"Sir! Two Sirs! I was wrong, I really was wrong!"
As a core fragment of the great Heliobus Ignamar, Fuyan could fairly be called a ghost of considerable standing — and right now it demonstrated exactly what it meant to know when to bow and when to stand tall. It drifted to float before Stelle and Caelus, its flame-tip wobbling back and forth as it begged and groveled.
"I never should have beaten Her Majesty at Rock-Paper-Scissors!"
The attitude was one of total, unfiltered sincerity: its heart had spoken, and its heart said survive.
I'm going to get eaten I'm going to get eaten I'm going to get eaten!!!
What in the actual hell — this place doesn't actually have ghosts, does it?
The Heliobus, known across the cosmos as Spirits of Starfire, were among the most singular beings in existence. Heliobus had always fed on the emotions of living creatures — never the other way around. Yet somehow these two could erase a Heliobus's consciousness outright and turn its energy into food.
Fuyan immediately dropped into a full grovel, face plastered with a fawning smile:
"It's entirely my fault for failing to recognize Mount Tai when it stood right before me. How about you open the gourd? I'll walk in myself — ever since I escaped that place I've been missing life inside the Creation Furnace. Work makes me happy!"
Fuyan's tone was earnest. Genuinely, painfully earnest.
"First defiant, then groveling — thinking about it is almost funny."
Stelle stood with both hands stuffed in her hoodie pocket, wearing an expression of maximum smug.
"Ha… hahaha~!"
Tail, who had been watching Fuyan eat crow, slammed the ground with her tail in hysterical laughter. "You little wretch — look at yourself right now, you're killing me!"
All jokes and laughter aside, Tail actually did understand where Fuyan was coming from.
That machine Gray-hair had pulled out was genuinely terrifying.
If you compared a Heliobus to a human being, what was happening right now was the equivalent of a bread maker coming to life, swallowing a person whole, baking them into a delicious loaf, and then eating itself. The only word for it was supernatural.
That machine was definitely not normal — otherwise, the Xianzhou would have used the Universal Synthesizer long ago to wipe out every troublemaking Heliobus on the ship.
Hearing the completely unmasked delight in Tail's laughter, Fuyan's expression cycled through several phases — and ultimately it kept its mouth shut.
"Alright, Leylah — let it go."
Caelus scooped up a spoonful of cherry-banana-coconut milk ice cream and fed it to the dark-haired girl who had been holding Fuyan in place.
Food imbued with a Heliobus's primordial energy was a rare delicacy for Leylah.
"Yes, Master~"
Leylah's tongue — as dexterous as a serpent's — curled around the cream-dabbed fingers as she released her hold, producing a soft, wet, delicate sound.
That bookish, quiet literary-girl demeanor; the dreamy flush spreading across her cheeks; the expression of pure bliss — she looked as though she were savoring the greatest delicacy in all the world. Whether she was enjoying the ice cream or Caelus himself was anyone's guess.
"Explain what's going on."
Caelus scooped another spoonful of ice cream — the kind that could grant a slight boost to movement speed, with the minor drawback of causing explosive diarrhea if you exceeded the serving limit. Worse than the Huawei Jet-Propulsion Warrior variety. Maybe that was where the speed boost came from.
"Uh, Sir, this is… a long story."
Fuyan's cautious tone carried a hint of shameless wheedling.
"Then talk fast!"
Stelle cracked open a second tub of ice cream. She was determined to find out which would win: ice cream's diarrhea-inducing power, or her Stellaron-body's resistance. She was nothing if not hardheaded — just one of her many, many understated virtues.
"A thousand years ago, the great Heliobus Ignamar faced off against General Teng Xiao of the Luofu in Fyxestroll Garden. That battle shook the heavens and moved even ghosts to tears! Ignamar transformed endlessly — floods, scorching fire, crumbling mountains, rending thunder — trading blow for blow with that General in a fight so close neither side could claim the edge. Fifty-fifty!"
Fuyan's vivid, dramatic account felt as though it were peeling back a corner of history hidden for a thousand years.
"Hold on, hold on — why does the story suddenly stretch back a thousand years? You call this the short version?!"
March 7th's face contorted as she could not help but chime in.
"Was it really fifty-fifty?"
Stelle's delicate brows knitted together in a small frown.
"Your priorities are completely wrong!"
March 7th continued her running commentary.
"I know something about this — according to the Ten-Lords Commission records, Ignamar apparently… suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of a general named Teng Xiao?"
Huo Huo ventured the information in a tiny, hesitant voice.
Fuyan opened its mouth to argue back — then a blade's whisper cut through the air, cold intent riding the breeze. A gorgeous tachi, its edge trailing crimson light, sheared off the flame at the top of Fuyan's head and planted itself in the ground.
Fuyan went rigid. It slowly looked up and found Caelus smiling pleasantly down at it.
"The short version."
"Yes! Sir!"
Fuyan snapped to attention.
Inside, it was on the verge of tears.
As one of Ignamar's core fragments, Fuyan wasn't quite the combat powerhouse Tail was — but next to an ordinary small Heliobus, it was absolutely a cut above. It had been sealed inside the Creation Furnace and worked to the bone for several hundred years, leaving its strength depleted and its body frail. When disaster struck the Xianzhou and the Furnace shattered, it had seized its chance to escape.
It had been starving for so long. Finally free of hell, the first order of business was obviously to stuff itself.
And yet — Fuyan had no idea whether the Xianzhou had changed too much in a thousand years, or whether its luck had simply turned catastrophically bad.
Every host it encountered was a specimen.
Its first attempt was a small child. That unfortunate kid thought about cotton candy every single day, which forced the weakened Fuyan to involuntarily think about cotton candy too, nearly turning it into a cotton candy ghost.
To escape infection from the cotton candy curse, Fuyan switched hosts.
Next was a cult member who, every morning, noon, and evening, opened an illustrated scripture of the Abundance Aeon Medicus for devotional readings. This left Fuyan utterly shaken. You're a person from the Xianzhou! What in the actual hell are you doing?! Have you lost your mind?!
Fearing that absorbing a lunatic's emotions would affect its own sanity, Fuyan changed hosts again.
This host was passably normal — except he'd been hopelessly bewitched by a Foxian online who called herself "Beautiful Fox Fairy," his head perpetually full of romance. The flavor was a bit cloying.
At that point, Fuyan actually heard someone claiming to be its devotee, summoning it, praying for it to appear.
Those humans had mistaken it for a ghost. It hadn't occurred to Fuyan that after being sealed away for centuries, the people of the Xianzhou would have grown so audacious — it decided to manifest directly and give those people a little surprise.
Instead, those infuriating humans wanted it to help them do their homework. Solve problems.
Was it supposed to just swallow that?!
Fuyan was so furious it filled in all their answers at random just to spite them.
In any case, after wandering through one ordeal after another, Fuyan had finally recovered some of its strength.
And then it had arrived at Fyxestroll Garden.
Not just it — all the splinter-spirits and fragments born from Ignamar's division had gathered in Fyxestroll Garden. It was the lingering obsession that Ignamar had left behind: the unfulfilled vow to fight the Xianzhou General once more.
One of Ignamar's core fragments, known as Huiyan, had set up an illusory labyrinth realm inside Fyxestroll Garden. It devoured the emotions of everyone who entered the Garden, while simultaneously trapping a large number of Heliobus within its phantom mirrors.
Heliobus sharing the same obsession merged with one another, or were simply swallowed outright by stronger individuals. The plan was to use a battle-royale-meets-snake-eating-game method to birth a new, mighty Heliobus — one capable of challenging the Xianzhou General.
The desire to fight the General again was an obsession branded into the soul of every splinter-spirit, Fuyan included. But what Fuyan wanted most was to reclaim its freedom. It wanted to return to the open sky beyond, not reunite with the other fragments.
"I couldn't escape the illusory labyrinth realm by my own power. My only option was to lure someone inside, then hitch a ride by possessing a human host to get out."
"Every step of the journey felt like walking on thin ice, and I was finally almost to the other bank… and then…"
Fuyan's voice broke. The tears were practically flowing.
And then it had run into these two freakishly uncanny gray-haired creatures.
"Big Brother, Big Sister, Sir, Ma'am — please, let's get out of here now! Huiyan is no longer a normal Heliobus anymore — it and that demon have fused into something entirely new!"
Caelus paid no mind to Fuyan's panicked, tearful urgency, and merely tugged at the corner of his mouth.
So the Heliobus fragments had merged into something big and then body-snatched a new-breed demon beast. Those two combined weren't simply one-plus-one-equals-two. This was mildly troublesome…
But then again.
The Heliobus's obsession was to settle the score with the General — Caelus could absolutely dump this headache straight onto Jing Yuan's lap to deal with. At worst it meant a few more white hairs for him.
Oh wait, Jing Yuan's hair was already white.
"So what do we do now? Guinaifen and Sushang are still somewhere in here — we can't just leave them."
Having heard everything, March 7th's expression had turned visibly anxious.
"Fuyan — did you lure anyone else inside before us?"
Caelus prodded the one-eyed Heliobus with the tip of the Jizo Mitama sword.
"No — I was too unlucky… I mean fortunate — to have run into the two of you first."
Fuyan caught sight of Caelus picking up the Universal Synthesizer and hastily amended its words, its voice trembling.
"This space has severed all signals. I am unable to reach my younger sister."
Xueyi lowered the two fingers from her ear.
With communications cut off, calling Jing Yuan in was not an option. As for getting out — Caelus swept his gaze across the growing number of bronze mirrors. The space was shifting constantly, actively trying to prevent those inside from escaping.
"The immediate priority is to investigate the nature of this creature."
Thanks to the high-performance sensors within her Ingenium puppet body, Xueyi could feel a terrifying energy being incubated somewhere in the distance.
"We'll split into two groups."
Caelus looked toward the Jade Knight, her silken ribbons drifting on the air. "Sushang, I'm counting on you to go find Little Gui and Sushang."
Li Sushang and Moonscar working together was unquestionably the highest individual combat strength available.
Li Sushang gave a firm nod and slapped her pillow. "Leave it to this young lady!"
With that, she condensed her Qi into a sword, stepped onto its blade, and flew off.
"We'll head to the center of the space and see exactly what we're dealing with."
Caelus tossed out the Wind Clow Card, then fished a blanket from his spatial ring. "Everyone, get on."
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