Miss Witch, even if we're poor, we can't sell ourselves!

"Teacher, could you demonstrate flesh magic?"

Miya sat on the rattan chair, her feet dangling in the air, the tips of her little leather shoes occasionally touching the chair legs, making a soft tapping sound.

She held the teacup with the cat paw pattern in both hands. She had drunk more than half of the tea, and two mint leaves, now white from steeping, had settled at the bottom of the cup. Her eyes sparkled as she stared at Bie Chenye, her gaze full of undisguised anticipation.

Bie Chenye was tidying up the pile of bottles and jars on the table when he heard this. He paused for a moment, and after putting a glass jar containing a dark green liquid back in its place, he turned to look at Mi Ye with a hesitant expression.

"Demonstration, now?"

Her fingers unconsciously twirled the loose threads at the edge of her robe, and her tone was no longer as fluent as when she was explaining the magic.

"That's not a good idea... The visual effects of flesh magic are a bit too intense for beginners. I'm afraid you might not want to learn it after seeing it."

"No way!"

Mi Ye put the cup on the table, jumped off the chair, walked to Bie Chenye, and looked up at him.

"Teacher, I just want to see it."

Bie Chenye was both amused and exasperated. Looking into her earnest eyes, he remained silent for a while before finally sighing, bending down to look her in the eye.

"You'll only see it once, and you'll stand behind me, keeping at least three steps away. Promise me."

"Yes, yes!"

Mi Ye nodded vigorously, then obediently retreated to the spot designated by Bie Chenye, a small open space inside the doorway, with an overturned old table serving as a screen in front of it.

Bie Chenye didn't act immediately.

She first walked to the pile of handwritten notes in the corner, squatted down and searched for a while. She pulled out a black notebook with nothing on the cover from the bottom, opened it, and found a small piece of dry twig inside.

The branch was only about the length of an index finger, with a grayish-brown bark and a completely dry cross-section, looking no different from any dead branch picked up by the roadside.

But Bie Chenye held it very carefully, cradling it in both hands as if it were a fragile antique.

She walked to the open space outside the house, and Mi Ye followed behind, peeking out from under the threshold.

Bie Chenye placed the withered branch on a flat stone in the center of the open space, then took two steps back, rolled up the sleeves of his dark blue robe to reveal his slender forearm, slowly raised his right hand, his five fingers slightly spread, his palm facing the withered branch, and then cast a spell.

However, Miye did not see any light, not the soft blue halo of Meredith's fingertips, nor any magic circle, nor even any visible fluctuations in the air.

But she sensed an aura emanating from Bie Chenye that wasn't magic, but something closer to the essence of life.

The withered branch moved slightly and then broke.

Starting from the inside, it silently turned into dust.

The grayish-brown wood lost all its structure in less than a breath, decomposing directly from a solid into ash finer than sand, piling up into a small clump of dark gray powder on the stone, and the entire branch simply vanished into thin air.

Miya peeked out from behind the threshold, her mouth agape.

She looked at the pile of ashes, with only one thought in her mind.

What the heck is this? It's way too supermodel-like!

Elemental magic requires conjuring fireballs, chanting spells, and drawing magic circles, while flesh magic can instantly kill it?

Isn't this a blatant rip-off?

She was already imagining that after learning this trick, the next time she encountered a stalker, she would just snap her fingers, and the stalker would turn into a pile of dust on the spot. Then she would squat down and say to the dust, "Be more careful in your next life."

"This is one of the main branches of flesh magic, called [Death Annihilation]."

Bie Chenye's voice pulled her back from her reverie.

"As the name suggests, it can deprive anything with life force, causing the target to lose all vitality in a very short time."

"What you just saw was the lowest output setting. If you turn it on to the highest setting, the range can cover the entire open space."

Miya walked out from behind the threshold, went around to the pile of ashes, squatted down, and gently poked it with her finger.

The ash was so fine that it was almost imperceptible to the touch.

She looked up, her eyes sparkling.

"This is amazing! Teacher, why didn't you say so sooner! This is way cooler than elemental magic!"

"Strong is strong."

Bie Chenye walked over and squatted down next to her, tracing a circle above the ashes with one finger.

A faint, transparent ripple spread through the air. After the ripple dissipated, the weeds around the ashes swayed slightly, as if blown by an unseen wind.

"But the cost is also very high."

"The danger of flesh magic, besides the fact that you will die from overdrawing your life force, has a more hidden cost: life force will not disappear into thin air."

She pointed to the pile of ashes.

"I robbed this withered branch of its life force; where did that life force go?"

Miya blinked.

"...Disappeared?"

"No, nothing in the world can disappear or be created out of thin air; they can only be transformed."

Biechen picked up a fallen leaf from the ground, tore it in half, and put one half in his left hand and the other half in his right.

"You take away the life force from a leaf, but that energy doesn't disappear. It will be released in another form. It can dissipate into the air and become heat, or it can be absorbed by me to replenish myself. But the problem is—"

She placed the half-leaf from her right hand next to the pile of ashes, then touched the surface of the ashes with her fingertip.

"This transformation process is extremely difficult to control precisely."

"Although the life force I just extracted was negligible, if I don't control the direction in which it dissipates, it will be released all at once in an instant."

"The vitality of such a small piece of withered branch, if concentrated and exploded, would be roughly equivalent to a medium-sized fireball. As for the range... it should be able to blow up this house without much trouble."

Miya's mouth opened even wider.

"Then why didn't it explode just now?"

"Because I channeled that energy underground."

Bie Chenye pointed to the ground.

"There is an underground river beneath this mountain forest. The water can absorb excess energy and carry it away."

"Why do you think I built my lab here? Because of the good view?"

Miya looked down at the soil beneath her feet and suddenly realized that the seemingly silent demonstration she had just witnessed contained far more advanced technology than she had imagined.

Her supermodel fantasy shattered, but her interest in flesh magic only grew stronger.

"Alright, that concludes the demonstration."

Bie Chenye stood up, dusted off his knees, and pulled her up from the ground.

"Before you formally engage with any flesh magic, you must first learn to feel life force; this is the foundation of flesh magic."

"How do you feel the vitality of life?"

"Come with me."

Bie Chenye took her hand and led her along a narrower path behind the house into the depths of the forest.

The path was almost completely swallowed up by weeds.

Bie Chenye walked ahead, occasionally using her toes to push aside the vines blocking her path, then turning back to check if Mi Ye was following.

After walking for about five or six minutes, they came to a small clearing in the woods.

In the center of the open space stands a very thick old tree, its trunk so large that it would take three people to encircle it. Its canopy blocks out the sun, and the sunlight filtering through the branches and leaves scatters into patches of fine, golden light on the ground.

The tree roots were exposed on the ground, like gnarled arms, covered with a thick layer of moss.

Miya stood in front of the old tree and looked up.

This tree gave her a very different feeling; it didn't feel like a tree, but more like the silent master of this mountain forest.

"This is an ancient oak tree that has lived for at least eight hundred years."

Don't say it in the dead of night.

"Its vitality is very strong and stable, making it very suitable for sensory training."

"Place your hands on the tree trunk, close your eyes, don't think about anything, just quietly feel it."

Miya took a deep breath, then took two steps forward, placed her hands on the rough bark, and closed her eyes.

The texture of the bark pressed against her palm, cool and moist, with the unique scent of the mountains.

At first, I couldn't feel anything except the sound of the wind, the birdsong in the distance, and the soft breathing of Bie Chenye beside me. All the sounds were clear, but my palms felt nothing but roughness and coldness.

Then she suddenly remembered herself in her past life.

Those warm lights, those people walking around, those vivid memories.

She remembered the steam rising from the bakery doorway that morning, the earnest look in the eyes of the little girl in the subway who used a levitation spell to make her plush bear fly, and the last gentle tremor of that withered branch before it turned to ashes—was it crying?

Then I felt something pulsating slowly and powerfully inside the tree trunk.

One, one, one.

Like a giant heart beating steadily deep underground.

The pulse traveled from her palm to her wrist, up her arm, and finally resonated in her chest.

Her own heartbeat was gradually becoming synchronized with that of the tree.

The moss around the tree roots seemed to breathe, like the gentle rise and fall of a newborn baby's chest in its sleep.

The soil is teeming with life: mycelium, insect eggs, and seeds buried in the decaying leaves, waiting to sprout in the spring.

The air itself is not empty; the breeze carries the sweet scent of distant pollen, and the photons of sunlight bounce off the leaves, each one carrying warmth.

Everything is alive.

She opened her eyes.

The sunlight still streamed through the gaps in the tree canopy, the wind still blew, and the birds still sang, but the world she saw was no longer the same.

Every leaf seemed to be glowing.

She could feel the life force flowing inside the leaf, gently pulsating along its veins.

She released her hand from the tree trunk, looked down at her palm, then looked up at Bie Chenye, her voice filled with a surprise she couldn't quite explain.

"Teacher, I think... I can feel it."

"It's moving, very slowly and steadily, like a heartbeat."

Bie Chenye stood two steps behind her, holding a blade of grass he had just picked from the roadside, which he had originally planned to use as a teaching aid after Mi Ye failed.

Upon hearing this, she stuffed the blade of grass into her pocket, quickly walked over, squatted down in front of Mi Ye, reached out and grasped the back of Mi Ye's hand that was pressed against the tree trunk, and closed her eyes to feel it.

Then she opened her eyes, unable to suppress the corners of her mouth.

"Little Miya, do you know how long it took my most outstanding student back then to feel a sense of life?"

She stood up, her voice brimming with uncontrollable joy.

"She squatted in front of this tree for three whole days, her knees were calloused from kneeling, before she could vaguely detect a tiny pulse."

"How long did it take you? From the time I told you to close your eyes until now, it's probably less than a minute?"

Mi Ye blinked, but before she could answer, Bie Chenye had already circled her twice, his hands behind his back, looking her up and down with the eyes of someone studying a rare creature.

"Hehehehe, I've struck gold! Hehe..."

She knelt down in front of Mi Ye and reached out to poke Mi Ye's forehead.

"What breed are you, exactly?"

Miya tilted her head and thought about it seriously.

"It's probably... a variant of a slime?"