The Girl Whose Elemental Power Ran Out of Control Found Her Salvation
The civilians and low-level Soul Masters passing by all hunched their shoulders at the sight. None dared step in and meddle.
Despair and humiliation surged in Mona's heart. She bit down hard on her lower lip, closed her eyes, and prepared to ram the pointed top of her hat into his nose.
"Crack!" A shriek as piercing as a pig being slaughtered suddenly exploded through the quiet street corner!
"Ah!! My hand! My hand is broken!!"
Mona opened her mint-green eyes in a daze.
At some point, a tall, upright young man in a white robe embroidered with gold had silently appeared before her stall.
The young man had not even used a martial skill. With a casual sweep of his sleeve, he unleashed a golden force, formless and intangible yet heavy as ten thousand tons, that snapped the bald brute's right wrist.
Immediately afterward, the purple-haired girl beside him, whose twin ponytails framed a breathtakingly beautiful face and whose body was wreathed in icy violet lightning, gave a cold snort. Her long, shapely leg, clad in a dark-purple stocking, swept out like lightning.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Three whip kicks, so fast they were almost impossible to see, sent three dazzling arcs of lightning through the air. Before the bald brute and the two young Soul Masters could even summon their Martial Souls, all three were sent flying more than ten meters, their bodies charred black and foam pouring from their mouths.
Clean and decisive, the three Soul Grandmaster thugs had been dealt with in the time it took a rabbit to spring and a falcon to swoop.
Only when a chorus of shocked gasps rose around them did Chu Yuan turn and look down at the young astrologer, who was staring up at him in a daze.
Seen up close, Mona's disheveled plight and allure were all the more apparent.
The backlash from forcibly channeling her Elemental Power had left fine beads of fragrant sweat on her jade-white forehead, while her full bosom, encased in her bodysuit, rose and fell violently with her rapid breathing.
The instant she met Chu Yuan's gaze, Mona felt the Hydro Vision inside her, which had been raging and churning under the world's constant rejection, miraculously fall quiet. It even gave a soft hum, yearning to draw closer!
"This... this presence of fate, high above the stars... you, you are..."
Mona's pupils contracted sharply. As an astrologer versed in Hydromancy, she was far more sensitive than ordinary people to presences and the workings of fate.
In her eyes, the black-haired young man before her had no trajectory of a star of fate at all, for he seemed to be the very laws of the entire starry sky!
And then there was the purple-haired girl beside him, who had drawn back her leg.
"Wait, that purple hair and Electro Vision... you're the Yuheng of the Liyue Qixing, Miss Keqing?!"
Mona recognized Keqing and cried out.
Keqing's formerly icy expression softened, and she gave a slight nod.
"It's me. Miss Mona, I didn't expect you to have fallen onto this continent in the same cataclysm either."
"It really is the Liyue Qixing..."
Mona breathed a sigh of relief, but the hunger in her stomach and the weakness from the elemental backlash immediately swept over her again. Another little growl echoed clearly in front of the quiet stall.
Mona's cheeks turned scarlet. Wishing she could bury her head in her pointed hat, she stammered:
"Cough, ahem! Thank you both for your help... Actually, even if you hadn't intervened, I was only preparing a grand Hydromancy ritual. It certainly wasn't because I was too hungry to have any strength left..."
"All right, great astrologer. If you keep preparing, I'm afraid you'll become the first scholar to faint from hunger on the roadside in another world."
A gentle smile curved Chu Yuan's lips. He bent down, took Mona's cool, slender hand in his right, and pulled her up from the low stool.
Her legs were weak, and she lost her balance as he pulled her up. With a little cry, she fell straight into Chu Yuan's sturdy embrace.
"Ah...!"
Through her thin, skintight bodysuit, the soft fullness of Mona's bosom pressed against Chu Yuan's warm chest. The presence of Primordial Divine Power coming from him enveloped her, and the Vision inside her felt an immense longing for it.
Chu Yuan reached out with his left hand and steadied her by her slender, supple waist. At the same time, he swept up the star-chart velvet cloth and brass water basin from the ground with his sleeve and tucked them into his robe.
"My name is Chu Yuan. We can talk later about this world's laws rejecting you and reshaping the Vision inside you. For now, how about we go to the restaurant next door and have a proper meal?"
At the words "a proper meal," Mona swallowed. Being held so intimately around the waist by a strange young man made her heart race and her face flush, but faced with the temptation of good food and the deeply reassuring presence about him, her poor scholar's pride instantly crumbled.
"S-since you've invited me so sincerely, it would be rather ungracious to refuse... So I suppose I'll reluctantly accept your hospitality!"
Mona lowered the brim of her hat and let Chu Yuan half support her by her weak, aching waist. Moving her long legs in their torn black stockings, she followed the two of them, pausing with every step.
A quarter of an hour later, in a private room on the second floor of the Golden Goblet Restaurant, the most luxurious establishment at the entrance to the night market.
More than a dozen signature dishes, splendid in color, aroma, and flavor, covered the entire round rosewood table: honey-glazed crispy roast leg of lamb, steamed silver-scaled fish, jade-green shrimp, creamy mushroom soup, and all manner of delicate pastries.
After the private room's door closed, Mona initially tried to maintain some of the ladylike reserve befitting a great astrologer, picking up small bites with her chopsticks.
But when the first piece of roast lamb, crisp outside and tender within, rich with juices, entered her mouth and its savory flavor set her taste buds ablaze, her mint-green eyes lit up like two little stars. Her eating speed multiplied visibly.
In less than half an hour, she had swept the roast leg of lamb and most of the dishes on the table clean like a whirlwind scattering the clouds.
"Haa... I'm alive again..."
Mona put down her soup bowl and leaned back against the padded chair without a care for appearances. Both hands gently rubbed her slightly swollen belly, which looked all the rounder and cuter, while a glistening trace of grease remained at the corner of her pink lips.
Keqing sat to one side with a teacup in hand. Seeing the famously eccentric and proud astrologer looking so content, she could not help but smile.
Chu Yuan, seated beside Mona, casually picked up a clean silk handkerchief and leaned over naturally to wipe the grease from the corner of her lips.
"Mm!"
Mona stiffened slightly. Looking at his handsome face so close to hers and feeling the warmth of his fingertip gently brushing the corner of her mouth through the silk, she found her mind, which had only just begun working again after she had eaten and drunk her fill, going blank.
"C-Chu Yuan... thank you for the meal."
Mona shyly drew in her neck and fidgeted with the torn edge of the star-patterned black stocking on her thigh. In a low voice, she said:
"This meal must have cost quite a lot... I don't have any Mora or any of this world's currency on me right now, but I'll find a way to pay you back! It's just... since last night, my Hydro Elemental Power has been suppressed and worn down by some force in this world, and the Vision at the small of my back is still aching..."
Mona raised her head and looked at Chu Yuan, her clear, lovely mint-green eyes full of confusion and hope.
"When you steadied me at the street corner, I distinctly felt a supreme power in you that could completely soothe that rejection by the laws... What exactly is going on?"
Chu Yuan set down the handkerchief and looked at the astrologer before him, who seemed especially lovely and charming in her tipsiness and embarrassment. Slowly, he opened his right hand.
An illusory crown, shimmering with seven-colored elemental light and bearing four diamond-shaped wings spread on either side, quietly appeared beneath the soft light of the private room.
The Hydro Vision at Mona's lower back suddenly gave an exuberant hum, and her breathing instantly grew rapid and hot.