Nexus Ascension: My Comprehension Defies the Heaven

Grey shook his head. There was no need to say anything more.

Xia Qingyue was truly miserable, yet despite all the pain she carried, she continued moving forward. She endured, lived, and maintained her composure as if nothing could truly break her.

The patience and restraint of a powerful evolver like her had to exist on an entirely different scale.

If it were him in her place, Grey knew he would probably lose control and blow everything around him to pieces.

That alone showed his immaturity.

But could he really be blamed?

He was still a child.

In both his current life and his previous one, he had never lived past the age of seventeen.

That realization made him pause.

In this life and the last, he always seemed to stop at seventeen.

It was strange.

Unsettling, even.

But his birthday was in September. There were still several months left before he turned eighteen, and he firmly believed that this time would be different.

This time, he would live past seventeen.

This time, he would truly become an adult!

That thought alone made him feel oddly determined.

Still, that was beside the point.

What he was truly thinking about was maturity.

He wanted to grow as a person.

In his previous life, he had entered college early and mingled with young adults older than him. Yet even then, many of them behaved childishly. From his experience, people only truly began to mature around the age of twenty, when reality finally pressed down hard enough to force change.

Of course, there were exceptions.

Some people matured early because of harsh circumstances and unavoidable suffering.

But in this world, maturity often held little value.

Here, it was worth no more than a dead fish floating in a pond.

What mattered was power.

Strength.

That was why so many childish people roamed freely, armed with nothing but overwhelming power and arrogance. Their thinking rarely went beyond a single notion.

'I'm stronger than you. Why should I care?'

That sense of superiority was very real.

Very dominant.

Only a rare few managed to retain rationality.

By rare, Grey meant individuals with average talent who had lived long enough to be worn down by reality. People like City Lord Brown and City Lord Albert. Those who had seen enough loss, compromise, and consequence to understand that power alone did not solve everything.

This was the consequence of having too many evolutionary paths.

Evolution had become far too easy.

Almost anyone could become an evolver.

Of course, that was still under the premise that they met the basic conditions to step onto a path.

And now, with the first rank breathing technique of his evolutionary path, the one he had taken from Alissa, the probability of success had reached a terrifying level.

A one hundred percent chance.

His evolutionary path was quite literally defying the evolutionary limits and the conditions set on evolution.

Grey had, quite literally, given the world a far greater opportunity to produce more self centered individuals. More people with power. More people with arrogance. More people who would mistake strength for superiority.

But in the end, that was not something he needed to concern himself with.

That was never his responsibility.

His only role was to spread the evolutionary path.

Everything else was secondary.

The Ultimate Leap demanded scale, belief, and numbers. For that, the path had to be accessible, widespread, and irresistible.

As for what people chose to do with the power they obtained from his evolutionary path, that had nothing to do with him.

Power was merely a tool.

What one did with it was their own choice.

And Grey had no intention of carrying the weight of the world's morality on his shoulders.

Grey turned toward Xia Qingyue.

She was already looking at him, waiting patiently. By now, everyone around him was accustomed to him occasionally drifting into long, silent monologues. Xia Qingyue did not comment on it.

"Are you done with your monologues?" she asked, a faint smile tugging at her lips.

"Yep." Grey flashed her a grin.

"Alright." Xia Qingyue nodded. "Speak. What is it that you wanted?"

She paused briefly before continuing, her tone turning more practical.

"I still need to return to Evan. I can't stay away from him for too long. He's undergoing a transformation right now, and I only diverted my attention because it was you."

"I mean, I could use my secret realm's power to keep you here for a longer time, Senior Xia Qingyue." Grey replied lightly.

"What would be the point of keeping me here longer?" Xia Qingyue shook her head.

Then she spoke again, her voice calm but unguarded.

"You only come to see me when you need something from me," she said plainly. "I'm afraid that once you're done, you'll forget about me and leave me alone in this secret realm."

Her gaze shifted slightly, no longer fixed on him.

"Evan isn't any better," she added, a trace of bitterness slipping through. "He only comes to me when he wants to train or learn a new technique."

The words were simple.

But they lingered.

Not as an accusation.

As a quiet truth.

'Is this woman guilt tripping me right now?' Grey thought to himself.

But on second thought, wasn't she simply stating the truth?

He could not deny it.

If nothing urgent involved her, he really would forget she even existed until the next time he needed her help.

That realization made him pause.

"Fine." Grey smiled helplessly. "I promise I won't forget about you."

Then, as if the words themselves were not enough, he continued casually.

"How about this, Senior Xia. Why don't you live with me from now on?" He smiled wider. "My secret realm can restore your strength far faster than Evan ever could."

Xia Qingyue's expression rippled the moment she heard that.

The proposal was tempting.

She knew it.

He was right. Remaining inside the secret realm would sustain her far better than staying by Evan's side. The difference in efficiency was not even worth comparing.

"And that's not all," Grey added. "I can passively bind you to the secret realm. As long as you remain within my mental perception range, you can freely move about the outside world."

He paused briefly before adding, almost casually, "That range already spans several cities."

Grey genuinely believed this was the better choice.

From his perspective, keeping Senior Xia Qingyue with him was far safer than letting her remain beside Evan. That man was the holder of fate itself. Wherever he went, chaos followed.

Opportunities.

Calamities.

Unreasonable coincidences.

Xia Qingyue had already suffered enough from being dragged into unexpected dangers because of that protagonist luck.

Beyond that, she possessed far too many things Grey could make use of.

Knowledge.

Experience.

Authority.

And who knew what might happen next?

Evan could suddenly appear in the eastern region overnight for all he cared. Fate holders were infamous for such nonsense.

Grey did not want to gamble on that.

He needed Xia Qingyue close to him.

Especially now, when he was actively developing his own Art and refining techniques for his evolutionary path. To move further, he needed reference points. He needed comparison, contrast, and accumulated experience.

He needed techniques.

And there was no one better suited for that role than Xia Qingyue. No one else possessed such a vast collection of techniques, insights, and lived experience for him to draw from.

Now that Evan had stepped into the second rank, his life was only going to grow more turbulent from here on out. Fate holders never walked calm paths. The stronger they became, the more chaos followed.

And besides, Evan alone could not truly help Xia Qingyue in the long run.

Perhaps he could.

But only years later.

By then, too much damage might already have been done.

If anything, Xia Qingyue herself had more confidence in Grey's ability to help her.

After all.

He was a man who repeatedly created miracles.