Moved

Ace conducted a detailed sensory examination of Taggart and confirmed the effect of the light sphere. Taggart's spiritual power seemed to have undergone some kind of mutation, and he had become incomparably devout toward the Child of the Ocean.

Ace investigated several other Blessed Ones. Some had not yet digested their light spheres, and he successfully drew them out with a magical item. He removed the light spheres from Glimmer, intending to keep them for gradual study.

Ace cast Beguile Creatures on these people one by one. Only when he saw rune structures emerge behind their necks did he feel at ease enough to wake them.

Taggart woke in a daze. He seemed to have been chased by thousands of fishmen and had no idea how he had run all the way here. His head spun, and then he had fainted.

The strange fellow before him, wearing a fishman mask, seemed to be his close friend. Why did he feel so strange? Taggart felt a little pain at the back of his neck.

Then he looked into a pair of eyes gleaming with ghostly light, and gradually stopped wondering why anything felt strange.

Feeling the Beguile mark finally stabilize, Ace let out a long breath. He had not expected the magical fluctuations within Taggart to be so intense. They had nearly broken through the Beguile's control.

Fortunately, he had activated Illusion Gaze in time, weakening the other man's will and guiding his thoughts.

After questioning them, carefully sensing Taggart's condition with his spiritual power, and drawing more than half a jar of Taggart's blood, Ace planted a suggestion in them: they had accepted a bounty mission to capture a small group of fishmen in the westernmost village of Tsimari.

Ace had not intended to kill Taggart and the others. They bore no grudge against each other, so there was no need. Taggart and the others had also been confused by his illusions, making it difficult for them to remember his true features.

Killing wantonly did not fit his bottom line either. A person was themselves because they possessed self-restraint and boundaries. Without self-restraint, one became a monster controlled by desire.

For the sake of protecting himself, he could abandon innocent barbarian women. He could kill blood-soaked sea raiders without guilt. Yet when his own safety was not endangered, he would also spare innocent people.

He was neither a foolishly good man nor a cold-blooded villain. He was simply himself, truly following his own heart.

Over the next month or so, Ace investigated Blessed Ones of different times and types, reaching several preliminary conclusions:

First, all Blessed Ones would gradually transform into devout believers of Pontos, regardless of whether they had previously believed in Pontos.

Second, most Blessed Ones possessed an exceptionally strong wish or obsession. Why this characteristic could attract light spheres remained unclear.

Third, nobles could also receive blessings, and their proportion was far higher than that of ordinary people. Ace guessed that high spiritual power and high magic power had a greater attraction to light spheres. Perhaps magical items could be created to capture them.

Fourth, the light spheres required a rather long process to infiltrate their hosts. Those who had received blessings on the same day as Ace still had not completely fused with their light spheres.

Ace created a single magical item. It looked like a bronze mirror, and while crafting it, he mixed in the remaining portion of Sharp's heart powder. The rune array used was a single rune array modified from a meditation method, which could be called a Meditation Rune Array.

This bronze mirror had two effects. Its wearer would enter a passive meditative state, and when actively triggered, it could somewhat enhance Ace's meditation. Ace intended to use it to attract the light spheres within Glimmer.

He extended his spiritual power into the bronze mirror and activated the rune array within. Magic power gathered. When he brought Glimmer close to the mirror, the light sphere indeed began to waver. Ace extended his spiritual power along the rune array and touched the light sphere. The sphere immediately stuck to it and followed his spiritual power into the bronze mirror.

Ace had prepared beforehand and cut off his spiritual power in time, successfully transferring the light sphere into the mirror. He then placed the bronze mirror inside a prepared box of high-purity lead and wrapped it in cloth. Lead was the substance Ace had found to be most inert toward spiritual power, making it perfect for storing the light sphere.

Ace did not yet have the ability to study the light sphere, but he believed that he would eventually gain that ability. For now, he needed to preserve this precious experimental material.

With the matter of the light spheres temporarily settled, Ace used Beguile to practice medicine at the clinic of Hel, a renowned physician in Tsimari. Every morning, he treated patients. In the afternoons, he wandered casually through Tsimari, sketching anything that interested him on the drawing board he carried with him.

He painted while treating the local people. Soon, word spread through Tsimari that the Child of the Ocean had bestowed upon Ace exceptional medical and artistic talent.

Three months later, on an early summer afternoon, Ace was casually sketching in the street. A number of people had lined up before him, hoping that he would paint their portraits with his brush and palette.

"Scholar Ace's paintings are so lifelike, just like True People," said an excited young man.

"I want to preserve myself at my most beautiful," said a charming young married woman.

"I like Scholar Ace so much. Not only are his medical skills superb, and his original surgeries have saved countless lives, but he is also an artist," said a young girl, her eyes sparkling as she looked at Ace.

"I heard it is because of Lord Pontos's gift that Scholar Ace achieved so much in such a short time," an older woman said mysteriously.

Ace's medical practice and painting in Tsimari went exceptionally smoothly. The locals accepted without question that he possessed extraordinary medical skill and endlessly praised his paintings. They believed he was someone blessed by the Child of the Ocean. Every Blessed One underwent some astonishing change, so Ace's case was not surprising.

His New Medicine concepts were very popular here. Even some elderly bloodletting doctors came to study under him. They claimed that Ace's knowledge came from Pontos's gift, and that they were learning from a Favored of Pontos.

His paintings were pursued even more eagerly. The Tzimali people called his right hand the God-Given Hand. It could wield a scalpel to save lives and paint moving works of art.

In truth, in his previous life, Ace had only been an amateur oil painting enthusiast. But the tremendous increase in his spiritual power in this life had given him different powers of perception, greatly elevating his painting skills.

Space, composition, light and shadow, color—along with painting after painting, Ace's understanding of the emotion he had felt during the Bonfire Festival four months ago grew ever deeper. His understanding of spell models also deepened. In a sense, runes were also an art of painting.

By day, he saved people and gathered inspiration. By night, he patiently painted a vast mural upon the city wall, depicting that moment of emotion. He had a premonition that once the mural was complete, he would once again enter the state of spiritual advancement that had been interrupted last time, achieving an essential leap in the level of his life.

For these three months, he had been steadily refining himself. He felt joy in healing the sick and saving people, felt life in gathering inspiration. The joys and sorrows of the Tzimali people, every blade of grass and tree within Tsimari City, the medicinal herbs he collected, the prescriptions he prepared—all gave him a different kind of emotion.

This was the sublimation of life's essence, the wild blossoming of the soul's flower.

Ace suddenly packed up his stall, abandoned the waiting crowd, and returned to his residence. The bewildered crowd chased after him. Many people who had no idea what was happening followed along as well, and the flow of people grew ever larger.

The emotion had returned. He wanted to paint his love for life, his tribute to living beings, his commitment to the spirit of objective and impartial research, his pursuit of the world's truth, and his longing for the mysteries of the extraordinary onto the vast mural. He would engrave them into his soul and make them the fuel that would carry him upward.

Upon the enormous mural, the sketched outlines were gradually filled with color: the revelry of the Bonfire Festival, fiery young women, sturdy young men, elders who refused to admit age, childish little ones. They held torches high, their expressions vivid and varied.

The mural advanced bit by bit. The long serpentine line of torches gathered, rose, and surged straight into the heavens, dimming even the divine statue beside them.

The people who had followed him quietly watched the vast mural. Many found themselves within it, found their own joys and sorrows, their own truth, and their own emotion.

Ace watched the mural gradually reach completion. Finally, at the center of the painting beneath the divine statue, he outlined himself, gazing up at the sky with endless hope, endless curiosity, endless exploration. Then he wrote a sentence beside the mural:

"Night stretched black and deep. Suddenly, countless fireflies gathered. They were both kindling and seeds of flame. When fireflies converged, they became a torch. Within the darkness, I am the light."

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