Silence settled over the room.
Only after a long while did Su Jiu speak again. "What if he strikes first and tries to harm me?"
The Painting Spirit barely stopped to think before reflexively shouting, "Impossible!"
"You just said yourself that nothing is absolute. So what if he does?"
The Painting Spirit had never expected Su Jiu to use its own words to cut off its retreat.
The Painting Spirit fell silent.
But that very silence made the stillness around them all the more unsettling.
No one had expected the Painting Spirit to declare its stance through silence.
Little Pearl laughed in sheer fury. "You're the most ungrateful spirit I've ever seen! You haven't even met him yet, and you're already blindly defending him! If you actually meet him, I bet you wouldn't hesitate even if he told you to stab A Jiu!" With that, Little Pearl burrowed back into the Nine-Star World-Cleansing Pearl.
The Snow Sprite gave the Painting Spirit a contemptuous glance. "It's merely the lowest and most useless spirit among us. If we lose it, so be it. Why waste so much time on it?" Although the Snow Sprite was a naturally born spirit and the strongest among them, its experience and understanding of worldly affairs fell far short of the other spirits'.
Before meeting Su Jiu, it had never received guidance from any person or spirit. Thus, it had no firm moral compass or worldview, and its likes and dislikes were entirely dictated by its whims.
Had it defeated Su Jiu back then, it would have killed her without hesitation. But Su Jiu had defeated it instead, and it had yielded to its instincts and submitted to her.
That submission, however, extended to Su Jiu alone. Everything else around her was dispensable to it, and the