Chapter 748: Visitor from the Sky
Although their faces couldn’t be made out clearly, judging by their clothes, they appeared to be Yun Yao and Zhang Chenze. Behind them followed a slender girl, who by inference should be Xiangling Li.
The three girls spotted Tiantian standing in the middle of the playground at a glance, so they quickly ran over to greet her. It seemed that during the time Qi Xia hadn’t met with them, this group had forged a solid friendship.
Qi Xia and Chu Tianqiu were far away from them, unable to hear what exactly was being said, only able to sense that they were both happy and sad.
After these people had gone through the "Celestial Horse Moment" yesterday, they had gradually been gathering toward "Paradise Gate." After all, it was a landmark building—if one wanted to find lost companions, the odds were higher here.
Watching the girls conversing on the school playground, Qi Xia slowly curled his lips. "Chu Tianqiu, you don’t want me to revive Wen Qiaoyun. How about we make a bet?"
"...What kind of bet?"
"We’ll go by what they say."
"Yun Yao...?"
Qi Xia nodded. "If Yun Yao, Attorney Zhang, and Xiangling Li bring up Wen Qiaoyun on their own within three sentences of meeting me, I’ll let her live."
Chu Tianqiu was stunned for a moment, then grinned. "You really are mad as hell."
"Dare to take the bet?"
"Is it a question of daring or not? Whether it’s Yun Yao, Attorney Zhang, or Xiangling Li, none of them could possibly know Wen Qiaoyun, let alone bring her up voluntarily." Chu Tianqiu said. "Are you sure you want to bet on this?"
"Sure," Qi Xia nodded. "Only three sentences. If none of them mention Wen Qiaoyun to me within three sentences, I lose. If they do, you lose."
"And what happens if you lose?" Chu Tianqiu asked again.
"If I lose, I’ll gouge out one of my eyes for you."
"Both," Chu Tianqiu said.
"Deal."
Having sealed the bet, the two turned to face the setting sun, ready to go downstairs and greet the new arrivals.
But as they turned back, they found a person standing quietly on the windy rooftop.
This person stood seven or eight steps away, having made no sound at all before appearing there, as if he had been on the rooftop first.
Seeing this person, both Qi Xia and Chu Tianqiu remained expressionless, as if they had long expected his arrival.
"How should I put it..." a voice that was both male and female emanated from the person’s throat, carrying a hint of reluctance.
Yet Qi Xia and Chu Tianqiu simply watched him in silence, neither speaking.
"Qi Xia..." the person said with a faint smile, "though it might seem like I’m helping you, you can’t treat me like a subordinate and order me around. That puts me in a difficult spot."
"What’s the matter?" Qi Xia smiled. "Is there a problem that you, 'Azure Dragon,' can’t solve in this land?"
"You stood out here in the open chatting like this, the sun hasn’t set, the train hasn’t left." Azure Dragon shook his head. "Did you really expect me to kill the 'Celestial Dog'? That kid and I have deep ties. It took a lot of effort this time just to calm him down."
"That’s not my concern," Qi Xia said. "Besides, we really do need to talk with you."
Azure Dragon understood the implication and smiled, then snapped his fingers.
The three of them were instantly surrounded by a strange aura. All surrounding sounds became inaudible.
Downstairs, Zheng Yingxiong suddenly looked up, frozen in place.
Tiantian noticed his oddity and crouched down to look at him. "What’s wrong, Brother Hero?"
"What kind of smell is this...?"
Zheng Yingxiong stared wide-eyed toward the school rooftop. There, he could only see the backs of Qi Xia and Chu Tianqiu. But there should have been a third person there, standing in his blind spot, hidden from view.
The scent on that person was too strange.
"I smell 'god' and 'immortal,' I smell 'stench' and 'fragrance,' I smell 'yin' and 'yang'..." Zheng Yingxiong murmured. "What on earth is that thing?"
"What are you talking about?" Chen Junnan frowned, looking at Zheng Yingxiong. "I can sort of understand the rest, but what's 'yin and yang'?"
Qin Dingdong thought for a moment and asked, "Is it an 'Echo'?"
"No..." Zheng Yingxiong shook his head. "It's not an 'Echo' in your sense... nor a 'thought'... It's more like a... 'state'?"
Even as he said this, Zheng Yingxiong seemed unsure himself. This was the first time in his memory he had sensed someone's "state."
"That 'yin-yang' smell is just like 'dead' and 'alive'—a persistent state attached to that person, obscure and hard to grasp," Zheng Yingxiong continued.
"A state?" Chen Junnan scratched his head. "A state like 'dead' and 'alive'? So is there some kind of yin-yang person standing up there?"
"I don't know." Zheng Yingxiong nodded. "Chen Junnan, I want to go up and see."
Chen Junnan stepped forward and pressed his hand on Zheng Yingxiong’s head. "What 'Chen Junnan'? Call me big bro."
"Stop messing around." Zheng Yingxiong tried to push Chen Junnan's hand away, but after several attempts, he couldn't, so he had to endure it with a serious expression. "I think Qi Xia is in danger. That person has many smells on him, but none of them are human."
"Ha." Chen Junnan dismissed it with a grin, looking up at Qi Xia’s silhouette on the rooftop. "Does Old Qi even have a human smell on him right now?"
"He..." Zheng Yingxiong paused. "If you put it that way... he really doesn't."
"See?" Chen Junnan said. "Birds of a feather flock together, right? If they're birds of the same feather, what are you worried about?"
"Same... same feather?" Zheng Yingxiong turned to look at Chen Junnan, thinking for the first time that this adult was even less educated than he was.
"So relax," Chen Junnan said. "If Old Qi really gets into trouble, he'll definitely shout down here, 'Ahhhh, Brother Junnan, please come save me!' That's when we'll go check on him."
Zheng Yingxiong stared at Chen Junnan expressionlessly for a long while before slowly saying, "Can you take your hand off my head?"
...
On the rooftop.
After opening "Silence," Azure Dragon stretched his neck and looked at the two before him with a pair of jade-green eyes.
"So it seems quite a few things have happened to you two."
Azure Dragon felt that in just a few short days, both of them had become completely different people.
Chu Tianqiu's appearance had changed drastically, but his aura remained the same as before.
Qi Xia, on the other hand, seemed unchanged on the surface, but his entire aura was now worlds apart.
"Is that so?" the two replied ambiguously, but their eyes held a hint of caution.
After all, the person before them was the "Azure Dragon," one of the two rulers of this land.
"Come to think of it, it's strange," Azure Dragon said. "People who retain their memories for a long time usually don't change much, while those who keep losing their memories change more and more. So who's gone mad—the one who changed, or the one who didn't?"