Chapter 939: No‑Man

She patted the ice shards on her hand, stood up and kept running.

While running, she glanced back.

Jing Liu was standing on the ice surface at the center of the bridge.

Her white hair was lifted by the wind under the moonlight, her expression unreadable, but Sai Fei Er could feel the other person staring at her back with those wine‑red eyes, the temperature in the gaze colder than the ice.

Then Jing Liu lifted a foot, the heel clicking lightly on the ice; the whole ice bridge burst open in the middle, shards of ice spewing toward Sai Fei Er like a small blizzard.

Sai Fei Er let out a howl, tucked their head and darted into an alley, the broken ice clattering behind them against walls and ground.

When they ran out of the alley, the surrounding environment had already begun to change.

Streetlights grew sparser, shop façades more dilapidated, and the walls began to show slash marks and charred scorch marks.

Not right!

After turning a corner, Sai Fei Er's steps slowed.

Ahead was a wide main road, the buildings on both sides tall and imposing, but every door and window was shut, the signs hung crookedly on the lintels, some half‑fallen, hanging from a single nail.

On the ground lay an overturned truck, its cargo of fabric strewn everywhere, blown about by the wind.

A muffled hoarse growl came from afar.

Sai Fei Er took a few steps forward, poking half a head out to peer deeper into the street.

Then they saw it: clusters of silhouettes gathered on the street, walking with twisted, crooked motions, like puppets with joints twisted wrong.

Their skin was covered with gray‑green mottling, some still bore fragments of Cloud Cavalry armor, their palms twisted into sharp claws, nails grown like dead branches, dragging shallow marks across the ground.

They all failed to notice them.

Sai Fei Er's cat ears slowly pricked up atop their head.

Their mouth corner began to lift, then half‑way down, then up again, down again, repeating three or four times; finally they abandoned any facial control, breaking into a grin that seemed to split the side of the face, eyes shining, pupils reflecting moonlight and the distant remnants of Nihong.

"Oho!"

They shouted excitedly, the voice echoing several times across the empty street.

A few shadowy forms were drawn by the sound, slowly turning their heads toward them, but before they could discern what was speaking, Sai Fei Er had already vanished from the spot.

They went full throttle!

No‑Man's Zone!

They could unleash their full speed, completely releasing the joyous power within; in the bustling district they had only used at most twenty percent of their strength, because of crowds, because they had to maintain Bai Hang's disguise, because Jing Liu's condition was unstable and could not be overly provoked.

But now?

The street was filled with shadowy forms, not a single normal person; what else did they need to worry about?

When Sai Fei Er sprinted across the middle of the street, the shadowy forms on either side didn't react at all.

They only felt a gust of wind sweep past them, lifting all the torn paper, fallen leaves, and dust on the ground, forming a rolling gray dragon in the street's center.

A few shadowy forms were spun around twice by the airflow, landing on their backs and emitting confused low growls.

Sai Fei Er's speed was so extreme that gravity beneath their feet felt like a suggestion rather than a rule, their body parallel to the ground, silver‑blue hair trailing straight behind their head.

While lingering in the air, they spread their arms, their cat tail sweeping a perfect circle behind them; moonlight leaked past their sides, illuminating them like a paused frame of animation.

They looked down at the block beneath their feet, shadowy forms scattered across the street, a few tilting their heads toward them, emitting muffled low growls.

And behind them, less than fifty meters away, Jing Liu sprang from the edge of the same roof, white hair trailing a silver streak under the moon, his robe flaring like wings in the night wind, crossing the same sky at the same speed.

Sai Fei Er turned mid‑air, gesturing a gunshot toward Jing Liu, silently shaping their lips: "Bang."

Then they contracted their body and plunged down swiftly.

Boom!

Upon landing, they braced a single hand on the ground, their body rebounding to keep running; the contact time of their feet with the ground was almost nonexistent, each step retracting before it even touched.

Sai Fei Er felt the joyous power inside them surging wildly.

They couldn't tell what was at work or whether they were always this wild, but at that moment they sensed an unprecedented thrill.

Jing Liu chased tighter from behind, and the faster they ran, the happier they felt; Jing Liu's Ice Sword skimmed past their ear and lodged into a wall ahead, and as they slipped past they kicked the wall for a boost, then casually pulled the Ice Sword out and tossed it back behind them.

Meanwhile, in another corner of the sealed zone, Qingque sat on stone steps, staring blankly.

To be precise, she was pretending to stare blankly while her mind was ranting wildly.

Standing before her was Huo Huo—no, Huan Long—delivering an impromptu speech with that soft, mushy voice about "the great vision of Destruction's destiny."

Huan Long's sales pitch was clearly meticulously crafted; she began with the universe's entropy increase law, arguing the philosophical inevitability that all things will end in Destruction, then transitioned from that inevitability to personal choice, stating that Qingque's current state—"both Abundance and Patrol Hunt forces coexisting within the body"—was a rare cosmic condition, and if she joined the Destruction side, Huan Long could personally guide her to wield both forces, possibly even making her a "being beyond the rank of a Command Issuer."

"Just think about it."

Huan Long looked at Qingque with Huo Huo's big turquoise eyes, the folded ears swaying lightly as she tilted her head, and said, "Abundance and Patrol Hunt are fighting inside you, each refusing to yield; you're stuck in the middle, unable to even speak—how painful."

"But if you master the law of Destruction, Destruction is not ruin but termination, ending all meaningless conflicts; then you can quiet both of them."

"Then you can speak whenever you want; no one can stop you."

Qingque stared at her expressionlessly.

To be precise, in Huan Long's view, Qingque's gray‑white, tattered face showed no ripple, the dull turquoise eyes staring straight ahead.

Yet beneath that expressionless mask, Qingque's thoughts were engaged in a one‑sided frantic rant contest.

"Entropy increase law? Philosophical inevitability? Beyond the Command Issuer rank?"

Qingque counted on their fingers in their mind, "Isn't this just the Medicine King Secret Transmission's version that adds us, grants Abundance and eternal life? You think I can't tell because you use fancy words? At least Medicine King Secret Transmission gave you a free pill to taste its saltiness, while you, the Extinction Great Lord, don't even give a trial version, just drawing pictures!"