Ancient Wizards: A Little Progress Every Day

In the quiet meditation room, the magic array flickered with a faint light, and an inexplicable oppressive atmosphere slowly spread.

After a long silence, Arajan's voice broke the calm.

"It seems your concerns are unfounded. How do you plan to deal with this?"

After a moment's thought, Dago said, "There are too many uncertainties here, and I'm not entirely confident."

"So what are your thoughts?"

"Let's find a way to leave early."

Dago said calmly, "I've tried. Although the protective array on the outside of this airship is sturdy, I have a way to break through it quickly. However, if I want to do it without alerting them, I may need your help."

Arazan remained silent for a few breaths before slowly saying, "Okay."

Dago nodded and closed his eyes again.

He continued his meditation, which had been interrupted.

My emotions remained completely calm, as if nothing had ever happened.

On the first floor of the garden villa, a well-built maid carried steaming dishes and hurried up to the second floor.

As you turn a corner on the stairs, time seems to stand still.

A tall, slender figure slowly emerged from the wall.

Cooper reached out and gently stroked a steaming bowl of thick soup on the tray in the maid's hands; some barely perceptible powder from under his fingernail fell into the soup.

The white steam rising from the thick soup instantly transformed into a mysterious and beautiful purple, like a blooming Roland. In the blink of an eye, all the purple faded, and "frozen time" resumed its flow.

Unaware of what was happening, the maid continued her ascent upstairs and soon arrived at the door of a room at the far end of the second floor.

After a gentle knock, the door opened from the inside, and a handsome young man with white hair, dressed in a black robe with silver trim, stepped out.

The maid carefully presented the plate, and the latter's eyes swept over all the food. Naturally, he picked up the silver spoon, scooped up the most tempting-looking soup from the plate, and took a sip.

After tasting the food, the young man showed a slightly satisfied expression. He accepted the food, waved his hand, and the maid who had served him respectfully withdrew.

The instant the door closed again, Cooper's figure appeared silently in front of the door like a ghost, gave a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, and then vanished into nothingness.

The spring water gurgles, and in the beautiful and tranquil garden, two figures appear side by side on the cobblestone flower path.

"It's been three days."

Lumian, who seemed to be enveloped in wisps of heat, lightly brushed off his salamander-skin robe and said expressionlessly, "That kid should be nothing but a pool of pus and blood by now, right? His soul should be completely corroded as well."

Cooper, the true owner of the garden, walked calmly toward the house not far in front of him, shaking his head as he went.

"I didn't put in a large amount, otherwise I wouldn't have needed to wait three days."

"He's probably in a near-death coma right now, but there's definitely no cure."

As he spoke, Cooper flipped his hand, and a crystal ball emitting a faint blue light appeared between his five fingers.

He glanced casually into the crystal ball, but his brows quickly furrowed.

"What? Is something wrong?"

Lumian noticed the unusual expression on Cooper's face and asked him a question.

Cooper didn't speak, but narrowed his eyes, and with a flicker, appeared directly on the second floor of the garden villa.

He raised his hand and waved it, and the door to a room at the far end of the second floor opened automatically.

The two stepped inside and immediately spotted a young man sitting cross-legged in the center of the room with his back to them.

"Good lad, he can still sit up."

A cold glint flashed in Lumian's eyes. He snorted and unleashed a powerful burst of spiritual energy. Just as he was about to make his move, someone else acted even faster.

"call--"

A deep purple ball of magical light, carrying a terrifying energy pressure, roared towards the figure sitting in the room, creating a series of continuous bursts of air along its path.

The young man sitting on the ground sensed this intense crisis and suddenly leaped up, only to be precisely struck by the energy ball in the next moment.

"Bang—"

The figure exploded, most of its body was swallowed by the ball of light, and some fragments that looked like flesh and blood were scattered everywhere, hitting the surrounding walls with a crackling sound and triggering one protective magic array after another.

Cooper reached out and grabbed some of the splattered "flesh and blood" in his hand.

Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that it was just some partially molten metal residue, mixed with tiny traces of blood.

"We've been tricked."

Cooper's face instantly turned gloomy and cold. "He used some kind of clone technique. His aura is almost identical to his original body. He even fooled the monitoring array."

"Damn it."

Lumian spoke slowly, each syllable accompanied by a wave of heat more intense than lava.

"It's alright."

Cooper said expressionlessly, "Having been poisoned by the Purple Mist Flower juice, he can't run very far even if he wanted to; it'll just be a bit more troublesome."

After saying that, Cooper uttered a rapid series of syllables as a spell. As he chanted the spell, the metallic residue and bloodstains he had just grabbed surged violently and quickly transformed into a bizarrely shaped, headless black moth, which then darted out of the room with a "whoosh".

The headless moth flew out of the room, passed straight through the external protective array, and disappeared into the vast air turbulence and lightning outside the airship.

Cooper and his companion relentlessly pursued the headless moth, and after five hourglasses, the headless moth that had been leading the way suddenly exploded.

Beside the enormous eye of the storm, beneath a dark sky filled with dense clouds, storm, and lightning, a figure finally came into view.

Upon seeing the target, without any further words, the red-haired Lumian let out a long roar. Beneath his robes, layers of crimson light surged forth, transforming him into a blazing river of magma that instantly swept away all the storms and lightning in the area, swiftly blocking the figure in front of him.

A cold glint flashed in Cooper's eyes, and layers of black mist spread out from his body. In the blink of an eye, he also caught up with the figure in front of him, and together with Lumian, they blocked the figure firmly from the left and right.

The two figures, one in red and one in black, one fiery and one cold, their terrifying aura as fourth-ring miracle wizards split a small patch of sky into two colors, forming an energy hurricane even more terrifying than the outside, like a reinforced iron barrel, sealing the young figure inside.

"My dearest Dago, why did you suddenly leave without saying goodbye?"

Cooper squinted at the young man in the robes below, asked with a bright smile, but his eyes were icy cold.

"Why waste your breath on him?!"

Lumian let out a low growl, as if many voices were overlapping, or like the impact of magma boulders, which shook the void and made it hum.

The hurricane created by the two men's auras caused the young man's robes to flutter wildly and his hood to slip off.

The young man brushed aside the white hair that had fallen across his face and sighed softly, "I thought I could escape this calamity."

"With those clumsy magical techniques?"

The red-haired man seemed to be burning with flames as Lumian let out a disdainful sneer, "You think you can escape this time?"

"No."

The young man shook his head, then looked at the two of them and calmly said, "I was talking about you two."

Before he finished speaking, an incredibly dense golden halo suddenly emanated from the young man's body.

In an instant, a spiritual force field far surpassing that of a typical fourth-ring cultivator, as vast and powerful as a boundless ocean, tore through the heavy heat and chill in the void, like an incomparably dazzling golden sun rising slowly from the dark valley floor.

"After all, I really don't want to kill people from the French Ring."