Charm Backlash, Tenfold!
On the tree-shaded imperial road, less than three li from Suotuo City's southern gate.
Two figures who looked as though they had stepped out of a painting walked unhurriedly over the dew-covered grass of the early morning, approaching Suotuo City's magnificent walls, which rose over ten meters high.
The youth in front was no more than twelve or thirteen. He wore an impeccably tailored white robe patterned with gold, without a speck of dust on it. His ink-black hair was tied behind his head with a simple jade hairpin, and his features were extraordinarily handsome. His black eyes, as deep as the starry sky, were calm and unruffled. Every gesture carried a nobility and composure that made others feel ashamed of their own inadequacy.
Half a step behind the youth, a purple-haired young woman followed close at his side. Her beauty could topple a city, and her bearing was cool, alluring, and noble.
They were none other than Chu Yuan and Keqing.
Keqing had changed out of the badly damaged purple-and-black dress she had worn the previous night. In its place, she wore a fitted purple dress with flowing skirts, newly woven by Chu Yuan in the grotto-heaven from Irminsul's essence and elemental moonlight. The new dress retained the practical elegance and splendor of Liyue's Yuheng, while faint gold Heavenly Principles patterns now adorned the hem and cuffs.
Her long, straight, shapely legs were once again wrapped in dark purple stockings, thin as cicada wings and faintly luminous. They traced the perfect lines of her legs and the curves of her full, upturned buttocks to perfection.
After the intimate tenderness they had shared in the hot spring the previous night, their bodies mingling like milk and water in endless passion, Keqing's meridians and Vision had both reached complete perfection. The sharp aloofness of a superior that had once marked her features had also softened considerably, replaced by the allure and radiance of someone newly nourished by rain and dew.
As she walked, a faint blush flickered across her fair cheeks from time to time, and every few breaths, her moist purple eyes stole a glance at Chu Yuan beside her.
Noticing the hesitant glances of the beauty at his side, Chu Yuan slowed slightly. He reached out with his right hand as naturally as could be, slipped it around Keqing's slender willow waist, narrow enough to encircle in one hand and soft as if boneless, and drew her closer.
"Mm..."
Keqing's delicate body trembled slightly. Though she was still a little shy about being held around the waist on the imperial road in broad daylight, her body had long since honestly remembered the man's warmth. Far from struggling, she obediently pressed her soft body a little closer into Chu Yuan's embrace, letting his warm, broad hand caress her waist through the thin purple silk.
"That's Suotuo City up ahead. Judging by the activity at the gate, the Douluo Continent's native Soul Masters have reacted rather quickly," Keqing said softly, her voice carrying a subtle tenderness that had not been there when they first met the previous night.
"After all, the upheaval of the heavenly chasm splitting the world was too great. In the eyes of these native Soul Masters, the crystals and relics that fell with the Teyvat landmass are all supreme opportunities dropped from the heavens."
The corner of Chu Yuan's mouth curved upward, and a barely perceptible glimmer of glassy green light flashed across his left palm before vanishing.
As they drew closer to Suotuo City, Irminsul's perception of the surrounding Ley Lines and things from Teyvat grew ever clearer.
In his perceptual field, four or five faint traces of Teyvat relics were scattered in and around Suotuo City. Two pieces of Liyue mountain rock containing Noctilucous Jade and Magical Crystal Chunks had fallen near the auction house in the western part of the city, and a broken Mondstadt pillar carrying the scent of Windwheel Asters had landed in the north. Even near a small mountain village southeast of the city, there was a faint fluctuation from a fragment of a statue of one of the Seven.
But aside from those inanimate objects, what concerned Chu Yuan most was the point of life-light located south of Suotuo City's bustling commercial district.
It was an extremely pure fluctuation of "water elemental power and the fate of the starry sky," though it was somewhat weak and disordered.
"That astrologer should be somewhere near the southern district right now."
Chu Yuan tapped his fingers lightly against Keqing's silky waist and said with a gentle smile, "And judging by the fluctuations of Elemental Power in her body, though she didn't fall straight into a pack of Soul Beasts and trigger an elemental rampage like you did last night, she's clearly being rejected by this world's laws too. I'm afraid things haven't been easy for her."
Hearing Chu Yuan mention another woman from Teyvat, Keqing felt a strange little ripple in her heart, but she quickly recovered the Yuheng's composure and grasp of the bigger picture.
She knew better than anyone that, in a foreign world cut off from Celestia and the Statues of the Seven, their companions from Teyvat would sooner or later be worn to death by the laws of the Douluo Plane if they did not receive the reshaping protection of Chu Yuan's Crown of Heavenly Principles.
"An astrologer... I remember there seemed to be an astrologer named Mona in the City of Mondstadt who exchanged letters with Ganyu or the scholars at the bookhouse." Keqing spoke earnestly. "Since she's in the city, let's go find her as soon as possible, before these ill-intentioned native Soul Masters in the city cause her trouble."
"There's no hurry. We can find somewhere to stay on the way, then take our time and happen to run into that proud astrologer."
With his arm around Keqing's slender waist, Chu Yuan walked beneath Suotuo City's towering gate.
A long line of people waiting to enter the city had formed at the gate. More than a dozen leather-armored soldiers of the Balak Kingdom's city defense force stood with spears in hand, sternly questioning every passerby entering or leaving the city. Two white-robed deacons wearing Spirit Hall sword insignias on their chests watched coldly from the side. They were evidently searching for anyone secretly holding the strange treasures that had fallen from beyond the heavens the previous night.
Yet when Chu Yuan approached the gate at an easy pace with Keqing in his arms, the Soul Masters and commoners crowding noisily around them fell silent despite themselves.
Countless gazes, filled with amazement, shock, and even fascination, turned toward Keqing in unison.
Her long twin tails shone like amethysts, and her exquisite beauty looked as though it had been painstakingly sculpted by a god. Paired with her luxurious purple dress, which outlined her ample breasts and long, beautiful legs in black stockings, she was a rare, peerless beauty even in a major city where beauties gathered like clouds!
Two city defense corporals guarding the gate stared with their eyes wide. They instinctively tightened their grips on their spears and moved to question her, but the instant they took a step, Chu Yuan's deep, tranquil eyes swept over them.
It was merely an ordinary glance, yet a vast pressure of superiority from the Crown of Heavenly Principles descended over them without a sound.
The two city defense corporals and the white-robed Spirit Hall deacons beside them were struck as if by lightning. Their breathing stopped, their minds went blank, and they felt that the figure walking toward them was no adolescent youth, but a supreme god enthroned high above the ninth heaven!
By the time they came to their senses from that suffocating awe, drenched in cold sweat, Chu Yuan had long since entered Suotuo City's broad main thoroughfare with his arm around Keqing's graceful waist, passing the checkpoint guards as calmly as if they were not even there.