"..."
Annie paid no heed to the four of them. She merely swept her gaze over the charred, shattered materials strewn across the room, the craters of various sizes blasted into the floor, the sword fragments, and the cracks gouged by shrapnel into the floorboards, walls, and beams. Then she looked at the four soot-covered figures before finally settling her eyes on Xueyan, who had just spoken.
"You all are..."
(||￢▽￢)
"Trying to get yourselves killed, aren't you?"
-
(゜-゜)
Annie asked the question slowly, one word at a time, voicing what she felt was the most fitting description. All four of them could not help but shudder.
"!!"
Thankfully, Daiyu was the first to recover.
Ignoring her disheveled state, she hurried forward and gave a respectful curtsy, then lowered her eyes and said:
"M-Master, please calm your anger..."
"It was Yu'er who acted rashly."
As she spoke, she quickly raised her head to sneak a glance at her master's expression. After thinking for a moment, she carefully chose her words before continuing:
"We thought that, since you taught us Divine Machine Hundred Refinements, we couldn't just keep talking without practicing. We never expected to forge something as ingenious as Like Flower, but we thought a few longswords should at least..."
"Should at least..."
The more she spoke, the softer her voice became. After looking around at the surrounding mess, she could not help lowering her head.
"And then?"
(_)
"Did you succeed in forging them?"
(.)
Annie raised an eyebrow, asking a question whose answer she already knew.
"..."
Daiyu lowered her head even further.
"Most of them... failed."
"Even the refined steel longswords you gave us for practice, they... they all exploded too."
"Yu'er didn't mean to do it. It was just..."
It was just that they had