Has the knight lady who married into the countryside fallen into depravity today?

The night breeze stirred the curtains, carrying a few wisps of rose fragrance.

Once the blush on her ears had faded slightly, Ophelia turned her head and met his gaze again.

"And now?" she asked.

Klein didn't react immediately: "What?"

"You just said you used to plan to be an invisible baron, spending all your time in the lab." Ophelia looked at him, her tone calm, yet revealing a hint of expectation she herself didn't realize. "Now... what do you want your future life to be like?"

That's a very serious question.

Klein abandoned his joking thoughts. He sat up straight, his gaze falling on her left hand, which had been hidden in the shadows.

He reached out and gently but firmly took her contaminated left hand in his.

"Pretty much the same."

Klein gently stroked the slightly rough, ominous black marks on the back of her hand with his thumb, answering crisply, "Continue studying alchemy, try to figure out those things on the West Coast as soon as possible, and heal you. So that you can openly show your hands in the future, instead of hiding them like this."

Ophelia's heart skipped a beat.

"Is there anything else?" she asked in a slightly hoarse voice.

"And then?" Klein turned to look directly into her watery eyes, his tone light yet incredibly serious, "to have a child with you."

The room fell silent instantly, and even the air seemed to become thick.

Ophelia's blush, which she had managed to suppress, suddenly burst forth again, spreading from her cheeks all the way down her slender neck.

She abruptly looked away, her right hand unconsciously twisting the fabric of her skirt tightly. Her mind went blank, as if all her composure and rationality had been shattered by those words.

Klein, however, had no intention of letting her off so easily this time.

He moved closer to her, shortening the distance between them until he could smell the faint rose scent she had after her bath.

"Ophelia," he whispered her name, a mischievous smirk in his voice, "tell me, do you want our future child to be a boy or a girl?"

This question was as blunt as a heavy hammer blow, leaving the usually calm and confident Imperial Knight completely bewildered.

She suddenly turned her head and glared at him.

So embarrassed was he that what should have been a menacing glance was utterly harmless to him; instead, it was like a cat whose tail had been stepped on and whose fur had stood on end in anger.

She finally managed to find her voice and, forcing herself to remain calm, retorted, "How could I possibly decide something like this?"

"That's hard to say, after all, the world of magic and alchemy is full of miracles." Klein chuckled, in a very good mood. "If it's a girl, it would be best if she looked like you, with blond hair and golden eyes, beautiful, and even better if her personality was like yours. If it's a boy..."

He deliberately dragged out the last syllable, keeping everyone in suspense.

"What's wrong with the boy?" Ophelia was completely led by the nose by him and subconsciously followed up with the question.

“If it’s a boy, then he’ll definitely take after you.” Klein said matter-of-factly, even sighing with a serious expression, as if to say, “I have to sacrifice myself for the future of the family.” “After all, I’m just a country baron who is ‘good-looking,’ really quite ordinary. In order for our next generation to win at the starting line in terms of appearance, we still have to rely on the Empire’s famous knight to strongly improve it.”

Ophelia was amused by his shameless and absurd reasoning.

"Nonsense," she scoffed, but didn't pull her left hand away from his grasp, nor did she refute the topic of the child. The hand that had once troubled her was now enveloped in his warm palm, and the warmth emanating from it seemed to dispel all gloom.

The moonlight, like water, gently spread across their clasped hands, outlining the future with crystal clarity.

But in the distant imperial capital, a completely different scene unfolds.

Deep within the magnificent palace complex lies an inconspicuous wooden door.

Behind the door lay a hidden world. Gleaming magic stones were scattered on the ground, and a cauldron in the corner was bubbling up mysterious purple smoke, the air filled with complex elemental scents.

In the center of the room, a figure draped in a wide black robe squatted on the ground. She held half a charcoal pencil in her hand and was writing and drawing on a huge parchment, deducing a spacetime alchemy formula that would make any archmage's scalp tingle.

"Achoo—!"

The girl in the black robe suddenly sneezed with earth-shattering force, her whole body lurching forward. Her hand trembled, and the precise charcoal pencil drew a devastating black line across the nearly completed formula.

She remained squatting, staring blankly at the black line that signaled the loss of hours of hard work, for a full half minute.

"Strange fluctuations..." She rubbed her itchy nose and uttered blankly in a flat, cold voice, "Unquantifiable. Oh well, Dad's probably just talking nonsense again."

There was no response from the surroundings. Only the bubbling sound of the potion boiling in the crucible could be heard.

She slowly stood up, brushed the dust off her robe, resignedly crumpled the discarded parchment into a ball, and precisely tossed it into the wastebasket that was already piled up like a small mountain next to her.

"Never mind." She shook her head, tossed the charcoal pencil back onto the table, and said, "I should go back to see Dad."

She raised her hand and unfastened the hidden button on her collar.

The heavy black robe slid down her slender shoulders, piling up at her feet like melting night.

The warm glow of the magic stone dispelled the last shadow cast by the hood, clearly illuminating her face.

It was an extremely exquisite face, with features that seemed to be the most outstanding work of the gods, but the sharp eyebrows and tightly pursed lips infused this exquisiteness with an inviolable heroic spirit, like a thorny ice rose.

She slowly raised her eyes.

Those were eyes as bright as molten gold, just like Ophelia's.

However, one can still see a resemblance between her and Klein in their features.

The young woman, known in the empire as the "omniscient and omnipotent sage," bent down to pick up the black robe, folded it neatly, and placed it on the edge of the table. She then let out a long sigh, as if completing some kind of ritual.

Then she pushed open the wooden door.

The light and shadow outside the door were distorted, and what was seen was not the palace of the capital.

Instead, it is a dazzling, unfathomable galaxy leading to another world.