Baili Weisheng gripped the bear’s back tightly with both hands to keep from actually falling off, and said earnestly, “Of course not! If I were, would I have bothered coming to find your mommy first?”

“Are you sure you’re not just here to curry favor?” the little one pressed further, his utterly serious demeanor making it feel exactly like an interrogation.

Baili Weisheng immediately scoffed. “What would a little squirt like you know? Now get moving, or you’ll regret being late!”

To his surprise, the little one scoffed right back, even more dismissively, and with a “Hmph,” yanked on both of the Silly Bear’s ears. “Go!”

The moment those words left his mouth, the Silly Bear obligingly gave its back a sudden violent shake — and somehow, in the process, sent Baili Weisheng flying off. Master and mount then charged off after Ziqing and the others, full of spirited determination.

Baili Weisheng hung suspended in midair, seething with fury. “You little brat, of all the things to learn, you had to learn to be a little punk! Just wait till I get my hands on you!”

A flicker of disdain crossed his eyes as he pushed off the ground, using a few bursts of lightness footwork and a couple of aerial flips, and actually overtook the Silly Bear.

Baili Weisheng deliberately turned back to make a face at the little one before hurrying off after Ziqing and the others.

Seeing himself overtaken, the little one immediately jumped up in excitement, pointing straight ahead. “Charge!”

The Silly Bear gave it everything it had, and for some reason its mood had inexplicably lifted — this was, after all, the first time it had ever seen the little one so fired up.

The Silly Bear and Baili Weisheng arrived at almost the same moment. There was no cliff, no lake — only a stretch of devastated, flattened ground.

Not far ahead, the streak of shimmering light — the dagger — still hovered in midair, slamming again and again with tremendous force into that wall!

Arriving there, Ziqing finally noticed that the entire Poison Beast World had already been reduced to ruins, with only a small portion of poisonous plants and a handful of small birds having survived.

And amid all that ruin, only this cliff wall remained standing — the portion that had collapsed had done so only because of the dagger’s relentless strikes, as though this wall alone had nothing to do with the world’s overall cataclysm.

This, then, must be the stone lock Baili Weisheng had spoken of.

Without needing Ziqing to explain further, the moment Baili Weisheng arrived, he understood immediately that this was the place.

“Let’s try smashing it open!”

Just as Baili Weisheng was about to move, Ziqing stopped him. “It’s no use. I thought it was the seal at first and tried striking it myself, but nothing worked. Only that dagger seems able to carve into it.”

“How could that be…” Baili Weisheng was baffled. What he’d read in the scrolls wasn’t like this at all. Whatever this dagger’s origin was, according to what he’d read in the scrolls’ records, all one needed to do was break the Death Barrier’s cycle, forcibly open the seal, enter the Poison Beast World, and the stone lock could then be destroyed!

So where had this dagger suddenly come from?

“Where did this dagger come from?” Baili Weisheng asked hurriedly.

“Jun Beiyue gave it to me…” As Ziqing said this, she paused visibly, but continued anyway. “These past few days it’s been giving off flashes of blade-light on its own, as though driven by some force, and then it flew here. The upheaval in the Poison Beast World started the moment it began striking the stone lock — it’s been going on for many days now.”

At this, Baili Weisheng grew even more astonished. He had originally assumed that the Poison Beast World’s cataclysmic changes had been triggered by the seal’s activation.

He never imagined it was actually the dagger’s strikes causing it all!

Could it be that someone had already set their sights on this stone lock, long before now?

As Baili Weisheng puzzled this over, Ziqing’s thoughts were drifting in the same direction. She couldn’t help but ask, “Is it Jun Beiyue?”

The dagger belonged to him, after all!

In truth, what Ziqing really wanted to ask was whether Jun Beiyue had been searching for her — whether he was looking for her even now.

But she never asked it.

She had to admit — the instant she’d seen Baili Weisheng, the instant he’d said he’d come to take her home, she had been so deeply moved. And yet, beneath that emotion, disappointment had inevitably crept in as well.

The person she had hoped, more than anyone, would appear — hadn’t. Instead, someone entirely unexpected had come in his place.

It always seemed to work out this way, somehow.

If only she could simply accept that moment of emotion, perhaps it would have been a kind of release — but a woman, it seemed, simply couldn’t manage that. Even with a wounded, aching heart, she still found herself hoping, again and again, for that one person to appear.

She would give ground, time and again, if only he would appear — his presence alone would be enough to clear the skies; his safety alone would be enough to bring sunshine.

Baili Weisheng had no idea about the misunderstanding between Ziqing and Jun Beiyue, no idea how deeply a husband and wife separated for so long might long for each other. He couldn’t even make sense of his own aching heart, let alone Ziqing’s. He was far too anxious about beating the Meng Clan to the Universe Poison Pouch to spare the time explaining every detail.

But he did know that Jun Beiyue had come too.

The seal was on Jun Beiyue’s chest — and watching the dagger’s shimmering light strike the stone lock again and again, it reminded him of Jun Beiyue’s heart, pounding on and on without pause!

Could it be — was that where the key lay?

This force — it was coming from Jun Beiyue’s heart!

Suddenly, understanding dawned on Baili Weisheng. “It’s Meng Wanyue!”

“Meng… Meng Wanyue?” Ziqing didn’t understand — but just then, the little one cried out in alarm, “Mommy, look, there are more humans over there!”

Ah well — coming from the mouth of a little human himself, the word “humans” felt only natural enough.

Ziqing immediately turned to look to the right, and sure enough, a group of people was approaching from not far off. Looking closely, she realized one of them was none other than Xuanyuan Lige!

“Ah Li…” Ziqing murmured, never having expected that Xuanyuan Lige would come too!

He, who had already retired from the world — and yet here he was!

Ziqing stared, stunned, before finally unable to hold back, calling out toward them, “Ah Li!”

Ah Li!

Once, he had said, I’ll call you Ziqing then — and she, rarely smiling, had replied, Then I’ll call you Ah Li.

It had been so, so long since she’d felt this kind of warmth. Suddenly, everything felt different — brimming, overflowing with hope!

“Ah Li!”

“Ah Li!”

Ziqing shouted with excitement, waving her arms wildly, while beside her, Baili Weisheng’s face fell. Xuanyuan Lige had found them awfully fast — had he tracked them all the way here too?

Baili Weisheng recognized at a glance that the three Meng Clan elders were with him — the second elder, the third elder, and that Old Fifth Meng. So this whole crew had all ended up together after all.

But — where was Jun Beiyue?

A complicated look flickered through Baili Weisheng’s eyes. He was just about to speak when a dark shadow materialized out of nowhere, landing not far off to their left.

This person…

His figure was tall and slender, and beneath a bandage wrapped faintly around one side of his chest, one could just make out the wild, violent throbbing of his heart, as though that burning heart might leap right out of his chest in the very next instant.

His features, carved as if by the heavens themselves with the utmost care, were at this moment cold and hard as polar ice, and those long, deep-set eyes were gazing at Ziqing from a distance.

Beneath the coldness, his eyes were brimming with a tenderness so thick it seemed it could never melt away, tenderness shot through with burning heat, his gaze locked tightly on Ziqing as though he meant to trap her within his eyes until the end of time.

He had only just appeared, and already the entire scene had gone still, as though the very air had frozen solid.

Ziqing’s whole body, every inch of her skin, went rigid. It felt as though the entire world had stopped moving, as though time itself had frozen. All she could hear was the sound of her own heartbeat: “Thump! Thump! Thump!”