My Taboo Harem!

But the Void-Ice Essence unlike mana, it did not struggle:

Thin traces of Void Essence drifted through every world, hidden inside distance, silence, shadow, and the immeasurable hollows between one thing and another.

Even Gods would fail to perceived it without affinity with the Void or Ice, he could because he was an immortal being

The Void Essence entered his body and simply ceased to exist, swallowed so completely that even the old man could not follow where it had gone despite being capable to perceiving his meridians and veins.

Phei showed no awareness of it; he continued speaking, smiling, and teasing the women around him while absence itself quietly fed him.

Each breath drew more.

The empty space between his fingers thinned, shadows beneath lost depth and the distance between his body and the world shivered as if uncertain whether separation still possessed meaning around him.

Even the Void seemed unable to decide whether it wished to kneel before the boy or disappear inside him.

The old man’s expression slowly became grave.

Phei was not cultivating.

That was what made it horrifying.

There was no circulation method directing the mana, refining the Void Essence, or soul technique controlling what occurred. His existence was performing all of it without instruction, the way fire burned and oceans gathered rivers.

The boy did not possess this phenomenon as an ability; it was simply what happened when he stood somewhere long enough.

He felt something moved inside him as if felt him probe Phei; the old Immortal froze.

It came from far beneath flesh and bone, deeper than Phei’s meridians, deeper than his bloodline and perhaps even deeper than the young Soul Realm sleeping sealed within him.

Something immense shifted behind the limitations of his mortal body.

For one terrible instant, the old man felt it pressing outward.

Something inside Phei wanted to emerge; something ancient enough that the surrounding laws instinctively drew close to suppress it, yet vast enough that those same laws trembled while doing so.

It pushed once.

Phei’s bones answered with a faint vibration too quiet for mortal ears.

His blood surged.

The Void Essence around him vanished in a single breath.

Mana from across the chamber rushed toward him so violently that several flames bent in his direction, only to scatter again when his body refused what it could not yet endure.

The thing within him pressed harder.

Then stopped.

Not because it had surrendered but because Phei’s present body was too weak to contain its release.

The old Immortal understood then that the Young Dragon’s mortal body was not protecting the world from an enemy:

His body was protecting the world from Phei himself.

His flesh, cultivation, meridians, and still-developing soul were acting as chains around something immeasurable, holding it below the surface until the boy became strong enough to survive becoming what he already was.

The old man had seen Divine Beasts awaken.

He had watched Immortal Sovereigns inherit ancient bloodlines and stood before monsters whose arrival caused laws of existence to scream warnings across entire realms.

This felt different.

Phei seemed destined to alter what existence meant once he finally awakened completely.

And through it all, the boy remained unaware.

The old Immortal slowly lowered his gaze.

After so centuries here on, he was reminded again that staring too deeply at a cultivator could become an act of disrespect toward one’s own survival.

’What a weird sensation. To think I missed it.’

He looked around, several men, especially those of weaker will, kept a distance from Phei they had never consciously chosen. Their bodies had received a warning their pride had not yet opened, some ancient instinct recognizing a predator standing far above them.

Even the Madame’s hidden shadows responded to him.

They were powerful beings, old, trained and utterly loyal to a woman whose name few dared speak carelessly. Yet whenever Phei moved, their concealed presences followed. Whenever the Void stirred around him, they lowered themselves by the faintest degree.

It was not just respect.

It was Reverence.

A quiet submission so instinctive that perhaps even they did not realize some deeper part of them had already bowed.

Like blades lowering by instinct when the heir walked past.

The old man’s gaze gleamed as Phei reached him and gave a courteous bow.

"Vice Principal," Phei greeted warmly. "Welcome to this humble birthday disaster."

Emily stopped beside him, still visibly surprised. "Vice Principal... I did not expect you to come."

The old man turned an accusing look toward her at once. "You did not expect me?"

Emily blinked.

"Should I be wounded?" he continued. "My beloved students invite me, and you assume I would not appear? Are you calling me a man without dignity?"

Phei’s mouth twitched.

Emily’s composure cracked. "That is not what I said."

"I will have you know," the old man said, raising one dignified finger, "my dignity has survived empires before you were born, academic councils, incompetent faculty meetings, and at least three generations of Main Legacy students who believed deadlines were flexible spiritual suggestions."

Phei laughed.

Emily shook her head, smiling despite herself. "That sounds like proof of endurance, not dignity."

"Endurance is dignity wearing comfortable shoes."

Phei bowed his head slightly, still grinning. "Then your dignity is welcome here, Vice Principal."

"As it should be."

The old man looked back at Phei.

Closer now, the sensation sharpened:

The presence of the legendary, prophesied Ryujin Tiamat.

Not fully awaken yet but so monstrous. What stood before him was not the complete storm but the pressure change before it, the first impossible taste of weather that would one day rewrite the sky.

Phei’s aura pressed outward without conscious arrogance.

His Dragon Dominance, still leashed by ignorance and youth, still insisted upon the room as if authority had become a scent in the air:

But against the old man, it did almost nothing.

He was too powerful, too old, too deeply seated inside his own existence to be moved by a boy’s passive presence.

But he still felt it but not as compulsion more as information:

As prophecy breathing against his senses.

If this was what reached him when Phei was calm, smiling, unaware, when he was an Immortal being standing before Phei, then what would weaker men feel if the Young Dragon ever unfurled his whole authority on them?

’Poor creatures.’

They would not kneel because they chose to; their bones would vote before their pride finished speaking.

’And the women,’ the old man thought with private amusement, ’would suffer a different ruin entirely.’

He had watched the that draconic dominance brush the edges of them just now, the merest leak of it, leashed and half-asleep, and still it had made a princess flush and a proud girl lose a staring contest with a neckline.

Let the dragon ever open that aura fully before a roomful of already-wanting women — well.

’There would be no decorum left standing.’

They would not be persuaded. They would be unmade, gently, the way a tide unmakes a sandcastle that had been quietly hoping to be unmade all along.

’Wait am I proud of my disciple’s kid being capable of getting into any woman’s skirt? Well, as long as he puts that Jade Dragoness in her place for me.’

The old man almost laughed.

Instead, he looked at Emily. "You see? I had to come. I feel like leaving this one unsupervised with a lot of my academy students would be academic negligence."

Phei looked offended. "I am extremely supervised."

Emily gave him a sideways look. "By whom?"

Phei opened his mouth.

Paused.

Then gestured vaguely toward the party. "Collectively."

"That is not reassuring," Emily said.

The Vice Principal nodded gravely. "A crowd is not supervision. It is merely witnesses with better clothes."

Phei laughed again. "Then please, come in and improve our legal position."

"With pleasure."

Phei turned, offering a welcoming gesture toward the hall.

The old man stepped forward.

As they walked in, his senses moved again.

Quietly.

Carefully.

He probed.

Just a little.

Not rudely enough to trigger that thing in Phei.

It was now a polite little reach beneath the surface, the kind used by ancient beings to understand what they were dealing with before agreeing to anything irreversible. He wanted to know more. Needed to know more.

After all this charade, after the invitation, the preparations, the smiling, the ceremony, he would soon have to teach with this boy.

He had to know what he was about to stand beside.

His senses touched the outer surface of Phei’s presence.

And bounced off clean.

The old man’s eyes sharpened.

He tried again, deeper this time.

The result was the same.

Not blocked in a crude way; there was nothing to see actually this time. It was like trying to read a book whose pages were made of night, ice and ancestral blood, while the book politely pretended it had never heard of literacy.

’How monstrous.’

The old man looked at Phei as they walked.

The boy was smiling at something Emily had said, easy and warm, completely unaware that an Immortal had just failed to read him properly twice.

’No.’

Not unaware.

The old man paused internally.

Phei’s eyes flicked toward him for the briefest fraction of a second.

Amethyst, calm and amused.

Then the boy looked ahead again.

The old man’s smile returned.

’Ah, so not completely unaware. How very inconvenient; how very promising.’

He would have to give him that soon.

The boy was ready.

Perhaps more than ready.

’And that was the problem with prophecies,’ the old man thought as Phei led him into the black-silver birthday hall.

’When they finally arrived, they rarely had the decency to be level they were expected.’