Qian Renxue (68)

"The things that seep out of The Rift," Lin Mo said without explaining in detail, "are like fragments of existence, but they don't have a complete self. They imitate life, but something is always off. All right, I'm taking her back. You'd better leave. It's not good for ordinary people to come into contact with this sort of thing too much."

But Qian Renxue did not move. She looked at the girl, at the starlight flickering in her eyes, at the threads on her body that connected to The Void. Within her perception of time, those threads were not only spatial connections, but temporal ones as well—they extended from the girl, not toward The Rift of the "present," but through time itself, linking to countless "possibilities."

"Wait," Qian Renxue said. "Can I try?"

Lin Mo frowned. "Try what? This isn't something Soul Skills can solve. We need specialized isolation and purification equipment, and we'll have to contact the experts in Heaven Dou City—"

"I'm not going to use a Soul Skill," Qian Renxue interrupted him, stopping a few meters away from the girl. "I just want to... talk to her."

"Talk? She can't hear anything right now—"

Lin Mo's words cut off abruptly. Because he saw Qian Renxue's eyes change. It was not the light of a Soul Ring flaring, but a deeper transformation—within her pupils, clockwork gears seemed to turn, hourglasses flowed backward, and stars were born and annihilated. When she gazed at the girl, her sight no longer stopped at the surface, but pierced through time and saw what lay deeper.

Qian Renxue herself was not actually sure what she was doing. This was instinct, the spontaneous application of Time Anchoring's power through a mortal body. She stared at the threads connecting the girl to The Void, not