Chapter 724: Patrol Hunt

Qingque's eyeballs almost popped out of their sockets.

Imperial Bow wore a joyous Mask on his face, a solemn half‑centaur war‑chariot form taken to the extreme, paired with a grinning orange smile.

The originally fierce, solemn, world‑shifting sacred aura was suddenly shredded by an extremely subtle yet intensely strong sense of contrast.

She even wondered if the side‑effects of her demonic‑yin body had caused a hallucination, rubbed her eyes hard and checked again—it was orange.

It really was orange.

That smile remained radiant.

Then the light arrow was shot.

The sound of breaking through the sky was so loud Qingque instinctively covered her ears; the whole firmament was split in two by the arrow's light trail, and where the light arrow passed, space itself was torn open into a continuously extending fissure, its edges burning with azure flame.

After firing that arrow, the vast figure transformed into countless tiny light specks drifting toward the heavens.

As it finally dissipated, the orange smiling Mask lingered briefly in mid‑air, its lip curve lifting a bit, then it too turned into light.

At that moment, the power within Qingque exploded.

An immensely vast force surged straight from her chest, racing along the sword core she had just shattered and reshaped, wildly spreading to her limbs and bones.

She could feel that force overturning everything inside her, mixing with the original, colliding and fusing.

The process was entirely beyond her control; she couldn't even tell whether it was a blessing or a mis‑injury, because her mind, still reeling from Marshal's song, was hit hard by the fact that Imperial Bow was wearing an Aha Mask.

What exactly just happened?

Qingque stood on a fish's back, her ash‑white long hair blown across her face by the lingering airflow, her emerald eyes wide and round, the fading light‑arrow trail reflected in her pupils.

Her mouth opened and closed, closed and opened, like a fish hauled ashore and gasping for breath.

The file that automatically popped into her mind kept cross‑referencing the orange smile she had just seen; every record in the database about Imperial Bow Director of Destiny made no mention of this form, and no dossier ever recorded Imperial Bow wearing another Star God's Mask.

She seemed to have been blessed by Imperial Bow; the azure power still churning inside her was definitely real, because her destiny force was now operating at an unprecedented speed, and the Bubbles she had conjured around her were being reshaped by that force, turning from transparent to semi‑transparent azure, their surfaces sprouting countless tiny runes.

But was the one drawing the bow really Imperial Bow? She plucked the unfinished little golden‑petal still clinging to her nose tip, clenched it tightly in her palm, her expression as if saying:

I don't know, I dare not ask, my mind is still a mess, don't add any more new things to me.

Heimu crossed his arms, standing beside a white marble colonnade at the edge of the plaza; his attire was clean and tidy, ash‑white long hair neatly draped behind his shoulders, the Witch Hat's brim sitting just right, the violet‑black skirt unmoving under Yongzhou's daylight.

Compared with the previous soggy‑chicken figure covered in rainbow powder and a hat brim stuck with colored paper, he was a completely different person.

On the plaza below, a thousand Ti Bao were engaged in Chaotic Demon Dance.

A sea of red crowds covered the entire plaza's azure tiles; from her elevated perch, she saw only fluffy red hair, fluttering little wings of all kinds.

Some Ti Bao tried to ram the violet‑black transparent dome with their heads, bouncing back each time; others crouched at the dome's edge, poking its wall with fingers, each poke sending a faint ripple across the surface; some gave up on breaking through, simply sitting on the ground, legs splayed, pulling out snacks from nowhere in their pockets to eat; and a few Ti Bao huddled together, chattering about something, probably still plotting the next escape plan.

The entire plaza was churned by the thousand red‑haired little girls into something like a pot of boiling red bean porridge.

Luckily HaiSeYin wasn't there; had she been standing here and saw a thousand lively cute little girls bouncing around the plaza, she probably would've lost control on the spot.

After all, she still vividly remembered HaiSeYin's earlier entry as a 'national power‑grid partner,' who especially liked young‑looking girls; this spectacle was the ultimate test of her self‑control.

Heimu stood outside the dome, expressionless, watching it all.

A few Ti Bao nearest her noticed her presence, instantly abandoning their poking, pressed their faces against the transparent violet‑black surface, their tiny palms clapping the dome while shouting things like 'cheater', 'mom's a villain', 'mom's not following the rules', and so on.

Heimu ignored them all.

Her expression remained calm, her violet‑black eyes lightly scanning the red crowd, confirming that all one thousand light points were still inside the dome.

Having been taken for a few rounds by these little rascals across Weng Fa Luo Si's city‑states, she didn't want a second experience.

The reason she could retrieve them so quickly was, of course, that she had gone to Xi Lian.

Xi Lian held partial administrative rights over the Weng Fa Luo Si world, especially the tracking and locating permissions for Golden Descendant data; as long as she cooperated, locking and batch‑recalling a thousand Ti Bao at once was no trouble.

However, when the communication connected, Heimu immediately sensed something off.

Xi Lian's way of speaking.

Heimu had known Xi Lian for more than a day or two; the two had chatted countless times in System Space, and she was familiar with Xi Lian's speaking style.

But in that recent transmission, Xi Lian's sentences ended with words that shouldn't belong to her—'kou ya', 'ye', and some exclamation that never appears in normal conversation.

Heimu stared at those lines of communication records for a few seconds, his violet‑black eyes narrowing slightly.

Although she was reluctant to admit it, based on Feng Jin's Socratic model and Ke Lv De La's Godfather entry, the series of offenses involving Ti Bao's mischievous split‑package indicated that Xi Lian was most likely also compromised.

It seemed Xi Lian hadn't shown any destructive behavior yet, so it could be held off for now.

Now she must first deal with the matter of the thousand Ti Bao before her.

Heimu immediately set the range search to maximum.

Hidden in the garden shrubs—found; hidden in the crevices of Xuanfeng City walls—found; hidden beneath the wishing pool of Yanu Sapolis—found; hidden in the sea, soaking with a swarm of semi‑transparent soft creatures—also found.

All were gathered onto the plaza, the violet‑black dome descending from the sky, sealing the entire plaza tightly.

After all, these little rascals had already moved beyond mere play‑fight games.

If they kept playing, Weng Fa Luo Si would probably be torn apart into pieces.