After the school year ended, Ian entered a period of intensive seclusion for research.
He sent letters to all his familiar friends and collaborators, stating that he would no longer be in contact for quite some time.
To reassure his aunt Amelia and little Susan, he fulfilled an earlier promise—he took them to the Moon.
Under the transparent dome, the three of them looked down upon the blue Earth. The oceans flowed like sapphires, and white clouds curled around the continents like a silent dream.
Amelia shed silent tears, while Susan merely clung tightly to Ian's sleeve.
At that moment, she finally believed that Technomagic was more than a fantasy.
But this was only the prologue.
Ian's true goals were threefold:
First, to rewrite his own Life Code;
Second, to forge his own Philosopher's Stone;
Third, to use the Philosopher's Stone as an Energy Core and activate the World Gate project.
Yet he understood that if his body and soul were not perfect, the latter two steps would be impossible.
Thus, he chose to complete the most dangerous and crucial experiment first—"Life Rewrite."
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The initial stage of the experiment was external validation of the plan.
He captured several fugitive dark wizards alone and tested the Life Code Reconstruction Technique on them.
All of them were wanted criminals. Some had massacred Muggles during the war, while others specialized in illegal transformation experiments.
Ian conducted an "Atonement Experiment" on them—if they survived successfully, they would be buried beneath the lunar surface; if they failed, their corpses would be converted into data.
As it turned out, the first few experiments had plenty of problems.
Some subjects suffered mental breakdowns during the rewriting process, causing their magic to run wild; others dissolved physically due to bloodline rejection.
Ian did not lose his temper.