Wizard: I Have a Cultivation System

Aurora gently straightened Mo Ling’s collar and said softly, "Go on, Mo Ling. Listen carefully in class, respect your instructors, and get along well with your classmates."

"I will, Mother," Mo Ling replied sweetly. She tilted her small face up to give Aurora a kiss on the cheek, then turned and walked with light steps toward the entrance of the pure-white Tower of Revelation.

Her figure blended in with the other young students. Along with Bobby and other children filled with curiosity, dreams, or simply the hope of changing their fates, she stepped into the high tower whose gates marked the dawn of a new age of knowledge.

Aurora stood where she was, watching until her daughter’s figure vanished inside the tower. Only after a long while did she slowly look away.

Her gaze drifted over the spire of the tower and up toward the endless sky, as if she could pierce the clouds and see the figure watching from that higher, more distant place.

She knew he had to be "watching."

Even if he was currently busy dealing with the approaching, unknown endgame.

...

「In the Holy City, a room far from the clamor.」

Adrian stood before the only window, his back to the door.

The view outside the window should have been of the Holy City Basin, but it was completely blocked by heavy, dark velvet curtains, not letting in a single sliver of daylight.

His shoulders trembled slightly. His monocle was clenched so tightly in his palm that the metal frame nearly dug into his flesh.

"Why isn’t he dead yet... How is he not dead!"

The hoarse words, full of venom and scorching impatience, were squeezed through his gritted teeth.

"The Tower! That damned, blasphemous white tower! It’s finished! Right in the center of the Holy City, standing there brazenly before the eyes of millions of the faithful!" Adrian’s voice suddenly shot up, becoming a low roar. "The apprentices went in! Those ignorant, clueless children are about to learn that... that Witchcraft! Using potions refined from the Origin our own Church Court extracted! Why hasn’t he left yet?! How is he still holding on?! What about the Balance Keeper’s methods? And the catalyst?! Was it all a lie told to us?!"

He waved his arms wildly, his sleeves whipping up a gust of wind that nearly swept an empty porcelain cup from the small table beside him. The cup clattered against the tabletop, the crisp, sudden sound jarring in the silent room.

Ambrosius’s gaunt frame was sunk into a large armchair, making him seem one with the shadows. In the dim light, the wrinkles on his face looked even deeper, like the cracked beds of dried-up rivers.

He didn’t respond to Adrian’s roars, merely watching the other man’s loss of composure with calm, deep-set eyes.

Only when Adrian’s panting had subsided and his chest was no longer heaving violently did Ambrosius finally speak. "Based on the latest intelligence from the Silver Tower... there are about ten months left."

"Ten months!" Adrian shot up as if pricked by a needle, his suppressed emotions boiling over once more. He spun around and took a great stride forward, stopping just short of Ambrosius’s knees. "Ambrosius! You tell me! That pack of sewer rats from the Silver Tower, that dreg from the Abandoned Land! Since when were they on our side?!"

His face was twisted with rage, his bloodshot eyes glaring at Ambrosius. "We were using them! Using their fear of that Demon to get information about the Elementalization process! But look what they’ve done! They actually sent people to help perfect the formula for the ’Enlightenment Potion’! They sent people to participate in compiling the tower’s introductory curriculum! They’re helping that Demon! Helping him establish this blasphemous system faster and more securely! Why?! Have they forgotten who they are?!"

His fury became a roar that reverberated through the small space.

Adrian could no longer maintain any semblance of composure. He was like a gambler who had lost all his chips, left with nothing but hysteria.

He hated Murphy. He hated Elizabeth. He hated the tower that had shot up from the ground. He hated every apprentice who walked through its doors. He hated the so-called "allies" who were supposed to be cooperating but were actually helping the enemy. And he hated himself for helping, too.

All of it made him feel a total loss of control, as if the world he had fought to uphold—the one he depended on for his very existence—was rapidly crumbling before his eyes.

Ambrosius understood this anger completely. How could he not be angry himself?

Every time he saw that pure-white spire glinting in the sun, every time he heard talk on the streets about the "Priest Apprentices," every time he thought of the Holy Scripture being reinterpreted and millennia of doctrine being openly twisted, every time he recalled the part he himself played in pushing these events forward, his withered heart felt as if it were being plunged into boiling oil and seared by an invisible flame.

It was an agony more painful than death, the piercing cry of a soul whose very cornerstone of faith was being pried away.

But their anger was different from that of an ordinary person.

As members of the Clergy, the very source of their power lay in walking the Path.

This meant practicing the teachings of Oriane and upholding the order and justice he represented.

When the doctrine was twisted, when justice was turned on its head, when injustice ran rampant for all to see—they were supposed to feel anger. They were supposed to rise up and resist.

It was written into the very core of their doctrine—a feedback loop of responsibility and power granted by their faith.

If they remained unmoved in the face of such blasphemy, or even gladly accepted it, that could only mean one of two things.

Either their faith had already collapsed and they no longer truly believed in the Path of Oriane—in which case the power derived from that Path would naturally abandon them.

Or, they had become so powerful that they could twist the doctrine itself by sheer force of will, defining black as white.