Hu Ya Set Up a Little Game

The "female corpse" below had her eyelashes suddenly twitch.

As if she had been disturbed.

That twitch stirred up earth-shaking, raging waves across this river of stars. Lin Xiaosu's consciousness Silver Fish was driven away, and before him, there was no longer a Sky Window—only the tranquil Willow Grove Temple.

Hu Ya sprang up abruptly and plopped down on her butt. "What was that?"

She charged out of the cave.

Lin Xiaosu was still shaken out of his wits and had no idea how to answer...

At that moment, he sat in a dark corner of the temple, staring blankly into its deep inner cave.

The solar-powered light could not reach the inner cave, yet in its darkness, he could still see everything clearly. It was all so utterly inconceivable...

A garment hung on the cave wall. The crooked, crisscrossing stitches were obviously Second Uncle's handiwork. Three strands of hair clung to it, long, fine, and soft—clearly a woman's hair. A mosquito took off from one of those hairs and flew into the air. He could see every tremor of its wings with perfect clarity...

Heavenly Insight Eye, perceiving the tiniest details...

Right... there was also Temporal Reversal!

How was he supposed to reverse time?

Lin Xiaosu's eyes shifted slightly, and everything before him seemed to flow backward through time. He saw Hu Ya getting up just now. She sprang off the ground, her full chest bouncing as though it might burst, and then she was outside the cave.

His eyes not only had the function of a microscope, but also the function of replay.

This... was the Heavenly Insight Eye!

How had these miraculous eyes appeared?

Because a Sky Window had opened in the stone, and he had looked through it at the female corpse lying on her back. A dewdrop had been about to fall onto her eyelid. Worried that it would disturb her thousand-year dream, he had instinctively blocked the drop. With that block, he had obtained the Heavenly Insight Eye.

Had my good intentions done her harm?

It was originally her opportunity. Did this count as cutting in midway and snatching the prize? Crossing two worlds that had never connected, stealing someone else's opportunity—what the hell had I done?

That fairy's eyelashes had truly moved. She was angry...

Outside, Hu Ya suddenly let out a shout, and it sounded excited...

Lin Xiaosu also rushed out of the temple. Outside, the starlight was hazy, and beneath it he saw a scene he would never forget for the rest of his life.

Hu Ya braced both feet against the cliff face and gripped a flowering vine, yanking outward. The vine had scales on it.

"So it was you, you little thing, disturbing my sweet dream. Get into this lady's pot already!"

Lin Xiaosu's teeth ached slightly...

"Still pretty stubborn, huh!"

With a fierce pull, stones flew everywhere. She forcibly dragged out a large patterned snake at least seven or eight feet long. The snake was extraordinarily vicious. It arched in midair and bit at Hu Ya.

But who was Hu Ya?

This was exactly what she did for a living!

She swung her arm, turning the huge snake into a limp whip. Smack!

It slammed against a rock!

Smack! Smack! Smack...

After a wild storm of whipping, the snake's head was finally smashed to pulp. Hu Ya held the large patterned snake, brimming with delight...

Lin Xiaosu, meanwhile, stared at the mountain rock, his face full of disbelief...

"Scared stupid?" Hu Ya used the snake's tail to tease him.

Lin Xiaosu seemed slow to react. Before, when she teased him like this, he would have immediately turned and run. But today, he seemed a little dazed.

"Did it really scare you? Don't be afraid, sis will protect you!"

"No..." Lin Xiaosu let out a soft breath. "Something's strange."

"What?"

"Take a good look. What kind of snake is this?"

Hu Ya stretched out her hand and lifted the large patterned snake. Her eyes instantly widened round. "Holy shit! Earth Granny? How could it be this big?"

Earth Granny was a local venomous snake, extremely poisonous, but it never grew beyond two feet.

Yet the one she held was at least two meters long. Even Hu Ya, famous throughout the county for handling snakes, had never seen such a bizarre Earth Granny.

"There's another strange thing. Just now, you used this snake as a whip and lashed it against this rock more than ten times. The rock was smashed apart, but the snake's body didn't even bleed."

Hu Ya looked at the rock, then at the dead snake in her hand. "That's true. What's going on? Could it be... ghosts?"

Lin Xiaosu's back turned cold.

"Ah, I'm scared of ghosts!" Hu Ya flicked her hand, sending the patterned snake flying down the cliff. Then she leaped up and pounced at Lin Xiaosu.

Worried that her tank-like charge would knock him off the cliff, Lin Xiaosu hurriedly turned around and darted into the temple.

The second half of the night was normal.

Hu Ya climbed onto the bed and patted its edge, signaling for Lin Xiaosu to come over too.

She slept on the inside, Lin Xiaosu on the outside, covered with Second Uncle's thin blanket.

For companions who had played naked together since childhood, this sort of thing seemed like nothing. But tonight felt a little different. At least, Hu Ya felt a never-before-seen fluster in her heart.

She was imagining a what-if...

Just a what-if...

If a pair of hands reached over from behind, should she kick him off the bed?

Yet the scene she imagined never appeared.

That relaxed the girl a little, but also seemed to leave her faintly disappointed.

If it had been Lin Xiaosu from half an hour ago, he might truly have played the "little game she set up." But now, his thoughts had wandered elsewhere, and he had not even noticed.

Before midnight, he absolutely would not have believed Second Uncle.

But now, he did.

Because he had seen with his own eyes the anomaly that occurred on Ecliptic Anomaly Day.

His eyes had completely mutated.

Just now, he had even used Temporal Reversal to trace the origins of the strange Earth Granny in Hu Ya's hand.

Before midnight, this Earth Granny had been normal-sized, only a little over a foot long. But when that faint glimmer swept past at midnight, it happened to touch it. Right before his "eyes," the snake had grown out of thin air, transforming into a seven- or eight-foot "giant snake"...

What was truly strange was that faint glimmer at midnight.