She would listen to him in everything, but in this one matter, she had to be a rebellious disciple.
"Master…"
Jingliu murmured softly. A sudden surge of madness rose in her crimson eyes.
He was there!
He was locked in a death match with Shuhu!
No wonder… no wonder she could not find him no matter where she searched across the Luofu. No wonder he and Xueyi and Hanya seemed to have vanished into thin air.
It turned out he had been in the most dangerous place all along.
"Master! Wait for me!"
Jingliu instinctively moved to pursue him on her sword, but just as she shifted, a sharp claw lunged from behind, nearly piercing the back of her neck.
It was a borisin that had not yet retreated. She swung her sword back and cut it down in one clean motion.
More Abominations of Abundance swarmed her. Although Shuhu had fled, the remaining remnants were still staggering in number.
If they were not cleared out, the crisis on the Luofu would not be resolved.
Recalling the absolute orders left by Teng Xiao, Jingliu's footsteps came to a forced halt.
On one side was her Master, whose life or death was unknown.
On the other was the Luofu, riddled with holes and on the brink of destruction.
On one side was personal feeling; on the other was duty.
Her arm trembled violently, but in the end she did not choose to give chase immediately.
As the Sword Champion of the Luofu and a member of the Cloud Knights, she could not leave while even a single Abomination remained alive.
If her Master were here, he would never allow her to defy military orders.
Despair, pain, anxiety, and worry converged at this moment, forging the most extreme killing intent.
Another cold, full moon rose slowly, instantly enveloping more than half of the Luofu in its icy radiance.
"All of you, die!"
"Die faster!"
Jingliu plunged into the enemy ranks like a demon. Wherever her sword light passed, Abominations were sliced into fragments and frozen into grotesque ice sculptures.
She was racing against time, venting her inner torment with a madness that pushed every limit of her body and spirit.
Master… I beg you. You must wait for your disciple.
Wait for me to finish killing this trash. Then I will find you. Even if it is hell itself, I will go with you.
The battlefield was a graveyard of frozen corpses and shattered jade architecture. Distant clashes of other Cloud Knights echoed faintly through the cold air, but Jingliu heard none of it. Her world had narrowed to the next swing of her blade, the next Abomination that dared stand between her and the direction she desperately wanted to fly. The moonlight she summoned pressed down like a second weight upon her shoulders, beautiful and merciless. Every breath burned. Every muscle screamed. Still she moved faster, struck harder, because stopping meant admitting the terror clawing at her heart.
She could not stop.
Not yet.
===
In the vast sea of stars, a spaceship was continuously jumping, hurtling toward the Luofu at speeds exceeding light.
Inside the cockpit, Ruan Mei was, quite rarely, personally piloting the ship.
Yu Qingtu and Black Swan sat to the side.
Though the relationship between the three women was subtle, at this moment the emotions on their faces were surprisingly consistent.
Not long ago, on the anniversary of Kanzaki's death, Ruan Mei had rushed over right after Black Swan.
The moment she learned news related to Kanzaki, that face which had rarely shown expression for thousands of years was instantly swept by a violent storm.
Although Black Swan and Yu Qingtu's expressions were slightly better, they were not far off.
After tracing the memories within that forget-worry plum blossom brew, Black Swan had obtained some broken fragments and heard the voice of past memories within them.
That voice—none of them would ever mistake it.
Though they did not know why, years after Kanzaki's passing, someone bearing the same name and voice would appear on the Luofu, it did not stop the three women from reaching a single, unbreakable consensus.
They had to reach the Luofu immediately. Right now. At the fastest possible speed.
If the Luofu were not a major faction where anyone entering without regard for the Jade Gate would be labeled a mortal enemy, they would have used even more convenient means long ago.
Now, in just two more Luofu system hours, they would reach their destination.
Hmm?
The three women suddenly turned their heads in unison, looking in a certain direction.
Was that… the gaze of Yaoshi?
It was so obvious, even more obvious than when Nous marked a new genius.
"Something is wrong."
Ruan Mei's slender brows furrowed slightly as her fair fingers swiped across the control screen, pulling up the biological detection radar interface.
The dense, almost gapless points of light on the flight path made them quickly realize what was happening.
The Abominations of Abundance were laying siege to the Xianzhou!
This was nothing new in the galaxy.
Any world that had initiated interstellar civilization knew that the friction between these two mortal enemy factions had lasted for thousands of years.
Not many factions dared to lightly provoke the Abominations of Abundance, but the three women in the cabin were not among them.
They were already burning with anxiety to reach the Luofu and find Kanzaki. Now, hearing that the Luofu was under attack by the Abominations of Abundance, how could they stand idle?
Before Yu Qingtu or Black Swan could act, Ruan Mei's narrow eyes squinted slightly.
On the radar interface, all the red dots vanished simultaneously in an instant, with no indication of what means she had used.
Yu Qingtu had to admit that a genius specializing in the field of life knew better than she did how to decide the survival of billions of lives in a heartbeat.
To Ruan Mei at this moment, these Abominations of Abundance were less than weeds.
If that Kanzaki… was the one she had missed and searched for all these years… then any existence that dared threaten his safety deserved to die.
"You two, if the situation on the Luofu is critical, I believe there is no need to follow their rules anymore. I am sure the Xianzhou people will understand."
Ruan Mei's tone carried an undisguised urgency.
Yu Qingtu was in no mood to appreciate how Ruan Mei's usually expressionless face had gained a human touch. She nodded without hesitation.
"I agree."
"Seconded."
"Ms. Black Swan, give me the coordinates," Ruan Mei said.
Black Swan's fingertip pointed toward Ruan Mei's forehead, transmitting a certain coordinate obtained from that bottle of forget-worry plum blossom brew directly into her mind.
Subsequently, Ruan Mei activated a space-type curio, using those coordinates as an anchor to open a wormhole that swallowed the entire ship.
After a brief transit, the ship appeared in the sky above the delve where the Qingxin Residence was located.
The three of them looked down through the portholes impatiently, but they never expected to see a scene of purgatory.
There were no Abominations of Abundance, nor any sign of the Cloud Knights. Only broken walls and ruins stretched as far as the eye could see.
Black Swan's form turned ethereal. She passed through the ship and floated down among the ruins of the Qingxin Residence. She meticulously analyzed the memory traces remaining in time and soon locked onto a figure.
Witnessing the hazy face of that illusory figure, tears could not help but fall from the corners of her eyes.
"Mr. Qi…"
Though his appearance was different, she could vaguely see the shadow that belonged only to him.
She would not mistake it.
It really was him.
There was no time to ponder why the Mr. Qi she had personally seen off had been reincarnated. The priority was to find his whereabouts.
Yu Qingtu appeared beside her, her classical and dignified face full of worry.
"Black Swan, you take charge of tracking Kanzaki's trail. Ah Ruan will come with me to help the Luofu break the siege first."
They had come in a hurry and knew nothing more about the Kanzaki here.
If he were just an ordinary long-life species, then in this disaster… none of them dared to think further.
That kind of future—finding what was lost only to lose it again before their very eyes—was something none of them could accept.