Wizard: Become stronger by drawing cards from the potions variety show

Chapter 548 Her Father
Li Daoxian stood up and gently patted the back of Catherine's hand, signaling her to rest assured.

Then he walked to the door, took a deep breath, and opened it.

Standing outside the door was a middle-aged man, tall and wearing a well-tailored dark robe. There were faint dark patterns flowing on the fabric, as if some ancient rune was breathing.

His face was angular, his eyes were as deep as the abyss, and there was a faint smile on the corners of his mouth. He seemed calm and composed, yet had a certain elusive majesty.

"Li Daoxian, I've long heard of your name." The man's voice was deep and magnetic.

"Please come in." Li Daoxian smiled slightly, stepped aside, and spoke in a respectful but neither humble nor arrogant tone.

The man walked into the house, his eyes swept around the room, and finally fell on Catherine. Catherine stood up subconsciously, her fingers tightly entwined, and whispered, "Father."

"Catherine." The man's voice was gentle, but with an invisible sense of oppression. "You look good, which is good."

Catherine pursed her lips and didn't respond.

The man took off his hat and put it on the coat hook beside him. "I was worried that you would get weak during your escape."

Li Daoxian closed the door, walked to Catherine, gently put his arm around her shoulders, and looked directly at the man: "Father-in-law, please take a seat. We have a lot to discuss."

"Father-in-law? Hahaha." The man laughed and walked to the sofa and sat down.

He crossed his hands on his knees, leaned forward, and his eyes moved between Li Daoxian and Catherine, finally fixing on Li Daoxian: "Young man, you are very direct."

"I like direct people."

"It can save a lot of unnecessary trouble." Li Daoxian sat opposite the man, and Catherine sat next to him, her hand still held in his palm.

The man nodded, with an inexplicable look in his eyes: "Then let's get straight to the point."

"Catherine is a core member of the Purist School. Her existence is vital to the school. Her concept of dedication is the key to promoting the future development of the school. I must take her back."

Li Daoxian did not respond immediately, but gently stroked the back of Catherine's hand to soothe her emotions.

After a moment, he raised his head, narrowed his eyes, and chuckled, "Father-in-law, there's no need to say such high-sounding words. Let's just talk about our respective prices. What can we use in exchange for her freedom?"

The man's smile faded slightly, and his eyes became sharper: "Freedom? In this world, true freedom is always relative. Catherine's birth has already determined her mission. Her existence is not just for herself..."

"And then?" Li Daoxian looked at the ceiling and said softly, "Father-in-law, your so-called mission, do you mean to use her as a tool to promote your ambitions, or to use Catherine to maintain the stability of the top management of the Pure Institute?"

The man's eyes suddenly turned cold, and the air in the room seemed to freeze: "What do you know?"

Catherine felt an invisible pressure emanating from her father, making it almost impossible for her to breathe.

She subconsciously moved closer to Li Daoxian, her fingers tightly grasping his sleeves.

Li Daoxian held Catherine behind him: "I don't know much, but I have to learn more..."

"I don't like others to oppose my decisions." The man's voice was still calm, but there was a chill in it. "Have you ever thought about the consequences of challenging the will of a school?"

Li Daoxian stared at the man without flinching, his eyes narrowed, and the corners of his mouth smiled: "Father-in-law, can you represent the academy? Please forgive me for being frank, the contradictions within the Purist School are so sharp, do you really think that the Purist School is willing to go to war with me?"

The man frowned slightly, with a hint of surprise in his eyes: "What else do you know?"

Li Daoxian shook his head slightly and said casually: "It's nothing more than those things. Under the family structure, the problems naturally arise."

"The power struggle within the purist school has intensified. Although you are at the top, you are not without opponents."

"I'm afraid you didn't come here just for Catherine. More importantly, it's the price for someone's purification. Am I right..."

The man's expression darkened, and his eyes became more scrutinizing. "You know more than I thought."

"Thank you for the compliment." Li Daoxian smiled faintly, "I just hope you understand that I am serious about making a deal with you. If I were you, when I had a choice, I would take some time to listen, instead of insisting on pushing my daughter into the abyss."

The man was silent for a moment, his eyes moving back and forth between Catherine and Li Daoxian. Catherine lowered her head, not daring to look at her father, but her hand was still tightly holding Li Daoxian's hand, as if it was her only support.

The man sneered: "There are always people who think they are smart. However, what I want to tell you is that so-called transactions can only be established under equal relationships."

"And you, I'm afraid, don't have that ability yet, young man. Don't be complacent just because you've been promoted to a domain wizard. You still have a long way to go in the future."

"My patience is limited." He looked at Catherine who was hiding behind Li Daoxian, "If you don't want anything to happen to the person you like, you'd better come back with me now."

Li Daoxian's original smile faded. Although there was a smile on the corner of his mouth, his eyes were fixed on the man in front of him.

"You're a bit arrogant. Saying such things in my territory and using me as a threat..."

The man raised his hand and sneered, "Shut up."

The moment he touched the crystal cufflinks, twelve dark gold chains suddenly dropped from the void, and the sound of the chains colliding carried a roar like judgment.

The shadow of a domain suddenly appeared in the air above Li Daoxian's head. A dark golden chain passed through the domain maintained by Li Daoxian, and the top of the chain slid towards Catherine without any concealment.

Well, there is something.

Although Li Daoxian's domain does not have the characteristics of a closed space, basic defensiveness still exists. It is not bad that the domain can be invaded so easily.

"Father!" Catherine exclaimed.

A bronze emblem was emerging on the skin of her wrist. Another soul in her body was now glowing brightly. It curled up in a ball, covering its head and wailing. This pain was immediately transmitted to Catherine.

The pain that penetrated deep into her soul made Catherine feel as if her soul was melting.

This is the highest level of "concept pledge" mark of the pure school.

Li Daoxian snapped his fingers, and the shadow of a giant black and white tree rose from the ground. A giant black and white tree that penetrated the sky and the earth formed a black and white scale at the forked branches.

The left tray was a distorted shadow of all things, the right tray was a pile of ashes. And under the trays were countless branches dancing wildly like tentacles.

Countless branches protected Catherine while being entangled with the dark golden chains.

The virus seeped into the chains along the branches, dyeing the cold metal into a strange black color.

At the same time, a large number of tentacles gently stroked Catherine's body, Catherine's painful expression eased, and the bronze emblem on her body gradually disappeared.

"Putting a mortgage on his own daughter..." The revelation tree behind Li Daoxian became clearer and clearer. "My father-in-law's style of doing things is really eye-opening."

"Not a bad domain." The man glanced at the domain behind Li Daoxian, and calmly loosened his cuffs. Then he turned his pinky ring, and the dark golden chain suddenly lit up with blood-red runes:
"Feelings are nothing more than quantifiable bargaining chips. As a wizard in a field centered on the concept of 'transaction', I thought you would agree with this. After all, brokers like you can sell anything."

"Unclean contact." As the blood-red runes shone, Catherine's father's pupils lit up with a silver-white conceptual observation halo.

The "vacuum peeling" unique to the purist school was activated, and the branches of the Revelation Tree began to disintegrate layer by layer in the sight of Catherine's father:

The digitalized surface → is decomposed into “binary dust” (gray-white granular conceptual residue).

Transaction contract network → disassembled into "promise fragments" (diamond-shaped crystals shining with golden light)
Virus core → Exposing the "evolutionary impulse" (proliferating black granulation)
Perfect matrix → degenerates into "flash of death and sublimation" (dazzling golden spots)

He chuckled, "I saw it all, purified and stripped."

The man stretched out his hand gently forward, and the dark golden chain broke and sank directly into the branches of the Revelation Tree, accurately ticking out "Binary Dust" and "Flash of Death and Sublimation".

Then, under the pressure of an invisible force, the two were actually transformed into a winding poisonous snake.

"Is the conceptual state a snake? What a beautiful form..." The man took a deep look at the venomous snake after it was formed - perfect body shape, beautiful and dazzling scales, every point of which sparkled with indescribable charm.

He stroked it gently, resisting the urge to collect it, and focused his attention back on what was in front of him. The branches of the Tree of Revelation were missing their epidermis and part of their core, and cracks appeared on the surface, exposing a fragile trading network and evolutionary impulse.

Afterwards, the golden chain was unobstructed. Although the branches were constantly evolving and adjusting their shapes, the results were getting worse and worse. There was even confusion among the branches due to the erroneous logic caused by evolution.

The man sneered: "In the eyes of purists, out-of-control evolution itself is impurity."

He gently stroked the venomous snake, then pushed it forward: "Go, pursue purity in the ruins where you were born..."

The venomous snake sank into the chain, the pierced branches of the Tree of Revelation were absorbed, and the four major components began to recombine in the blood-colored runes of the chain.

Binary dust forms the cage frame, flashes of death and sublimation serve as inhibitory coatings, fragments of commitment serve as energy sources, and evolutionary impulses are transformed into tracking tentacles.

The man looked at Li Daoxian, his eyes flashing with deep meaning: "This is the fighting method of the Purist School, and it is also a 'data graveyard' created specifically for you."

This conceptual cage, named the "Data Graveyard", is shrinking at an extremely fast frequency, decomposing the mark of the Revelation Tree on Catherine.

The bronze emblem emanated from her wrist once again, a sign that the digitized shell that the Tree of Revelation had wrapped around Catherine was being dissolved.

Catherine's father was not surprised by this result.

He didn't care about Li Daoxian at all. Perhaps Li Daoxian was still trying to stabilize the revelation tree that was constantly mutating...

The man's figure quickly came to Catherine along the chain. Looking at his daughter's terrified face, he stretched out his hand and said gently: "It's okay, let's go home. I will accompany you to the trial. People always have to learn to face it..."

When Catherine's father was about to catch his daughter, the digitized powder that had been dissolved suddenly flashed with golden light.

In the light, a white hole suddenly appeared in the core of the originally dark ashes.

The seemingly stripped components suddenly boiled, and densely packed contract terms appeared in the black liquid—it was Li Daoxian’s most core trading network, and also the contract that was constantly flowing in the Tree of Revelation.

"The conceptual body you stripped off has never been ownerless." Li Daoxian's pupils were as black as ink, and countless lines were faintly woven in them. "As long as I noticed, they are not branches, but the transfer agreement signed by you personally."

All the decomposed components suddenly flowed back and reorganized into the "snake-shaped chain" branches of the Revelation Tree in front of Catherine.

At this moment, the rights of possession and use are clearly divided, and the causal relationship between existence and non-existence becomes blurred.

This creature, which possesses the attributes of both existence and nothingness, causes the law of vacuum stripping to fall into an erroneous cycle.

Each time you peel off a layer of concepts, you generate twice as many new rule components.

Catherine's father's finger stopped half an inch from his daughter's neck, and he was stuck by countless contradictory concepts:

Because of the exposure to virus components, if we continue to peel off, we need to first deconstruct the legitimacy of our own existence.

If a breakthrough is forced, the terms of use of the contract will be triggered and the "data graveyard" will disappear from the contract.

The "data graveyard" used to remove the brand was now in a cycle with the brand and became a firewall to protect Kaiser.

The man raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. So the virus is the core... It seems that the definition of unclean observation needs to be revised. But it doesn't matter."

"By absolute standard, this is unclean."

As the man's voice fell, the sound became majestic in an instant.

Li Daoxian could feel that this was the secret technique that laid the root of the other party's territory.

The mark on Catherine's body flashed for a moment, and then only mottled flashes were left. Everything else disappeared.

Li Daoxian's eyes flickered, he understood the effect of this secret technique.

Catherine's father sublimated his own concepts into "absolute benchmarks", directly rewriting the perception of reality. Except for what he considered pure, everything else in the field would be considered impurities and eliminated.

A variety of compound rule products like the Revelation Tree Mark would be paralyzed due to the lack of components...

As long as conceptual identity is not achieved, it will be destroyed by this "absolute benchmark".

(End of this chapter)