The atmosphere at the dinner table was warm. Tang Xue kept putting food on Gu Yuena's plate and asking what she liked to eat, treating her like her own child.
Gu Yuena responded with smiles as well.
Before long, however, Gu Yuena's appetite stunned both Tang Xue and Xu Yan.
Although Gu Yuena had recovered her memories, this had not changed.
Helpless, Tang Xue could only make more food before Gu Yuena finally had her fill.
After dinner,
Tang Xue tidied up the study, cleaned it, laid out soft bedding, and brought in a brand-new set of daily necessities, arranging everything neatly and cozily.
"All right, Nana, this will be your room from now on. Just make yourself at home," Tang Xue said with a gentle smile.
Looking at the transformed room, Gu Yuena's purple eyes flickered with an almost imperceptible warmth. She nodded softly. "Thank you, Auntie."
Xu Qing stood nearby watching, his mind still in turmoil.
The encounter in the alley still refused to leave his mind?
And there was that mass of seven-colored light imprisoned by countless chains of energy.
If I'm not mistaken, that should be the plane consciousness. After all, the original novel did mention the existence of a plane consciousness.
To be honest, Xu Qing felt considerable sympathy for the plane consciousness.
Of course, this was not limited to the consciousness of the Douluo Plane itself. There was also Long Tianyang from Ultimate Douluo, who had voluntarily split her original body into Heavenly Dragon Star and Heavenly Horse Star to construct the embryonic form of a four-dimensional space in hopes of ascending to a higher dimension.
But later, the Heavenly Dragon and Heavenly Horse races produced large numbers of Super God-level powerhouses. Fearing Long Tianyang's power, they joined forces to split her apart and imprison her, locking half her consciousness/original body on Heavenly Dragon Star and the other half on Heavenly Horse Star.
In the novels Xu Qing used to read, the Heavenly Dao always stood above all, treating all things as straw dogs.
So many novel protagonists made overthrowing the Heavenly Dao their mission, but was that really right?
In Xu Qing's view, a plane consciousness was actually much the same as the Heavenly Dao.
Born beneath the Heavenly Dao, sheltered by it, and growing because of it, only to destroy it in the end-Xu Qing found that somewhat laughable.
Of course, this was merely Xu Qing's personal opinion.
But regardless of what others did, Xu Qing followed the principle of returning a foot of respect with ten feet of his own-except, of course, for those who did not act human.
The night deepened, and the bright moon hung high, its cool light spilling into the house through the window lattice.
Everyone washed up and prepared to rest.
After returning to his room, however, Xu Qing did not go straight to sleep.
He planned to prepare for another trip into the parallel Earth.
Last time, he had entered rashly, knowing nothing about the situation on the parallel Earth, which was why he had ended up in such a sorry state.
Of course, with Xu Qing's current small frame, even climbing a wall was difficult, let alone killing zombies.
So this time, he would still focus on observation. If he encountered a horde of zombies, he could only run.
Of course, besides that, there was one most crucial reason why Xu Qing wanted so badly to investigate the parallel Earth.
With his current innate rank-three talent, without help from his cheat, who knew how many years of cultivation it would take if he slowly ground away on his own?
He could only start with his cheat and search for a breakthrough. Besides, he did not believe Earth's consciousness had handed him a planet occupied by zombies without any deeper meaning.
As for the Five-Clawed Golden Dragon Bloodline, Xu Qing was somewhat speechless.
This bloodline would not even spare him a glance. Not only could he not activate it, he could not even sense a trace of its power, leaving him with no idea where to begin.
The Five-Clawed Golden Dragon Bloodline's attitude was: A little piece of trash like you wants to control me? Why don't you weigh yourself first and see just how much you amount to?
Xu Qing sighed inwardly and suppressed his stray thoughts.
He got up and shut the door and windows, making sure no one would disturb him.
The next instant, light and shadow flickered faintly in the room, and Xu Qing abruptly vanished into thin air.
Meanwhile, in the study next door.
Gu Yuena had not gone to sleep. She sat quietly by the window, the moonlight coating her silver hair with a soft glow, her clear purple eyes turned toward Xu Qing's room.
Gu Yuena had been keeping her attention on Xu Qing's movements all along.
After all, even the Auspicious Beast from ten thousand years ago could not compare to such dense power of destiny.
In that instant just now, she had clearly sensed Xu Qing's presence vanish completely into thin air, leaving not the slightest fluctuation behind, as though he had been erased from this world entirely.
Gu Yuena's purple eyes abruptly sharpened, shock filling their depths.
He disappeared?
How could that be!
Even though she had now lost her cultivation, her spiritual power still far surpassed that of every living being in this plane, yet she could not make sense of what had just happened at all.
It seemed this Xu Qing was nowhere near as ordinary as he appeared.
The secrets he harbored were probably even more terrifying than the Golden Dragon King.
This made her all the more certain that staying by Xu Qing's side was the most correct and wisest choice she had made thus far.
Elsewhere.
After a brief sensation of weightlessness, Xu Qing's feet landed firmly on the ground.
The familiar air of decay, desolation, and deathly silence enveloped him once again.
Beneath his feet lay dry, cracked concrete, covered in a dense web of fissures, with withered, yellowing and blackened weeds filling the gaps.
All around were stretches of collapsed, dilapidated residential buildings. Their walls were peeling and mottled, riddled with bullet holes and shell scars, and the devastating traces of war's ravages were visible everywhere.
Broken, rust-covered rebar lay exposed. Tottering billboards and abandoned car wrecks littered the streets and alleys, and not a trace of life could be seen in the deathly silent town.
Xu Qing took a deep breath, no longer panicking.
He walked slowly forward, carefully surveying his surroundings.
No zombies had appeared for the moment, allowing him to breathe a slight sigh of relief.
And this was still the place he had fled from.
He slowly approached a house by the street whose walls were the most severely damaged.
Most of its walls had collapsed, its roof was missing, its doors and windows had long since rotted and shattered, and thick dust and rubble filled the interior.
Broken household items and rotting clothes lay scattered in the corners and across the floor, along with several old, dried, blackened bloodstains that had long since seeped into the concrete-an alarming sight.
The air inside was stale and moldy, mingled with the strange stench of rotting corpses.
It immediately made Xu Qing retch. Only after taking a moment to adjust did he soften his footsteps and slowly enter, carefully examining every corner.
He reached out a fingertip and lightly touched the thick dust on the windowsill. Clearly, this house had been empty for a long time.
His gaze swept over the ruined furnishings. What had once been a warm home had been reduced entirely to rubble by war and the apocalyptic catastrophe.
Just then, stiff, dragging footsteps sounded from deep within the streets outside.
"Hh... hh..."
Low, hoarse, meaningless growls came intermittently, drawing closer from afar.
Xu Qing instantly held his breath and focused, immediately pressing himself behind a broken wall and secretly peering out through a crack.
In the middle of the street, three stiff-bodied zombies wandered aimlessly.
Their flesh was rotten, their skin ashen, their eyes cloudy and deathly white, and their limbs moved with twisted stiffness.
If only that big shot Electrolux were here.
These zombies were perfect undead materials!