Hexi fell silent for a few seconds. He was clearly raising his price at every turn. "Shameless."
But she had no choice. Keisha was the Angel King, the cornerstone of the Order of Justice. In the end, she approached the Mothership alone.
"I'm here. Release Keisha."
Li Chen merely glanced at her. Trying to fool him with a duplicate? She was dreaming. "Not enough. I want nine."
Hexi had never expected him to be so difficult to deal with. She could only come in person with her true body. Now she could only hope Keisha would find an opening, seize his weakness, and get her back through another exchange.
"Come aboard, along with all your duplicates." Li Chen spoke only after confirming that her true body was there.
"I want to see Keisha first." Li Chen merely waved a hand.
Hexi saw Keisha.
Escorted by Tong Yao, that figure emerged step by step from the shadows of the Mothership's passageway.
Keisha still had the same face, the contours of her features unchanged, yet Hexi could barely recognize her.
Her golden hair hung dry against her shoulders, stripped of all its luster. Her eyes were half-open, the light in her pupils faint, their focus lost somewhere unknown. Her steps were slow.
She wore only a plain grayish-white garment without any pattern, its fabric so thin that the emaciated outline beneath showed through.
A black ring encircled her neck, its surface etched with intricate energy patterns that flickered continuously. Matching rings bound the joints of her limbs-wrists, ankles, elbows, knees. Every joint was locked.
But she bore no injuries. A body of Divinity would leave no scars. Over a thousand years, she had been dismantled and reassembled, reassembled and dismantled. Every reconstruction left her whole.
Hexi stood rooted to the spot, her