Break Illusion

Angel brought Moro to the stilt house where his mentor lived.

"Master has already gone to bed. Mr. Moro, please forgive me—I'll go in and inform him first."

Moro nodded, and Angel went up to the second floor ahead of him.

"This house is built quite ingeniously. I never expected to see such a peculiar structure even on the Old Earth Continent." Moro offered a brief word of praise for the stilt house's appearance. He had seen many strange buildings on the Prosperous Continent. Though the stilt house's design was uniquely ingenious, it was ultimately still a mundane creation. The main reason for his praise was that its builder was merely an ordinary man.

Moro did not care much for the stilt house, but Alan and Irene could not contain their curiosity. They circled the little house, even braving the rain to inspect the vegetables and fruits Jon had planted near the vine trellis in the courtyard.

The brother and sister had not entirely shed their youthful natures. Though they tried to act mature, their occasional actions still carried a trace of innocence. That pure childishness made everyone smile unconsciously. Seeing their interest in the grape trellis, Leon had a flash of inspiration and fetched two bottles of red grape wine that had been cellared for two years, filling everyone's glasses.

The wine was rich and mellow, its fragrance intoxicating. Using their shared fondness for drink as a bridge, Leon began discussing the front lines with Eaton. Eaton also wanted to break the awkward silence, and the two hit it off at once. The atmosphere soon relaxed.

Meanwhile, Angel went upstairs. He first woke the mute servant and had him help his mentor change clothes. After sending the servant away, he finally explained why he had come.

Jon had been awakened in the middle of the night, and his mind had yet to fully clear. Only when Angel uttered the word "wizard" did he suddenly react.

"Wizard? You said you met a wizard just now?" Jon grabbed Angel's sleeve with his withered hand and cried out in disbelief

.

"Yes. More precisely, he is a Third-Level Wizard Apprentice. That is what Moro called himself."

Confusion and curiosity flashed through Jon's eyes, followed by sudden realization as he repeatedly murmured, "So that's how it is, so that's how it is. Now it all makes sense. Wizards, wizards! I've studied physical data for years, yet so many formulas could never be applied. So this was the source of it... I was wrong from the very beginning. This world was never ordinary—it is actually a world with supernatural power!"

"Hahahaha, I always thought my horizons stood above those of the natives here. Yet in the end, I was trapped to death by my own horizons. Is this what it means to spin a cocoon around oneself?" Jon stared blankly out the window and shouted aloud.

His cries were laden with fierce emotion—resentment and remorse.

Even the people in the first-floor hall heard him. Moro listened carefully to those self-mocking cries of unwillingness, his face full of bewilderment. "Eh? What language is that? Why isn't it the common tongue?"

Angel had not previously told Moro everything about Jon. He had said nothing of Jon's origins, nor that Morning Dew After Rain had been planted by Jon. Thus, Moro had always assumed Jon was an Imperial citizen.

"It's the language of old Jon's homeland. It's called... Huaxia Language, I think? I don't know much about it either." Leon was equally puzzled.

Huaxia? Moro thought for a moment, but the name of that country left no impression in his mind. It was probably some small nation tucked away in a remote corner. After thinking it over, Moro did not dwell on the detail. Though he was curious about the emotions contained in that roar, as a wizard apprentice, there were far too many things that piqued his curiosity. There was no need to waste precious time on an ordinary person's affairs.

Besides, he had only just advanced to Advanced Apprentice. All he wanted was to quickly resolve Angel's troubles, leave the Old Earth Continent, and return to the academy for further study. Nothing else was more important than his own strength.

With that thought, Moro simply closed his eyes and began meditating.

Not long after, Angel came downstairs with Jon, whose expression had returned to calmness.

Jon did not let Angel support him. Before his legs had atrophied, he had personally designed a wheelchair. With several axles, wheels, and springs, it allowed him to easily go up and down stairs in daily life.

After learning from Leon that the wheelchair beneath Jon was designed by Jon himself, Moro could not help sighing inwardly. He has strong mechanical talent. If he had talent for it and took the alchemy path, he might have achieved great things. What a pity... Even if he had talent, he is simply too old.

Moro's first impression of Jon was fixed upon one word: old.

He himself was already nearing eighty. Because he had not broken through to become an official wizard, he could only let time alter his appearance. Still, he had used certain methods of upkeep, and outwardly he looked no more than sixty-something.

As for the Jon before him, if Angel had not previously said that Jon was only in his early fifties, Moro would have thought he was at least a hundred years old.

"Is it a pathological mutation, bloodline depletion, or perhaps a curse that accelerated the erosion of time's power?"

The great trouble Angel had mentioned earlier was precisely his hope that Moro could treat Jon. Thus, Moro immediately began considering Jon's condition.

When Jon approached, Moro frowned. A strange sense of incongruity emanated from Jon.

It felt like the otherworldly slaves captured by wizards that he had once seen at the Crimson Auction—an incongruity that made them seem utterly out of place beneath this heaven and earth

.

Could this man be a visitor from another plane? Moro frowned.

But when it came to visitors from other planes, he did not quite fit that description either. Moro remembered reading Pros and Cons of Plane Conquest, written by the twisted great wizard Basil, in the academy library. It clearly stated that while other planes possessed intelligent life, humans identical to them had never been discovered.

Of course, there were many humanoid creatures: ones with three eyes, ones with fish scales behind their ears, ones small enough to fit in one's palm, ones with wings on their backs. Though they bore human appearances, they were generally classified as humanoid races.

Could this man be a humanoid from another plane? Moro secretly guessed, but his face remained kindly.

If he truly was an otherworldly creature, capturing him and selling him to a wizard lord would earn at least ten Magic Crystals! After struggling for so many years, Moro had saved fewer than a hundred Magic Crystals.

At that thought, Moro's eyes curved into thin slits.

Once Jon had sat down, Moro gave a light cough and said, "I'll first perform Disease Detection on you. As long as we find the right direction, treatment should not be a problem."

Without waiting for Jon or Angel to react, Moro directly summoned a crystal ball and began chanting under his breath.

Before long, rings of pale green light drifted from the crystal ball, slowly enveloping Jon's body.

Startled by this extraordinary sight, Jon gradually calmed beneath the soothing green rings. Color slowly returned to his face, and at last he silently closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

Everyone marveled at Moro's methods, assuming he was casting a healing spell. They did not know that the wizardry Moro had released was not the Level 1 cantrip he had mentioned, Disease Detection, but a Level 2 cantrip that only a Second-Level Wizard Apprentice could barely cast: Break Illusion.

Break Illusion was an auxiliary cantrip capable of seeing through illusions and obstructions. Though it was ostensibly a cantrip for dispelling illusions, wizardry itself could not be defined with a single sentence. Just as Grease Spell was meant to hinder others from advancing, yet with a slight adjustment could also help fuel a fire, every form of wizardry held infinite possibilities. What wizards pursued as truth was, in fact, the process of turning infinite possibilities into infinite certainties. Break Illusion was no different. With a slight adjustment—changing the target from oneself to another—it could serve a different purpose, such as determining the other party's race.

However, the prerequisite for such usage was that the other party had to willingly cooperate with the casting. Once they felt resistance, the cantrip would naturally fail. Moro had cast it under the pretext of helping with treatment, so Jon certainly would not resist.

The green rings continued for half a minute. They initially enveloped Jon's head, then slowly moved down to his feet, as though scanning him. Once everything was complete, the rings gathered back into the crystal ball.

Moro's gaze flickered as he silently sent his spiritual power into the crystal ball, examining the result returned by Break Illusion.

"Human? A one-hundred-percent pure human?!"

Seeing this answer, Moro felt the reassuring certainty that it was only right, yet faintly felt that his intuition should not have been wrong. After pondering it for a long while without reaching a conclusion, he ultimately chose to trust Break Illusion's result. As long as Jon was human, he was one of their kind. There was no need to dwell on it further.

Since Jon was not an otherworldly creature, once Moro cast aside his misgivings, he naturally began fulfilling the promise he had made to Angel.

He continued waving the crystal ball, then silently used magic to construct a new cantrip model... This time, the cantrip model he constructed was the real Disease Detection.