After completing the binding of the soul-slave contract, Ethan continued browsing through the system shop interface. With his recent purchases, his balance had dropped to 49,000 points.
He needed to find a top-grade restorative pill capable of fully curing Kael’s mother and completely reversing the damage done to her body by her long paralysis.
As he scrolled through the high-end medical section, a unique item caught his eye.
Resting on the digital display was a radiant, golden pill, upon its surface was etched a faint, intricate symbol resembling the sign of infinity.
Ethan’s gaze shifted to the item’s description:
[Temporal Rejuvenation Elixir: Consuming this pill allows a female cultivator to reverse their biological age by ten years, purging accumulated impurities and restoring their body to its absolute prime. Special Property: It causes zero disruption or regression to the subject’s cultivation rank. Whether they are a Third-Rank Mage or a Third-Rank Warrior, their cultivation base remains completely unaffected.]
Ethan glanced down at Kael’s mother. Though her facial features were stunning, years of suffering, malnutrition, and immobility had taken a heavy toll, placing her currently in her mid-twenties.
If he used this pill on her, it would not only heal her paralysis and wash away her physical scars, but it would also slice a decade off her biological age, plunging her straight back into her youth.
And best of all? The pill was surprisingly affordable, costing a mere 10,000 points.
Without a second thought, Ethan extended his hand and materialized the golden pill into his palm. Utilizing precise telekinesis, he gently unlocked the paralyzed woman’s jaw, guiding the glowing elixir smoothly into her mouth.
The moment the pill touched her tongue, it instantly melted into a warm, luminous stream of liquid gold, sliding down her throat and surging into her meridians.
WHOOSH—!
A blinding, ethereal golden glow exploded across her entire body, bathing the dark coastline in a warm, sacred light.
A thick wave of pure white steam began to vent from her pores, carrying away years of stagnation, toxins, and accumulated fatigue.
Under the influence of the temporal energy, a breathtaking physical transformation began to take place.
Her striking light-blue hair swiftly deepened in tone, shifting into a rich, vibrant shade of dark blue that cascaded over her shoulders like a waterfall of starlight.
Her eyes—previously clouded with exhaustion and sorrow—flared with a brilliant, luminous clarity, their deep, captivating color shining with newfound vitality.
As her biological clock spun backward, her mature, curvaceous figure subtly refined, shedding the heavy wear of adulthood and settling into the breathtaking, ethereal grace of a late-teen maiden.
The clothes Ethan had dressed her in moments before suddenly looked slightly loose on her newly slender, perfectly proportioned frame.
Stripped of a decade of hardship, she no longer looked like a broken mother trapped in a nightmare. Instead, lying there softly on the cool sand under the moonlight, she looked like an untouchable fairy maiden of sixteen or seventeen—a picture of absolute purity, breathtaking youth, and timeless, celestial beauty.
Slowly, her eyelids fluttered open.
Coming back to her senses, she instinctively raised her hands, staring at her own palms in sheer disbelief. She flexed her fingers, then wiggled her toes, testing her limbs.
A wave of overwhelming realization hit her—every single muscle and nerve in her body was once again entirely under her command, completely free from the suffocating prison of paralysis.
With a graceful, effortless motion, she pushed herself up and stood firmly on her own two feet for the first time in years.
Her gaze immediately snapped toward her little daughter, who was still sitting huddled in the sand, trembling from residual fear.
Though the magical pill had instantly healed all of the toddler’s physical wounds, the poor child was utterly bewildered by the sudden chaotic turn of events.
After all, she was barely two years old, far too young to comprehend the monumental shift in their reality.
Overcome by a surging wave of maternal grief and relief, the young mother sprinted across the sand, dropped to her knees, and wrapped her arms tightly around her daughter, burying her face in the child’s light-blue hair as bitter tears streamed down her cheeks.
"I’m sorry... I’m so, so sorry," she sobbed brokenly, her voice choked with anguish.
"I’m sorry I dragged you into this living hell with me... sorry for marrying a monster who brought us nothing but endless suffering. Sorry that your brother and your uncle turned out to be such wretched beasts. I had to watch you get tortured and abused every single day, hurting more than if the pain had been inflicted on my own flesh. Please... please forgive me, my sweet girl."
Confused, frightened, yet feeling the genuine warmth of her mother’s embrace for the first time in her short life, the little girl began to cry softly as well, burying her face against her chest. "No, Mother... it’s okay, don’t cry..."
Standing a short distance away, Ethan watched the emotional reunion with an indifferent, cold gaze.
"System, don’t I get any reward? I’ve changed the lives of a crippled mother and a poor two-year-old girl. And by changing their lives, Keal’s life will also change, right?"
The System’s voice echoed in his mind.
[Host, it has not yet been determined how their lives will affect Keal’s fate.]
[The Threads of Fate are spreading in countless directions.]
[The number of Fate Points you receive will depend on your next decisions and the impact of your actions.]
a sudden shift in the atmosphere drew his attention upward.
The first faint streaks of dawn were beginning to break across the horizon. The exact hour had arrived—the precise moment when Kael’s fated opportunity was supposed to manifest somewhere along this vast coastline.
Since Ethan had altered the timeline and kept Kael fast asleep and miles away from the shore, the protagonist would never stumble upon it naturally.
But Ethan wasn’t about to let such a precious fortune slip through his fingers.
Focusing his mind, Ethan released a sweeping wave of Search Magic, casting his perception deep beneath the churning surface of the dark ocean waves.