Then, she picked up the pink fish plushie again, weighing it in her hand and feeling its soft texture.
After hesitating for a few seconds, she didn't put it away or throw it aside, but instead placed it right there, next to a stack of files on her desk.
The pink fish plushie lay there quietly, as if keeping her company, or perhaps keeping watch.
Fu Xuan sat back down in her chair and refocused her attention on the pile of official work, but the tight line of her lips, drawn thin by exhaustion and complaint, seemed to soften just a little, almost imperceptibly.
"Still... has a bit of a conscience."
She muttered to herself, her voice so soft that only she could hear it.
Meanwhile, in a bustling card parlor somewhere in the Exalting Sanctum.
"A—choo!"
Qingque, who had just drawn a good card and was beaming with joy, sneezed loudly without warning, nearly dropping the cards in her hand.
"Oh! Qingque, which fellow player is talking about your good skills?" a player nearby teased with a smile.
"That's right, perhaps someone lost so badly they're cursing you behind your back!" another person chimed in.
Qingque rubbed her itchy nose and waved her hand dismissively, her face returning to its lazy state: "Meh~ who knows. Maybe the Grand Diviner is nagging me again about 'neglecting my duties for games'! Anyway, never mind, come on, whose turn is it to play? I'm going to win big this round!"
She quickly put the minor incident behind her and dove back into the card game, her mind already racing with how to use this good hand to expand her lead.
After all, nothing is more important than slacking off and playing cards!
Perspective shift.
Just as Sirin felt her power was unmatched and her intellect superior, with her little sense of pride almost overflowing, believing that the two below should be intimidated by her unfathomable demeanor, or at least show a look of hesitation—
Kevin, the strongest warrior of the Previous Era, gave the most direct answer with his actions.
He didn't even look at Sirin again, as if the Herrscher radiating terrifying pressure in the air was no different from an ordinary moving target in the training room.
He simply raised his left hand, which was not holding the baseball bat, his icy blue eyes narrowing slightly.
In an instant, the temperature in the training room plummeted at an unnatural speed!
Countless moisture particles in the air instantly condensed and shaped themselves into dozens of ice spears of varying sizes, their edges sharp as blades and their tips gleaming with a deadly cold light. Like a lethal arrow formation controlled by an invisible hand, they whistled past the speed of sound, shooting toward Sirin in mid-air from multiple tricky angles!
No warning, no probing; the first move was a lethal strike.
"Hmph!"
Sirin was slightly startled, a flicker of anger flashing in her golden cross-shaped pupils.
She didn't expect this White-haired Man to be so "unappreciative"; after she had displayed her power and "given him a chance," he still dared to initiate such a fierce attack.
As expected of humans, ignorant and arrogant!
But her pride as the Herrscher of the Void would not allow her to retreat in the slightest.
Facing the incoming array of ice spears, she didn't even move, simply raising a slender hand with an expressionless face and snapping her fingers crisply.
"Snap."
The sound wasn't loud, but it seemed to pluck the strings of space.
Centered in front of her, dozens of voids, their edges shimmering with purple-black light and their interiors deep and bottomless, appeared out of thin air without warning, precisely blocking the flight Path of every single ice spear.
Those ice spears, like clay oxen entering the sea, plunged into the voids and vanished instantly without a trace, failing to stir even a ripple.
Sirin's lips curled back into that arc filled with a sense of control.
She spread her fingers slightly; the voids that had just absorbed the ice spears did not dissipate completely but instead converged and compressed above her palm in some mysterious trajectory, forming a purple sphere the size of a ping pong ball that radiated a heart-stopping fluctuation.
"Heh."
She spat out the word with disdain, flipped her palm, and gently sent the small purple sphere toward the area where Kevin and Stelle were below.
"Hum—!"
Voids, more numerous and widely distributed than before, appeared densely like a honeycomb above Kevin and Stelle's heads and in the air around them!
Immediately after, the ice spears that had just been swallowed burst out from within at an even faster speed and from even trickier angles, aimed directly at the two below!
"Holy crap—!"
Stelle shrieked, the sudden change happening too fast.
She had no time to think about how this weird "rebound" was happening; her body had already reacted before her brain.
She slammed the Flame Lance she was clutching hard into the ground beneath her feet!
"Boom!"
Dark red flames erupted suddenly in a ring centered on her, hugging the ground!
The blazing and dense flames swirled rapidly upward, instantly forming an airtight, hemispherical flame shield, firmly protecting Stelle inside.
The high concentration of the flames caused the air around the shield to refract violently.
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