The Patriarch clearly knew his grandson carried many secrets, and as long as Alec wasn’t interested in revealing them, he was perfectly content not to pry.

“I want you to use one of those now. I’m hoping my prediction is right and it does exactly what I’m expecting,” Alec said, pointing toward the pill bottle that housed the Tier 7 mental pill.

The Patriarch immediately understood, without hesitation, he uncorked the bottle, took one pill, and swallowed it.

Right after that, he glanced at Alec as if expecting further instructions—but Alec simply watched him quietly, as though waiting for something to happen.

At first, nothing did.

That alone surprised him, he had taken the Tier 7 cultivation pills Alec gave him in the past, though far fewer than what lay before him now, and he had treasured each one, since the clan could rarely afford such resources.

Still, whenever he consumed one, he usually felt the effects almost immediately.

This time, however, there was nothing, for a moment, he wondered if something was wrong.

Then, about two seconds later, it began.

A strange heat surged inside him, there were no flames, yet it felt as though an intense force was burning through his body from within. Dark impurities started seeping out through his skin, pushed outward by that same internal pressure.

And that wasn’t all.

When the Patriarch sent his mental senses inward, he could clearly feel his mana veins expanding. Veins that had aged, narrowed, or even partially blocked over the years were slowly reopening under the influx of powerful energy.

He didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but he felt like he could already tell what was happening to him.

Because he had always believed that if those blockages fully broke open...he would be pushed straight into the Tier 8 mage realm, without any other actions needed.

The very realm he had struggled to reach for so long was finally within his grasp, just as he tried to suppress the surge, a sharp bang erupted from his body, and his head snapped backward, as he began to levitate into the air.

The sheer energy radiating from him cracked the ground beneath like a spreading spiderweb.

Alec simply watched with a faint smile, he couldn’t quite explain it, but he felt genuinely happy in that moment, he had been hoping the first effects of the mental pill would help his grandfather step into the Tier 8 realm.

After all, he still remembered how the old man used to complain about needing more Tier 7 cultivation pills in order to break through, even while already at the peak of the Tier 7 realm, which had always puzzled Alec.

He always had this biased feeling that his grandfather was extremely talented, and there was no reason he should require so much assistance to move through just one minor realm.

Eventually, Alec had concluded that it wasn’t a lack of talent at all, it was years of intense training without proper detoxification, combined with inconsistent medicinal support, he believed that it must have been what caused the blockages within his body, making advancement far more difficult.

That didn’t make him less gifted, just burdened by the accumulated strain, which was why Alec had insisted on him taking the mental pills before him.

Because beyond its enhancing mental abilities, it also seems to carry a strong purifying effect, flushing out hidden impurities on its first usage.

As Alec watched his grandfather continue levitating, he started to feel powerful aura fluctuations suddenly approach with his mental senses.

Five elder mages appeared around him almost instantly, the Grand Elder took one side, while the Third and Fourth Elders positioned themselves at others, without hesitation, they began forming rapid hand seals, channeling a foreign energy through their mana.

It was clear—they were stabilizing the environment, ensuring the breakthrough wouldn’t spiral out of control.

As the elders’ energy surged upward, it spread across the sky like a veil, clearly meant to suppress and conceal the aura pouring out from the Patriarch.

But just then, the seemingly unconscious Patriarch jerked slightly, as his mental image materialized behind him.

The towering dark golem apparition that seems to have been made from dark iron opened its eyes and turned toward the elders.

The Gordons’ elders were doing everything they could to mask the Patriarch’s breakthrough, because if he truly stepped into the Tier 8 realm, they wanted no outsider to realize it—not yet.

But it was already too late, as the mental image suddenly struck at the center of the stabilizing energy field, and like falling dominoes, the concealment collapsed instantly.

As a bright brown radiance burst outward in all directions, and even the Patriarch’s aura began to change, as the dark golem behind him also started undergoing its own transformation, its form growing heavier, more defined, almost alive.

The elders exchanged helpless glances, they all knew there was no hiding this anymore. Concealing the Patriarch alone had been difficult enough, but hiding a colossal dark-iron golem mental image of that scale was simply impossible, they had tried this formation on Tier 7 mages and it worked but on a Tier 8 breakthrough they realised how hard they were reaching for considering their low realm in comparison.

_ _

From a distance, Terran stared at the dark golem figure with closed eyes as its body shifted and evolved. He slowly shook his head.

He knew exactly what this phenomenon meant.

Someone was breaking into the Tier 8 realm.

And since it was happening within the Gordons Clan’s territory, there was little doubt about who it was.

Still, he couldn’t wrap his head around it.

He hadn’t seen any mid-rank clan this abnormal before. In fact, he didn’t even believe he could still call them a mid-rank clan anymore.

The mere fact that they now possessed a Tier 8 mage already qualified them as a weak high-rank clan, and that was without even factoring in the existence of their Tier 7 mages.

What unsettled Terran even more was the Gordons’ apparent ability to conjure pills and armor as if from thin air. It was precisely because of this that his suspicions kept growing. All this while, the spies they had planted throughout the city had been completely unable to uncover the true origin of the pills and spirit equipment that were auctioned off, as if their source had been deliberately erased from the world itself.

Clearly, they were bound to fail from the start, as the person responsible for their troubles was far away from their reach, the true reason behind their confusion was so unbelievable that even Terran had never once suspected Alec to be the one responsible for creating them.