shadowed corner of the alley, closed his eyes, and reached inward — beyond the magic stars, beyond the elemental flow, into the deeper place where something ancient waited.
The familiar cold resonance responded.
A ripple of gold, heavy as a mountain.
A vibration like thunder rolling under the sea.
The breath of a being who had seen civilizations rise and burn long before humans learned fire.
The Summoning Plane cracked open around him.
His body dissolved into a stream of blue-white particles and vanished.
—
Air returned first.
Then the ground — cold, metallic, echoing.
Then the sky — vast, stormy, and lit by lightning veins that stretched across the clouds like the world's oldest scars.
He was standing in the Ancient Dragon's domain.
Not the Ice Plane.
Not the Flame Plane.
But the forgotten precinct where dragons once gathered, where their bones shaped mountains and their roars carved rivers.
The ground was a mosaic of black stone melted by ages of dragonfire. Lava glowed faintly in cracks. The air smelled of iron and ozone.
And on a throne of basalt, half-buried in history, sat the Ancient Dragon.
Golden scales dimmed by time.
Eyes like twin suns behind a veil of dust.
Horns cracked but unbroken.
A body so large the mountain trembled when it exhaled.
Its gaze moved.
"Human."
The word shook the entire plane.
Xu Mang bowed. "I need your help."
"You ask much," the dragon murmured. "The last time we spoke, I warned you: the path you walk steals from fate."
"Better I steal from fate than let fate steal from others," Xu Mang replied.
A low rumble of amusement echoed. The dragon's voice rolled across the plane, each syllable heavy with forgotten law.
"What do you seek now?"
"The Mu Clan guards a technique," Xu Mang said. "Innate Talent Forging. To get close, I need something no human barrier can detect."
The dragon's eyes narrowed.
"And why should I cloak you?"
Xu Mang met its gaze calmly.
"Because what I'm going to steal will change the future of this world. Because too many people in Bo City died powerless. Because the Clans hoard miracles while letting cities burn."
He straightened.
"And because you chose me. So let me do something worth choosing."
Silence cracked across the plane like a glacier shifting.
Then the dragon rose.
It was like watching a mountain stand up. Lava trembled in its veins. Storm clouds recoiled from its head. Its wings, broken long ago, still cast a shadow large enough to swallow kingdoms.
It stepped forward.
The ground shook with every movement until the dragon's head lowered to Xu Mang's level — a sun lowering itself to examine a spark.
"Very well," it said. "Then I shall grant you one of the oldest sequences of our kind."
A glow formed in its throat — not fire, not lightning, something older.
Dragons called it The Breath Between Heavens.
Humans would call it impossible.
The glow condensed into a sphere of gold-black light, swirling like molten stars.
"This," the dragon intoned, "is the Thousandfold Concealment Sequence. Dragons used it in the age of the Primordial Hunt to walk unseen even among Forbidden Curse tyrants."
Xu Mang's pulse accelerated.
"This will hide me from the Mu Clan?"
"It will hide you from all beings beneath the Forbidden Curse," the dragon said. "Your presence, your mana, even your soul ripple will vanish. You will become… unfindable."
"And the cost?" Xu Mang asked immediately.
The dragon's eyes glimmered.
"Every ancient gift demands balance. When you use this Sequence, you must not cast magic. To reveal your power is to reveal yourself."
Xu Mang nodded.
"That's fine. I'll be a shadow until I reach what I need."
The dragon lowered the orb onto Xu Mang's chest.
It sank into him like molten gold. His heartbeat changed — quieter, smoother, fading into a calm so total it felt unnatural.
Xu Mang exhaled.
For the first time in his life…
He had no presence.
No signature.
No sound in the world's magical fabric.
He was nothing.
A perfect nothing.
The dragon watched him with approval.
"You walk into danger with arrogance."
Xu Mang smiled faintly. "Confidence."
"Arrogance," the dragon repeated. "But arrogance is the fuel of the ambitious. Go, child. Take the technique. Change the world."
The Summoning Plane shattered around him.
—
He blinked.
He was back in the alley.
The frost wall hummed with detection spells.
Xu Mang touched the barrier with one finger.
Nothing reacted.
No glyph flared.
No alarm sounded.
Not even the slight ripple of mana disturbance.
He stepped through.
The wall passed through him like smoke.
Inside the Mu Clan estate, dozens of guards patrolled.
Servants carried trays.
Mages practiced.
Sentries chanted detection spells every ten minutes.
Not one of them turned toward him.
Xu Mang smiled.
"It works."
Somewhere deeper in the estate, the Talented Research Division held the forbidden scripture of innate talents.
And tonight…
He would take it.
Xu Mang walked straight into the Mu Clan estate like he was out for a stroll.
Mana-lamps glowed faintly across long stone paths. Guards in cyan cloaks patrolled in rhythmic patterns. Servants shuffled between pavilions with trays of icy tea and scrolls. The entire place moved with the same elegant arrogance as a palace of frost-touched nobles.
And Xu Mang walked right in the middle of all of it.
Unseen.
Unfelt.
Unreal.
A patrol of three young Mu disciples passed directly in front of him. Their frost aura rolled across the path like mist, brushing against Xu Mang's coat.
Not a single one blinked.
"So this is what cheating feels like," Xu Mang murmured. "No wonder dragons liked it."
He approached the inner courtyard, where a group of Mu Clan elders stood in discussion beneath a pavilion carved entirely from blue-ice. Their conversation carried in the cold air.
"—Ningxue's innate talent is stabilizing. This year's inheritance trials will place her at the top."
"Provided the Holy Spring fragment arrives on time."
"Nanrong intends to oppose us at the summit. If they claim unfair advantage—"
"Let them bark. The calamity at Bo City has already shifted national attention. No one will question our internal decisions."
Xu Mang snorted softly.
Bo City burned, and here they were worried about talent rankings and political optics.
One elder suddenly paused and turned his head—directly toward Xu Mang.
Xu Mang didn't breathe.
The Thousandfold Concealment Sequence wrapped him in stillness, dissolving his existence like mist in moonlight. Even his heartbeat flattened until it matched the rhythm of the air itself.
The elder frowned.
His eyes scanned the courtyard.
Nothing.
He dismissed the moment and returned to the conversation.
Xu Mang slipped past them without a sound.
He moved deeper into the estate, toward the place every rumor, archive, and whisper hinted at—the underground chambers beneath the Frost Ancestral Hall.
If the Mu Clan had a secret technique that could strip and rebuild innate talents, that was where they buried it.
But first, he had to enter the hall.
It towered before him now: a structure carved from ancient glacier stone, its pillars etched with runes that pulsed faintly like a heartbeat. A double door of reinforced ice blocked the entrance, guarded by two elite Mu Clan mages.
Xu Mang didn't approach the door.
He stepped into the shadow behind the statue of a frost qilin.
Then he pressed his palm against the ground.
A faint vibration.
A hollow echo.
"There," he whispered. "Your stupidly secure vault has a stupidly convenient drainage channel."
He slipped through the narrow gap in the stonework. His body brushed against frost-laced metal bars, but the concealment sequence muffled his presence entirely.
On the other side, darkness stretched out before him.
Smooth walls.
Cold air.
A faint blue glow that barely illuminated the long descent.
The Mu Clan's underground was quiet.
Too quiet.
Xu Mang descended the ancient staircase one slow step at a time. Frost coated every surface, inscriptions spiraling along the walls. His breath misted in the air. Far ahead, something throbbed like a distant heartbeat.
Not human.
Not magical.
Something older.
He followed the sound until the staircase opened into a vast, circular chamber.
At its center was a gate.
Not a door.
A gate of pure primordial ice, carved with symbols that did not belong to this age. They shimmered as if alive, shifting slightly each time he blinked. The gate radiated cold so potent it felt like standing inside a glacier.
Xu Mang approached—
Then stopped.
Because something was watching him.
A presence shifted in the shadows behind the gate—a massive form, frozen in place yet somehow breathing. Its outline was indistinct. Its aura was unmistakable.
An Ancient Guardian.
The Primordial Ice Guardian.
Not a beast.
Not a golem.
Not a summon.
A relic from the ancient era when the Mu Clan first touched frost inheritance.
Its eyes opened—two slits of pale, chilling light. The chamber trembled as it stirred, frost spiraling off its form like slow snowfall.
Xu Mang held his breath.
A human coming this close would normally be ripped apart for trespassing. No magic, no stealth spell, no illusion would work on such a creature. Only something that operated outside human mana could deceive it.
Like the Thousandfold Concealment Sequence.
The guardian scanned the chamber.
Xu Mang's body remained as void as air.
No mana.
No ripple.
No scent.
Still, the guardian's gaze lingered.
It tilted its head slightly, sniffing the empty air.
Xu Mang remained motionless.
The guardian exhaled, and shards of frost drifted like glass petals. Then it lowered its head and closed its eyes again.
Xu Mang exhaled silently.
"Well," he whispered. "Good to know dragons weren't exaggerating when they said humans are blind toddlers compared to old-world guardians."
He approached the gate.
The inscriptions pulsed.
These weren't elemental glyphs.
They were laws.
Rules carved into ice that commanded it not to melt, not to break, not to forget the secrets stored behind it.
He set his hand against the cold surface.
"Let's see what you're hiding."
The gate rippled.
Not unlocked.
Not opened.
Recognized.
Because Xu Mang wasn't walking in as a mage.
He wasn't even walking in as a human.
Right now, he walked with the scent of dragon authority stitched into his very soul.
The ice melted for him like wax beneath a flame.
The gate parted.
Light spilled out.
Inside was a pristine vault—
scrolls preserved in encasing crystals,
metal tablets etched with runes,
and at the center…
A single book.
Bound in silver frost.
Resting on an altar of blue stone.
Xu Mang stepped toward it.
The title glimmered faintly.
Innate Talent Forging: Foundations of Seizing Fate
He grinned.
"Found you."
He reached for the book.
Just as his fingertips brushed the cold cover—
A female voice echoed behind him.
"Well now. You're not supposed to be here."
Xu Mang froze.
Slowly, he turned his head.
Standing in the vault entrance, holding a lantern of pale blue fire, was a girl with silver hair cascading over her shoulders like moonlight.
Eyes as sharp as ice crystals.
Breath as steady as a winter storm.
Mu Ningxue.
And she was staring directly at him.
Through the Thousandfold Concealment Sequence.
As if it wasn't even there.
Xu Mang blinked once.
"…Huh."
Mu Ningxue raised an eyebrow.
"…Huh?"
She took a step closer, her frost aura blooming gently in the vault.
"I said," she repeated, voice cool as the gate behind her, "you are not supposed to be here."
Xu Mang sighed inwardly.
The dragon was going to roast him alive for this later.