Did He Awaken Some Kind of Companion Divine Envoy?
The night wind howled past Chu Yuan's ears as the ancient trees on the outskirts of the Star Dou Great Forest raced backward beneath his feet.
With his body strengthened by level-thirty Primordial Divine Power, each touch of his toes against a sturdy treetop or jagged rock carried him more than ten zhang with ease.
Along the way, he occasionally encountered Hundred-Year Soul Beasts that had been disturbed by the celestial phenomenon and were trying to run wild beyond their territories. But when Chu Yuan's figure swept over their heads, a mere wisp of the supreme presence of the Crown of Heavenly Principles and Irminsul escaped, and the ferocious Soul Beasts fell prostrate in the bushes, their limbs trembling.
The closer he drew to the rocky hill in the northeast, the stronger the smell of burning and the presence of violent Electro in the air became.
"Boom-crack!"
A blinding burst of violet lightning exploded beneath the night sky ahead, followed by the piercing, mournful cries of several wolf-type Soul Beasts.
Chu Yuan flashed forward and landed silently atop a weathered boulder over ten meters high, lowering his gaze to the ground below.
The center of the rocky hill had been reduced to a charred crater.
The strange rocks that had once filled the area bore countless sword cuts, each as smooth as a mirror. Around the crater lay more than a dozen archaic gray-blue stone bricks that clearly did not belong to the Douluo Continent, along with fragments of white marble railings bearing Liyue cloud patterns.
At the very center of the crater, a slender yet upright figure in purple knelt on one knee. In her right hand, she held the Lion's Roar, a longsword flickering with faint lightning, its tip plunged deep into the scorched earth to barely support her swaying body.
It was Keqing, the Yuheng of the Liyue Qixing.
But the Yuheng was in an utterly terrible state.
After being torn at by the spatial turbulence between worlds and suffering the violent impact of a fall from high above, the purple-and-black dress she usually kept immaculate, luxurious, and elegant was damaged in many places.
The exquisite purple bow and gauze at her chest had been shredded by the cutting currents of air, exposing a large expanse of delicate shoulders fairer than frost and snow and her finely defined collarbones. As she breathed rapidly and painfully, the full, rounded curves of her chest rose and fell violently, their breathtaking whiteness partly visible beneath the torn fabric.
The deep-purple pantyhose covering her long, straight, near-perfect legs had been slashed open in several places by sharp stones. Amid the snagged threads, glimpses could be seen of her tender, delicate skin, tinged with faint pink.
A thin trail of crimson blood ran down her fair, small chin and dripped onto her dust-covered black high-heeled ankle boots.
More than ten meters away from Keqing, seven or eight enormous, dark-green Hundred-Year Gale Demon Wolves were closing in around her in a semicircle. Behind the pack, a Thousand-Year Thunderstripe Terrorclaw Bear over four meters long, with a single horn on its forehead, stared greedily at the young woman in the crater, foul-smelling saliva dripping constantly from its mouth.
Under the rejection of the laws of the Douluo Star plane, the pure Electro that had originally spilled violently from Keqing's body seemed to these native Soul Beasts like some kind of human-shaped heavenly treasure giving off an unparalleled fragrance.
"Damn it... what in the world is this place...?"
Keqing clenched her teeth, her eyes, clear as amethysts, filled with unwillingness and a piercing chill.
Just half a shichen earlier, the sky above Liyue Harbor had collapsed without warning. She had been helping evacuate the people beneath the Jade Chamber when a sudden spatial vortex swept her and a section of stone platform into it.
When she regained her senses after the dizzying fall, she found herself in this unfamiliar wilderness.
More alarming still, the rules of this world seemed to harbor extreme malice toward her!
She could not sense even the slightest trace of the familiar seven-element Ley Lines in the air. Instead, it was filled with a strange energy that was viscous, overbearing, and highly aggressive.
Whenever she tried to draw on the power of the Vision at her waist, that strange energy would surge madly back through her meridians. Not only did it suppress her Electro within her body, preventing it from circulating freely, it was also constantly squeezing the core of her Vision!
"Buzz-crack!"
The surface of the Electro Vision hanging from the skirt at Keqing's waist was already covered in dull, spiderweb-like cracks. Every flicker sent a stabbing pain shooting into her mind, making her slender waist go weak in waves and even causing the hand holding her sword to twitch faintly beyond her control.
"Roar!!"
The Thousand-Year Thunderstripe Terrorclaw Bear at the rear finally lost patience and let out a deafening roar.
The seven or eight Hundred-Year Gale Demon Wolves in front kicked off the ground at once, turning into streaks of foul wind as they pounced on Keqing at the center of the crater!
"You beasts, don't even think about it!"
Keqing's gaze sharpened. Even with her meridians on the verge of rupturing, the pride and resolve of the Yuheng would never allow her to sit and wait for death.
She bit down hard on the tip of her tongue, using the sharp pain to rouse her mind, then snapped her wrist. A violet Lightning Stiletto slowly, laboriously took shape.
"Star Dou Restoration!"
Keqing's figure became a violet afterimage of lightning, darting back and forth through the wolf pack as she struck. Sword lights wove together, cleaving the three nearest Hundred-Year Gale Demon Wolves in two on the spot!
But the instant she landed after using the skill-
"Pfft!"
The backlash from crossing the laws of worlds erupted with a roar!
The Vision at her waist suddenly gave a mournful cry. Rather than spreading outward, the violent violet lightning surged backward, rampaging through Keqing's slender waist, limbs, and bones.
A piercing numbness and agony swept through Keqing's entire body. She spat out a mouthful of blood, her legs gave way, and she fell onto the cold, scattered stones. The Lion's Roar flew from her hand and embedded itself at an angle three steps away.
"Ugh... my body... won't move..."
Tiny violet arcs crackled over her beautiful legs in their torn black stockings and her snow-white shoulders. Each leap of electricity made her body shudder violently, and an unusual flush rose on her fair, exquisite face from the reversed flow of the element and the intense heat. Even her normally cool, commanding gasps involuntarily took on a trace of pitiable moaning and trembling.
By then, the Thousand-Year Thunderstripe Terrorclaw Bear had crushed its way through the rocks and charged to within three zhang of her with heavy steps. Its enormous paw rose high, trailing a foul wind, and came crashing down toward the helpless Keqing's head!
The shadow of despair instantly enveloped Keqing's vision.
Could it be that I, Keqing... will die for no clear reason today in the jaws of a beast in this otherworldly wilderness?
She widened her violet eyes in unwillingness, her fingertips clawing futilely at the loose stones beneath her.
"Be still."
A young man's warm, calm voice, seemingly imbued with the supreme decree of heaven and earth, suddenly rang out beneath the deathly silent night sky.
The next moment, Keqing's pupils contracted.
The fierce Thousand-Year Thunderstripe Terrorclaw Bear, along with the surviving Gale Demon Wolves around it, had eerily stopped in midair like insects trapped in amber, less than half a chi above her head!
A tall, slender figure in white with gold patterns appeared silently before her, as though he had crossed the barrier of space.
The young man stood with his hands behind his back, his ink-black hair stirring lightly in the night wind, and casually flicked a finger.
"Buzz!"
A brilliant wisp of pale-gold Primordial Divine Power spread out in invisible ripples.
The thick-skinned Thousand-Year Thunderstripe Terrorclaw Bear, enough to give an ordinary level-thirty Soul Elder a terrible headache, could not utter so much as half a scream before its massive body exploded in midair into a cloud of blood mist. A deep-purple Thousand-Year Soul Ring then slowly rose above its remains, while the remaining Gale Demon Wolves were scared out of their wits and fled into the depths of the forest like mad, their tails between their legs.
Only after doing all this did Chu Yuan slowly turn around and look down at the purple-haired young woman lying limp on the rubble.
Looking at the young woman before him, her clothes half undone and her black stockings torn, yet her violet eyes still fixed firmly on him with a measure of vigilance and stubbornness, a trace of intrigued amusement flashed in Chu Yuan's eyes at her tragic beauty.
He slowly crouched down before Keqing and naturally reached out with his slender fingers, lifting her delicate, fair chin, which was stained with a little blood.
"Don't move, Miss Keqing."
The warmth of his fingertips made Keqing's entire body stiffen. Having never been so close to a member of the opposite sex, she turned scarlet to the tips of her ears and instinctively tried to turn her head away. But the Electro rampaging through her body had left her without even the strength to raise a hand, so she could only bite her lip and demand in a low voice, embarrassed and indignant, yet also startled and suspicious:
"You... who are you?! How do you know my name?"
Chu Yuan did not answer immediately. His gaze swept over the snow-white expanse of Keqing's chest, rising and falling with her rapid breaths, before settling on the Electro Vision beside her slender waist, which was on the verge of shattering completely. The corners of his mouth lifted slightly.
"Who I am isn't important. What matters is that right now, I'm the only one who can save your life."