The courtyard fell silent for several seconds.
The moment Talia finished speaking, all three women looked at Su Li. Su Li, meanwhile, stared into Talia's emerald-green eyes.
"Explain yourself." Elena was the first to speak, her voice low.
Talia ignored her. She walked over to the stone table and drew a circle on its surface with her fingernail.
"The essence of aether solidification is compressing flowing energy into a stable 'core.' At the instant that core takes shape, it produces violent tremors. Your soul must withstand those tremors, or it will shatter."
She drew three smaller circles outside the larger one.
"But what if your soul isn't isolated? What if, at the moment the tremors strike, three souls bound to you by a possibly profound fate simultaneously exert stabilizing force on your soul from three directions?"
Talia looked up at Su Li.
"Like a three-point positioning clamp used in forging. When metal is quenched, it contracts and warps violently, but if fixed points press in from three directions at once, it can retain its original shape until it cools."
Su Li understood.
She was using pure forging logic. It had nothing to do with his cheat.
This old elf had, from a technical perspective, deduced a method that almost perfectly overlapped with the Family Group's effects. It was purely a coincidence—but one so uncanny it sent chills down his spine.
"Wait." Saina squeezed in beside Su Li and clutched his sleeve. "The anchors are the three of us? Then when the impact comes, will he...?"
Her lips parted, but she swallowed the rest of the question and rephrased it.
"Will we be hurt?"
Talia tapped the stone table twice. "Soul resonance isn't extraction. It's vibration. To put it simply, the three of you are standing at either end of a