I reign supreme in the Western fantasy world for eternity.

Ji Tian nodded, took out a few silver coins from his pocket, placed them on the table, and stood up.

Lilith quickly grabbed her cloak and put it on, then followed behind him.

The two walked through the lobby and passed the table by the window where the hero's team was.

Alex was cutting his steak with his head down, the knife and fork making a soft sound as they hit the plate, his gaze never lifting.

Mason rested his chin on his hand, listlessly poking at the remaining half of an asparagus on his plate with his fork, his eyes vacant, lost in thought.

Bruno had finished gnawing on the big bone and was wiping his hands with the tablecloth, his thick fingers mechanically rubbing back and forth on the cloth.

Anna closed the Bible, held the glass of hot milk that had long since gone cold in both hands, and gazed at the dark night outside the window.

No one looked up at them.

They didn't even glance at us out of the corner of their eye.

Lilith kept her head down, her hood covering most of her face, and walked as fast as if she were racing.

She practically jogged across the distance between those tables until she pushed open the restaurant door and felt the night breeze rushing towards her, at which point she let out a long breath.

"Master," she whispered, her eyes still darting nervously behind her, "was my walk natural enough? Did I look like an ordinary diner who had just finished eating roasted lamb chops, in a good mood, and definitely not secretly observing the hero?"

"You walk as if a dragon is chasing you."

"...What should I do? Have they noticed me?"

"No. They didn't even look up."

Lilith patted her chest, then suddenly frowned: "They're so careless! What if I'm a demon assassin? What if I'm hiding a hideous face under my hood? What if—"

"You are not."

"Yes, I'm so cute, I certainly don't look like an assassin." She nodded seriously and tightened her cloak.

Ji Tian walked behind her, his pace neither hurried nor slow.

Tonight, they each had their own thoughts, and neither paid any attention to the other.

……

The night is deep.

In the room at the end of the corridor on the third floor of the "Stars and Roses" hotel, the candles had already gone out.

Moonlight streamed in through the window, spreading a silvery-white frost across the floor.

Lilith was curled up in the middle of the bed, wrapped in a blanket, her long, silvery-white hair scattered on the pillow like a shattered moon.

Her breathing was even and deep, and a faint smile lingered at the corners of her mouth—she was probably eating cake again in her dream.

Ji Tian sat cross-legged on the windowsill, his back straight, his hands resting on his knees, palms facing upwards.

The moonlight shone on his face, casting a cold, white glow on his expressionless features.

His breathing was so light that it was almost inaudible.

The divine sense flowed slowly within the body, traveling inch by inch along the meridians, examining every acupoint and every pathway.

The golden elixir slowly rotated in the dantian, its surface shimmering with golden patterns, like a carefully polished jewel.

He has checked it many times.

The golden core was full, round and flawless, with a faint crack as thin as a hair on its surface—not a defect, but a sign that the nascent soul was about to break out of its shell.

Like an egg about to hatch, the cracks in the shell let out a glimmer of light from the new life inside.

He could sense a vague outline taking shape inside the Golden Core, like a larva curled up in a cocoon, needing only the last breath of spiritual energy, a tribulation of lightning, and a test of inner demons before it could break free.

He had touched that threshold many times, but he could never break through it.

As we all know, breaking through to the Nascent Soul stage requires the support of a vast amount of spiritual energy, the tempering of lightning tribulations, and the torment of inner demon tribulations.

Only in this way can one temper the physical body and the soul, and transform the golden elixir into an infant.

However, the "Heavenly Way" of this world is flawed. There are no tribulations of lightning or inner demons during breakthroughs; one must create them oneself.

Tribulation by lightning is easy to handle; this world already has lightning element, which can be activated during the breakthrough.

The problem is the inner demons.

Before meeting Lilith and learning about the abilities of the Nightmare Clan, Ji Tian tried using "Heart Demon Pills" made from mushrooms to help him break through, but the effect was almost non-existent for him at the moment.

Fortunately, his efforts paid off. When he learned about Nightmare's abilities, he finally saw hope for a breakthrough.

So he separated most of his divine soul to evolve and cultivate the Nightmare Dao in the "Inner Landscape," leaving only a part of his divine consciousness to lead his new disciples in hunting low-level demons and expanding the Human Emperor Banner. He only returned once during the battle with the Red Dragon.

The dragon was right; with so much energy devoted to deduction, his words and actions had indeed become much more sluggish.

Finally, just as Lilith was feeding him the lamb chop, the Nightmare technique was mastered to a minor level!

The golden elixir trembled slightly in the dantian, as if urging or yearning.

Ji Tian opened his eyes and looked down at his right hand.

There was a very faint, almost invisible golden line on the palm of his hand—a sign of the completion of the Golden Core stage and a harbinger of the imminent formation of the Nascent Soul stage.

"That's about it," he thought to himself.

He glanced at Lilith on the bed.

She was sleeping soundly, with a corner of the blanket kicked back, revealing a section of her fair calf.

Not only that—her pillow had somehow been pushed to the edge of the bed, leaving half her head dangling in mid-air, her long, silvery-white hair hanging down like an upside-down waterfall. Completely oblivious, she was still smacking her lips and mumbling, "...This little cake is mine...don't take it..."

Ji Tian stared for two seconds, then judged expressionlessly: With this sleeping posture, forget about training, just not rolling off the bed would be a success.

He walked to the bedside, reached out, pulled the blanket up to cover her feet, and pushed the pillow that was about to fall off the bed further in.

The movements were so light that there wasn't even a sound of the blanket rubbing together.

Lilith rolled over, grabbed the blanket, buried her face in it, and mumbled in her sleep, "Master... pat my head again..."

Ji Tian paused for a moment.

"...I didn't touch her head," he said softly, not knowing whether he was refuting her or himself.

He withdrew his hand, took the Emperor's Banner out of his Purple Mansion space, and hung it on his waist.

The soul imprints on the banner were already nearly the size of a fingernail, less than two thousand away from the ten thousand souls.

He decided to gather all the soul fragments tonight, refine them, and then set up a grand formation before his breakthrough to avoid being disturbed.

Of course, if Heaven has eyes and summons an even greater tribulation to temper the physical body, that would be even better.

As he reached the door, he stopped and looked back.

Under the moonlight, the silver-haired girl had rolled the blanket into a ball and hugged it to her chest, curling up like a shrimp, with a glistening drool hanging from the corner of her mouth.

"Two hours at most," he whispered. "I won't leave you alone for too long."

He pushed open the door and went out.

The door closed softly behind me with a barely audible click.

The Emperor's Banner trembled slightly at his waist, as if responding to the eager golden core within him.

tonight--

He wants to replenish the number of souls in the Emperor's Banner to ten thousand.