He planned to pass through it.
Late at night on the third day.
1:12 AM.
Aaron sat on his bed, verifying the external environment one last time.
His Sensory Network swept across the entire Slytherin area.
No one in the corridors.
No one in the common room.
Flint had returned to his dorm early tonight.
All the first-years were fast asleep in their respective rooms.
He stood up.
His school robes were hanging in the wardrobe; wearing only a thin white shirt and black trousers, he walked barefoot to the glass wall.
He pressed his right hand against the glass.
A chilly sensation and the faint hum of flowing magic transmitted into his palm.
Aaron closed his eyes.
His consciousness sank into his body.
The thumb-sized Godhead hovered at the exact center of his soul, its gold-and-white light slowly rotating.
Ever since he fused the resonator left by his parents, the operating efficiency of the Godhead had increased tenfold, and its surface now bore a layer of fine, dark-gold patterns, like ancient runes carved onto a miniature sun.
Aaron channeled the Godhead.
Not to release divine pressure.
But to invoke another function: Spatial Overlap.
The Divine Kingdom was essentially a space independent of reality.
It existed inside Aaron, but at the same time, it was “attached” to the physical world.
This attachment meant that a pathway existed between the spatial tier of the Divine Kingdom and reality.
In the past, Aaron had used this pathway to harvest believers—touching a target and pulling them into the Divine Kingdom.
But the uses of this pathway did not end there.
What if, instead of pulling external matter into the Divine Kingdom, he briefly let his own body “slip into” the spatial tier of the Divine Kingdom, and then “slip out” at another location?
Theoretically feasible.
He had calculated this possibility repeatedly during his final days at the orphanage, but had never put it into practice.
In an ordinary physical environment like the orphanage, passing through walls served no practical purpose.
But things were different now.
Before him was a three-inch-thick crystal barrier reinforced by a thousand years of enchantments.
And on the other side of that wall lay the entire Black Lake.
It was worth a try.
Aaron’s heart rate remained steady at sixty beats per minute.
He began the operation.
The Godhead spun faster.
The gold-and-white light diffused outward from the depths of his soul, permeating his flesh, blood, and bones along his meridians.
His right hand, pressed against the glass, began to change.
It wasn’t transfiguration.
It was becoming “transparent.”
Starting from his fingertips, the texture of his skin began to vanish. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
It wasn’t invisibility—invisibility was a change in light refraction, which his Demiguise talent could easily achieve.
This was different.
His fingers were turning from “physical matter” into a “concept.”
His materiality was stripping away.
His palm became translucent, like a patch of condensed fog.
This change spread up his arm at a moderate pace, expanding at roughly ten centimeters per second.
Aaron deliberately suppressed the speed, ensuring that the transformation of every inch of his body remained stable and reversible.
Ten seconds later, his entire right arm had become translucent.
His palm passed through the glass.
No sound.
No resistance.
The reinforcing charm did not react.
The waterproofing charm did not react.
Even the ancient Slytherin barrier from a thousand years ago did not react.
Because the design logic of these magical defenses was to prevent intrusions on a “material level.”
And Aaron’s current state did not exist on a material level.
His arm slipped through the three-inch crystal wall and entered the lake water on the other side.
Chilly currents enveloped his fingers.
This temperature…
It was about four degrees Celsius.
The water temperature in the deep layers of the Black Lake remained in this range year-round.
Without sunlight, there was only perpetual cold.
Aaron felt the pressure of the water.
His arm had already returned to a solid state, bearing the hydrostatic pressure of the deep-water layer.
He did not hesitate.
The scope of the transformation expanded further.
Shoulders, chest, waist, and legs.
Within fifteen seconds, his entire body completed the process of “intangibility, penetration, and solidifying.”
He had crossed that wall.
From the dry air of the dormitory, he stepped into the freezing waters of the Black Lake.
Throughout the entire process, there was no sound of shattering, no splashing, and not a single alarm spell was triggered.
The dormitory’s glass wall remained completely intact, the enchanted runes on its surface not even flickering once.
It was as though no one had ever passed through it.
Aaron suspended himself in the lake water just outside his dormitory window.
All around him was absolute darkness.
Not the darkness of the night sky, which still had starlight, but the darkness of the underwater depths.
Light decayed to nothingness just a few meters below the surface; at this depth, human vision was completely useless.
Aaron’s eyes remained open in the darkness.
He couldn’t see a thing.
But his Sensory Network could.
This network of perception, formed by stacking the talents of over three hundred insect believers, conducted far more efficiently in water than in the air.
Sound waves, water vibrations, weak bioelectric fields—all this information constructed an “underwater map” in his brain that was more precise than actual sight.
He could “see” everything.
Thirty meters to his left, two massive pillars of pondweed growing from the lakebed swayed slowly in the current.
Fifty meters below, the lakebed topography of silt and gravel rolled on and on.
Further away, the vital signs of the merpeople colony flickered—they hadn’t detected him yet.
Hydrostatic pressure squeezed his body steadily from all directions.
The water pressure at this depth already exceeded what an ordinary human could withstand, but Aaron’s Godhead automatically generated an invisible forcefield over his skin, acting like a form-fitting wetsuit that distributed the pressure evenly to a manageable degree.
Cold, but not bone-chilling.
Intense pressure, but not enough to cause injury.
So far, so good.
Then, his lungs began to protest.
Air.
Before passing through the glass wall, he had taken a deep breath, and that breath had remained trapped in his lungs for nearly forty seconds.
Oxygen levels were rapidly dropping, while carbon dioxide concentration was rising.
His brain began to send the most primal alarm signals.
*Breathe.*
*Need to breathe.*
Aaron’s body was a human one.
The Godhead could enhance his physical stamina and slow his metabolism, but it couldn’t change a fundamental fact: humans needed oxygen, and there was no oxygen in the water that he could breathe directly.
One minute.
The limit for an ordinary person holding their breath underwater was about one to two minutes.
Relying on his Hyper-Speed Nerves and precise control over his body, Aaron could stretch this time to around three minutes.
But three minutes was far from enough.
He needed to move freely underwater for hours, or even longer.
The dull ache in his lungs grew increasingly pronounced.
It wasn’t a sharp pain, but a heavy, expanding pressure.
His diaphragm contracted involuntarily, trying to force him to open his mouth and inhale.
One and a half minutes.
Aaron’s expression didn’t change.
No one could see his face in the dark, but even if they could, they would only see an incredibly serene countenance.
He was waiting for this exact moment.
Even before passing through the glass wall, he had anticipated this problem.
No, rather, he had deliberately manufactured this problem.
Because talent fusion required a trigger condition—a real, urgent survival demand coming from the absolute bottom of physical existence.
Only when his body was truly on the brink of an oxygen-deprivation crisis would the Godhead respond to his will, drawing appropriate abilities from the talent inventory of his believers to initiate the fusion.
This wasn’t a gamble.
It was a precisely calculated catalytic reaction with fully controlled risks.
Two minutes.
Slight shadows began to creep into the edges of his vision.
The alarm signal in his brainstem escalated from a “warning” to an “urgent demand.”
*Enough.*
Like a bolt of lightning, Aaron’s consciousness plunged into the Divine Kingdom within his palm.