The vault's cold air tightened around them like a held breath.
For a moment, neither moved.
A normal person, a normal mage, a normal anyone would have panicked.
Xu Mang just blinked once and thought:
…Okay. Didn't expect her to be the problem.
Time to improvise at god-tier difficulty.
Mu Ningxue's frost aura rippled gently—controlled, elegant, and sharp enough to cut the air into ribbons. Her silver hair floated slightly, lifted by the mana pressure that came naturally to her. She wasn't hostile, but she wasn't relaxed either.
Her eyes stayed locked on the exact spot Xu Mang stood.
He scratched his cheek.
"So," he said carefully, "you can see me."
She did not blink.
"I can."
He pointed at himself. "Through… all of this?"
"Yes."
A beat of silence.
Xu Mang nodded slowly.
"Alright. I'm impressed. Very, very inconveniently impressed. But impressed."
Her expression did not change. "Explain."
Right. Straight to the point. No drama. No warmup. Classic Mu Ningxue.
Xu Mang opened his mouth—
then paused.
He could lie.
He could say he was some kind of spirit.
He could say he wandered in by accident.
He could claim he was scouting for Black Vatican.
He could even pretend to be a hallucination.
All terrible options.
Instead, he smiled.
"Truth? I came to steal something."
The temperature dropped so sharply that frost bloomed across the vault floor in seconds.
Her voice was soft.
Dangerously soft.
"You're admitting to trespassing in the Mu Clan's hereditary vault."
"Yes."
"And attempting to steal a forbidden technique."
"Yes."
"And you're not even trying to escape."
Xu Mang gestured casually around him.
"You froze the floor. I'd fall on my face before I made it five steps. So running feels like the wrong vibe."
Mu Ningxue stared at him with the expression of someone who had never in her life encountered a person this utterly incorrect.
Then—
to Xu Mang's surprise—
she did not scream, or summon guards, or blast him into the next century.
She stepped closer.
Her frost aura, normally sharp and cold enough to bite skin, softened slightly.
"What do you want with the forging technique?" she asked quietly.
Xu Mang didn't answer immediately.
He looked at her—really looked at her.
The poised posture hiding a deep loneliness.
The cold talent she never asked for.
The obligations shackled to her ankle by her family's ambition.
This girl, in the original story, was a victim of politics she didn't deserve.
In his timeline?
She was still at the very start of that path.
Xu Mang exhaled.
"Bo City fell," he said.
Her eyes flickered—a real reaction, small but unmistakable.
"You know that, right?" he continued. "People died because they weren't strong enough. Because the world doesn't care about effort, talent, or fairness."
Her fingers clenched around the lantern's handle.
"I want the technique," Xu Mang said softly, "because I want to make sure the people with me don't die powerless."
A deeper silence settled.
A breath.
A tremor.
A heartbeat.
Mu Ningxue looked down at the book on the altar—the cursed, taboo, coveted scripture of her clan. Even she wasn't allowed to touch it.
"…That technique," she whispered, "has caused more suffering than salvation."
Xu Mang nodded. "I know."
"And yet you want it."
"I need it."
Her gaze rose again, colder this time.
"Anyone who attempts to use it is branded a criminal. Even within the clan."
"I'm not from your clan."
"That doesn't make it less dangerous."
Xu Mang shrugged.
"I'm used to dangerous things."
She looked at him for a long time—longer than she should have, longer than a stranger deserved.
Then she asked the question that mattered:
"Are you going to hurt anyone to take it?"
Xu Mang's response came instantly.
"No. I'm only taking paper. Not lives."
Her eyes softened—barely.
The frost on the ground thinned.
She stepped aside.
"Take it."
Xu Mang froze.
"…What?"
"Take the book," she repeated. "Quietly. Without leaving a trace. If you're caught, you were never here. If they question me, I saw nothing."
Xu Mang stared at her.
"Why?" he asked quietly.
She looked away.
"Because my clan hoards power the world needs," she whispered. "Because the techniques they lock underground could save people instead of serving politics. Because I'm tired of standing still while cities fall."
She turned back to him, eyes sharp as moonlit ice.
"And because I know," she said, "that if you manage to get this far without being detected… you might actually do something with it."
Xu Mang slowly reached for the book.
His fingers brushed the cold cover.
It warmed beneath his touch—as if recognizing a new owner.
He lifted it.
Heavy.
Ancient.
Alive.
Mu Ningxue extinguished her frost lantern.
"You should leave," she murmured. "Before the Guardian realizes something is wrong."
Xu Mang nodded.
But before he stepped away, he added quietly:
"When Mo Fan goes to Pearl Institute… choose to help him. Don't wait for the world to force you."
Her eyes widened slightly.
"You know him?"
"I know his future," Xu Mang said. "And yours. And trust me—your paths are tied tighter than any clan elder understands."
She didn't answer.
He didn't push.
Xu Mang slipped back toward the gate—
and the Thousandfold Concealment Sequence folded around him like a shadow swallowing gold.
Mu Ningxue watched him disappear into thin air.
She whispered to the empty vault:
"…What a strange person."
The moment Xu Mang slipped out of the vault, the temperature shifted.
Not in the gentle, drifting way frost spreads across a window…
No.
This was sharp.
Sudden.
Predatory.
Like the air itself realized a crime had been committed.
Xu Mang paused mid-step, concealed completely under the Thousandfold Concealment Sequence, but every instinct in his body snapped to attention.
Someone noticed.
He turned his head just slightly.
Above the Frost Ancestral Hall, on one of the high walkways overlooking the courtyard, an elder in ceremonial azure robes stood perfectly still—hands folded behind his back, snow-white hair rippling despite the absence of wind.
Mu He.
The clan's First Research Elder.
A man whose entire personality could be summarized as "paranoid scholar with too much authority."
His eyes narrowed at the hall below.
"Something is… amiss."
Xu Mang did not breathe.
Mu He raised one hand. A pale-blue glyph spun into existence, trembling in the cold air—a high-precision detection spell that normally caught even underground insects.
It washed over the courtyard like a sheet of frost.
Passed through guards.
Passed through pillars.
Passed through Xu Mang.
No reaction.
The Thousandfold Concealment Sequence didn't just hide him.
It lied to the world.
Mu He frowned deeper.
"Recalibrate for soul frequency," he muttered.
A second glyph formed—this one gold-flecked and violent, the kind of spell that forced hidden presences into visibility by agitating their spiritual resonance.
It passed through the courtyard.
Through walls.
Through Xu Mang.
Still nothing.
Mu He's brows drew together. "Impossible… was it fluctuation from the vault seals?"
Xu Mang offered a silent prayer of thanks to the ancient dragon.
And also a silent apology.
The Sequence wasn't supposed to endure direct high-tier detection spells. He was absolutely going to owe that dragon a fruit basket or a kingdom later.
Mu He scraped frost from the railing with one finger, deep in thought.
"Strengthen patrols. Increase mana-pressure on all seals. If there was a disturbance, it will reveal itself."
Two guards bowed and sprinted off.
Xu Mang waited until Mu He turned away, then drifted—soft as a breath—toward the estate's outer ring.
Not walking.
Not running.
Just moving, like the world had forgotten to notice him.
He slipped through light, frost, footsteps, sound, and the very idea of presence until he stood outside the estate wall again.
The Thousandfold Concealment faded into a gentler hum.
He exhaled.
"That was… extremely stupid," he said to himself. "And extremely successful. Excellent balance."
He glanced down at the book under his coat—the silver-frost spine gleaming faintly.
Innate Talent Forging.
Centuries of taboo research.
A weapon.
A miracle.
And now it belonged to him.
He walked toward the train district. The city lights dimmed behind him as the night thinned into dawn.
He ducked into a quiet, abandoned workshop near the tracks and lit a small lamp. Then he placed the ancient book on the table.
A faint mist of frost rose off its surface.
Xu Mang cracked it open.
The first page was a warning, written in elegant, archaic script:
"To seize fate is to lose something equal.
To grant power is to wound another.
Balance is law."
Xu Mang snorted. "Philosophy before manuals. Excellent."
He flipped the page.
The next section outlined the fundamentals:
— Innate Talent is not just a trait; it is a soul imprint woven into elemental resonance pathways.
— It can be extracted if one breaks the resonance chain carefully.
— The donor must be at least spirit-stable or the process collapses.
— The recipient must have compatible elemental affinity or risk self-collapse.
— A catalyst is required to stabilize the transfer: a High-tier Soul Essence.
Xu Mang leaned back, eyebrows lifting.
"Oh, this is messy. Beautifully messy."
He flipped further.
The diagrams showed intricate soul threads, spiraling into geometrical patterns resembling constellations.
The forging method required:
• Soul pressure
• Elemental stabilizers
• A three-stage chain-breaking process
• A catalyst infusion
• A final re-binding phase
Most of it read like a medical procedure for the soul, performed by a psychopath.
But Xu Mang's mind processed it calmly.
Step by step.
Structure by structure.
Finally he reached the most important page.
"Forging requires a donor, a recipient, and a forger."
He stared at the book.
"…Who exactly do they expect to supervise this? A bored angel?"
He kept reading.
"The forger must not be emotionally tied to either side. Attachment distorts balance."
Xu Mang's expression darkened slightly.
Right. Emotional detachment.
Perfect for someone trying to save people he actually cares about.
He turned the page.
The next section was written in a different ink—older, heavier.
"Forging a talent does not create life. It redistributes destiny.
Choose carefully who receives fortune, and from whom it is taken."
Xu Mang closed the book.
His reflection in the frosted window looked sharper than usual.
He wasn't going to take from good people.
He wasn't going to rob families of their prodigies.
He wasn't going to break lives to build others.
He was going to take from monsters.
From clans who believed the world belonged to them.
From criminals whose talents only fueled cruelty.
And he would reshape those stolen fates into shields for the people beside him.
A train horn echoed from the station.
The sun crept up behind the city's frost-touched rooftops.
Xu Mang stood slowly, sliding the book back into his coat.
Time to return.
Time to prepare.
Time to build a world where someone like Mo Fan didn't have to dig himself out of every grave fate threw at him.
He stepped into the morning light.
And the shadows followed him willingly.