Chapter 62: Bud-level

In fact, Lin Yun knew very little about Anya’s death as well.

Because he was neither at the scene nor able to see her remains. The information he obtained all came from the accounts of the younger generation of magical girls.

But even so, at that time, he still could not understand how Anya could possibly die.

A Flower Card magical girl, recognized for her combat power, could be said to stand at the pinnacle of magical girls; not to mention, she was the "strongest Flower Card."

Simply guarding Fang Ting was like a stroll in a back garden for Anya; let alone any danger, she was likely the true disaster for the remnant beasts.

Yet her death was so clean and easy, it even felt unreal, as if a towering mountain that had stood before one's eyes a second ago had silently leveled into a plain the next.

Anya died, bright red blood blooming from her chest like a spider lily planted upon a cherry blossom tree. She closed her eyes, a satisfied and happy smile on her face, as if she had seen something beautiful and had fallen into a sweet dream.

It was just that the road to this dream was a one-way street; once Anya stepped onto it, she could never turn back.

Lin Yun never got to see this final moment.

When the other magical girls arrived, terrified and grieving over Anya’s death, and attempted to take her remains away, Anya’s body turned into fine particles of magic and drifted away before their eyes.

She did not leave behind the slightest trace in this world.

In the end, the only thing that could record her existence was that small tombstone.

This was also the reason why Lin Yun could not let Lin Xiaolu see Anya’s remains at that time: because there were no remains at all, and he could not explain to Lin Xiaolu why.

At that time, Lin Xiaolu felt puzzled, even angry, at his behavior. But as she learned the truth now, she began to feel that she had not acted correctly back then.

Several more days had passed since the wedding anniversary of Lin Yun and Anya.

Because she had learned the fact that her mother was a magical girl, Lin Xiaolu had been absent-minded for several days, distracted by everything.

Lin Yun continued with the final handover for his resignation, preparing to devote himself entirely to the affairs of the magical girls.

Moko carried out its Sower career sporadically, spending most of its time at home watching the two newcomers train, and occasionally going out to search for new magical girls.

According to it, it seemed to have found similar traces in the Lixing District, so it had some motivation for this.

As for Xia Liang, as the more talented of the two new magical girls, she had touched the bottleneck between Seed-level and Bud-level in these few days at a speed that would leave anyone stunned.

And then, logically, she welcomed the opportunity to construct her true form on this day.

A magical girl’s true form is a concept that sounds mysterious but is actually quite concrete. In terms of its actual composition, it is a special structure that uses the magic source as its core to combine the magical girl’s magic and soul together.

It is the foundation for all of a magical girl’s subsequent abilities; whether it is magic constructs, incantations, or anything else, they all require a true form. It is also the source of a magical girl’s life; no matter how serious the injuries a magical girl’s body sustains, as long as the true form is not damaged, these injuries can recover over time with magic.

Likewise, this also means that once a magical girl’s true form is destroyed, that magical girl’s life has reached its end.

This is precisely why magical girls need to protect their magic source: after all, the magic source is the core of the true form, and if the magic source is damaged, the true form will also be severely affected.

And right now, what Xia Liang was doing was related to this: she was going to use her own magic source as the core to construct a new true form.

The time was ten o'clock at night, and the location was Xia Liang’s home. When the study session was halfway through, she suddenly indicated to the two of them, as if struck by a flash of inspiration, that she felt her state had arrived.

Under Cui Que’s instructions and Lin Xiaolu’s bored gaze, she began her attempt to construct her true form.

Holding her heart seed in the palm of her hand, Xia Liang closed her eyes, quietly feeling the surge of magic within her body.

Consciousness is the manifestation of the soul; one must capture and follow the flow of magic, letting one’s consciousness follow the magic to form similar fluctuations; afterwards, one must inversely guide the magic, manipulating the frequency of its fluctuations to make it identical to one’s own consciousness and soul.

After the fluctuations of the soul and magic gradually overlap, one then uses the magic source as the core to conduct two-way communication, causing them to merge into one, thereby forming a new power.

Gradually, the heart seed in her hand began to glow with a light different from before.

Just as a seed in the soil breaks through with a sharp tip when nourished by water, the shape of the originally round heart seed changed, transforming from a regular sphere into a teardrop shape. A small, sharp tip stood at the top of the gem, looking surprisingly cute.

Of course, when it reached this step, the heart seed was no longer a heart seed; it should be given another name—a heart bud.

Hibiscus-purple magic spread out in circles from the heart bud, enveloping Xia Liang within it. The fluctuations of the magic cast a phantom of Xia Liang, and the phantom vanished in an instant, merging back into Xia Liang herself.

Lin Xiaolu, lying not far away, couldn't help but rub her eyes: she didn't know if it was her imagination, but vaguely, she seemed to see two Xia Liangs, only one of them was as transparent as a phantom.

Cui Que stood with her arms crossed, quietly watching the process of Xia Liang constructing her true form, nodding from time to time, sighing once again in her heart at Xia Liang’s talent.

Constructing a true form on the first attempt—she did not know how many people in the magical kingdom had this record, but it was certainly the only one she had ever seen in her life.

Among the four main members of the first batch of the Fang Ting magical girl squad twenty-two years ago, the record for the fastest construction of a true form was Su Shengzi: she took three attempts. And the slowest record was Anya: she tried a full seventeen times.

Of course, the number of attempts Anya spent was not entirely a matter of talent. In fact, her talent as a magical girl was very high, it was just that she was the first in the squad to reach the Bud-level bottleneck at that time.

The lineup in Fang Ting at that time was even more pathetic than it is now—they didn't have a senior mentor like Cui Que, only a few new recruits who knew nothing. Only that rabbit fairy named Wobo could provide some knowledge on cultivation, but its level of teaching could be described as misleading at best.

Recalling that it took her a full ten attempts to construct her true form under the guidance of that stinky rabbit, Cui Que had to sigh that times had changed.

As the hibiscus-purple light faded, Xia Liang, who was standing in the middle, opened her eyes, holding the flawless heart bud in her hand, and gave a playful smile to Lin Yun and Lin Xiaolu.

Clearly, she had succeeded.

And constructing the true form and reaching the Bud-level meant the next step—she would awaken her own magic construct.