It was late Friday evening when the grand, chaotic summit of the Dover family finally drew to a close.
The sprawling circular driveway of the estate, paved with perfectly crushed white gravel, was currently occupied by the two departing vehicles.
The sleek, understated black government-issue sedan belonging to Senior Uncle Nathaniel, and the flashy, aggressively expensive luxury SUV driven by Junior Aunt Sylvia.
The setting sun cast long, peaceful, golden shadows across the meticulously manicured lawns, a stark contrast to the absolute powerhouse of terrifying supernatural energy currently gathered by the front steps of the mansion.
Airis stood between her parents, her hands folded neatly in front of her cream-colored sundress.
She maintained her [Aura of Serenity] at a steady, ambient hum, projecting the image of a perfectly recovering, beautifully fragile teenage girl.
Internally, however, the twenty-seven-year-old salaryman was practically sweating bullets, hyper-aware that she was surrounded by a secret agent, an ancient Cultivator, and a transcendent Medicine Immortal.
"Remember, Airis,"
Junior Aunt Sylvia said, adjusting her oversized designer sunglasses and offering a practiced, incredibly stiff hug.
"If you ever need a break from the immense stress of city living, you can always come stay with us in the suburbs.
We have a wonderful neighborhood watch, and it's far less likely you'll be caught up in these terrifying... incidents."
It was a classic Sylvia maneuver—managing to sound simultaneously sympathetic and deeply condescending, implying that Alexander and Victoria were failing as protective parents.
"Thank you, Aunt Sylvia. I will definitely keep that in mind,"
Airis replied with a serene, faultless smile, ensuring her calming aura washed over the woman so Sylvia wouldn't feel the urge to add any further venom.
Nine-year-old Leo, still clutching his wooden baseball bat like a sacred knight holding a broadsword, looked up at Airis with solemn, wide eyes.
"I'm leaving the bat in the trunk for the ride home, but I sleep with it right next to my bed, Airis. If the bad guys come back to your house, you just call me. I can take the train."
"You are my absolute first line of defense, Leo,"
Airis promised, leaning down and tapping the top of his head affectionately.
The boy beamed, his chest puffing out with immense pride before his mother hurried him into the backseat of the luxury SUV.
Senior Uncle Nathaniel gave Alexander a firm, bone-crushing handshake and a stiff nod.
The two brothers exchanged a silent, weighty communication that likely involved international security protocols, shadow-government sweep operations, and classified threat assessments.
Aunt Eleanor, the terrifying hidden-clan cultivator, turned to Airis last.
Eleanor didn't offer a hug.
She simply reached out and gently squeezed Airis's hand.
Her dark eyes, which had previously probed Airis's meridians with terrifying precision, now held a profound, knowing warmth.
"Stay strong, child," Eleanor murmured softly, her voice pitched so low that only Airis could hear it.
"Your spirit is resilient. And make sure you tell that boy in the Southside... he is very lucky to have someone who blushes so fiercely for him."
Airis forced a rigid, polite smile, though she felt the dreaded, paradoxical heat rushing back to her cheeks.
"I... I will, Aunt Eleanor. Have a very safe trip back to the capital."
Finally, Junior Uncle Robert approached. The overworked, balding surgeon—who Airis now definitively knew was a transcendent Medicine Immortal capable of altering the very fabric of human biology—smiled warmly.
He reached into his worn leather medical bag and pulled out a small, incredibly mundane-looking plastic bottle.
"Airis, I noticed you were looking a little pale earlier this afternoon,"
Robert said kindly, his voice the perfect picture of a tired, caring suburban uncle.
He pressed the bottle into her hands.
"These are just some standard, over-the-counter vitamin gummies.
I give them to Leo every morning before school. Take one a day.
They'll help boost your immune system and help your body recover from the residual shock."
"Thank you, Uncle Robert,"
Airis said, looking down at the plastic bottle. It rattled innocuously.
The label featured a cartoon orange wearing sunglasses, boldly claiming to be packed with Vitamin C and Zinc.
"I'll make sure to take them."
With final waves, polite nods, and the honking of horns, the two vehicles rolled down the long, tree-lined driveway, eventually disappearing beyond the heavy wrought-iron gates.
Alexander let out a massive, uncharacteristic sigh of relief, immediately reaching up to loosen his silk tie.
Victoria leaned against him, resting her head against his broad shoulder.
"Well," Victoria breathed out, running a hand through her chestnut hair.
"We survived Sylvia for another year without me throwing a vase at her. I call that a resounding victory."
"I need a very stiff drink," Alexander muttered, turning back toward the mansion's double doors.
"And then I need to get back on the secure line with the Berlin logistics team. They've had four hours to rethink their hostile takeover defense."
Airis followed her parents inside, her thumb idly tracing the cheap plastic cap of the vitamin bottle Robert had given her.
Once she was safely upstairs and the heavy oak door of her bedroom was locked, she sat down on the edge of her king-sized bed.
She held the bottle up to the light. It looked entirely normal. It looked like something you could buy for four dollars at any local pharmacy.
Suddenly, the crisp, mechanical chime of the System rang out in the quiet recesses of her mind.
[Ding!]
[Item Analysis Complete.]
[Item Name: Nine-Revolutions Marrow Cleansing Pill (Severely Diluted/Sugar-Coated).]
[Creator: Entity 'Robert Dover' (Grandmaster of the Crucible).]
[Description: A legendary, mythic-tier alchemical marvel, flawlessly disguised as a chewable citrus gummy.
Consuming one gummy will instantly purge all mundane toxins from the human body, reconstruct damaged cellular pathways, extend the natural lifespan by approximately five to ten years, and permanently fortify the skeletal structure to be as dense as tempered steel.]
[Note: The Host currently possesses the 'Perfected Cellular Vitality' and the 'Aegis Bioskin'. Therefore, this item is completely redundant and will have zero effect on the Host.
However, it is considered an exceptionally high-tier, reality-breaking consumable for ordinary mortals.]
Airis stared at the cartoon orange on the label, her jaw dropping slightly.
He disguised a life-extending, bone-fortifying, legendary alchemical elixir as a children's chewable vitamin, she thought, letting out a breathless laugh of pure, unadulterated disbelief.
My family is absolutely, certifiably insane.
She opened the bottle. Inside were slightly translucent, orange-colored gummies coated in what looked like ordinary sugar crystals.
They smelled exactly like artificial citrus. To the untrained eye—or to anyone without a cosmic System installed in their brain—it was just candy.
Airis lay back on her pillows, staring up at the ceiling.
The System was right. She didn't need these. Her body was already a temple of divine, unshakeable perfection.
Her cells were perfectly vitalized, and her skin was an unbreakable quantum shield.
Eating one of these gummies would be like pouring a cup of water into the ocean.
But for an ordinary mortal?
For someone whose body was currently suffering the long-term effects of chronic malnutrition, exhaustion, and physical stress?
This little plastic bottle was a miracle. It was a golden ticket to absolute health.
An image flashed in Airis's mind. A scrawny, seventeen-year-old boy sitting in a drafty, freezing apartment, forcing himself to memorize calculus equations while his lower back throbbed and his eyes burned from lack of sleep.
The Riverdale Community Outreach Spring Basket had provided him with high-grade food and warmth, which had stabilized his immediate survival.
But food couldn't instantly undo two years of physical neglect.
Food couldn't instantly repair the microscopic damage done to a young body pushed to the absolute brink of collapse.
I don't need this, Airis thought, a fierce, pragmatic resolve hardening in her chest. But he does.
She sat up, her sapphire eyes narrowing with focus.
Tomorrow was Saturday.
The timeline of her slow-paced life was perfectly clear: she had Saturday to relax, and Sunday morning would bring her next Weekly Sign-In.
She had a window of opportunity to make another anonymous delivery.
But she couldn't use a proxy server or a delivery app to send a physical object currently sitting in her bedroom.
And she certainly couldn't ask Arthur to drive her to the Southside again; Alexander's newly heightened security protocols meant her town car was strictly monitored.
If she left the estate, a detail of armed guards would follow her every move.
She needed to get the bottle to Lin Ye without ever leaving her room.
Airis looked at her own hands. A faint, luminescent emerald-green spark danced across her fingertips.
Absolute Psychokinesis (Esper Pinnacle), she reminded herself.
Capabilities include limitless manipulation of physical matter... enough telekinetic output to casually level modern metropolises.
If she could theoretically summon a meteorite from the exosphere, she could certainly move a plastic bottle twelve miles across the city.
It just required precision. It required extending her mind further than she ever had before.
Saturday morning arrived with a gentle, rolling thunderstorm that painted the skies over Riverdale a moody, slate gray.
After joining her parents for a quiet, relaxed breakfast in the dining room—where Alexander happily reported that the Berlin acquisition was officially successful—Airis retreated to her bedroom, claiming she needed to catch up on some reading for AP European History.
She locked the door.
She walked over to her pristine white desk, booted up her laptop, and connected to the high-end laser printer tucked away on the bottom shelf.
She quickly typed out a new message on a piece of heavy, textured cardstock, matching the exact font and layout of the previous delivery.
Bonus Health Supplement for our selected candidate.
Please take one gummy daily to ensure peak academic performance. — Riverdale Community Outreach.
She printed the note, folded it neatly, and used a rubber band to attach it to the bottle of "vitamins."
Airis sat cross-legged in the exact center of her king-sized bed. She placed the plastic bottle in her lap.
She took a deep, centering breath, closing her eyes and shutting out the physical world around her.
She activated her [Absolute Psychokinesis].
The emerald-green aura didn't just flicker this time; it flared into a brilliant, ghostly flame that engulfed her entire body, lifting her hair weightlessly into the air.
Expand, she commanded her mind.
Her consciousness exploded outward, phasing through the walls of the Dover estate, rushing over the manicured lawns, and sweeping past the heavily armed security perimeter. It was a disorienting, god-like sensation.
She could "feel" the raindrops falling from the clouds. She could feel the dense, pulsing electricity of the city grid.
She could feel the millions of mundane lives moving below her invisible, omnidirectional gaze.
She swept her mind south, crossing the invisible boundary between the affluent hills and the smog-choked industrial district.
She navigated the labyrinth of cracked asphalt and towering, rust-streaked warehouses.
Building 4. Unit 2B.
She found it.
Through the walls of the dilapidated apartment building, her telekinetic sense mapped the interior of the room.
She could feel the space heater humming in the corner. She could feel the heavy winter duvet on the bed.
And she could feel the boy sitting at the wobbly kitchen table, his heartbeat a steady, exhausted rhythm as he hunched over a textbook.
Airis focused her immense power, narrowing a beam of force capable of crushing a skyscraper down to the delicate precision of a surgeon's scalpel.
In her bedroom, the plastic bottle levitated off her lap.
In a flash of emerald light, the item was propelled forward, moving through the air at terrifying, imperceptible speeds, shielded by a telekinetic bubble that rendered it entirely invisible and frictionless.
Twelve miles away, in Unit 2B, Lin Ye rubbed his burning eyes.
He was currently deep into his second practice run of the State Scholarship Mock Exam.
The high-grade salmon and jasmine rice he had been eating for the past three days had worked wonders; he no longer felt like he was going to pass out every time he stood up.
But his body still ached. His joints felt stiff, and the lingering brain fog of chronic fatigue still hovered at the edges of his vision.
He reached out blindly for his glass of water, intending to take a sip.
Instead of smooth glass, his fingers brushed against cold plastic.
Lin Ye jumped, startled, nearly knocking his chair backward. He stared at the wobbly kitchen table.
Sitting exactly one inch away from his water glass was a small, plastic bottle with a cartoon orange on the label.
Attached to it was a folded piece of heavy cardstock.
He looked around the empty, locked apartment.
The windows were shut tight against the rain.
The deadbolt on the front door was securely fastened. There was absolutely no physical way anyone could have entered the room.
His heart hammered against his ribs. He remembered the tinted window of the black town car. He remembered the impossibly smooth, authoritative voice of the girl who had commanded him to study.
She didn't just find me on the street, Lin Ye realized, a shiver of profound awe running down his spine.
She can reach me anywhere. She is... she is something else.
With trembling hands, he untied the rubber band and unfolded the note.
Bonus Health Supplement for our selected candidate. Please take one gummy daily to ensure peak academic performance. — Riverdale Community Outreach.
Lin Ye looked at the bottle. It looked like a child's vitamin.
But given the staggering wealth and resources of his mysterious benefactor, he knew better than to judge a book by its cover.
If she wanted him to take a health supplement to pass the exams, he wasn't going to question it.
He popped the cap off, the smell of artificial citrus filling the air.
He pulled out one of the sugar-coated orange gummies and popped it into his mouth. He chewed it quickly and swallowed.
For about ten seconds, nothing happened.
Then, the Nine-Revolutions Marrow Cleansing Pill activated.
Lin Ye gasped, dropping his pen onto the table. A sudden, intense wave of heat exploded from the center of his chest, rushing outward through his veins like liquid fire. It wasn't painful, but it was overwhelmingly powerful.
He stumbled backward, falling onto his knees on the scuffed linoleum floor.
His body began to uncontrollably sweat.
But the liquid pouring from his pores wasn't normal perspiration; it was a dark, oily, foul-smelling sludge.
It was the physical manifestation of two years of inhaled industrial smog, cheap chemical preservatives from instant noodles, and the accumulated metabolic waste of chronic exhaustion being forcefully and violently expelled from his system.
Deep inside his body, his skeletal structure began to pop and crack with sharp, rhythmic snaps.
The micro-fractures in his shins from walking miles in unsupportive shoes knit themselves together instantly.
His spine, previously curved from hunching over cheap convenience store counters, forcefully straightened itself out, aligning into perfect, healthy posture.
Lin Ye squeezed his eyes shut, gripping the edge of the table as the alchemical miracle reconstructed his mortal form.
The intense heat peaked and then suddenly vanished, leaving behind a sensation of absolute, blinding clarity.
Lin Ye opened his eyes.
The world looked entirely different. The persistent, dull ache behind his eyes was completely gone.
He could see the microscopic grain of the wood on the wobbly table. He could hear the individual raindrops hitting the windowpane with crystal-clear precision.
He slowly stood up. He felt incredibly light, as if gravity had somehow loosened its grip on him.
He rolled his shoulders, marveling at the frictionless, powerful movement of his own muscles.
The chronic fatigue that had been his constant companion for twenty-four months had been entirely erased.
He walked into his cramped, dingy bathroom and turned on the shower, scrubbing the foul-smelling, dark sludge off his skin with a bar of cheap soap.
When he stepped out and wiped the condensation off the cracked mirror, he stopped and stared.
He was still wearing the same cheap clothes, but the boy looking back at him was transformed. His skin was clear and possessed a healthy, vibrant pallor.
The dark, purple bags under his eyes were completely gone, revealing bright, intensely sharp dark eyes.
He looked healthier, stronger, and more alive than he had ever been in his entire life.
He walked back into the kitchen, his mind humming like a perfectly oiled supercomputer.
He looked at the complex calculus equation on his mock exam that had been stumping him just ten minutes ago.
Suddenly, the numbers made perfect, intuitive sense.
The solution unspooled in his brain instantly, without him even having to consciously calculate it.
The 'brain fog' was gone. His cognitive functions were operating at peak human efficiency.
Lin Ye picked up the plastic bottle of gummies, holding it as if it were a holy relic.
He didn't know who the girl in the black town car was.
He didn't know what kind of impossible, hidden world she belonged to.
But as he sat back down at his desk, picking up his pen with a hand that no longer trembled from exhaustion, his resolve hardened into something unbreakable.
I will not fail, Lin Ye swore to himself, to the empty room, and to the invisible benefactor watching over him.
Whatever exam they put in front of me, I will tear it to pieces.
Twelve miles away, in the luxurious bedroom of the Dover estate, the emerald-green aura surrounding Airis slowly faded away.
The hovering strands of her golden-blonde hair settled gently back onto her shoulders.
She opened her sapphire eyes, a small, exhausted, but profoundly satisfied smile curving her lips.
The System interface chimed quietly, confirming the delivery and the successful activation of the alchemical item.
The timeline of her weekend was secure.
The chaotic family summit was over, the past was safely fortified, and her slow-paced life remained hidden behind the walls of Riverdale.
"Sleep well, Lin Ye," Airis whispered into the quiet room.
She reached over and turned off her bedside lamp, settling into the soft silk sheets.
Tomorrow was Sunday. Tomorrow was the next Premium Sign-In.
And whatever the System decided to throw at her next, she was finally feeling ready to handle it.