Nascent Soul Rebirth: Starting as a Wizard

Half a month passed in the blink of an eye.

As the last night passed, the faint light of dawn struggled to pierce the lingering, murky haze of steam and dust that had accumulated over the Emerald City.

The entire city is like a giant powder keg with a lit fuse, reaching the critical point before it explodes.

The streets are no longer passageways for people to walk through, but have become viscous, slow-moving, and suffocating human rivers.

From every named port in the Emerald Sea, and even from ships of all sizes that braved the stormy waves to come from faraway seas at great cost, they were all densely anchored in the harbor, their masts resembling a withered forest.

It continues to greedily "vomit" out batch after batch of young people, some pale, some flushed, each with their own regional accents and ambitions.

The dock area was already paralyzed, with goods piled up haphazardly in corners, replaced by crowds of people looking around blankly.

Every window of the inn street was filled with faces, and makeshift beds were set up in the corridors and even the stables.

The central square was packed with people, with almost no gaps between them, who could only sway slightly to the rhythm of the crowd.

Anxious whispered prayers, excited shouts that distorted their voices, heated arguments arising from collisions and friction, and suppressed sobs and hoarse words of advice when saying goodbye to loved ones...

All these sounds, along with the salty smell carried by the sea breeze, the heavy body odor emanating from the hundreds of thousands of people gathered together, and the pungent smell of cheap food and alchemical potions.

Together with the metallic dust emanating from the distant factory area, they fermented and evaporated, forming a vast, turbid, dizzying, and even physiologically repulsive collective ocean of agitation.

One hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand? Perhaps it has already exceeded five hundred thousand.

Countless lives, some with real hopes and others with unreal hopes, collide, squeeze, and rub against each other in this city that suddenly seems fragile and small.

All for the chance to enter the "Miracle Gate" leading to the world in the clouds, which has suddenly lowered its entry threshold by almost half.

Solo has no need, nor any intention, to make a futile struggle in this "human hell".

Thanks to the flimsy yet effective "family" referral letter provided by Catherine, he, along with other lucky individuals with similarly special backgrounds or who had paid an astonishing price, boarded the airship ahead of schedule.

The streamlined, silver-gray hull reflected a cold luster in the morning light, creating a stark contrast with the chaotic and filthy scene below.

Keynes and Leah were also among the passengers.

Keynes stood at the top of the gangway, arms crossed, looking down at the surging crowd in the square below like an anthill riot with an almost appreciative air. The curve of his lips was a mixture of condescending superiority and a hint of barely perceptible contempt.

Lydia stood quietly inside the hatch, her gaze calmly sweeping across the area below. But beneath that deep, still calm, Solo's keen senses caught a fleeting hint of worry, and a deeper sense of gravity.

The complex array of anti-gravity runes and propulsion arrays on the bottom of the airship lit up simultaneously, emitting a deep and steady magical hum.

The city's hustle and bustle, its foul smells, and the suffocating sense of collective anxiety were quickly left behind and diluted.

The air became crisp and clear, and the view suddenly opened up. The massive outline of Emerald City began to shrink, revealing its planned yet incredibly chaotic geometric shape.

Solo stood alone on the observation deck extending from the foredeck, his clothes fluttering in the strong winds high above.

He closed his eyes and focused his mind, shutting out the disturbances of the outside world. His mind sank into his body, like the most sophisticated internal imaging instrument, examining the results of his quiet recovery over the past two weeks.

The Primordial Qi Technique truly lives up to its reputation as the top-tier internal martial arts technique. Under the guidance of this seasoned knight, whose life seed has already begun to take root throughout his body and who possesses a profound and far-reaching foundation, it has become invaluable.

His internal energy flowed smoothly and without obstruction, like a mountain stream thawing and surging, flowing abundantly through his expanded meridians. He had steadily recovered to the mid-level of a second-rate martial artist, and his limbs and bones were filled with a long-lost sense of power.

The dragon and tiger illustrations on the back have also regained some of their color.

With another two months of arduous, persistent training, returning to the peak of the second tier should not be difficult.

However, his fundamental Qi Refining cultivation remained unchanged at the eighth level.

Without absorbing spiritual energy, and relying solely on a few rudimentary spiritual herbs, his cultivation level completely stagnated.

The only thing that could offer him some solace was the self-repair of his spiritual consciousness.

When I entered meditation yesterday, the center of my sea of ​​consciousness, which had become dim and damaged due to the forced division of my origin, finally rippled with a warm and full jade-like radiance, its intensity steadily returning to the peak of the late stage of Qi Refining.

He could clearly "introspect" that the fragments of divine consciousness in his sea of ​​consciousness were constantly dissolving to provide pure primordial spirit power for his spiritual consciousness.

At this rate of natural recovery, the spiritual consciousness can be fully restored to its peak state of Qi cultivation in less than a month.

As for the progress of the wizard apprentice's cultivation, he devoted very little effort to it in the past half month, conducting it in a somewhat experimental manner.

Referring to the thick, brick-like book "Introduction to Basic Rune Construction and Modeling", five more structurally sound basic spirit runes were successfully formed, which can be considered as proceeding step by step and steadily.

But whenever he flipped through that book, especially the latter half which listed a vast number of "practical magic tricks," he always felt an almost absurd sense of detachment and speechlessness.

Wizards in this world, especially those in the early apprentice stage, delve into and categorize so-called "tricks" or "apprentice magic" in terms of "infinite accumulation in quantity" and "extreme refinement of application scenarios."

It reached a level that astonished even the well-informed Solo.

From the most basic lighting, cleaning, ignition, and water-condensation techniques, to automatically writing fixed-format greetings with a quill pen, temporarily altering the color and texture of clothing fabrics, eliminating minor spoilage or odors in food, and even precisely repelling specific insects in a small area...

The list is extensive and varied, encompassing almost every minor inconvenience one might encounter in everyday life.

If he continues to study strictly along this path, it probably won't be long before he masters a large number of these "tricks for making life easier".

He would easily surpass the sum of all the proper offensive, defensive, auxiliary, escape techniques, and secret methods he had explored and studied in his eight hundred years of cultivation, from the Qi Refining stage to the Nascent Soul stage.

In the Xuanhuang Realm, magic is a powerful tool for protecting the path of cultivation, eliminating external demons, and exploring the laws of heaven and earth. Useless or inefficient magic has long been eliminated through the long and cruel years and competition.

Those that have survived all possess unique value, strategic significance, or profound insights.

And tricks like "how to make the foam in a wine glass stay in a specific shape longer" or "how to make indoor potted plants emit a specific fragrance in a short time"...

Solo is truly difficult to fathom, and what serious use it could possibly have besides serving as a tool for amusement at aristocratic banquets or in intimate moments.

If I had to pinpoint anything unique about him, it would probably be that if he continued like this, he would be able to cast hundreds of spells instantly.

But what's the difference between this and throwing out a bunch of yellow-tier talismans at the same time? In fact, 99% of the magic in this is not even as good as low-grade yellow-tier spells.

This is perhaps the strange "capillary" network that inevitably arises from the deep integration and even mutual shaping of wizarding power and secular society, spreading throughout every tiny pore of the social body.