Chapter 718: I'm Going!

Qingque glanced at that huge thing in the distance, then at the ten thousand jade tiles spread before her like half the sky, and the abacus in her mind clacked back and forth several times.

Then, with a sudden surge of spirit, she mustered all her strength and swung again toward the direction of the giant tree.

All the jade tiles flipped simultaneously, their faces forward, and azure light burst from the twenty thousand tiles at once.

Tens of thousands of streaks of light, trailing slender tails, shot forward, piercing the clouds, passing through the golden‑hued air above the sea reflected by the canopy, spreading across the sky.

From afar, the scene resembled a reverse‑falling meteor shower, with countless azure specks rising from the horizon into the heavens, weaving in the sky into a glowing river.

Qingque stood on the fish's back, her ash‑gray long hair lifted backward by the wind stirred by the light, her emerald eyes reflecting the sky's meteors, and she suddenly thought the scene was rather romantic.

The romance turned excessive; the next instant, tens of thousands of meteors struck the surface of the giant tree simultaneously.

Boom—

Boom Boom Boom—

Boom Boom Boom Boom—

Dense explosions rose and fell in succession, and azure shockwaves blossomed one after another on the trunk, each halo many times larger than the previous spark.

On the foremost row of trunks, newly sprouted human faces were jolted by the shockwave and closed their mouths simultaneously; several thin branches were blown off the main trunk, twirled in the air, and fell into the sea, splashing water.

Qingque looked at the trunk stained by azure fireworks, nodded with satisfaction, then lowered her head to glance at the right hand she had just waved.

She hadn't expended much energy; one could even say she barely used any.

The warm energy within her remained abundant, like a well that would never run dry.

"I didn't expect I actually have some weight; looks like this general of mine isn't a total dud after all."

Qingque twirled her ash‑gray hair, her fingers sliding from root to tip, the strands still retaining the faint heat left by the jade‑tile meteors.

It was clear she was a bit puffed up now.

After years of goofing off at Tai Bu Si, she never imagined she'd have such a powerful day; anyone would swell under this, and her level of swelling was already considered restrained.

The jade‑tile meteor move had spectacular visuals and minimal energy cost; the tree, after being hit by tens of thousands of tiles, only lost a few thin branches, but she deliberately ignored the latter part.

However, just as she rolled up her sleeve to launch a second shot, a sound of something tearing through the air came from above.

The sound wasn't the sharp whoosh of the thin branches before; it resembled a weighty rumble as if the whole sky were being pressed down.

Something pushed the air slowly yet inexorably from a great height, and the pressure shift made her ears ache faintly.

Qingque instinctively lifted her head toward the horizon, and a black dot appeared at the center of the golden sky.

The black dot expanded at a visible speed, growing from the size of a fist to filling the entire view.

Qingque finally saw what it actually was.

It was the branch that had appeared countless times in her dreams within dreams, each time Shuhuo invaded Luofu, each time the sky split open a fissure, each time the branch would press down on her head as she ran.

Only this one was incomparably thicker—many times the girth of all the branches she had dodged in those dream‑within‑dreams.

It was so thick that she had to tilt her head back to the limit just to barely fit the whole branch's outline into view; on its surface a single crimson eye had coalesced—just one, occupying the entire sky at the center of her sight.

It wasn't the myriad eyes that previously stared from the tree; it was a single colossal eye that had come specifically to look at her!

The pupil was a vertical black slit, the surrounding iris shifting from dark red to bright red and then to a rim of scarlet‑gold; the vascular pattern on the eye's surface was so clear it seemed someone had enlarged an entire anatomical diagram to celestial scale and pasted it on the trunk.

Then the eye tilted downward, the dark pupil rolling down, locking onto her with precision.

"I'm going!"

Qingque let out a Luofu profanity from deep in her throat.

She stomped hard on the fish's head, her mind driving wildly; the blue fish beneath sensed her will, flicked its tail fin, and the whole creature launched sideways at incredible speed, turning into a streak of azure light that darted above the sea.

The massive branch struck down, grazing her fish's tail, so close she could see the golden sap seeping from every groove on the trunk's surface.

The branch plunged into the sea below, raising a wave hundreds of meters high; the spray splashed onto Qingque's face, chilling her.

Qingque crouched on the fish's back, both hands gripping the fins, curling into a small ball, staring in terror at the massive trunk still sinking into the sea behind her; the water was blasted into a huge crater, revealing golden roots on the seabed that were studded with eyes.

Her heart hammered wildly, and a half‑uttered phrase got stuck in her throat.

Fortunately she reacted quickly; had she been a beat slower, she wouldn't be crouching here with a racing heart, but would have turned into a vague splash of azure water.

The gratitude of surviving the calamity hadn't yet reached her limbs when new growth sprouted on the massive branch lodged in the sea.

Fine twigs erupted from the side of the main trunk at a visible speed; each was at least dozens of meters thick—small compared to the main trunk, but against the size of her fish, each could crush both her and the fish.

Those twigs branched wildly in the air, forming a dense mass of golden tentacles, each tip bearing a small crimson eye that all swivelled toward her.

A tingling ran from the back of Qingque's head to her tailbone, and a warped scream burst from her throat: "What the hell, how can it still Counterattack!!"

The blue fish beneath, driven by her will, plunged sharply; a branch swept past her head, the wind pressure flattening even her stray hairs.

Before she could straighten up, a second branch swept horizontally from the left; the fish's tail fin flicked right, barely evading it.

The third branch thrust upward from directly below; she pressed her body down to the lowest point on the fish's back, the fish's belly rubbing her stomach against the branch's rough golden surface.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth branches converged simultaneously from three directions; she steered the fish through three rapid aerial turns, the force so great her cheek flesh trembled.

"Doomed, doomed, doomed—"

Her mouth twitched incessantly, as if wound up.

Each time she shouted 'doomed', a branch pierced past her, the timing precise as if keeping rhythm with her scream.

A branch lunged forward from directly ahead; she thrust the fish upward at the last moment, the fish's belly scraping the branch's surface, the azure scales and golden bark sparking in a cascade.

Another branch fell vertically from above; she rolled the fish ninety degrees sideways, her body contorting like a rider leaning over a motorcycle.

The sea's giant wave hadn't settled, the sky's tentacles still pursued wildly; Qingque rode her translucent blue fish, darting through the air in a chaotic serpentine path.

Behind her, hundreds of relentless golden tentacles chased, each accompanied by deafening sonic booms and gusts, while the string of 'doomed' from her mouth looped endlessly within the pulse‑pounding soundtrack of this extreme aerial chase.