Chapter 10: Breaking Through the Illusions

Angel brought Moro to the stilt house where his mentor resided.

"My mentor is already resting, Mr. Moro. Please excuse me while I go in to announce your arrival."

Moro nodded, and Angel stepped up to the second floor first.

"This house is built quite uniquely. I didn't expect to see such peculiar architecture in the Old Earth Continent." Moro offered a slight compliment regarding the appearance of the stilt house. He had seen many strange buildings in the Prosperous Continent; although the structure of the stilt house was ingenious, it was ultimately still a mundane object. His praise was largely due to the fact that the builder of the stilt house was a mere mortal.

Although Moro didn't care much for the stilt house, Allen and Irene couldn't contain their curiosity. They wandered around the small house, braving the rain to observe the vegetables and fruits Jon had planted near the trellis in the courtyard.

The youthful spirit of the siblings had not yet fully faded. Even when they pretended to be mature, their occasional actions still held a hint of innocence. This pure, childlike quality made everyone smile involuntarily. Seeing the two interested in the grape trellis, Leon had a flash of inspiration; he went to the cellar, brought out two bottles of red wine that had been sealed for two years, and filled glasses for everyone.

The wine was mellow and the aroma intoxicating. Relying on the camaraderie of fellow drinkers, Leon and Eton began to talk about the front lines. Eton also wanted to break the awkward silence, so the two hit it off, and the atmosphere suddenly became relaxed.

On the other side, Angel went upstairs, first waking the mute servant to help his mentor change clothes. Then, he dismissed the servant before explaining the reason for his visit to his mentor.

Jon had been woken up in the middle of the night and his consciousness hadn't fully cleared, but when Angel uttered the word "wizard," he suddenly snapped to attention.

"Wizard? You said you just met a wizard?" Jon grabbed Angel's sleeve with his withered hand, exclaiming in disbelief.

"Yes, to be precise, a Level 3 wizard apprentice. That is how Moro refers to himself."

A look of confusion and curiosity flashed in Jon's eyes, followed by a sudden realization as he muttered repeatedly: "So that's it, so that's it. That explains everything. A wizard, a wizard! I have studied physical data for many years, and many formulas could not be applied. The root cause was here all along... I was wrong from the start. This world is not ordinary at all; it is actually a world that possesses extraordinary power!"

"Hahahaha, I always thought my vision was superior to the natives here. I never expected that, in the end, I would be trapped to death by my own limited perspective. Is this what they call 'spinning a cocoon around oneself'?" Jon looked out the window in a daze, shouting loudly.

His shouts carried intense emotions—unwillingness and remorse.

Even those in the hall on the first floor heard him. Moro listened carefully to these cries of unwilling self-mockery and couldn't help but look confused: "Eh, what language is this? Why isn't it the Common Tongue?"

Angel had not previously told Moro everything about Jon; he hadn't mentioned Jon's origins, nor that the morning dew after the rain was something Jon had cultivated. Therefore, Moro had always assumed Jon was a person of the Empire.

"This is the language of Old Man Jon's hometown. What was it called... Huaxia language? I don't know much about it myself," Leon said, also looking puzzled.

Huaxia? Moro pondered for a moment, but there was no impression of such a country in his mind. He figured it must be a small, remote nation. Moro thought about it and didn't dwell on the detail. Although he was curious about the emotions carried in that roar, as a wizard apprentice, there were too many things he was curious about; there was no need to waste precious time on the affairs of ordinary people.

Besides, he had just been promoted to a high-level apprentice and only wanted to resolve Angel's troubles quickly so he could leave the Old Earth Continent and return to the academy for further study. Nothing else was as important as his own strength.

Thinking of this, Moro simply closed his eyes and began to meditate.

...

Not long after, Angel brought Jon, whose expression had returned to calmness, downstairs.

Jon did not let Angel support him. Before his legs withered, he had personally designed a wheelchair, which could easily be used to go up and down stairs daily through a system of axles and springs.

Moro learned from Leon that the wheelchair Jon was sitting in was of his own design, and he couldn't help but sigh inwardly: His mechanical talent is very strong. If he had the aptitude, he might have achieved great things in the alchemy path. It's just a pity... even with the talent, he is simply too old.

Moro's first impression of Jon was fixed on the word 'old.'

He himself was nearly eighty years old, and because he hadn't broken through to become an official wizard, he could only let time change his appearance. However, he had used some maintenance methods, so he appeared to be at most in his early sixties.

As for the Jon before him, if Angel hadn't already said that Jon was only in his early fifties, he would have thought the man was at least over a hundred.

"Is it a physical disease or bloodline decay? Or perhaps someone cursed him, accelerating the erosion of his body by the power of time?"

The great trouble Angel had mentioned earlier was precisely the hope that Moro could treat Jon, so Moro immediately began to consider Jon's condition.

When Jon approached, Moro frowned. A strange sense of incongruity radiated from Jon.

This feeling was just like the one he had experienced at the Scarlet Auction when he saw slaves from other planes captured by wizards—a sense of being out of place in this world.

Could this person be a visitor from another plane? Moro frowned.

However, speaking of visitors from other planes, it didn't quite seem like it. He remembered reading "The Pros and Cons of Plane Conquest," written by the Twisted Great Wizard Basel in the academy library, which clearly stated that although other planes had intelligent beings, humans like them had never been discovered.

Of course, there were many humanoid creatures: those with three eyes, those with fish scales behind their ears, those as small as a palm, and those with wings on their backs. Although they had human appearances, they were basically collectively referred to as humanoid races.

"Could this be a humanoid race from another plane?" Moro guessed inwardly, though his face remained kind.

If he really were a creature from another plane, capturing him and selling him to a wizard lord would fetch at least 10 magic crystals! Moro had struggled for so many years, and the magic crystals he had saved didn't exceed 100.

Thinking of this, Moro's eyes narrowed into slits.

When Jon sat down, Moro coughed lightly and said, "I will first perform a disease detection on you. As long as we find the right direction, treatment should be no problem."

Without waiting for Jon or Angel to react, Moro directly summoned his crystal ball and began to chant.

Before long, pale green halos drifted out from the crystal ball, slowly enveloping Jon's body.

Jon was startled to see the extraordinary phenomenon. Under the soothing effect of the green halos, he slowly calmed down, his complexion gradually becoming ruddy, and finally, he closed his eyes silently and entered a state of deep sleep.

Everyone was amazed by Moro's methods, assuming this was Moro casting a healing spell. They did not know that the spell Moro had released was not the Level 1 cantrip he had mentioned—Detect Disease—but a Level 2 cantrip that only a Level 2 wizard apprentice could barely cast: Break Illusion.

Break Illusion is an auxiliary cantrip that can see through illusions or barriers. Although on the surface it is a spell to break illusions, magic itself cannot be defined by a single sentence, just as a Grease spell is used to block people's progress, but with a little modification, it can also be used to aid combustion. Any magic has infinite possibilities; wizards pursuing truth is actually a process of turning infinite possibilities into infinite absolutes. Break Illusion is the same; as long as you make a slight adjustment and change the target from yourself to someone else, Break Illusion will have a different effect, for example: determining the other party's race.

However, the premise of this usage is that the other party must actively cooperate with your spellcasting. Once the other party has feelings of resistance, the cantrip will naturally fail. Moro released it under the guise of helping with treatment, so Jon would certainly not resist.

The green halo lasted for half a minute. The halo first enveloped Jon's head, then slowly moved down to his feet, as if scanning him. Once everything was finished, the halo was retracted into the crystal ball.

Moro's eyes flashed, and he silently projected his mental power into the crystal ball to investigate the feedback from the Break Illusion spell.

"Human? One hundred percent pure human?!"

Looking at this answer, a sense of relief that "it should be so" rose in Moro's heart, but he vaguely felt that his intuition should have been correct. After thinking for a long time, Moro couldn't reach a conclusion and finally decided to trust the feedback from the Break Illusion spell. As long as he was human, he was one of their own, so there was no need to dwell on it too much.

Since Jon was not a creature from another plane, Moro let go of his inner conflict and naturally began to fulfill the promise he had made to Angel.

Thus, he continued to wave the crystal ball and silently constructed a new spell model with his magic power... This time, the spell model he constructed was the true Detect Disease.