This kind of thing must be widely publicized

One month later.

"Honestly, I'm disappointed."

He Shenyan stood with his back to the guy who was tied up tightly with black magical chains and lying on the high platform, sipping a cup of coffee.

He was dressed casually, but his expression was far from pleasant.

"You attacked me without provocation and displayed intense malice. While I understand that people like you are capable of all sorts of bottom-feeding behavior—including killing someone you perceive as, uh, a Muggle, for no reason—it's a pity that I am not one."

"However, what I cannot understand is the way you cast spells. Gentlemen, you possess a treasure, yet you have never once thought to mine it."

He set down his coffee, turned around, snatched a stick from the guy's waist, and gave it a shake.

"A shoddy enchanted wand. You have clearly touched the boundary of twisting reality with your mind, so why stop there? Sigh."

He let out a long sigh. The guy stared at him in terror, whimpering incessantly as if begging for mercy, completely oblivious to what he was saying.

What a pity.

He Shenyan took one last careful look at the wand in his hand, shook his head, and tossed it away.

He raised the index finger of his right hand, a thin blade of magical energy manifesting. He walked toward the poor local wizard, even offering a gentle smile when he noticed the man's sweat-drenched face and terrified expression.

"Relax, sir. Based on the experience of your previous companions, I will be very careful with my proportions this time. You won't die—at least, not in such agony."

The guy began to struggle violently.

"Don't bother begging. Accept the facts; you were the ones who blocked me in the back alley of that magical artifact market with the intent to kill."

The mage smiled with refined elegance: "Every cause has an effect, sir. You are an adult; you should be responsible for your own actions, shouldn't you?"

Half an hour later, he wiped the blood from his hands, walked out of the basement, and snapped his fingers to clean the mess inside with magic.

Afterward, he came to the courtyard of the country villa where he had been living for a month and sat down.

The scenery of the European countryside was quite nice; calling it picturesque would not be an exaggeration. In such an environment, He Shenyan began to think silently.

Thanks to these kind souls who delivered themselves to his doorstep, he had finally figured out the spellcasting methods of the wizards in this world.

He had arrived here a month ago and intended to leave immediately, but he discovered that the magic in this world was exceptionally dense and that practitioners existed. Driven by a researcher's curiosity, he decided to stay for a while to collect knowledge related to their spells.

However, as an outsider, he did not make contact with the local magical community. At most, he would stroll through their private black markets to broaden his horizons and silently scan the books in their shops using his mental power.

He simply couldn't resist such things.

Then, good times didn't last.

After a gathering, these people set their sights on him.

They thought he was an easy target—a fresh face who had accidentally stumbled into the wizarding assembly—and wanted to kill him for it. They seemed to harbor an extreme hatred for Muggles, or ordinary people.

That point was quite interesting.

It was just that their meager knowledge couldn't support their foolish brains in understanding that this black-robed stranger wasn't devoid of magic; rather, his magic was completely restrained.

This was proof of his extreme control over his own power.

Though he had changed worlds and the people here called themselves wizards rather than mages, their physical structure was no different from what He Shenyan knew, and even the location of their magical storage remained the same: in the brain.

Thinking of this, he sighed again—how could they just stop there? Why must they rely on those wands and incantations? You could have gone so much further! What a waste!

Twisting reality with the mind, forcing it to obey one's command. Isn't such a path better than casting spells with a wand?

He shook his head helplessly, a sense of regret welling up, and he couldn't stop the emotion from taking hold.

Initially, the essence of the magic he learned from the Ancient One was borrowing.

Mages coordinated with each other through complex gestures and incantations, sacrificing to the Dimensional Gods to obtain magic and complete spells. As an outsider, He Shenyan quickly discovered the flaw.

If you don't even have your own magic, can you really be called a mage?

So he began to make bold changes—and he even succeeded. No one expected him to succeed.

Thanks to his improvements, the way the mages of Kamar-Taj cast spells today is vastly different from the past.

Now, they no longer need to borrow or pay a painful price. They only need to condense magic through meditation and use their own mental power to drive the flow of that magic.

A fireball is still a fireball, and even the formations remain unchanged, but there is no longer a need to communicate with the Dimensional Gods—what is there to communicate? The creditor has become me!

However, even so, the method of obtaining magic—the process of meditation—is extremely dangerous. Without long-term practice or astonishing talent, any single step could lead to dire consequences.

At best, one becomes an idiot; at worst, one dies on the spot. Even so, it could not stop mages from all over the world from coming to Kamar-Taj to learn—no mage could refuse this path.

Great power belongs to oneself.

As his attainments in magic grew higher and higher, He Shenyan did not stop there. He began to constantly improve and invent new spells. In the process, he even gradually discovered the essence of magic.

Magic, in the final analysis, is actually using a powerful will to influence, twist, and even change the world.

To make the world bow at your feet.

This was the fundamental reason why he was truly disappointed in the wizards of this world.

They had already walked the path that the mages of Kamar-Taj took thousands of years to traverse, yet they abruptly stopped. They could have taken one step forward, just one more step!

Yet no one took it.

The wizards of this world were all children who had just learned to run. They all had talent, and the best among them might even possess formidable magic. It was a pity that this talent was wasted—completely wasted.

They could have become professional runners once grown, with the exceptionally gifted even becoming Bolts, running in a way that shocked everyone and becoming synonymous with greatness, but now—

He Shenyan looked up at the clear sky over the European countryside, unable to help but hesitate.

Do I really want to do this?

Do I really want to help them progress, forcibly changing the course of this world as an outsider? They are satisfied with the status quo, and though I am angry at their lack of ambition, this anger is entirely unreasonable.

He closed his eyes, intending to rest for a moment and let go of this pointless obsession, but a voice suddenly echoed in his heart.

It was not his own voice.

"Please, help them."

The voice vanished in an instant. He Shenyan looked up in shock—someone had bypassed the protective wards he had set up and initiated a conversation directly within his mind?

Who are you?!

The voice replied two seconds later: "World Barrier. I have accepted you, outsider, so I ask you to help them—they have taken the wrong path."

The mage froze. His instincts urged him to refuse to believe this, but his reason began to compel him to verify the truth of the matter. He vanished from where he stood, reappearing at a weak point in the World Barrier he had observed long ago.

Eye of Observation was released—within that dim field of vision, the only glowing weak point began to squirm slowly, and a line of text emerged upon it.

"I ask you to help them, and I will help you cross boundaries once more."

He Shenyan fell silent—he could find no reason to refuse. A moment later, he nodded.

And he was a man of action.

He closed his eyes, no longer concealing his mental power. His incomplete, recovering soul remained formidable, sweeping across the entire world in an instant. Everyone who possessed magic within them felt an inexplicable tremor at that moment.

However, only those with high magical power could realize that this was, in fact, a message—an invitation.

There were many ways to help, and the most efficient might be to brainwash every spellcaster in the world, crudely stuffing knowledge into them and leaving them to fend for themselves, completely disregarding the dangers they faced when meditating alone.

But if you were to ask him what he had learned from those seven hundred long, stinking, and tedious volumes of magical history from around the world in the library of Ancient One, He Shenyan would tell you one thing: any mage who does not consider themselves human and places themselves above all living beings will meet a miserable end.

After all, you were born human.