Luna tested the other abilities quickly: Tidal Force let her manipulate metaphysical currents, creating waves of fortune or misfortune. Phase Shift Reality allowed her to alter her relationship with physical reality. Gravitational Lensing bent light and space for precision attacks or perfect illusions. Micro-Singularity Creation formed tiny black holes with crushing gravitational pull.
Each ability was devastating. Together, they made her one of the most dangerous combatants on the continent.
But the most profound change wasn't the abilities.
It was the memories.
Luna sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb Nova, and focused on the sensation building at the edge of her consciousness.
A seal. Ancient, intricate, woven into her very soul. She'd never noticed it before because it had been designed to be invisible until the trigger condition was met.
Access to Lunar Dao.
Now that she'd crossed that threshold, the seal was dissolving, revealing what had been hidden for over a thousand years.
Luna closed her eyes and let the sealed memory surface fully.
The Sealed Memory - From Her Parents' Perspective
The memory began not with images, but with her mother's voice—warm, loving, tinged with desperate urgency.
"My precious daughter. My little moon. If you're hearing this, it means you've achieved Lunar Dao comprehension and survived to this point. I'm so proud of you."
The voice solidified into vision. Luna found herself experiencing the memory from her mother's perspective, seeing through her eyes, feeling her emotions.
Her mother stood in an opulent chamber that defied mortal architecture. The walls were constructed from solidified moonlight, translucent and glowing. The ceiling opened to a sky filled with dozens of moons, each one radiating different colored luminescence. This was the heart of the Lunar Spirit Clan's ancestral palace in the Immortal Realm.
And her mother was running away from it.
"I can't do this anymore," her mother—Selene Nightwhisper, Saintess of the Lunar Spirit Clan—whispered to herself as she snuck through corridors she'd known since childhood. "I can't marry someone I don't love just because Father decreed it politically advantageous."
The perspective shifted, showing Selene escaping the clan grounds. She was young, perhaps the equivalent of twenty in mortal years, though she'd lived for millennia. Beautiful beyond mortal comprehension, with silver hair that seemed to absorb and reflect moonlight simultaneously, eyes that shifted between violet and silver, skin that glowed with ethereal radiance. Her beauty was so profound it seemed to warp reality itself, making the air shimmer around her.
She was naïve. Sheltered. The Saintess position had given her power but isolated her from reality.
The memory accelerated, showing her descent to a lower realm—not quite mortal, but not fully Immortal either. A middle ground where cultivators from both realms sometimes traded and interacted.
She encountered scammers almost immediately. Smooth-talking merchants who recognized noble bearing and saw an easy mark. They offered her "rare treasures" at "friendship prices" and she, having no concept of currency or negotiation, gave them everything valuable she carried.
By the time she realized she'd been robbed, they were gone. She stood in an alley, alone and vulnerable for the first time in her existence, feeling stupid and lost.
Then he appeared.
A young man—mortal-born but ascending rapidly through cultivation realms. Kael Stormborne. He'd noticed the scam, followed the merchants, and recovered everything they'd stolen through a combination of intimidation and overwhelming combat superiority.
He returned her belongings with a slight bow and a warm smile.
"You should be more careful, miss. Not everyone in the lower realms is trustworthy."
Selene stared at him, stunned. Not because he was extraordinarily handsome—though he was—but because he'd helped her without expecting anything in return. No political favor. No clan advantage. Just... kindness.
"Thank you," she managed, her voice small. "I... I'm not from around here."
"I gathered that," Kael said with gentle amusement. "Let me guess—sheltered noble daughter sneaking out to see the world?"
She nodded, embarrassed.
He laughed, not mockingly but warmly. "Well then, noble daughter, how about I show you around properly? Make sure you don't get scammed again?"
The memory accelerated again, showing days blurring into weeks. Kael Stormborne showed her the lower realms—the markets, the cultivation sites, the places where ordinary people lived and struggled and found joy. He taught her about real life beyond palace walls.
And Selene Nightwhisper fell in love.
Not with his power—though he was impressive, advancing through Immortal Ascension sub-realms with shocking speed. Not with his looks—though she found him beautiful. But with his kindness. His humor. The way he treated her like a person instead of a political piece.
Kael Stormborne, for his part, fell just as hard. The sheltered Saintess who approached everything with wide-eyed wonder, who laughed at his jokes, who genuinely cared about his dreams and ambitions.
They married in secret. A small ceremony witnessed only by the moons themselves, binding their souls in ways that transcended clan politics and racial taboos.
And when Selene Nightwhisper became pregnant—an event that should have been impossible for a Lunar Spirit—they knew they were in trouble.
The memory shifted to the moment of discovery. The Lunar Spirit Clan's patriarch—Selene Nightwhisper's father—learning that his daughter, the Saintess promised to another powerful clan, had not only run away but married a mortal-born cultivator and lost her virginity.
The rage was apocalyptic.
Waves of cultivators descended on Kael Stormborne and Selene Nightwhisper. Dozens of Immortal Realm experts, sent to retrieve the Saintess and eliminate the "contamination."
But Kael Stormborne was a genius beyond normal comprehension.
The memory showed battles from Selene Nightwhisper's perspective as she fought beside her husband. Kael Stormborne breaking through mid-combat, ascending from early Immortal Ascension to mid stages in the heat of battle. Comprehending new Daos as enemy attacks forced him to understand fundamental principles. Grasping Origin concepts on pure instinct.
They survived wave after wave, their love and desperation fueling impossible growth.
But eventually, the Lunar Spirit Clan patriarch himself descended.
Aldric Nightwhisper. Peak of the Immortal Realm. A being who'd lived for hundreds of millions of years, who'd mastered Lunar Dao to its absolute limits, who commanded power that could unmake galaxies.
He looked at his daughter with disappointment and his son-in-law with contempt.
"You've brought shame to our clan, Selene. And you, mortal... you dare touch what was promised to another?"
Kael Stormborne stood his ground despite being an entire major realm below the patriarch's power. "I love her. She loves me. No political arrangement changes that."
"Love." Aldric Nightwhisper's voice dripped with disdain. "What does a mortal know of love? You've stolen my daughter's purity, created forbidden offspring, destroyed carefully planned alliances. For this, you die."
The battle that followed lasted one minute.
One minute that shook the entire Immortal Realm.
They fought in the Chaos Realm—the space between ordered reality and pure chaos—to avoid casualties. Even so, the collateral damage was catastrophic.
Aldric attacked with the full weight of peak Lunar Dao. Each strike carried galaxy-destroying force. Beams of concentrated moonlight that didn't just damage but fundamentally rewrote reality. Gravitational manipulation that crushed space itself. Void freeze that stopped time in localized regions.
Kael, despite being a full realm below, fought back with impossible tenacity. He burned his lifespan, his cultivation base, his very existence to keep pace. Comprehended new Daos mid-battle. Touched upon Origins he'd never studied. His genius let him fight above his realm, turning what should have been instant execution into genuine combat.
The Chaos Realm trembled. Countless barren universes that existed in that space—dead realities long abandoned—were destroyed in the crossfire. Stars went supernova from stray attacks. Black holes formed and collapsed. Space itself fractured.
But Kael couldn't win. Only survive. Only buy time.
One minute. That's all he could give.
He turned to Selene, even as he fought off attacks that could annihilate solar systems.
"Go! Take our daughter to the mortal realm! The Middle Realm—they won't find her there immediately!"
"I won't leave you!" Selene screamed, tears streaming down her face as she clutched their infant daughter.
"You must! If they catch you both, they'll kill Luna and lock you away forever! At least if you run, she has a chance! Please, my love—save our daughter!"
Selene's heart shattered. But she knew he was right.
She fled, tearing open a dimensional passage that led down through the realms. Immortal Realm to Heaven Realm to Middle Realm—descending until she reached a place remote enough to hide.
The Black Tide Sect. A demonic cultivation sect in a distant corner of the Middle Realm, led by a Sect Master who'd once received a favor from the Lunar Spirit Clan and owed a debt.
The memory showed Selene arriving, her cultivation sealed to hide her presence, holding baby Luna in trembling arms.
"Please," she begged the former Sect Master—a woman with kind eyes despite her demonic cultivation. "Please raise her. Protect her. Never tell her who she truly is until she's strong enough to know."
She laid baby Luna in the Sect Master's arms and worked quickly, weaving complex seals into her daughter's very existence.