Chapter 857: Need a Reason

Dan Heng's grip on the cloud‑striking hand had not fully released.

The spear tip tilted, pointing at the ground, and the blade's surface glittered with water light that streamed from right to left, then returned from the shadows leaking through Dan Heng's finger gaps.

Dan Heng looked at the white‑haired, Fox Ears figure before him, and two completely different sets of information were raging against each other in his mind.

Dan Heng suppressed those stray thoughts.

"At least, in the facts I understand,"

Dan Heng spoke, voice steady, "Bai Hang is already dead."

Dan Heng lowered the cloud‑striking hand another inch, the spear tip was almost touching the ground.

It could only be said that the opponent's demeanor overlapped with the Memory fragments of Bai Hang to such a degree that Dan Heng couldn't keep his weapon pointed at them.

"Resurrection,"

Dan Heng paused, his teal eyes staring at the other, "requires a reason."

Sai Fei Er mentally ran through the data Xi Tong had given, at lightning speed in her mind.

Then a bitter smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

She raised her right hand and scratched the back of her head.

"Uh, it does seem so."

"In your eyes, I am indeed dead."

Bai Hang lowered the hand that was scratching her head, letting it hang at her side, her fingers unconsciously twirling the fabric of her garment's hem.

Her gaze shifted away from Dan Heng's face, as if weighing words, yet also as if recalling something she was reluctant to touch.

She maintained this "hard‑to‑speak" posture for about three seconds, just right; too short seemed perfunctory, too long seemed pretentious.

Then she lifted her head and looked back at Dan Heng.

The light in her fox eyes changed from the earlier sparkling brightness to a tentative gentleness.

She opened her mouth, like a cat about to take food from a human's hand, repeatedly checking whether the other would suddenly withdraw.

"That—Dan Feng, no."

She lightly tapped her own mouth.

"Dan Heng. You've said it many times; I have to remember."

She inhaled deeply, her shoulders briefly shrugged and then relaxed.

Her white long hair swayed behind her with the motion.

"Can you believe me?"

She added no extra embellishment, no "please believe me no matter what," nor "everything I say is true," just the simplest, most straightforward "Can you believe me?"

Dan Heng was silent for two seconds.

"I don't know."

He replied.

Honestly.

This answer was so honest that even Dan Heng himself was a bit surprised.

He had intended to say "cannot," but the word was blocked at his lips by some indescribable thing.

Bai Hang immediately slumped her shoulders, her whole body like a deflated balloon, her Tail also drooping.

She puffed her cheeks and exhaled, the breath lifting a few stray strands of hair on her forehead.

"I suppose so."

Her voice carried a calm that was "expected yet slightly disappointing," the corners of her mouth lifted, pulling out a half‑hearted smile.

"After all, my status is indeed very unclear—no, it's extremely obscure. A dead person suddenly reappears; if it were me, I'd be bewildered too."

She straightened her back again, hands on her hips, chin slightly raised.

The Bai Hang‑style magnanimity meant sorrow lasted no more than three seconds; once past, it was over.

"As for how I actually survived, that, too, is not unspeakable."

She tilted her head, her Fox Ears tilting as well, her tone retracting slightly from the earlier flamboyance, gaining a hint of seriousness.

"This is related to The Lord."

Dan Heng's eyebrows twitched.

The movement was slight, but Sai Fei Er's peripheral vision caught that subtle curve clearly.

She gave herself a mental thumbs‑up—good, hooked.

No, more precisely, "the bait has started to bite."

She deliberately used the ultra‑vague title "The Lord" to make the other fill in the blanks themselves.

This is one of the most basic applications of Deceitful Divine Authority: the less information you give, the more the other will use their own Cognition to fill the gaps.

And Dan Heng's mind had so many possible options to fill in that whatever he chose was safer than her inventing a specific name outright.

Dan Heng was indeed mentally filling in the blanks.

Several names flashed through Dan Heng's mind, each crossed out one by one; he did not ask "who The Lord is," because he knew if the other intended to say, they would have already said it.

He merely kept the question in his mind temporarily, waiting for more information to arrive before processing it together.

Sai Fei Er, seeing he did not follow up, began to get down to business.

She cleared her throat first, adjusting her tone to Bai Hang's "storytelling mode."

"At that time, during the great war, when I piloted the Star Chariot toward that big fellow, I had already prepared for no return. As you all know, in that situation, once the Star Chariot charges in, it's essentially a one‑way trip."

She paused there, her gaze sweeping Dan Heng's face, confirming he was listening.

"But at the instant just before the star spear collided—"

She raised her right hand, her five fingers snapping open, making a "burst" gesture.

A person suddenly appeared inside my Star Chariot.

She just materialized out of nowhere. My reaction was—who are you?! —but there was no time to ask. She grabbed me straight out of the pilot seat, and, how should I put it, it felt like being pulled out of water. Everything around was light, I could see nothing, and my ears buzzed. When I opened my eyes again, I was already on this timeline.

She spread her hands, shrugged, and wore a helpless smile that said, "I also think this is absurd, but that's the fact."

"It's that kind of thing—being pulled out of the timeline and then tossed to another point in time. A blink of an eye. For me, I was just on the battlefield, and the next second I was—uh, landed in the present. You all blinked and hundreds of years passed; I blinked and didn't even finish a yawn."

She scratched the back of her ear.

Dan Heng looked at her.

The temperature in his gaze didn't change at all, nor did the curve of his mouth.

That expression translates to four words: "Are you teasing me?"

Sai Fei Er's mouth twitched at the corner from his stare.

She mentally ranted about Xi Tong!

What a crappy Script you gave!

This story is written far too absurdly!

What "being pulled out of the timeline," what "in a blink arriving at the present"—even she feels like she's reciting lines from a third‑rate novel!

But the problem is this is all the information Xi Tong gave her; even if she wanted to improvise, she wouldn't dare deviate much, because if she veers off and can't bring it back full circle, it's over.

Nevertheless, absurd as it is, it's not entirely impossible to act out.

Bai Hang herself is a person who naturally carries a "survival in dire straits" aura.

A person whose luck is absurdly good, rescued at the brink of death by some mysterious being—on someone else that would sound like nonsense, but on Bai Hang, it might actually have some credibility.

Sai Fei Er decided to gamble again.

She put away the helpless smile and shifted her expression to the "aggrieved but trying not to show it" setting.

Her lips pressed together slightly, her brows twisted a bit then relaxed, her gaze moved from Dan Heng's face to the ground, and when she looked up again, a faint rim of red had appeared around her eyes.

"Look— you don't believe it either, do you?"