Painting of the Nine Immortals - Chapter 2: Inhibition and Apprenticeship

[The End of Full Text]“From just now, you've been looking at me with such malicious intent. Are you perhaps reminiscing about...the old dream of the night before last?” Liang Chen forcefully pulled Jing Haohao into the washroom.“I told you, what happened a few days ago was an accident. I'm not the kind of woman you can just casually touch!” Jing Haohao shook off the hand he had grasped onto her wrist, turned to leave, but was abruptly caught by Liang Chen. He lowered his head to her ear, a mischievous smile on his lips, cryptically saying: “Don't worry, if I can't casually touch, then I'll be serious when I do!”

A pill, a tiny capsule encased in a biologically harmless water-soluble shell; A shell whose very existence is a result of a century of research and technological advancement. A manmade synthesis of Chemicals and product of complex processes.

And in the end, a means to an end.

A way to deliver a concoction of other Chemicals for an agenda; Vitamins for nutrition, medication for treatment, or… perhaps more.

We trust that what we eat won’t do us harm, and trust that those who are responsible for its creation had the best of intentions. But in the end, it is difficult or perhaps impossible to truly tell what lies within a pill.

That is until one day I entered a research institution as a test subject. All I did was swallow a pill I was told to be a health supplement.

Silvermist Evermore never belonged. Born to unloving parents and cast aside, she had long accepted that life would never offer her warmth—until she was chosen as an apprentice at Moonstone Academy, a place where magic breathes and fate is written in the stars.But her arrival comes with a price. In an act of betrayal and manipulation, Silvermist shatters Frost's staff, the formidable Winter Guardian, unraveling a secret that should have remained buried.Now, bound by an ancient rule, she must take its place—not as a mere apprentice, but as something far more dangerous: Frost’s human staff, the living embodiment of his power.As Silvermist struggles to navigate the treacherous halls of Moonstone, she discovers that Guardians without apprentices are doomed to vanish, and the balance of the four seasons—Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter—hangs by a thread. But the shadows whisper a greater truth: a war looms on the horizon, fueled by the Sandman’s wrath and a hidden enemy who has been pulling the strings all along.Haunted by cryptic dreams, hunted by those who seek to use her, and betrayed by those she once trusted, Silvermist must uncover the truth behind her own existence before she loses herself to the very storm she was forced to wield.Can she survive the weight of Winter, or will she be the final snowfall that buries them all?

Lin Xing has the ability to turn back time.Whenever he faces a life-threatening danger, he would return to the past.He falls to his death, and returns 5 seconds earlier.He is killed by a falling object, and returns 1 minute earlier.He is struck down by a dump truck, and returns 20 minutes earlier.Then one day... he finds himself having returned to one year ago.