"Splash." Li Yue splashed cold water on her face. Her wet hair hung down, making her look a bit disheveled.
"Good... good... I am calm..." Li Yue let out a long breath. Through the bathroom mirror, she could see the "Li Yue" in the shadows smiling at her. There were a few pitch-black scales at the corners of its eyes, and its blood-red gaze held a hint of a sneer.
"Laugh if you want..." Li Yue ignored her other self, combed her hair, and walked out the door. Her eyes betrayed a sense of exhaustion. She suppressed the throbbing in her heart, unsure if it was instinct or some kind of outside influence.
"Either merge with the divinity... or be affected by those negative emotions..." Li Yue clenched her fists. "Enough is enough..."
The sound of the door opening came from downstairs. Dinner was already laid out on the table, steam rising from the dishes, but Li Yue had no appetite at all. She stood by the table for a moment, waiting for Clo to change her shoes and come over.
"Why didn't you come to greet me?" Clo puffed out her cheeks. "Smells good. Is dinner just ready?"
"Yeah... I'm going to rest now..." Li Yue bit her lower lip and ran upstairs, hugging her arms.
"A Yue, wait." Clo reached out. "Aren't you going to eat?"
She felt her heart tremble. It seemed like something had flickered beside her and then quickly vanished.
"I... I already ate at the academy... I have things to do tomorrow morning, so I'm turning in early..." Li Yue glanced at Clo and saw the figure in the black robe standing beside her. It glanced sideways at Clo before quickly looking away and following Li Yue up the stairs.
"What's going on... A Yue seems a bit strange..." Clo slumped into a chair, looking at the food on the table without any appetite. As she watched Li Yue's retreating back, she felt a faint sensation that something was overlapping with her.
"Is she sick again? I'll go check on her in a bit."
Clo took a bite of the food. The delicious flavor stimulated her taste buds, yet it felt like chewing wax. She slowly closed her eyes, and her body began to dissolve into nothingness, as if slipping into a crack in the world.
On the shore of the River of Time, a girl walked slowly. She carefully observed every fork in the path. Countless tributaries branched off from every node, but in the end, they all flowed back into the main trunk. She looked downstream, and in that pitch-black, unpredictable void, she faintly saw a figure.
It was writing by candlelight, character by character. It was turning pages that once held calligraphy and paintings back into blank sheets, writing in its own way. With every word it wrote, the space it occupied turned a bit more into nothingness.
Surprise flashed in the girl's eyes. This was the first time she had seen this peculiar figure. As the water rippled, everything began to slowly disappear.
The world gradually shattered, and Clo's figure reappeared in the living room. She sat in the chair, exhausted. Her hand seemed to have been cut by something, and a line of words was written in blood.
"The gifts of fate can actually serve as the price itself."
"The price... Who... How is it possible to meet... someone else on the 'shore'?" Clo lay on the sofa, the intense exhaustion making it almost impossible to resist the onset of sleep. "No, no, another 'hint.' What does it mean... this time..."
She fell into a deep sleep. In the dream she had had countless times, she witnessed Li Yue's departure once again. On that night when the blood moon rose, she put on that sinful crown. Time and again, she could change nothing.
Next time... what change could she bring?
【Time】, 【Cycle】... could it be 【Fate】?
...
The morning sun always carried a hint of coldness, a feeling Li Yue was very familiar with. For her, waking up early on a day off was a common occurrence.
She walked along a small path in the forest, comparing the plants by the roadside to the illustrations in her book. This was a small wooded area under the academy's jurisdiction, housing some spirit beasts to simulate the environment outside the academy. It contained many special materials, including those needed for the final assignment in her potions class.
This forest was only open to trainee-level 1 and 2 students to let them adapt before they officially stepped into the outside world. However, the level of danger here was child's play compared to the outside. Under the coverage of monitoring formations, dying here was much harder than staying alive.
Li Yue had thought about just buying the materials, but the requirement was that they had to be self-harvested, which made things a bit difficult for her.
She sighed softly, feeling a bit irritable. The laughter of other students constantly drifted from the bushes. The dense forest reminded her of that little maze in Yakutsk, and she hoped she wouldn't encounter a similar scene here.
Well... if there's someone monitoring... that kind of thing shouldn't happen, right?
Hard to say...
"Damn it, why are there blood wolves here? Tsk, my mist-arrow vines! I worked so hard to find them!" A shout rang out from the trees not far from Li Yue. That area seemed covered in a thin mist, accompanied by the sounds of magic blasts and howling.
"Ah, I need that material too," Li Yue murmured, walking toward the source of the sound. Pushing aside the bushes, she saw several wolves with blood-red fur facing off against a few students.
She completely ignored the people, harvested the mist-arrow vines, and prepared to leave.
The egg-white vines emitted a faint mist. They were a raw material for sputtering potions and mist-concealment potions. Making these potions also required the flesh of a tasteless fruit, which was said to mask a person's scent.
Smoke bombs. That was Li Yue's interpretation of the potion.
"Hey! You!" a male student shouted in frustration. "Taking advantage of the situation like this is too despicable!"
"It's called seizing an opening..." a man wearing glasses and clutching a wand reminded him in a low voice.
"Awoo!" Several blood wolves lunged at Li Yue.
"Hmm? Calling me?" Li Yue blinked. She instinctively pulled out a long sword, and after dodging a pounce, she switched to Death and Rebirth.
"What a hassle..."
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