Xuanwu froze for a long time, then raised her head to look at everyone before her.

“What are you planning…?”

Luo Shiyi had nothing to say at this moment and hurriedly turned to look at Su Shan and Song Qi.

The two of them also had troubled expressions.

Song Qi played with a stone in his hands, carefully pondering the current situation.

It wasn’t difficult for Qiu Shiliu to make herself catch fire—after all, she had already controlled her emotions before entering Xuanwu’s body.

For her, the hardest part was stopping the fire.

But why did the inside of Xuanwu’s body look perfectly fine…?

Could there be something fishy about that space that caused Qiu Shiliu to die directly after entering?

Su Shan also stared at Xuanwu with wide eyes. When Qiu Shiliu was about to enter Xuanwu’s body, she had clearly released “Crimson Flames,” but after her figure disappeared, the words “Crimson Flames” vanished, and only “Immortality” covering Xuanwu’s body could be seen.

“Relying on guesswork for this unknown situation is really too difficult…” Su Shan murmured.

Everyone froze in place, not knowing what to do. Should they continue attacking or wait and see…?

“Ahhhhhhh!”

Just as everyone was silent, a miserable scream suddenly came from the distance.

Everyone turned to look and saw Ma Shier running over while screaming and holding a pitch-black arm.

He ran up to everyone panting heavily, threw the arm on the ground with a terrified expression, then gasped for breath in large gulps.

“What happened…?” Luo Shiyi asked with a furrowed brow.

“Eleventh Brother ahhh!” Ma Shier looked quite frightened. “Just now… this arm… what the hell…”

“Get to the point.”

After hearing this, Ma Shier quickly adjusted his breathing and pointed at the pitch-black arm on the ground, saying with a trembling voice, “Shiliu’s face just floated past inside this arm!!”

“Huh…?”

Everyone present was astonished for a moment. Although this matter was difficult to understand, it wasn’t particularly incomprehensible.

“When you say ‘her face floated past,’ you mean…”

“Just… how do I put this!” Ma Shier scratched his head while trying to imagine how to describe what just happened. “Just now, Shiliu’s face was like a moving tattoo on this arm… except it went from this end, whoosh, to that end.”

It looked like Ma Shier was trying his best to organize his thoughts to make everyone believe he hadn’t gone crazy.

After speaking, he looked around and quickly discovered the problem. “Wait… where’s Shiliu?”

“She went to become a tattoo.”

“Huh?”

After Luo Shiyi finished speaking, he reached up to scratch his head and asked again, “When you saw Shiliu… was she alive or dead?”

“What?!”

Ma Shier completely couldn’t understand this question.

“Eleventh Brother, what exactly do you mean… you mean that tattoo really was Shiliu herself?!” Ma Shier said with an excited tone. “She’s swimming around inside Xuanwu’s arm?!”

“Something like that.” Luo Shiyi said. “But the current plan seems to have some flaws, so is she dead or not?”

Only after hearing this did Ma Shier carefully think about that face from earlier.

“If that’s the case… Shiliu shouldn’t be dead.” Ma Shier answered. “But her eyes were wide open, as if she had seen something extremely shocking…”

“Shocking…?”

“That’s right!” Ma Shier nodded. “If her eyes hadn’t been opened so wide, I wouldn’t have been instantly scared either…”

“Since she’s not dead, why hasn’t ‘Crimson Flames’ activated yet…?” Luo Shiyi raised his own question, then turned to look at Song Qi.

Standing on the low building, Song Qi heard all of this clearly and soon had a deduction.

If Qiu Shiliu was fine but hadn’t activated “Crimson Flames,” it could only mean her “anger” had decreased.

An “Echo” that could only be triggered by “extreme anger” hadn’t taken effect, indicating that Qiu Shiliu had seen something very strange in that space—something that even changed her emotions.

As several people were pondering, they noticed a figure floating past inside Xuanwu’s pitch-black body. The figure went from left to right and quickly exceeded the visible range.

That figure was precisely Qiu Shiliu.

“Holy…” Ma Shier pointed at Xuanwu and exclaimed, “That’s exactly what it looked like!!”

Xuanwu, who had been looking down, also saw this scene and immediately extended her left hand into her own body to grab Qiu Shiliu, but couldn’t reach her no matter what.

Only now did everyone understand what it was like to have someone floating past on their body…

It was like the image displayed on a television.

Xuanwu’s entire body was like a pitch-black, three-dimensional display screen. She was constantly playing a starry sky screensaver pattern, but now a person had floated past the starry sky.

This situation wasn’t quite like a tattoo, because Qiu Shiliu appeared inside Xuanwu’s body rather than on the surface of her skin.

“What… should we do now…?” Ma Shier asked softly.

“Give Shiliu some time. Don’t attack rashly.” Song Qi said from the rooftop. “We still have this much understanding.”

“That makes sense.” Luo Shiyi also nodded. “Since Shiliu didn’t immediately activate Crimson Flames, it can only mean she feels now isn’t the right time.”

……

It took Qiu Shiliu a long time to barely stabilize herself in this strange space.

The first time she entered here, her first reaction was “unable to breathe.”

This strange space seemed not to have reserved even a trace of air for an outsider like her. She thought she was about to die immediately.

But after raising her head, the unreasonable sense of shock directly bombarded into her mind.

The matter of breathing was also cast aside in that instant.

Everywhere she looked, against a pitch-black background, were countless doors floating in midair.

Some doors were half-open, revealing faint light from the other side. These infinite doors, as vast as heaven and earth, emanating faint light, looked from a distance like a vast sea of stars shining with brilliant light.

Where did they lead to?

And why were they in Xuanwu’s body?

No, rather than being curious about this question, she should wonder what place she was currently in.

After about a minute, Qiu Shiliu came to her senses and discovered that she had actually been breathing all along.

She was steadily inhaling and exhaling in a place without air.

But when she became aware of this abstract problem, she suddenly found it difficult to breathe again.

Having been a member of “Cat” for some time, Qiu Shiliu quickly understood that the “breathing” here was affected by her subconscious.

As long as she believed she couldn’t breathe here, she would die from lack of oxygen. So only when she was subconscious would she ignore the issue of breathing.

Though it sounded easy, getting herself to believe she could breathe freely in this space was actually quite difficult.

After all, this place looked like it had no sky above and no earth below—a boundless, endless, pitch-black strange space. Could humans really breathe in this kind of place?

Qiu Shiliu tried many times but still couldn’t change her subconscious, so she could only slowly turn around, searching in the air for something that could distract her.

This turn of her head was no small matter—Ma Shier’s large face suddenly passed before her, scaring her into opening her eyes wide as well.