Chapter 960: Jing Liu vs Qingque (2)

Moonlight fell on her face, and her shadow was cast onto the stone slab ground; the outline of that shadow appeared especially clear and especially distorted against the frost.

Qingque instantly felt a chill surge up her lower spine.

She cursed a profanity in her mind—too indecent to quote—but essentially it meant, "It's over, she's even crazier."

Just as she tried to step back and create distance, Jing Liu suddenly appeared on her right.

There was no intermediate movement; in the previous frame Jing Liu was ten meters away, and in the next frame was pressed against her side at less than half a meter.

The Ice Sword slanted upward from the lower right, its blade angle razor‑sharp, aiming straight for Qingque's left side.

Qingque had no time to dodge.

She spread the five fingers of her left hand, and five streams of Bubbles surged from the gaps; the Bubbles elongated and deformed the instant they met air, becoming five translucent white tentacle‑like objects that coiled around the Ice Sword's blade, forcibly pulling the blade's trajectory off course.

The Ice Sword swept past the outer side of Qingque's left arm, its blade cutting through three layers of the wide‑sleeved cuff on her left side, but it did not touch skin.

The edge of the cut cuff quickly formed a thin layer of ice; the cold seeped inward along the fabric, and Qingque's left arm instantly sprouted a goose‑bump layer.

She clenched her teeth, formed a fist with her right hand, and drove it straight at Jing Liu's face.

Mid‑punch, a Bubble emerged from the back of her hand, rapidly expanding into a transparent sphere half a meter in diameter, encasing her fist as it slammed toward Jing Liu's face.

Jing Liu turned her head to dodge; the Bubble brushed her left ear and flew onward, exploding on the stone slab ten meters behind her. The blast left a shallow crater, and the surrounding stone surface was coated with a constantly writhing transparent film—the lingering transmutation effect of the Bubble spreading.

Using the head‑turn as momentum, Jing Liu spun, lifted her right leg, and the heel of her high‑heeled long boot traced an arc in the air, sweeping horizontally toward Qingque's waist.

The boot heel tore the air, emitting a sharp whistling sound; the boot's surface was sheathed in a thick layer of icy blue cold.

Qingque crossed her hands to guard her waist, and both palms simultaneously spewed Bubbles, which overlapped at her wrists to form a curved shield.

Jing Liu's boot heel struck the Bubble shield; the shield's surface quivered violently, its membrane wall caving inward by nearly ten centimeters, but it did not break.

Yet the impact kicked Qingque's entire body outward; she rolled twice in the air, her ash‑white long hair and mist‑green cloak tangled together.

Just as Qingque steadied herself mid‑air, she suddenly realized she was actually floating!

Instinctively she looked down at the void beneath her feet, and somewhere a fish had appeared under her soles.

The fish was entirely lapis‑blue, its semi‑transparent body shimmering with a cold glow in the moonlight, roughly the size of an adult dolphin; its outline was smooth and sleek, its Tail gently swaying, and faint circles of blue ripples spread through the air.

Qingque's left foot rested on the fish's back; the sensation under her sole was not the slick fish scales but a warm, solid‑ish semi‑solid surface with a slight give.

Qingque froze for a moment.

Just now a thought had flashed through her mind, that if she could stand on something and launch herself she could evade Jing Liu's pursuit, and then the fish emerged from beneath her foot.

It felt exactly like summoning those lapis‑blue swimming fish in a dream, only this time it was in reality.

"It really works."

Qingque said softly.

The fish, upon hearing her voice, swayed its Tail as if responding.

Jing Liu stood on the ground, looking up at Qingque suspended in mid‑air.

Her expression grew even more twisted; the curve of her mouth had completely left the definition of a "smile," becoming an extreme state between rapture and fury.

She opened her mouth and forced out a hoarse gasp from her throat, sounding like someone's name, but half‑crushed by teeth.

Then Jing Liu, with one hand, grasped the hilt of the Ice Sword, pointed the tip downward, and drove the entire sword vertically into the stone slab beneath her feet.

The instant the Ice Sword entered the ground, a visible white shockwave radiated outward from the blade as its center; wherever the wave passed, the stone slabs were lifted in whole pieces, the flipping slabs froze into ice clumps mid‑air, then crashed back down, shattering into countless shards of ice.

The shockwave covered the entire street; the outer walls of the buildings on both sides were simultaneously coated with a thick white frost, and the sound of glass shattering echoed from all directions, like a string of firecrackers ignited but silenced in less than half a second as they were all frozen into duds.

Afterward Jing Liu pulled the Ice Sword out of the ground, and the blade, as it rose, generated an upward‑surging gust of air.

She held the sword with one hand, the tip pointing at Qingque in mid‑air; the blade glowed with a ghastly white light, bright enough to turn the whole street into daylight, swallowing every shadow.

Countless tiny ice crystals began to condense in the air; they spun rapidly and converged in front of the blade tip, and in the blink of an eye formed a massive Ice Cone spiral over two meters in diameter. The spiral's core was a high‑speed rotating icy blue cold, and the shredded ice at its edge peppered the walls on both sides of the street with dense bullet‑hole patterns.

"Illuminate the ten thousand rivers."

When Jing Liu uttered those four words, the voice was no longer her own at all.

Hoarse and deep, as if carved onto the stone slab with an Ice Cone.

Then she swung the sword outward!

Seeing this, Qingque thrust forcefully against the fish's back; the lapis‑blue fish leapt upward, its Tail whipping a circle of blue ripples in the air.

The Ice Cone spiral brushed past about half a meter beneath her feet, and she could even feel the extreme cold current freezing a layer of white frost onto the surface of her right leg's mist‑gray thigh‑high sock.

Qingque hurriedly commanded the fish to make a sharp left turn; the Ice Cone spiral detonated directly on her right side, and each fragment of ice became an individual Ice Sword, densely hovering in mid‑air, all tips aimed at her.

Qingque's eyes widened; she swung her right hand forward, and dozens of white Bubbles surged from her cuff, arranging in three layers of a defensive formation before her.

When the volley of Ice Swords rained down, the first layer of Bubbles caught about twenty of them; after the bubble membranes were pierced, they contracted, enveloping the Ice Swords, then turned into transparent foam that dissipated together with the swords.

The second layer of Bubbles caught most of the remaining swords, but three Ice Swords slipped through gaps in the bubble array, thrust straight toward Qingque's face.

Qingque slapped the fish's back with her left hand, causing the whole fish to flip in mid‑air; she hung upside‑down in the void, and three Ice Swords brushed past her back and legs. The nearest sword was only two centimeters away from the over‑knee thigh‑high sock on her left leg, where the silver pattern at the cuff was cut by the sword's wind into a nick.