“Die!”
Extraordinary energy surged through every tired muscle in Atoris’s body, and her mechanical armor whirred into super-high operation. Clenching her teeth, she plunged her ancient longsword, now wreathed in golden flames, fiercely forward.
“Pfft!”
“This is impossible! I am the Chosen One… the one selected by the Supreme Sovereign!”
Scorching blood from his heart corroded the blade. The man extended a hand, now completely blackened, to grasp the flaming sword embedded in his chest. A faint light flickered in his dark-red eyes as he stared at the cold, indifferent young woman before him, screaming with hysterical fury.
“Only I… can save this world!”
“You will only bring destruction to the world!”
Seeing the man’s body already beginning to distort before her, Atoris mustered her last reserves of strength, driving the longsword deeper into his heart. The extraordinary power coursed through the blade, erupting entirely within his form.
“I refuse to accept this!”
Dark-red flames consumed the man, igniting him completely. His body, in that instant, began to dissipate and crumble like foam, ultimately leaving behind a single, spinning black rose on the ground.
Atoris plunged her longsword into the earth and knelt, gasping for breath. Fine beads of sweat dotted her smooth forehead, and the unstable extraordinary substances within her body began to churn wildly. The whispers of madness and chaos grew clearer in her ears.
Without a word, she immediately activated the sealed artifact at her waist. A pure, holy radiance instantly soothed the surging frenzy within her.
Atoris’s gaze remained fixed on the black rose hovering in the void before her. As Perseus’s life force faded, the rose slowly withered, then transformed into a tiny seed that fell to the ground.
“Clang!”
Perseus’s mechanical backpack crashed to the ground. The already tattered bag exploded open, and the black seed, in that very instant, shot toward it.
“Hmph.”
Atoris let out a cold snort. A hint of scales briefly appeared beneath her skin as she forcefully flung her longsword.
“Clang!”
From the exploding fragments came the sound of metal colliding. Atoris’s eyes widened in surprise as her longsword was deflected. Her pupils contracted slightly.
Finally, the dust stirred by the impact settled, clearly revealing the object within the smoke.
A strangely shaped lantern?
****
Two in the afternoon.
Lin Xuan sat idly in her shop, bored. Her sister that morning had been full of crude jokes and had clung to her relentlessly, giving Lin Xuan a splitting headache.
Fortunately, her sister left after lunch, claiming she was in a hurry to go home and do homework.
Not long after she left, Lin Xuan followed suit. She took a taxi back to the flower shop and, as expected, the little girl who had been sheltering from the rain was gone. A note she had left was taped to the rolling shutter door.
It contained a bewildering message for Lin Xuan.
“My apologies, Senior. This junior was reckless! I will certainly call upon you another day to offer my apologies!”
However, having always aced reading comprehension since childhood, she quickly understood that the girl must have accidentally messed up something in the flower shop.
Upon entering, she indeed saw that the dilapidated potted plant by the counter seemed to be arranged differently than before.
Aside from that, nothing else appeared broken or out of place.
Perhaps the little girl had accidentally knocked over the pot while charging her device.
Since it was nothing major, Lin Xuan couldn’t be bothered to deal with it.
As usual, she casually opened her novel to browse. She noticed several new messages in the comment section of her story, “The Complete Guide to Pigeon Cuisine.”
“Author, if you have the guts, post your address! I’ll send you a box of razor blades!”
“If you dare post it, I dare send them!”
“Author, post your address! I’ll send you a pigeon-specific urn!”
Lin Xuan was amused by these comments. A pigeon urn? Was this some new popular meme?
Thinking this, she switched to her alt account, added a comment below that one with her flower shop address, and urged, “Send it quickly, send it quickly!”
After that, she exited the novel app.
Just then, a message popped up on her QQ alt account.
Tu Su: Senior, Senior, are you there? (*^▽^*)
Nine-tailed Celestial Fox: ? Yes, I am.
Tu Su: Senior, I’ll be there soon!
Tu Su: Hehe, I’m afraid you won’t recognize me, so I’ll send a selfie first (*^ω^*)
Lin Xuan, who was drinking water while looking at the picture the other party sent, immediately spat it out.
The phone displayed a beautiful fox-girl with orange-red hair, dressed in ancient attire. Her small, delicate face was turned towards the camera, revealing a cute smile. A pair of fluffy ears stood perfectly straight, seemingly a little nervous.
Though it could also be due to props.
But that wasn’t the point. The point was:
‘Ling’er? How could it be her?’
Lin Xuan was a little bewildered. The image of her well-behaved, adorable, gentle, virtuous, and sensible sister slowly merged in her mind with the chuunibyou girl dressed as a fox-girl before her.
Lin Xuan felt her head buzzing. To discover that her gentle and virtuous sister was actually a chuunibyou girl who loved cosplay, and that her own alt account was her revered Senior?
What should she do? Urgent, waiting online!
‘No, calm down, calm down!’
Upon careful thought, there was nothing wrong with it. Her sister was indeed at the age of chuunibyou. In fact, her usual mature, sensible, and all-knowing demeanor was probably what wasn’t normal.
At this realization, Lin Xuan, in that moment, unhesitatingly awakened her own chuunibyou soul, which had long been dormant.
‘Regardless, as an older sibling, it’s my duty to protect my sister’s chuunibyou heart!’
And so, she swiftly went upstairs, changed into the ancient costume she kept there for streaming, removed her makeup, and summoned her tail and ears.
After perfecting her demeanor and posture, Lin Xuan gazed at the “fox immortal maiden” in the mirror, a reflection entirely different from her usual self, and a smile that eclipsed all beauty bloomed on her face.
“Perfect!”
****
The alley outside the flower shop.
“Quick, chase! Don’t let that Young Master of the Demonic Cult escape!”
“He seems to have gone this way!”
Two almost imperceptible white shadows flashed across the sky, like a gentle breeze, failing to draw even a flicker of attention from passersby.
Long after the two white shadows departed, a low voice suddenly echoed from the shadows of the alley.
“The aura of the Primordial Orb left by the Cult Master…”
A young man with a gloomy appearance, dressed in dark-red ancient clothes, emerged from the shadows.
He glanced at the dim alley before him. In the next instant, he melted like paint into a mass of black shadow, rapidly moving forward.
However, after only a few meters, he was suddenly forced out of the ground, as if repelled by some unknown force.
Sha Ao had never anticipated such a situation. Due to inertia, he stumbled a few more steps forward before finally steadying himself.
Then, a peaceful, ethereal voice chimed in his ear.
“You’ve arrived!”
‘Who?’
The voice was like a ghost, seemingly close by, yet he couldn’t feel it at all. Sha Ao instantly felt a chill run through him and instinctively looked up.
Before him was merely an ordinary-sized shop, but for some reason, it gave Sha Ao an indescribable sense of eeriness.
Following the direction of the voice, he saw an unparalleled woman, her face obscured by chaos, standing quietly by the shop’s door. In that moment, the shop in Sha Ao’s eyes underwent a world-shattering transformation.
Boundless white chaos surged from the surrounding walls, and one chain after another, like threads of order, slowly undulated within that chaos.
A pure black pillar, towering to the heavens, stood in the chaotic world. Yet, beneath the figure of the person before him, it appeared so minuscule.
Innumerable bizarre, twisted evil eyes opened on the pillar, gazing at the person before them with a mocking, disdainful look, as if appraising a new prey.
In a trance, he seemed to see nine world-shading tails sweep across the void.
Wherever they passed, worlds collapsed and were destroyed, billions of living beings wailed—a scene of pure hell…
This Young Master of the Demonic Cult, who had seen countless storms and tribulations, felt an extreme terror in that instant!
****
Lin Xuan felt somewhat bewildered watching the young man frozen in place before her.
She had thought it was Ling’er who had arrived, but instead, it was a stranger. And that pale complexion clearly indicated someone who rarely left their home. Hmm, this guy’s legs seemed to be trembling a little too. As expected, after staying indoors for so long, he must be the type who is shy and not good at socializing.
That’s why he specifically chose such a sparsely populated alley to walk through when going out.
Then, looking at his attire, Lin Xuan suddenly smiled. It seemed to be another chuunibyou teenager, and judging by the style of his clothes, he was practically identical to the chuunibyou uncle she had once entertained, who claimed to be the “Demonic Cult Master!”
So, she tried to keep her voice calm and smiled gently.
“You must be a junior of Sha Wuji, then. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time!”
However, as her words fell, she saw the young man before her tremble even more violently…