Chapter 806: ...Ying?

After the girl steadied herself, she lowered her head and looked at her hands, which were wearing black‑red patched half‑glove fingerless gloves; her fingers were slender and long, the tips protruding from the glove openings, and her nails were neatly trimmed.

She lowered her head again to look at her clothes: a white stand‑collar uniform, a bright red bow, a deep‑blue pleated short skirt, and black high‑heeled short leather boots.

Then she lifted her head and looked at Heimu.

Gray‑purple irises reflected dark‑purple light; the pupils were clear and alert, no longer the previous hollow dullness, only a bewilderment that had not yet had time to be clarified.

Her eyebrows twitched slightly, her lips moved, and then she uttered a voice tinged with confusion.

"... Black Curtain Lady?"

Heimu tilted her head.

She heard something; the other party called her name.

As if they knew her.

Heimu's mind instantly flashed several possibilities: the future Ying had time‑traveled here? The timeline was scrambled by Aha? A Ying from a Parallel World was pulled into her system?

In Past World Paradise, the Ying data underwent irreversible self‑evolution, causing the memory repository to develop a precognitive bias—

"Eh, what am I?"

The other's mutter interrupted the storm of conjectures in Heimu's mind.

Ying, or rather this pink‑haired girl who looked like high‑school Ying, lowered her head and began to touch herself.

First she looked left and right, then raised a hand to feel her face, her fingers sliding down to her jaw, then she felt her fox ears; the pads of her fingers gently rubbed the edge of the elongated pink fox ears twice, and the ears twitched.

Then she lowered her head to look at her clothes, tugged the bow at the collar with her right hand, pinched the hem of the pleated short skirt with her left hand, and lifted her left foot to glance at the sole of the black high‑heeled short boot.

Her whole demeanor resembled a cat whose collar had just been switched, falling into a deep cognitive dissonance when facing herself in the mirror.

Heimu squinted slightly.

She could sense from the other's body language that the bewilderment was genuine, not an act.

Heimu tentatively spoke, her tone extremely light, as if testing: "... Ying?"

The other lifted their head.

Gray‑purple eyes met Heimu's dark‑purple irises, the haze in the pupils not yet fully cleared.

"It's me."

Ying nodded.

All the conjectures in Heimu's mind about "timeline traversal", "Parallel World Fusion", and "precognitive memory bias" evaporated in an instant.

Alright, only the appearance changed.

Ying is still Ying.

She felt a vague regret; those wild thoughts could have spawned several interesting scripts.

But on second thought, confirming it was Ying saved a lot of trouble.

She surveyed Ying's current form from head to toe, with one final verification step still pending in her mind.

"Ying, which Golden Descendant did you liberate?"

Ying answered almost instantly, without pause: "A Ge Lai Ya. Her speed exceeded that of ordinary people; I had to freeze time and combine assassination technique to finish the fight, that slash got caught in the gap of her predicted landing point, missing her counter by only a few tenths of a second."

Heimu nodded.

Only the real Ying could know the correct answer, and the phrasing and details matched perfectly.

It can be confirmed.

Past World Paradise, one of the Pursuing Fire Thirteen Yingjie, Shana, Ying, stood before her.

Only her appearance had shifted from the mature big‑sister in his memory to a school‑age girl's figure, the uniform changed, and a Foot‑long dagger replaced the katana.

Ying herself clearly noticed these changes.

She lowered her head again to look at her clothes, tugged the hem of the pleated skirt, and her gray‑purple eyes were filled with confusion.

"I—I remember I was just in the Training Room. Ailixiya said she prepared a set for me, and then, then I don't remember anything."

"So my clothes..."

Ying's voice carried an indescribable confusion, "Why did they change?"

Heimu raised the Magic Staff and drew a circle in the air.

The dark‑purple gem at the staff's tip left a luminous trail in the air; within the circle a light mirror materialized, its frame a ring of dark‑purple filaments, the surface smooth as water.

Heimu pushed the light mirror in front of Ying.

"It's more than just the clothes," she said.

Ying lifted her head and saw herself in the mirror.

The light mirror reflected a pink‑haired girl, with irregular fine bangs across the forehead and a few strands of soft hair hanging on each cheek.

On her head stood a pair of elongated solid‑pink fox ears, at least a third shorter than in his memory.

The face was the same—soft, oval, gray‑purple eyes, a petite nose, full lips—but the overall contour was noticeably younger, shifting from mature female lines to the softer shape of a pre‑pubescent girl.

The white stand‑collar uniform clung to the still‑fresh upper‑body curves, the deep‑blue pleated short skirt fell to mid‑thigh, ultra‑thin light‑gray sheer stockings wrapped the legs, and the black high‑heeled short leather boots' cuffs sat exactly at the narrowest part of the calves.

The girl in the mirror widened her eyes.

Ying extended her right hand, and the girl in the mirror also extended her right hand.

She touched her own ear, and the mirrored girl also touched her ear.

She tilted her head left, then right, sliding her fingers down her cheek until they brushed the faint red traces of the just‑faded lines at the jaw edge, leaned close to the mirror to examine them, then turned to Heimu, pointed at the pink reflection, her lips moving several times before she managed a sentence.

"... Is this me?"

She lowered her head to look at her hand, then at the mirror, "Wait, why are my ears this color? I remember my fox ears being pink—"

She tugged her hair, pulling a strand before her eyes to examine, "The hair too—does the ends really look this white—"

Heimu stood aside with arms crossed, the Magic Staff slanted across her elbow, her gaze bouncing between the mirrored Ying and the real Ying, then she tilted her head and remarked, "She does look a bit like high‑school Ying. The uniform fits well too."

Ying turned her head to look at her, a flash of complex emotion passing through her gray‑purple eyes.

Then she shook her head: "I never went to school."

After saying that, she couldn't help but rub her forehead, pressing her fingers to her temples and gently massaging twice.

This gesture was very Ying; when faced with a situation beyond comprehension, one instinctively tries to use rational thought to sort it out, but halfway through finds that all clues don't fit a single logic, so can only rub the temples in silence.

Heimu waved the light mirror away, refocusing attention back on the matter at hand.

"Do you still know anything? For example, why appearances change, why you're affected by the Corrosion's power, why you draw your sword the moment you see me?"

Ying furrowed her brows tightly and began to think.

She lifted her right hand, pressing her index and middle fingers together against her chin.

Those gray‑purple eyes gazed into the darkness deep within the corridor, her brows furrowing tighter, her lips pressed into a thin line.

She was silent for a long time, then slowly spoke: "…I remember Ailixiya calling me. She said she would show me something. Then, green light. A lot of it. It surged up from beneath the floor. Then, I knew nothing else. And just now, when I opened my eyes, I saw you."