# 1273
Chapter 1274: Reunion
Lin Qiye tried persuading for a long time, but Jinian still refused to leave the cell.
Just then, sounds echoed from the end of the corridor, rapidly approaching.
"The guards are coming back. Hurry, go!" Jinian whispered. "Don't worry about me. I'm hard to kill!"
Watching the guards approaching from a distance, Lin Qiye had no choice but to bid farewell to Jinian and retreat along the path he'd come from.
Lin Qiye moved quickly—partly to leave the Dungeon before anything changed, and partly to catch up with Si Xiaonan, who had left ahead of him.
He strode out of the Dungeon, scanned his surroundings, and was about to search for which direction Si Xiaonan had gone when several deafening roars echoed from the distance.
"That is..."
Lin Qiye sensed the disturbance in the God's Ruins in the distance and frowned slightly.
"Eek—?" Mumu, riding on Lin Qiye's back, tilted her head in confusion.
"There's clearly a God's Ruins fluctuation, but no divine power is appearing... It must be a Proxy battle." Lin Qiye said immediately. "Mumu, don't rush to get down yet. Let's go take a look."
"Okay!"
With his Absolute Concealment active, Lin Qiye passed directly through the streets, heading toward the source of the sounds.
As the surrounding buildings grew sparse, Lin Qiye left the central temple complex of Asgard and burst into a towering dense forest.
Like most deities within Asgard, the trees here were impossibly massive. Wherever Lin Qiye looked, he saw thick brown giants requiring twenty or thirty people joining hands to encircle them. Dense, dark leaves clustered like clouds blocking the sky, and the deeper he went, the faster visibility dropped.
Finally, Lin Qiye spotted the figures in battle.
Three divine Proxies darted through the forest at astonishing speeds, ghost-like, taking turns attacking from different directions at the figure in the center.
Si Xiaonan stood swaying in a pool of blood. The skin exposed to the air on her body showed faint char marks, as if struck by lightning. Her other wounds varied—some were slashes from bladed weapons, others looked like bites from wild beasts. Her face was deathly pale, and she looked as though she might collapse at any moment.
Seeing this, the three figures pressed their assault even more ruthlessly.
A man wrapped entirely in a brown robe blurred forward, then surged upward, transforming in an instant into a giant bear over a hundred meters tall. Its head pushed through the dense canopy of leaves, and the next moment, a pair of massive snow-white claws, carrying terrifying cold air, crashed down upon Si Xiaonan's head like a tidal wave.
Si Xiaonan bit down hard. Dark threads swiftly materialized around her body, weaving into "Stratagem," and in the blink of an eye, she appeared a hundred meters away, evading the terrifying blow.
"Cough, cough, cough..." The near-death escape brought no relief to Si Xiaonan's expression. Instead, she broke into violent coughing.
"Give up, Si Xiaonan. Today, you will die without question." A tall, red-haired man with blue eyes leisurely stepped out from the trees, his cold smile cutting. "Loki doesn't care about your survival, and you've made enemies with Thor. You're like a stray dog no one wants—no one in all of Asgard will protect you now...
The grudges between us from before? It's time we settled them."
He extended his right hand and flicked his fingers. A surge of light spread from beneath his feet like a tide, enveloping the mobility-impaired Si Xiaonan.
As his palm closed into a fist, blades of light burst from the earth like thorns, a cage of light closing in on Si Xiaonan's form. She endured her injuries and retreated rapidly, but still several blades grazed her, blood splattering and staining the ground into yet another pool of crimson.
A blade of light swept past, and Si Xiaonan's legs buckled. She fell backward onto the ground.
It seemed all her strength had left her. She breathed weakly, and anyone could see her life force draining rapidly—she was close to death. Slowly, she closed her eyes, as if resigned to her fate.
At that moment, a short, dark-skinned woman suddenly leapt from the giant treetop above Si Xiaonan, streaking toward her throat like lightning!
Just as the woman was about to touch Si Xiaonan's throat, the seemingly dying Si Xiaonan's eyes snapped open!
Her right hand, which she'd kept hidden behind her back, shot up. A dagger was reversed in her palm, and with shocking speed, she slashed open the short woman's throat before the attack could land!
Blood splattered across Si Xiaonan. The short woman's triumphant smile gradually froze, replaced by fury and confusion. She couldn't understand—why had the Si Xiaonan who had appeared on the verge of death been able to unleash such terrifying combat power!
She... was tricking me?
The moment that thought crossed the short woman's mind, her breath stopped. She collapsed heavily into the pool of blood before Si Xiaonan.
After a single strike that killed a Proxy, Si Xiaonan reversed her grip on the dagger and, swaying, rose from the pool of blood. Her icy gaze fell upon the red-haired, blue-eyed man.
"Phile, and here I thought you were a Proxy of the God of Light... To think you'd use such underhanded methods. Why don't you fight me one-on-one?"
"I won't fall for your 'Stratagem,' Si Xiaonan." Phile, the Proxy of the God of Light, snorted coldly. "You've got too many tricks up your sleeve. If I fought you one-on-one, I'd probably just walk into another one of your traps. As long as we can kill you, what does it matter if we use numbers?
You're already at the end of your rope."
"Is that so?" Si Xiaonan sneered, kicking the corpse of the short woman at her feet. "Then why don't you come kill me yourself?"
Phile's expression grew darker still. He glanced at the massive bear beside him and said calmly, "Lyst, kill her."
Roooar!!
A deafening roar came from above. Two enormous bear paws whistled through the air, slamming toward the immobilized Si Xiaonan.
The howling cold wind swept across the ground, instantly blanketing it in a thick layer of frost. Si Xiaonan's movements immediately slowed—even the weaving speed of her "Stratagem" was hampered.
Just as despair crept into her heart, a blade of light suddenly erupted from the empty air directly before her, clashing with those two massive bear paws. Like a knife cutting through tofu, it cleanly severed both paws along with the wrists!
The instant that blade of light appeared, both Si Xiaonan and the distant Phile froze.
"You have backup?! You were holding out on more trump cards!" Phile roared.
The blade of light didn't stop after cutting off the bear paws. It continued laterally, cleaving the giant bear's body from bottom to top, splitting it in two!
Lin Qiye held the [White Slash] in one hand. The bandages on Mumu's back unwound, spewing twin jets of flame as her form slowly descended to the ground. A single eyeglass reflected cold light, and golden hair fluttered in the wind.
Si Xiaonan stared at this somewhat familiar face before her, as if remembering something. "Number 33? Miles?"
At the Proxy conference, when Si Xiaonan had disguised herself as Number 01, she had seen what Miles looked like.
Lin Qiye glanced at her and smiled faintly. "The green彼岸花 will eventually bloom. Even the harshest winter cannot bury it forever... Isn't that right, Xiaonan?"
Si Xiaonan's pupils contracted sharply!