Chapter 945: Dead Leg, Run Faster

Qingque is sprinting at full speed now.

The speed is faster than imagined.

When she was at the Tai Bu Si before, the fastest she ever ran was to slip out of the archive room before Fu Xuan could Lock the door; she thought that had been the pinnacle of her life and she bragged about it for a full three days.

This speed could probably throw her former self two streets away.

Yet she still feels it's too slow.

Because the coldness behind her is closing in at an incomprehensible speed, like someone has stuck a piece of ice that will never melt onto the back of her neck.

Suddenly, a blade of ice‑blue sword light sweeps past her right side, brushing her ear and striking the ground three meters ahead.

Bang!

The stone‑paved road erupts where the sword light hits, and ice crystals spread outward from the center in layers; the sharp petals, in less than a second, bloom into an ice flower half a meter in diameter.

Seeing this, Qingque veers sharply left, her foot twisting to the brink of a sprain, barely avoiding the sharp tips of the ice flower's petals.

But her shoe slipped on the frozen road, nearly sending her flying sideways; she flailed her hands in the air several times before regaining balance.

Immediately another sword light attacks!

Hearing the sharp howl of air torn by cold behind her, Qingque lunges forward, does an extremely unorthodox forward roll, scrapes along the lower edge of the sword light, and the ice flower that exploded above her head is only about two finger‑widths away.

The cold slides off her scalp, freezing a few strands of gray‑white hair, which clink together like tiny ice sticks as she stands up, producing a crisp "ding‑ding‑ding" sound.

Qingque doesn't have time to stop and quickly gets up to keep running.

She can only say that none of her lifetime's slacking‑off experience ever taught her how to evade a former Sword Leader's chain of ice swords while in a demonic‑yin state.

She then mentally reviews all the absurd events of today from start to finish.......

Ha.

She reaches a very simple conclusion: staying alive is enough.

The demands aren't high.

Being alive is all that matters.

At that moment, someone perched on the roof of a three‑story building, cat ears standing straight, cat tail lazily swaying behind, eyes wide, a cheerful smile at the corner of the mouth, watches the chase below with full attention.

Beside her, Huan Long is being squeezed under her arm in an extremely uncomfortable position, one folded ear flattened, the Command Flag's pole poking Sai Fei Er's side repeatedly being brushed aside by the impatient cat tail.

Huan Long's mood is now very complicated.

Being grabbed by Sai Fei Er at the waist and taken off without a chance to resist, she has to maintain Huo Huo's weak‑personality persona; a real Huo Huo being carried by Sai Fei Er up to the roof would react how? Scream, cry, tremble in fear.

So she screamed, she cried, she trembled.

But her true thought inside is:

When I regain my true form, ha.

"Look, look!"

Sai Fei Er doesn't notice that the "Lan Lan" tucked under her arm is glancing at her with a cold side‑glance; she points with her empty hand at the two figures ahead and behind on the street below, her cat ears twitching excitedly, "Jing Liu is chasing that one! Amazing! Jing Liu actually keeps running after a person this long; isn't she supposed to kill with a single sword? This one has dodged several swords, there's something here!"

Huan Long weakly whimpers from under her arm, using Huo Huo's voice trembling, "Sai Fei Er sister… could you… put me down…?"

"Right away, right away!"

Sai Fei Er says, but her foot doesn't move a inch; her arm squeezes even tighter.

Her cat tail whips up behind her, and she radiates a joyful aura of "Tonight's totally worth it."

Then she lightly hops on the roof, clutching a weak‑type loli and runs toward the direction of the two figures below.

Occasionally she kicks off one or two tiles, flips a few somersaults in the air and shatters them on the ground, yet she never misses a step.

Her gaze stays fixed on below.

Perspective shift.

Gray‑white hair trails behind her like a blurry afterimage; her feet tread on a mix of broken ice and wilted petals, each step painfully slippery.

"Bad luck, bad luck, bad luck, why am I so unlucky? I did force‑kiss Grand Diviner, that's true, but only because I thought I was dreaming. Does dreaming and force‑kissing a superior break the law? Even if it did, it wouldn't warrant an ice sword slash, and this former Sword Leader, I've never met you, why would you slash me—!"

Mouth runs, legs run, brain runs.

Three operate in parallel, never interfering, efficiency absurdly high—so it's definitely Qingque.

The white silhouette behind her sticks to her shadow like glue; no matter how she twists, turns, darts into narrow alleys or climbs over walls, Jing Liu is always about three body lengths behind her.

"Dead leg, run faster—!"

Qingque lets out a soul‑shout toward her own legs.

But her legs have already given their all.

These legs have today been chased by Xue Yi, surrounded by demonic‑yin, pursued by a former Sword Leader; their résumé is rich enough to be a case study at the Tai Bu Si year‑end summary conference.

The fact they can still run is already a miracle.

A blade of sword qi sweeps over her head, cutting off several strands of gray‑white hair.

The severed hairs spin and fall, frozen mid‑air by the aftershock of the next sword qi into tiny ice needles that "ding‑ding‑ding" into the adjacent wall.

Qingque pulls her neck in and keeps running, the hair on the back of her neck standing up.

"Someone, save me—!"

A hoarse, muddled gasp erupts from her throat, but she doesn't care whether anyone understands; she just needs an outlet, otherwise she fears she'll choke on her own anxiety before Jing Liu can slash her to death!

"Grand Diviner—! Fu Xuan—! Aren't you usually the best at calculating where I'm slacking off? Why are you useless today! I'm in the lockdown zone! Right under your very eyes! Calculate quickly! Use your Exhaustive Observation Formation to see that your Diviner is about to become an ice sculpture—!"

Another blade of sword qi.

But this time she doesn't completely dodge.

The edge of the sword qi grazes the outer side of her left leg, the cold seeping through her mist‑gray knee‑high sheer socks into the skin, leaving a frostbite on her calf.

The flower‑like veins on the skin harden, a layer of white frost coats the gray‑green stems, the petals tremble and three fall off.

Qingque inhales a sharp breath of cold pain, yet she doesn't slow down.

Because she heard the brief pause behind her, the moment before Jing Liu swings the next sword—a prelude to a charge; every swordsman has such a pause before a heavy move, like the sea suddenly stills for a fraction of a second before a storm.

But Qingque didn't know, and subconsciously turned her head to glance back.

Then she regretted.