Chapter 841: Awakening of Qingque

Dan Heng gave no answer.

He had already chased a few steps ahead, Jiyun held sideways at his side, the spear tip pointing backward and the butt forward, his whole body like an arrow about to leave the string.

His body lightly leapt onto the roof of a low building, chasing toward the direction where the two figures had just vanished, at a very high speed.

Huo Huo held the Command Flag standing in place, watching Dan Heng's silhouette disappear on the roof.

Her mouth opened, then closed again.

Her eye sockets were still red, the tears that had welled up from suppressing a laugh hadn't been wiped away yet.

No need to wipe them now, because Dan Heng had left, Luocha's attention was also on Dan Heng, and no one was looking at her.

She lowered the Command Flag, revealing a half‑face with a mouth corner that couldn't help but curl upward.

Huan Long brewed herself a cup of tea in her mind.

Too exciting.

Really.

She carved out a short span from her career to lurk in Luofu, not expecting the bonus entertainment program to be at least eight orders of magnitude more than anticipated.

A Star Core Hunter was hunting a cat disguised as a dead body, the cat almost shouted out the Dragon Lord's soul, and beside her stood a Celestial Trader left alone to face ambiguous Aftereffects.

She stole a glance at Luocha.

Luocha was looking at the direction where Dan Heng vanished, his expression unchanged, still that kind of gentle smile that leaves no room for criticism.

But he switched the silver cross back to his right hand; he had already done that once before, and doing it again felt like he was sorting his thoughts.

Huan Long noted this detail in her mind.

Good material, keep it for later use.

Then she quickly adjusted her expression, raised the Command Flag back to her mouth, switching back to the timid Huo Huo mode.

"Mr. Luo… Mr. Luocha… will it be dangerous for Mr. Dan Heng to go alone… should we follow…?"

Luocha turned his head, gave her a glance, then shook his head slightly.

"Mr. Dan Heng knows his limits," he said, "let's first go meet Mr. Walter."

His tone remained gentle, still composed.

Only as he turned, he glanced again at the direction where Dan Heng had vanished.

That direction showed no figure now, only distant rooftops shimmering white in the sunlight.

Huan Long walked a few steps behind him, then her ears twitched lightly.

Her senses were far keener than an ordinary person; even with wind rustling and the distant Star Chariot's engine hum, she still caught an extremely faint sound from a corner.

She glanced sideways toward the rear.

A white figure stood silently in a dim corner of the dock.

The corner was piled with cargo crates and old ropes, sunlight barely penetrated, only a razor‑thin slit let a single ray in.

The figure stood beside that ray, the light tracing a cold white outline around her, revealing a few strands of frosty white hair.

Jing Liu.

Huan Long's pupils contracted for an instant.

But she didn't stop, nor utter any extra sound, simply nonchalantly withdrew her gaze and kept walking behind Luocha.

Jing Liu stood motionless in the corner. The Eye Mask covered her eyes, but her face was turned toward the direction Dan Heng had just chased.

More precisely, the direction where that white figure had just vanished.

Hand pressed on the hilt, a thin layer of frost clung to the Ice Sword's sheath, standing there like an ice statue forgotten in a warehouse corner.

At that moment, she suddenly moved.

Her toe lightly tapped the ground, her body rose silently, her robes rippled a small wave in the air, and the next second she landed on the roof of a nearby low building.

Jing Liu stood at the roof's edge, looked down at the pit the blade had left on the ground, then glanced again at the direction Dan Heng had departed.

Then she turned and darted toward another direction.

Perspective shift.

Consciousness was like a pot of overcooked porridge, lazily bubbling.

Qingque felt she was floating up from a very deep place; for each inch she rose, her eyelids sank an inch, and a lump of mush accumulated in her mind.

All limbs and bones were tinged with a sour‑soft fatigue of "slept too long, too lazy to get back to work," as if pressed by eight hundred quilts all winter.

Simply opening her eyes took a full ten seconds for her to manage.

Her eyelids lifted a slit, then snapped shut.

Too bright.

Open again, close again.

The third time she barely held, allowing the blurry ceiling to gradually focus in her view.

An unfamiliar ceiling.

The air was filled with the smoky scent of boiled herbs.

This formula, Qingque knows well.

"Elixir Cauldron Department."

Her lips moved, but no sound came out; she merely muttered it in her mind.

Her eyeballs rolled left, seeing the daylight leaking through the wooden lattice window, a lazy golden hue of about two or three in the afternoon.

Her eyeballs rolled right, spotting a small celadon bowl on the bedside cabinet, its bottom still holding dark‑brown residue of medicine, beside it a copper spoon whose handle bore the Elixir Cauldron Department's cauldron pattern.

Confirmation complete.

This place is a ward of the Elixir Cauldron Department; the room is modest, well‑lit, no one else sharing it, perhaps even a specially approved "wounded‑person preferential package."

Qingque finally sluggishly propped herself up.

The coat hung on her, crumpled, and the cloud‑patterned embroidery was pressed into a distorted shape.

She lowered her head, tugged a strand of hair up to her eyes.

Brown.

She tugged, and a clear pulling sensation spread across her scalp.

She lowered her head again to look at her hand; the fingertips were slender and fair, and the pristine, delicate skin on her wrist glimmered with a faint jade sheen in the sunlight.

"Brown."

Qingque's voice still carried the hoarse rasp of just having woken up.

Brown.

It was her original hair color.

It wasn't the gray‑white in the dream, the silver she could never pull back.

The chaotic memories in her mind were like unstacked Mahjong tiles, spilling across the table in a clatter.

Shen Ce Fu.

The council hall.

Fu Xuan slapped the table.

She yawned.

Then... then, in front of everyone from Luofu, she blocked the Acting General's mouth.

With her own mouth.

Qingque's facial muscles twitched briefly.

She leaned forward further.

In the dream, the even more absurd things tangled around her like seaweed at high tide—giant trees, human faces, golden branches, red eyes covering the sea floor, branches crashing down from the sky, and herself standing on a fish's back, clutching a jade‑like talisman, confronting the monsters of an entire world.

And that one slash.

She instinctively touched her waist.

Her fingers pressed against the knit shirt; through the fabric she could feel her skin intact, her waist slender and supple, with no horizontal slash scar.

But that icy sensation traveling from her lower back to her abdomen felt as if someone had poured ice water down her spine, lingering in the nerve endings even after waking.

"So..."

Qingque squinted her jade‑green almond eyes, the slight upward curve at the corners now brimming with doubt.

"Did we actually win, or not?"

Memory fractured at the final moment.

The last image she could recall was Fu Xuan's silhouette in a revolving lantern; Fu Xuan stood within a white glow, his mouth opening and closing, as if cursing her, yet also calling her name.

Then she woke up.

"Since we woke up, we probably won, then."

Qingque quickly closed the logical loop, nodding with satisfaction.

The reasoning was simple: if she had lost, how could she have woken up?

What does this indicate?