"My most compatible wand?" Allen's eyes lit up with excitement. "That sounds more appealing than a magic boost!"
The system did not answer immediately. Instead, it projected a pale blue screen into his mind.
Lines of text appeared on the screen, carrying a certain ancient rhythm.
[Analyzing host's essence...] [Analysis complete.] [Host: Allen Vane] [Essence: A traveler through time and space, a wandering soul from another world, a drifter across parallel timelines]
Allen froze, falling silent for once.
On the days he had not spent writing lately, he often went out exploring with great enthusiasm, but he felt a sense of loneliness at every moment.
The local customs, people's manners and speech... all felt unfamiliar and distant to him.
He had to admit that he missed that red nation. He... missed home.
[The host's soul does not belong to this world. It drifted here from another dimension, another timeline.] [Therefore, conventional wand materials cannot establish perfect resonance with the host.] [An ordinary wand will never be able to unleash the host's true power.]
Allen casually wiped the corners of his eyes and grinned. "So I'm pretty special, then?"
[Precisely.] [To match the host's unique essence, the system has extracted the most suitable materials from the roots of the multiverse.] [Wand wood: Jianmu.] [Jianmu originates from Eastern mythology and is the only passage connecting heaven, earth, humans, and gods.] [It symbolizes connection, traversal, and communication, and is the embodiment of the oldest road in the universe, matching the host's identity as a "transmigrator."] [Wand core: Zhulong Whisker.] [Zhulong is a mythical creature of the East that governs time. When he opens his eyes, it is day; when he closes them, it is night. When he blows, it is winter; when he breathes out, it is summer.] [His whiskers contain the power to manipulate and even reverse time, matching the host's experience of "wandering timelines."] [Wand length: Thirteen and two-thirds inches.] [Flexibility: Extremely rigid.]
Reading the descriptions on the screen, Allen felt his heart pound in his chest.
"Jianmu... Zhulong..." he repeated the two names quietly.
He was no mythologist, but he knew what those two names represented.
Jianmu was the divine tree in Eastern mythology that connected heaven, earth, humans, and gods, the only passage through the three realms.
Zhulong was an ancient deity who governed the alternation of day and night and the cycle of the seasons, his power even touching the very essence of time.
Both were beings from ancient Eastern legends.
"System," he swallowed, "are you sure you haven't made a mistake?"
"These two materials... aren't they a bit too ridiculous?"
[The system has never made a mistake.] [The host's soul crossed the barriers of time and space and traversed dimensional boundaries. This aligns closely with Jianmu's essence.] [At the same time, the host's arrival altered the course of this world's fate, resonating with Zhulong's power over time.] [Therefore, the combination of Jianmu and Zhulong Whisker is the only choice that best suits the host.]
The next moment, ripples suddenly appeared in the air before Allen.
Like a pebble dropped into a still lake, ripples in space spread outward from the center.
Then a wand slowly emerged from the ripples.
Its appearance surprised Allen.
He had expected Jianmu to be some sort of rough, ancient-looking wood, but what actually appeared before him was a dark wooden wand with a smooth, lustrous surface.
Its color lay somewhere between dark brown and inky black, with a faint bluish-green sheen shifting beneath the light.
Fine patterns were faintly visible along the shaft, like some kind of ancient runes, appearing and disappearing as the light changed.
Most striking of all was a faintly visible current of silvery-white light flowing inside the shaft, as though a sleeping dragon were breathing.
Allen steadied himself and reached out to grasp the wand.
The instant his fingers touched the shaft, a powerful sense of resonance surged from his palm through his entire body.
It was like a traveler who had wandered for years finally returning to his homeland, or a child lost in the darkness finally finding the way home.
An invisible connection seemed to form between his heart and the wand, each heartbeat making the silvery-white thread inside the shaft tremble slightly.
Holding the wand, he felt his magic rejoicing, surging wildly with the support of Jianmu and the Zhulong Whisker.
"No, wait-" Allen's expression suddenly changed. He felt something about to gush out.
He desperately tried to suppress it, but as everyone knew, the harder one tried to suppress certain things, the harder they became to hold back.
"Oh no, it's... it's coming out-"
The instant the words left his mouth, he felt the magic inside him surge out as though a floodgate had opened.
A brilliant pillar of light erupted from the wand's tip, piercing the roof and shooting straight into the sky.
In anguish and indignation, Allen tried to pull his magic back, only to discover that he could not control its rampage at all.
The pillar of magical light burst through his apartment, forming a dazzling, silvery-white column visible to the naked eye in London's night sky.
The pillar shot straight toward the heavens, as though it would pierce the clouds and reach the stars.
People near Baker Street looked up in astonishment.
A young man walking his dog stopped in his tracks, the leash slipping from his hand, while his pet dog also stood rooted to the spot, staring up at the sky.
"Wh... what's that?" he murmured.
A middle-aged woman beside him covered her mouth, her eyes wide. "Oh God... a pillar of light..."
The moment she finished speaking, the pillar vanished.
"I saw it too!" A fat man in pajamas leaned out of a window, confirming that it had not been an illusion. "A pillar of light! It just suddenly appeared and disappeared!"
"Was it a shooting star?"
"Doesn't look like it. Shooting stars fall down. This went up."
"Could it be a UFO?"
"Don't be ridiculous..."
People on the street stopped one after another, gathering in twos and threes, pointing at the sky and discussing it.
Some tried to pull out cameras to capture traces of the light, but there was already nothing left in the sky.
Only a few wisps of cloud drifted slowly in the moonlight, as though nothing had happened.
A young man in a peaked cap rubbed his eyes. "Were my eyes playing tricks on me?"
"No way," his friend beside him said. "I saw it too."
The people around them began discussing it.
"What on earth was that?"
"Could an underground pipe have exploded?"
"What explosion makes light like that? Didn't you see? That pillar of light was perfectly straight! It shot straight up into the sky!"
"Maybe it was some kind of new weapons test?"
"The government testing weapons in central London? Are you mad?"
Everyone talked over one another, but no one could say just what that light had been.
Meanwhile, Allen lay sprawled on the floor, his face exhausted. That brief outburst had completely drained all his magic, leaving not a trace inside him.
He had no strength at all now and could only lie on the floor, slowly recovering.
"System!" he shouted in a hushed voice. "What was that just now?!"
[After the host obtained his exclusive wand, his magic entered deep resonance with it, causing a brief loss of control.]
"Loss of control?!" Allen's voice abruptly rose. "Easy for you to say! That light was probably visible across all of London!"
"Have I been exposed? Will someone come knocking? The government won't arrest me, will it?"
The more he thought about it, the more nervous he became. Although he had become a wizard, faced with humanity's most advanced modern weapons, he could only steer clear of them.
[Please remain calm, host.] [The space the host occupies is located within a subspace at the end of Baker Street.]
Allen paused. "A subspace?"
[Yes.] [This building does not exist entirely within the physical space of the Muggle world. Instead, it floats at a subspace node between the main world and the gaps between dimensions.] [Unless the host voluntarily steps outside this door, no one can discover him.] [Neither Muggle technological methods nor the various detection spells of wizards can locate this space.]
Only then did Allen breathe a sigh of relief. "So that's how it works. But I'm the only wizard in this world. Why go into so much detail?"
The system said nothing, remaining silent.
Allen paid it no mind either. He raised the wand in his hand and examined it closely. The silvery-white thread inside the shaft was still glowing faintly, as though winking at him.
"Jianmu... Zhulong..." he murmured the two names, his fingers gently brushing over the runic patterns on the shaft.
The patterns grew faintly warm beneath his touch, as though answering his call.
He could feel the connection between himself and the wand, an instinctive understanding like a bond of blood, a resonance like minds in perfect accord.
"It's perfect," Allen could not help praising it.
A powerful wave of exhaustion washed over him. He struggled onto the bed, placed the wand beside his pillow, then closed his eyes.
"Good night."
The silvery-white light inside the wand flickered silently, as though in reply.