Chapter 781: Cracked Open

The heart of this giant tree.

She propped herself up on the Bubbles and stood, extending her right hand forward; the array of Thus Item: Thus Item: Thus Item: Diyuanqiongyupai around her re‑expanded, the azure‑gold light dimmer than before, the energy consumption nearing the critical point, yet the patterns on the cards remained clear and sharp.

At that moment, her gaze suddenly flickered.

In the golden reflection of the Bubbles before her, another scene intruded.

A card table stood there, scattered with Thus Item: Thus Item: Thus Item: Diyuanqiongyupai.

Fu Xuan stood beside the table, a scroll in hand, Fu Xuan's lips moving as if lecturing.

The scene flickered and shifted to another: her parents seated at the home dining table, a plate of osmanthus cake on the table, her mother scooping food into her bowl, her father speaking incomprehensibly.

Qingque jerked her head.

A rapid montage.

Again.

This time she wasn't even on the brink of death, just a brief gasp, and her mind began automatically replaying a montage of her life.

She raised her hand and slapped her own forehead hard; the crisp "pop" echoed inside the Bubbles, bouncing back and forth several times.

The golden blossoms on her forehead were blown off by the slap, a few landing on her knee and still trembling slightly.

The image faded.

Fu Xuan's face turned into Golden Light Particles that drifted away, replaced by the golden sphere atop her head, which continued to morph.

"Gah." She forced the word out between her teeth.

The sphere split completely.

A vertical fissure opened straight down from the center; thick, almost liquid gold light surged from its edges, flowing downward, solidifying into a new tissue structure the instant it met air.

The first thing protruding from the crack was a hand.

Precisely, it was a hand woven from golden wooden fibers, slender five fingers, with red eyes set at the joints.

Immediately after came a second hand.

Both hands simultaneously pressed the sides of the fissure, tearing the sphere's shell in two like a thin veil; fragments splintered outward, striking the surrounding Bubbles and erupting two rows of interwoven gold‑azure light waves.

A figure rose from the shattered core.

Its stature wasn't huge; compared with the boss‑level monsters that had peeled off the tree trunk before, it was only medium, about three people tall.

Yet the aura of pressure it exuded was entirely different.

That sense of oppression didn't stem from size, but from a difference in density.

If the earlier monsters were mud puppets shaped by Abundance qi, then this thing before her was a crystal solidified directly from the Abundance qi itself.

Its humanoid silhouette was entirely woven from pure golden wooden fibers; each fiber's surface coursed with thick golden light fluid, like strands of golden veins exposed on the skin.

Every joint was embedded with a vertical pupil; each bendable part bore one, each rotating and focusing independently.

Its head lacked facial features, only a vertical mouth that spanned the entire face, the slit running from forehead to chin; lips flipped back to reveal rows upon rows of stacked granular teeth, each tooth opening and closing slightly.

Instead of wings, dozens of branches of varying thickness sprouted from its back, each tip bearing a flower whose center housed a closed eye.

Qingque watched the creature complete its transformation, raised a hand and wiped the still‑wet bloodstain from her mouth corner.

Deep within her emerald pupils, several Golden Light Particles began to whirl faster, the whole pair of eyes reflecting a dazzling azure‑gold.

All the Thus Item: Thus Item: Thus Item: Diyuanqiongyupai on her body ignited simultaneously, their radiance surging to nearly eclipse the golden light emitted by the core.

The Bubbles beneath her, previously flattened by her pressure, re‑inflated, rebounding into a perfect sphere that steadied her.

"Fine then."

She flicked her newly‑grown left arm; the wrist joint cracked with a crisp "ka", her ten fingers crossed and pushed forward, the finger joints snapping in a rapid series, "Found the core, that makes it easy."

The humanoid core gave her no chance to finish speaking.

Dozens of eye‑adorned branches shot out from its back simultaneously, moving so fast that only a blurred golden afterimage remained in the air.

The Bubbles beneath Qingque suddenly sank to the lower side, and all the branches simultaneously pierced a void.

Under Qingque's mental command, the Bubbles surged from all directions, enveloping her body within the core area; outer layers stacked upward, shielding against the branches that turned back.

The branches pierced the Bubbles like forks into hot butter; each layer they pierced caused several Bubbles to shatter into droplets, which then re‑condensed into new Bubbles to fill the gaps.

A tug‑of‑war.

Shielded by the Bubbles, Qingque adjusted her breathing, pulled out a slender branch still lodged in her clavicle, and crushed it.

She looked up.

The humanoid core surged toward her, pushing dozens of its back branches in the opposite direction; its body leveraged the force, the entire golden silhouette crashing into the Bubbles like a meteor.

At least two‑thirds of the Bubble layer were pierced by it.

The distance instantly shrank to less than ten zhàng.

Qingque did not retreat.

She pressed two right‑hand fingers together and slashed forward.

The Bubbles surrounding the core instantly split in two, creating a straight passage.

She kicked off the ground; a blue fish coalesced from the Bubbles, supporting her as she advanced straight through the passage.

Her left hand made a phantom grab in the air; tens of thousands of Thus Item: Thus Item: Thus Item: Diyuanqiongyupai simultaneously returned, forming a continuously rotating wall of cards before her.

She nudged her right fingertip forward; dozens of jade cards at the wall's center detonated, turning into dozens of azure‑gold koi, their luminous tails trailing as they slammed into the core.

The core's vertical mouth gaped.

A massive Light Pillar roared out from the slit, colliding head‑on with the koi swarm.

When the light wave burst, every sound in the space was sucked away, leaving only a rapidly expanding ring of interwoven azure‑gold and golden‑white shockwave that blew all remaining Bubbles outward.

The shockwave shoved Qingque backward several hundred zhàng, her boot soles carving two deep grooves into the Bubble surface, barely keeping her upright.

She lifted her head; the core also retreated, the koi swarm's impact knocking it off balance. Its back branches flailed wildly to stabilize it, while the wooden fibers across its chest burst open with several cracks, golden sap gushing out.

Qingque's mouth corner curled upward, forming a slightly manic arc.

She wipes away the golden fluid and petal fragments stuck to her eyelids, pulls off a newly sprouted vine on her thigh that is still struggling to regenerate, and tosses it away casually.

Then she raises both hands simultaneously, all the remaining jade cards hover in the air, their surfaces blazing with light to a dazzling extreme.

The azure fish at her feet lifts its head high, and a deep‑blue light sphere shines from its open mouth, spinning rapidly.

The clusters of Bubbles above her head and beneath her feet contract simultaneously, gathering toward her and channeling all the remaining power into her.

All the Bubbles across the sea region flow toward the same direction, and lapis‑colored light streams converge from all sides, forming an ever‑thickening light cocoon around her.

"This time—"

Qingque pushes both hands forward, and lapis‑colored light erupts from her palms, illuminating the entire space as bright as daylight, "Die for us!"