The wide, sweeping slashes of his blade instantly shifted to nimble sword techniques. The ensnaring tentacles hadn't even retracted before they were sliced into a sky full of minced meat by the sword light erupting from Jiang Lianqiu's body.
In his mind, Su Shang exclaimed like a cheerleader:
"It can change like that too!? If I encountered this situation, I would have just blindly hacked away..."
Jiang Lianqiu didn't respond to Su Shang, and she didn't mind. She just stood in her courtyard, her gaze fixed intently on him. As her attention began to uncontrollably drift towards Jiang Lianqiu, her body started to move in sync with him.
Meanwhile, as Jiang Lianqiu shattered the giant net woven from tentacles, Dio made a decisive move. He wiped his hands on his legs, and the connection between his elongated, twisted legs and the tentacles snapped.
However, this delay forced him to fall towards the ground under Jiang Lianqiu's assault.
Below, the man raised his hand and lowered the brim of his hat. Just as Dio was about to hit the ground—
"Ora Ora Ora Ora—!"
Normally, Dio wouldn't mind retorting to Jotaro Kujo with "Muda Muda," but with the biggest threat still looming above him, he let Jotaro slam him into the ground.
Then, his body seemed to melt and sink into the ground.
Since his ability to merge with the Void was nullified by that strange line art marking, he decided to simply sink into the ground.
"Tch!"
Jotaro Kujo frowned irritably as he looked at the ground beneath his feet.
"Troublesome! Hey, Little Commander, do you have any other ideas?"
For the first time, Jotaro Kujo felt that his own methods were too limited.
While Star Platinum was powerful, and its ability to stop time was formidable, the duration was short, and Star Platinum's range was even shorter.
"Move aside for a moment."
Hearing this, Jotaro Kujo, though puzzled, quickly retreated.
Then, he fell silent as he watched rows of floating cannons suddenly materialize from the Void behind Jiang Lianqiu.
You can do that too?
Because Jiang Lianqiu had been using his sword the entire time, Jotaro Kujo hadn't subconsciously expected him to suddenly abandon his sword for cannons.
This combat style... it was a bit like cheating, but it was effective.
"He burrowed underground? Just blast him out. He can't have sunk too deep, or his time-stopping ability would fail outside of this mental interference space."
—By then, Belfast and the others, who would have regained their ability to act, would have plenty of ways to dig Dio out of the ground.
As for tracking him, that wouldn't be a problem at all.
Under the tracking and sensing of The Hunt, Jiang Lianqiu maintained a firm lock on Dio's position. The floating cannons behind him swiveled their muzzles and unleashed a fierce barrage, targeting a spot on the ground.
BOOM—!!!
The earth shattered and cracked under the bombardment of high-energy beams, and a massive crater was blasted out on the spot.
Indeed, a figure marked with line art leaped out as the explosion occurred!
Jotaro Kujo seized the opportunity, his legs erupting with explosive power, propelling his body forward.
However, this time, Jiang Lianqiu's brow twitched:
"Careful!"
Dio, who had leaped out, had a look of madness in his eyes. As he saw Jotaro Kujo closing in, he suddenly thrust the index fingers of both hands deep into his temples.
Amidst spurting blood, he shouted:
"Time! Accelerate!"
"Reach Heaven! Over Heaven!!!!!"
To successfully reach Heaven, one needed their Stand to awaken the ability to accelerate time, and then accelerate time to its absolute limit, to the point where it could trigger the birth of a new universe.
The Dio before them, who had already reached Heaven, clearly possessed such an ability.
The moment time began to accelerate violently, a burning sensation spread through Jiang Lianqiu's chest.
The Scales of the Time Worm, which he had placed inside his collar, were heating up.
And behind Dio, his Stand, "The World Over Heaven," finally revealed itself for the first time.
The next second, the world changed in the blink of an eye, rapidly flashing past Jiang Lianqiu's eyes.
The Scales of the Time Worm grew hotter. As everything in the world changed at an extreme pace, he vaguely saw that on the river of time, a colossal, celestial-sized starry beast—the Time Bug—seemed to twitch the tip of one of its limbs at some point, creating ripples on the cyclical flow of time.
Then, Jiang Lianqiu saw a golden stream of light surging forward. This stream, like a great river, suddenly branched off at some point, heading in two different directions. These two streams then forked again not far away...
In the blink of an eye, a sea of flowing light, resembling a giant tree or a massive net, occupied his entire vision.
A vague intuition told him that each of these branching points was a "Singularity."
A Singularity, according to the theory of FGO, was an anomalous world separated from the normal timeline.
That is, a world that did not develop according to its predetermined fate.
Dio's painstaking efforts to reach Heaven were not to defeat JOJO, but to defeat and sever his own destiny, which is why he needed to break through the Singularities.
Perhaps it was because the Scales of the Time Worm were worn close to his body, or perhaps for some deeper reason, Jiang Lianqiu was now completely immune to Dio's ability to accelerate time to its extreme. However, he also broke through the Singularities along with Dio.
However, what should have been merely time acceleration to break through the Singularity and reach "another worldline" mutated in an unknown way because Jiang Lianqiu was brought along by Dio, and because Jiang Lianqiu and another girl from a completely different world, who was not a Singularity of this world, had their five senses linked.
Pat—
Jiang Lianqiu vaguely felt like something had been added to his mind.
It was just like when Su Shang suddenly "entered" his mind back then.
"Who?"
In New Ailidou, at the Starseeker residence's dojo.
Starseeker Ya, who was kneeling on the ground practicing "meditation cultivation," her fox ears twitched above her head. The tender toes of her feet, wrapped in black silk and pressed under her buttocks, rubbed against each other, revealing crystal-clear, round toes.
The fox-eared girl raised her head, her red eyes shimmering with a confused divine light.
Upon careful reflection, Starseeker Ya couldn't sense anything.
The feeling of something new in her mind flashed and disappeared. Then, Jiang Lianqiu saw a pair of beautiful, clear eyes, brimming with a foolish innocence, staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes.
And Dio, who had fallen at his feet and whose body was gradually turning to ash, and what fell from his dissipating body—
—the second Scales of the Time Worm, and the Red Stone of Aja.
Dio, whose mental power was insufficient to independently complete a true world-spanning traversal, had by sheer accident... burned himself to death.
"Ah! Qiu Zi!!!!"
"A live Qiu Zi!!!!"
Su Shang cried out, pouncing forward and giving him a bear hug.
Jiang Lianqiu: "???"
PS·Ding, recharge successful, basic traversal function officially activated.