Losing Control Beneath the Starry Sky

Crystal-clear droplets slid down her fair, jade-like chin and flowed over her delicate collarbone.

"M-my hydromancy chart exploded... my hydromancy chart..."

At first, Mona was still absorbed in the shock and heartache of her astrological instrument exploding, but just two seconds later, she realized that what she was sitting on was not a soft sofa cushion at all, but a man's hard, burning thigh.

"Ch-Chu Yuan?! Wh-what are you doing?! Put me down..."

Mona flushed scarlet with embarrassment, the color spreading to her earlobes and neck as she tried to push herself up from Chu Yuan's thigh and escape.

Chu Yuan looked down at the drenched kitten in his arms and said with a gentle smile:

"Don't move around. If I don't reshape your Hydro Vision immediately, the Hydro Elemental Power in your body will be completely exhausted tonight."

"Bear with it. Open up your Hydro Elemental Power to me completely."

Chu Yuan murmured the instruction in her ear. The next moment, the phantom image of the [Crown of Heavenly Principles], shimmering with seven colors, appeared above his right palm once more and stamped itself directly onto Mona's Hydro Vision!

Her once-parched meridians were instantly filled, as though with scalding hot spring water.

Mona lost all her strength and slumped limply into Chu Yuan's arms.

Beneath her soaked, deep-purple bodysuit, a rich fragrance unique to a young woman wafted out.

Chu Yuan felt the delicate body of the beauty in his arms as he guided the Primordial Divine Power with his fingertips, completing its final circulation and baptism within her body.

Under Chu Yuan's divine power, applied so intimately, the Hydro Vision at the small of Mona's back began to undergo a transformation visible to the naked eye.

A ring of dazzling golden Heavenly Principles star patterns gradually appeared on the surface of the once-dim blue crystal. The Hydro Elemental Power flowing within not only became completely immune to the suppression of the Douluo Continent's Soul Power, but also gained a trace of stellar origin capable of divining the fate of the heavens!

"Hummm-!"

With a clear hum like the starry river hanging upside down, Mona's Hydro Vision was completely reshaped, bursting into an unprecedented deep-blue starlight!

Almost at the same time, the pure Hydro elemental origin and the laws of starry fate that flowed back from within Mona resonated violently with Chu Yuan's [Crown of Heavenly Principles], frantically drawing upon the power of the laws of both worlds between heaven and earth!

Rumble!

The barrier around Chu Yuan's Soul Power, which had long since reached the peak of level thirty, shattered under this vast surge of power from the laws. As naturally as water flowing into a finished channel, he officially stepped into the Soul Elder realm at level thirty-one!

Immediately afterward, under Keqing's astonished and delighted gaze, a Divine Authority Soul Ring materialized out of thin air beneath Chu Yuan's feet. Deep as the starry sky, with azure ripples and brilliant golden light flowing within it, it pulsed slowly, its radiance playing off the purple-gold First Soul Ring and the emerald-green Second Soul Ring!

The Third Divine Authority Soul Ring had formed!

As the ten-thousand-year-level Divine Authority Soul Ring, formed from Mona's Hydro power and starry fate, settled into place, a brand-new Heavenly Principles authority Soul Skill instantly appeared in Chu Yuan's mind-[Stellar Fate Hydromancy: Illusory Bubble]!

This Soul Skill not only allowed Chu Yuan and Mona to instantly transform into streams of water and starlight, shifting between the real and the illusory to blink across vast distances, but could also cast a "Stellar Fate Bubble" over the entire field, imprisoning enemies in bubbles of false fate and multiplying the damage they suffered. No means of concealment, illusion, or divination could escape detection beneath the vision of stellar fate!

As the Soul Ring fully withdrew, the seven-colored divine light in the private room gradually faded.

Mona, however, still lay limp on Chu Yuan's thigh, immersed in the lingering aftereffects of the divine power's mingling, as though she had just ascended to the heights of bliss. For a long while, she could not recover her senses.

"Huff... ahh..."

Mona lay weakly against Chu Yuan's broad shoulder, her long, wet purple-black hair clinging in disarray to either side of her scarlet cheeks.

She could clearly feel that the Hydro Elemental Power in her body was many times stronger than it had been in Teyvat. Even the Hydromancy that had once required a water chart could now directly summon starlight with a mere thought.

But... the shameful sensation of that divine power roaming through every sensitive corner of her body, while Chu Yuan's large hand freely stroked and kneaded her through her soaked clothes and the tears in her black stockings, had been far too intense!

So intense that, at the moment this innocent scholar, who usually knew only how to devote herself to studying astrology, opened her body and mind completely to Chu Yuan, even her soul was deeply branded with this man's presence.

Chu Yuan looked down at the young woman in his arms, whose eyes were hazy and whose red lips were slightly parted as she panted softly. The large hand supporting her rounded buttocks gave them a gentle squeeze, and he said with a warm smile:

"How do you feel, great astrologist? Not only has your Vision been reshaped, but I'm afraid our fates have now been completely bound together too."

"Mmm... y-you, stop saying that..."

Mona's delicate body trembled again. Feeling Chu Yuan's fingers still resting on the soft flesh of her thigh through a tear in her starry black stockings, she was so embarrassed that even her toes curled.

But when she raised her watery, mint-green eyes and met Chu Yuan's deep, doting black gaze, she could no longer summon the slightest resistance. Instead, an unprecedented attachment and dependence welled up in her heart.

Since even the source of the starry sky and fate itself were in this man's hands, wasn't her defeat at his hands, and even the surrender of her body and mind to him, seemingly an inevitable result decreed by fate?

At that thought, Mona blushed and took the initiative to wrap her slender, fair arms tightly around Chu Yuan's neck, letting him lower his head and kiss her pink cherry lips, cool and moist, with the faint fragrance of fruit wine.

"Mmph...!"

The instant their lips touched, Mona obediently closed her long-lashed eyes. Her soaked, delicate body softened completely in Chu Yuan's arms as she let him freely savor her youthful sweetness.