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"No need to be so grateful to me!"
A slightly irritated voice rang out above Jiang Yu's head, exceptionally clear in the deathly silence. "That spellbook of yours helped a lot too... Of course, if I hadn't twisted the entrance to the Small World around to the other side at the last moment, that rabbit wouldn't have been the only one reduced to charcoal! So, no need to be so grateful to me..."
Still crying, the witch raised her head and looked up through a blur of tears.
The Yellow Calico Cat whom Zheng Qing called "Brother Huang" lay in a fork of a branch not far above her head, one leg dangling. A small, transparent sphere sat before him, with the faint outline of a little tree visible inside.
"He... he blew... blew up." The witch choked on her words as the last image in her memory kept swelling and circling through her mind—the enormous Black Cat roared, his body suddenly expanding, while the Small World gave its final mournful cry. Shattered fragments of space drifted down like snow in the depths of winter. A speck of dark red lit up inside the Black Cat, then vanished in a flash. Then the entire world was engulfed in strange, brilliant colors and dazzling white light.
"No, he's still alive." A slightly hoarse voice sounded behind Jiang Yu.
She spun around.
Through her hazy tears, she saw a familiar figure.
It was Colma.
But the Colma before her looked utterly different from before she had entered the Small World. Her dark brown hair had turned a lustrous silver-white, and a jet-black, tadpole-like mark had been branded in the center of her fair forehead, lending her delicate face an air of mystery.
The greatest difference, however, lay in her presence and