Although their faces weren’t clearly visible, judging by their clothing they should be Yun Yao and Zhang Chenze, with a thin girl following behind them who should be Li Xiangling based on deduction.
The three girls immediately spotted Tiantian standing in the center of the playground and quickly ran forward to greet her. It seemed that during the time Qi Xia hadn’t met with them, this team had established a good friendship.
Qi Xia and Chu Tianqiu were quite far from them and couldn’t hear what exactly they were saying, only sensing that they were both happy and sad.
After these people had passed through the “Pegasus Moment” yesterday, they were all slowly gathering toward “Heaven’s Gate.” After all, this was a landmark building. If they wanted to search for scattered companions, the probability of finding them here was greater.
Watching the several girls conversing on the school playground, Qi Xia slowly raised the corners of his mouth. “Chu Tianqiu, since you don’t want me to revive Wen Qiaoyun, how about I make a bet with you?”
“…What bet?”
“We’ll do as those few people wish.”
“Yun Yao…?”
Qi Xia nodded. “If, after Yun Yao, Lawyer Zhang, and Li Xiangling see me, they bring up Wen Qiaoyun on their own within three sentences, I’ll let her live.”
After hearing this, Chu Tianqiu was slightly stunned, then also grinned. “You’re truly severely mad.”
“Is this a question of whether you dare to bet or not? Neither Yun Yao, Lawyer Zhang, nor Li Xiangling could possibly know Wen Qiaoyun, much less have any probability of bringing her up on their own.” Chu Tianqiu said. “Are you sure you want to bet on this with me?”
“Sure.” Qi Xia nodded. “Limited to three sentences. If within three sentences, none of them mention Wen Qiaoyun to me, I lose. If they mention her, you lose.”
“What happens if you lose?” Chu Tianqiu asked again.
“If I lose, I’ll dig out one eye and give it to you.”
“Two,” Chu Tianqiu said.
Having completed their wager, the two faced the sun about to set behind the mountains and prepared to go downstairs to greet the several new guests.
But just as they turned around, they discovered that on the rooftop swept by a gentle breeze, a person was standing quietly.
This person was seven or eight steps away from them, having already stood here without making a single sound, as if he had arrived on the rooftop first.
Upon seeing this person, both Qi Xia and Chu Tianqiu remained expressionless, as if they had long anticipated his arrival.
“How should I put this…” A voice mixing male and female tones came from that person’s throat, his tone carrying a hint of difficulty.
But Qi Xia and Chu Tianqiu only looked at him quietly, neither of them speaking.
“Qi Xia…” That person said with a slight smile, “Although it looks like I’m helping you all, you can’t just order me around like a subordinate. This makes things very difficult for me.”
“What’s wrong?” Qi Xia smiled. “Is there a problem on this land that you, ‘Qinglong,’ can’t solve?”
“You two are standing here chatting so openly—the sun hasn’t set, and the train hasn’t left.” Qinglong shook his head. “Do you really expect me to kill ‘Heavenly Dog’? That kid and I have deep feelings for each other. This time I spent great effort to placate him.”
“That’s not something I should worry about,” Qi Xia said. “Besides, we really do need to chat with you.”
After hearing this, Qinglong understood tacitly, then smiled slightly and snapped his fingers.
The three were instantly surrounded by a peculiar aura, and all the surrounding sounds could no longer be heard.
Downstairs, Zheng Yingxiong suddenly raised his head at this moment, his entire person freezing in place.
Tiantian noticed Zheng Yingxiong’s abnormality and crouched down to look at him. “What’s wrong? Little Brother Yingxiong?”
“What is this scent…?”
Zheng Yingxiong stared wide-eyed toward the school rooftop, where only the backs of Qi Xia and Chu Tianqiu could be seen, yet there should clearly be a third person there. He stood in a blind spot, his form invisible.
The scent on that person was too strange.
“I smell ‘god’ and ‘immortal,’ I smell ‘foul stench’ and ‘pure fragrance,’ I smell ‘yin’ and ‘yang’…” Zheng Yingxiong murmured. “What exactly is that thing?”
“What are you saying?” Chen Junnan looked at Zheng Yingxiong with a furrowed brow. “I can roughly understand the other things, but what is ‘yin and yang’?”
After hearing this, Qin Dingdong thought for a moment and asked, “Is it an ‘Echo’?”
“No…” After hearing this, Zheng Yingxiong shook his head. “It’s not what you call an ‘Echo’… nor is it a type of ‘thought,’ but rather… a type of ‘state’?”
This statement seemed to lack confidence even from Zheng Yingxiong himself. This was the first time in his memory that he had smelled a “state” on someone else.
“This scent of ‘yin and yang’ is almost like ‘death’ and ‘life’—a persistent state attached to that person, obscure and difficult to understand.” Zheng Yingxiong continued.
“State?” After hearing this, Chen Junnan scratched his head. “A state like ‘death’ and ‘life’? Is there a hermaphrodite standing up there?”
“I don’t know.” Zheng Yingxiong nodded. “Chen Junnan, I want to go up and look.”
After hearing this, Chen Junnan stepped forward and pressed down on Zheng Yingxiong’s head. “What ‘Chen Junnan’? Call me ‘big bro.'”
“Stop fooling around.” Zheng Yingxiong pushed Chen Junnan’s hand away, but after pushing several times without success, he could only say with a completely serious expression while topped by his hand, “I think Qi Xia is in great danger. That person has many types of scents on him, but he just doesn’t have the scent of a human.”
“Ha.” Chen Junnan looked up indifferently at Qi Xia’s back on the rooftop, then asked with a smile on his face, “Does Old Qi have the scent of a human on him now?”
“He…” Zheng Yingxiong was slightly stunned. “If you put it that way… it seems he really doesn’t have the scent of a human.”
“There you go then.” Chen Junnan said. “People of certain status need to talk with people of the same status. Birds of a feather flock together—what are you worried about?”
“Birds… birds of a feather?” Zheng Yingxiong turned to look at Chen Junnan. For the first time, he felt that an adult was even less cultured than himself.
“So just relax,” Chen Junnan said. “If Old Qi is really in danger, he’ll definitely shout down below, ‘Ahhhhh Big Bro Junnan get the fuck up here and save me,’ and then we’ll go up and deal with it.”
Zheng Yingxiong stared expressionlessly at Chen Junnan for a long time before slowly saying, “Can you move your hand off the top of my head?”
…
On the rooftop.
After Qinglong activated “Silence,” he stretched his neck, then looked at the two people before him with a pair of dark green eyes.
“It seems quite a lot has happened to you two.”
Qinglong only felt that in just a few short days, these two people before him had become completely different.
Chu Tianqiu’s appearance was utterly different from before, but his aura was exactly the same as originally.
While Qi Xia looked largely unchanged, his entire aura was worlds apart from before.
“Is that so?” The two said ambiguously, but their eyes both carried a hint of caution.
After all, the person before them was “Qinglong,” one of the two rulers of this place.
“Speaking of which, it’s also strange,” Qinglong said. “People who preserve their memories for a long time usually don’t change much, yet people who constantly lose their memories change more and more. So in the end, are the ones who’ve changed mad, or are the ones who haven’t changed mad?”