After receiving the exclusive card and the note from Kai, the boy made his way to Crystal Palace Restaurant. The golden doors gleamed in the setting sun as he approached, his little sister still sleeping soundly on his back. “Excuse me,” he called to a woman in designer clothing. “Would you like to see this—” “Ugh, security!” The woman recoiled and clutched her Hermès bag against her side. “Keep these street children away from me!” A guard immediately stepped forward. “Move along, kid,” he ordered menacingly. “This isn’t a place for beggars.” The boy retreated a few steps but did not leave. He remembered the quiet confidence in Kai’s voice and believed the young doctor would never deceive him. So he remained near the entrance, watching guest after guest sweep past with expressions of disgust or practiced indifference. “Please, just look at this card,” he tried again. “Go away!” “Don’t bother people!” Each dismissal made his hands tighten around the card, but he refused to g

Kai stood at the intersection of West Street and Pearl Avenue as the evening lights began to flicker on around him. The city moved with its usual restless rhythm—horns in the distance, footsteps on polished pavement, the glow of storefronts reflecting in rain-darkened streets. Yet Kai’s thoughts had drifted elsewhere. To the shoeshine boy. He wondered who had recognized Master Rowan’s exclusive card and whether they had honored every condition in the note. The child’s faith had been too pure, his determination too sincere. Kai hoped the stranger who obtained the card understood that the price was not merely money—it was a promise to give two abandoned children a future. A Bentley Mulsanne glided to a stop in front of him. Its midnight-blue paint reflected the city lights like black water. The rear door opened. Ryan stepped out first, straightening his designer suit with the practiced arrogance of someone accustomed to being watched. The gesture failed to conceal the pain he was

Chairman Vale stood in stunned silence after hearing the butler’s report.Inside the bedroom, Elias’s fingers traced invisible paths above Madam Vale’s body. Every movement was deliberate. Every pause seemed to reveal another layer of the illness that had haunted the family for five years.“The Thunder Spirit Strike...” Chairman Vale murmured again.His mind returned to that fateful confrontation with Grandmaster Marlowe. The rainy night. The argument. The old martial artist’s venomous warning.Details Elias had identified without being told.He had diagnosed the cause within minutes, without medical records, laboratory results, or expensive machines.The chairman’s previous doubts began to collapse.Countless renowned specialists had visited this mansion. They had brought advanced scanners, issued complicated reports, and prescribed increasingly expensive medications. Yet none had discovered the true cause of his wife’s decline.But Elias had looked at her once and uncovered the hidd

Elias stared at his phone for a moment, his brow furrowing in disbelief.Seraphina’s arrogance had reached a level that even he found difficult to ignore.She had accused him of stealing a card that had been given freely. She had dismissed a life-saving treatment as a trick. And now, she was offering to “reconsider” her pursuit of him as though such attention were a reward he should be grateful to receive.“Unbelievable,” Elias murmured.Sophia glanced at him.“What did she say?”Elias shook his head.“Nothing worth repeating.”With a calm motion, he ended the call.***Several streets away, Seraphina stared at her silent phone.For the first time in years, someone had hung up on her in the middle of a conversation.“Did he just...” she whispered.Her eyes widened.“Did he just hang up on me?”Her fingers curled around the communicator until her knuckles turned pale.“I am the War Goddess,” she said through clenched teeth. “No one hangs up on me.”She was about to call Elias again whe

Upon hearing Seraphina’s words, Elias’s eyes widened.For a moment, he thought he had misheard her.“He’s awake?” he asked.“He opened his eyes,” Seraphina replied, her voice still filled with disbelief. “He recognized me. He even asked why everyone was standing around him.”Elias frowned.That should have been impossible.He had personally examined Seraphina’s grandfather the previous evening. The old man had been suffering from the Silent Ember Poison, an extremely rare toxin that gradually attacked the nervous system and clouded the mind before weakening the heart.The poison was so unusual that even Elias had struggled to identify all its properties.Without the proper herbs, the treatment could not be completed.And he had not yet obtained those herbs.“How did this happen?” he murmured.His mind began reconstructing the old man’s condition—the weak pulse, the darkened veins around his wrists, the faint silver discoloration beneath his fingernails.The poison should still have be