Filler Chapter

In Shrek City, before the windowsill on the top floor of the Sea God Pavilion, the evening breeze seeped through the open crack, carrying a faint, cool dampness. Ya Li stood by the window, her long hair blown up behind her by the wind. A few strands rested against the edge of the frame before slipping down along the wooden hairpin. Her fingertips rolled a freshly fallen leaf, its veins slowly gliding beneath her pads, its edges still beaded with a thin layer of dew. She did not turn around. Her gaze passed over the orderly rooftops and settled on the street in the distance, steeped in twilight.

"This presence... young people really are full of vitality." She turned the leaf over as though counting its veins. "They've only been back for a short while, and even the air in Shrek City has come alive with them." There was a note in her voice that was hard to tell whether it was sentimentality or relief, as if she were using the scent borne by the wind to confirm the progress of something.

Yun Ming rose from beside the desk, the chair legs scraping softly across the floor. He set down his pen and slowly stretched, several joints in his shoulders and back cracking like old gears gradually settling back into place. "I think Zhuo Shi put him up to it." He walked to the window and stopped there, tilting his head to look at Ya Li's profile with a knowing smile. "He may not say it, but no one has truly let it go these past few years." His gaze fell on the leaf in Ya Li's hand, as though he wished to read something yet unspoken from the paths of its veins. In the end, he merely left it to the wind outside.

Ya Li did not turn around, her gaze still fixed on the distant horizon. "The dignified Master of the Sea God Pavilion, Ultimate Douluo Yun Ming, is now so exhausted by paperwork that he can barely lift his head?" There was a hint of teasing in her voice, as though she were pulling him back into his usual rhythm through a gap that had not yet fully closed. Standing beside her, Yun Ming followed her gaze into the distance. "Was I too harsh back then?" His tone carried the slowness of recollection, as though he were searching through the cracks of those memories for an answer he had yet to find. "By rights, he should blame Zhuo Shi. It's all Zhuo Shi's fault for teaching Changkong to be so stubborn."

Ya Li finally turned to glance at him. "Then go ask Wu Changkong yourself whether he blames you or Zhuo Shi." Her tone was calm and impartial, as though she were stating a fact she had long since confirmed, simply handing the question back to him intact and waiting for him to unravel it himself.

Yun Ming fell silent for a moment, withdrawing his gaze from the distance. "Forget it." He paused, as though weighing something that was taking shape, then said, "Tell me, when he comes back next time, what realm do you think he'll have reached?"

Ya Li sensed the subtle shift in the Soul Power fluctuations around him, and the corner of her mouth twitched. "He and his little girlfriend only just came back. What are you planning to do?" Yun Ming's tone remained casual. "I want to see... whether he has the strength to enter the Sea God Pavilion."

Ya Li placed the leaf on the windowsill and turned to look at him. "Wait a couple of days." Her voice trembled faintly as the wind passed through the window, as though she were adjusting the warmth of those words to just the right degree. "Even if you put it that way, Zhuo Shi will be very happy. But the moment he comes back, you want to challenge him to a duel—" She paused. "Zhuo Shi will turn against you, won't he?"

The corner of Yun Ming's mouth lifted slightly, as though he had thought of something, or as though he were confirming certain details he had already locked onto. In the end, he turned around and rested a hand on the edge of the windowsill, his gaze still directed at the distant tower. "All right."

Indeed. Beating up someone else's child in front of their parent—anyone would turn hostile.

"Then we'll wait until the day after tomorrow. I won't show myself for the next few days—there are still loose ends from the Holy Spirit Cult matter, and there are people from elsewhere on our side."

Ya Li nodded without asking further. Outside the window, twilight was slowly sinking. The pale orange band of light along the horizon was being swallowed bit by bit by the night. One by one, the streetlights came on, as though pushed by some force, spreading slowly along both sides of the stone road.

The wind seeped through the crack in the window, flipping the half-turned pages on the desk before they settled back into place.

Yun Ming stood by the window, still looking toward that distant tower, quietly standing in the twilight as though waiting for something bound to arrive sooner or later to draw near on its own.

"God Rank... is still far too distant for me."