Chapter 686: Exactly the Same

Then the squad leader swallowed a mouthful of saliva, his Adam's apple bobbing, and spoke with extreme caution, as if addressing a volatile explosive, struggling to open his mouth.

"Qingque—are you—are you alright?"

Qingque blinked.

The image in his mind was still stuck on the frame where Fu Xuan's face seemed to close in infinitely.

A lingering sensation, scented with flower tea, still clung to his lips.

She instinctively lifted her hand to touch her lips, but felt nothing.

No Fu Xuan, no bed, no excessively luxurious bedroom.

Only the cold light strip of the Star Chariot and the varyingly terrified faces of the Cloud Cavalry across from her.

She blinked twice more, her gaze gradually returning from a daze to its usual look.

She lowered her hand from her lips and idly waved it in front of her.

"Ah. N—nothing at all."

After speaking, she curled back into her seat, hands resting on her knees, brown hair draping from her shoulders to cover half her face.

Her teal eyes stared straight at the neatly arranged nails on the opposite bulkhead, gaze hollow, expression vacant, the skin at her ears flushed red enough to bleed.

The Cloud Cavalry opposite collectively exhaled in relief.

The young officer finally picked up his scabbard, the veteran dabbed sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, and the squad leader slowly sat upright from the chair back.

But the three of them kept glancing intermittently toward Qingque, then snapping their gaze back, as if fearing that lingering a moment longer would attract something.

The veteran kept his head down, fingers drumming incessantly on his knees.

He had served for nearly thirty years, seen countless elites of the Cloud Cavalry, and met generals many times.

Just now, at the instant Qingque opened her eyes from the seat, he felt a pressure he had only experienced twice in his life.

The last time was in the main hall of Shen Ce Fu, where General Jingyuan stood before him, squinting and smiling, and his knees nearly gave way.

The feeling just now was exactly the same.

The veteran lifted his eyelid, peeking through his lashes at the petite girl curled in the opposite seat, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Qingque was still staring at the ceiling.

That sensation on her lips wouldn't dissipate.

She raised her hand and touched her lips again; when her finger brushed the lip, she jolted.

It was a dream.

She was certain.

Fu Xuan could not—

Qingque's finger froze on her lips.

The redness at her ears spread visibly across her cheeks and neck, her head feeling as if plunged into boiling water.

She curled back into the seat again, nesting into the corner between the backrest and the bulkhead, wishing she could meld into it.

But she quickly thought of a question—why did the dream show Grand Diviner in that way?

And even intimate—

Qingque shook her head forcefully, her brown hair whipping up to strike her face.

No.

Can't think about it.

Must forget.

Forget it immediately.

Pretend nothing happened.

When she turns back, she'll still have to report to Grand Diviner as usual.

Grand Diviner remains Grand Diviner, reviewing files, arresting people, and pulling overtime daily.

She remains a slacking Diviner, skipping work to drink tea and play cards each day.

But—if this dream doesn't shatter—then—

Qingque shook her head again, more violently than before.

Stop.

That's it.

Perspective shift.

Heimu sat sideways on the Magic Staff, one leg crossed over the other, elbow propped on the shaft, supporting his cheek.

The Magic Staff drifted leisurely several thousand meters up, moving at a pace neither fast nor slow, like a stroll.

Her ash‑gray hair streamed backward in the high‑altitude wind, and the violet‑black hem of her skirt swayed beside the staff.

From that height, the barren land below looked as if someone had hacked it with a giant sword: fissures stretched east to west, ravines ran south to north, and violet‑black flames spewed from the cracks, tinting the sky with a dark purple hue.

The air was filled with the smell of char and the acrid scent of vaporized rock.

An hour had passed.

She kept Bai E in this Data Space for a full hour.

It wasn't that she couldn't defeat it; she was deliberately stalling, wanting to test Shen E's endurance limit and see if the great sword's swing frequency would wane over time. The answer: it wouldn't.

Everything remained unchanged.

Each strike was as heavy as the first, each thrust as fast as the initial one.

Heimu shifted the hand supporting his cheek to the other side, the corner of his mouth turning slightly downward.

Infinite endurance—truly—before she could finish thinking, a perception alarm detonated in her mind.

She and the Magic Staff vanished instantly from the spot, shifting laterally over a kilometer.

At the moment Heimu vanished, the airspace Heimu had been hovering over was pierced by a meteor.

The meteor appeared without any warning, with no falling trajectory from the sky, no breakthrough flame; it simply coalesced out of thin air in mid‑air, over five hundred meters in diameter, its surface cloaked in purple‑black Flame, and the instant it emerged it displaced all surrounding air, the pressure differential causing Heimu's skirt hem to flip upward sharply.

The meteor, grazing her fading afterimage, slammed into the ground.

Boom—!!!

Where the ground was struck, a gigantic mushroom cloud of magma and rubble rose.

Flame spread from the impact point outward, the shockwave swept a burning ring over a thousand meters in diameter across the barren land, and purple Flame rolled along the ground, plowing the already cracked earth again.

Heimu steadied herself in the distance, and the Magic Staff automatically rotated back to rest beneath her.

She reached up to tuck her wind‑tossed long hair behind her ears; her purple‑black eyes hadn't even had time to glance at the meteor's impact point when a slicing sound reached her ears.

It wasn't the aftershock of the meteor hitting the ground; it was sword qi.

Extremely swift sword qi split the high‑altitude wind, slashing diagonally from behind her occiput.

Heimu didn't even turn her head, she plunged downward as the Magic Staff thrust her into a vertical dive.

Sword qi brushed past the top of her head, shearing off several floating strands of hair.

The severed hairs were twisted into dust by the lingering sword qi in the air.

Halfway through the dive, another sword qi slashed upward from directly below.

Heimu tapped the tip of the Magic Staff with her toe, the staff swung left in a sharp turn, and she nearly flattened her body to fly past the edge of that sword qi.

She glanced downward with her purple‑black eyes; Bai E hovered in the direction of the incoming sword qi, the massive sword riddled with cracks held horizontally before her, its violet patterns burning steadily on her exposed upper torso.

After slashing twice, Bai E's stance showed no pause for adjustment; the sword was already raised again.

Boom—!

The already scarred surface now bore an additional new ravine stretching for thousands of meters.

Heimu perched on the Magic Staff, raised herself again, glanced at the still‑smoking new fissure on the ground, and twitched the corner of her mouth.

Infinite stamina is one thing, but not even a cooldown—treating a super move as a normal attack, is that reasonable?

But that's fine.

Precisely because it can't be killed, it's suitable for testing those huge toys that everyone has wanted to try but never had the chance.

She reached out and casually sliced the air before her.