Farewell

Lin Sheng had already been unhappy about Bai Li being forced on them by the Guide Association. Seeing Luo Ruzhuo object so strongly, he immediately said with a serious expression, "Don't worry. I'll report this to the Black Tower right away. I absolutely won't let you run into her again."

With that, he immediately began typing up a report on his optical computer, the keyboard clattering under his fingers.

Meanwhile, Liu Sui hadn't been idle either. A whole box of twenty-four vials of mental entity growth fluid had been brought in along with the restorative food he had made. They were stacked neatly beneath the nursing station, the blue liquid glowing with a chilly light under the ward's ceiling lamp.

Luo Ruzhuo's gaze lingered on the blue glow for a moment before sweeping past it to settle on the heating pad at the very top.

Liu Sui came over carrying a bowl of ginseng chicken soup, filled with all sorts of things: goji berries, red dates, longan, lotus seeds, and more.

"Where did you learn this recipe?" Luo Ruzhuo couldn't help asking.

A trace of uncertainty showed on Liu Sui's cool face. "I learned it from an ancient Chinese book. It said it was a medicinal dish. Sorry, I don't know if I made it correctly, but I tried a bowl beforehand..."

It had tasted pretty good, and his physical data on his optical computer had been normal, though his nose had felt a little hot.

Just in case, Liu Sui put the soup back where it had been, not daring to let Luo Ruzhuo try it.

He pushed the entire nursing cart over and brought up the mental entity growth fluid underneath, his tone becoming much more businesslike. "The Guide Association heard that you and Guide Bai fainted and sent these as compensation. They said to drink them over the next few days to gradually restore some mental power."

Luo Ruzhuo gave them a cursory glance, not revealing the slightest hint on her face. She simply let a grateful expression appear and nodded.

Then her palm went cold. She realized that Liu Sui had slipped a piece of something into her hand and was giving her a faint smile.

It was a small piece, a rich green. Another Insect Jade.

Though Luo Ruzhuo didn't know where they had gotten so much money, she didn't stand on ceremony.

After she saw the two of them off, the ward fell silent. At Luo Ruzhuo's insistence, the caregiver had no choice but to arrange her discharge. She returned to her dormitory.

A robot brought the box of mental entity growth fluid back and arranged the vials neatly on the table. Luo Ruzhuo glanced at them, picked them up, and walked straight to the window.

She unscrewed them. Poured them out.

The blue liquid fell onto the grass of Planet b-475 and soaked into the soil, leaving no trace.

That evening, a knock sounded at the door.

Luo Ruzhuo opened it to find a familiar figure standing in the shadows.

She wore a hooded coat and makeup that deliberately made her features as hard to recognize as possible. If she hadn't spoken first, Luo Ruzhuo would scarcely have recognized her.

"I'm leaving," Zhu Rongtian said without preamble. "The people at Ankang Pharmaceuticals don't know the chip has stopped working yet. I sent them a false message, telling them you'd been severely injured and your mental domain was close to collapse."

"You can stay here and purify Xianzhu without worrying for a while, until the commission is over."

"Thank you." Luo Ruzhuo nodded, her gaze lingering on her for a long time. In the end, she only said, "Take care on your way."

What she really wanted to ask was whether Zhu Rongtian had anywhere left to go. After all, Zhu Rongtian had only just come out of the Interstellar Prison, and there was no telling how long she had been locked up. She was probably even less familiar with the outside world than Luo Ruzhuo, a stranger who had only just arrived.

Zhu Rongtian heard the unspoken concern in her words and pulled her hood back slightly, revealing a radiant smile. "Don't worry. I have a place that's absolutely safe."

"Ankang Pharmaceuticals has eyes and ears everywhere. Once they discover the chip has stopped working, they'll definitely send people to investigate. If I stay here, I'll only draw my pursuers to you. Before they find out, you have to finish the commission and return to the Black Tower as quickly as possible. It's safe there, at least until you're exposed as an attack-type guide."

Luo Ruzhuo nodded and said no more. She simply took her hand and pressed a cold key into it.

Before Zhu Rongtian could give her a questioning look, she explained, "An aircraft. It's in the corner on the east side of the backup landing pad. Its stealth mode is on, but you can find it with the key. It came from a safe source, so don't worry about using it."

After a moment's thought, she added, "If you're worried, you can treat it as disposable. Destroy it as soon as you're done with it. That would be safer."

In the darkness, Zhu Rongtian's eyes reddened for a moment. She quickly reined in the emotion and said nothing, only reaching behind her neck to remove a thin chain.

A metal tag the size of a fingernail hung from the end of the chain. A scorpion was engraved on one side, and intricate electronic patterns on the other.

She pressed the chain into Luo Ruzhuo's hand in one brisk motion.

"I tinkered with this when I had nothing else to do. It's more secure than an optical computer and can encrypt communications. If anything happens, contact me with it. I'll do it for you."

Luo Ruzhuo rubbed the metal scorpion with her fingers a couple of times. It felt cold and uneven, like a real scorpion's shell.

"You said there would be a new tower in the future. That was a statement of certainty, right?"

"Of course."

"I believe you, and I'll build it with you."

Zhu Rongtian smiled, curled her hand into a fist, and lightly bumped it against Luo Ruzhuo's, like some kind of silent oath. Then she pulled up her hood, turned, and disappeared into the night at the end of the corridor.

Early the morning after seeing Zhu Rongtian off, Luo Ruzhuo stood before the contact window in the purification room.

The morning mist over the lake had yet to clear. Tiny droplets of water had condensed on the glass. The giant dragon lay in the middle of the cage. Hearing her footsteps, he slowly opened his vertical amber pupils, his nostrils flared twice, and the tip of his tail swept lightly across the ground.

Luo Ruzhuo opened the contact window. The dragon's scales pressed against her palm of their own accord.

This time, it was harder than ever to send her mental power in.

She didn't know whether his fight with Zhu Rongtian last time had thrown Xianzhu's mental domain into even greater chaos. By the time her mental power finally entered, the volcano was more violent than ever.

The summit erupted, orange-red lava scattering across the sky like a shower of meteors. Enormous fireballs trailed long tails as they streaked across the sky one after another, crashing into the ground with booms and raising mushroom-shaped clouds of dust.

Sticky black pollution flowed along with the lava, dyeing the crimson almost dark red as it covered the scarred land.

Luo Ruzhuo darted aside to dodge the fireballs raining from the sky. She moved as fast as lightning, never stopping.

This time, she had a destination.

She headed straight for the deepest part of the mountain's base.

Zhu Rongtian had told her that ordinary purification methods wouldn't work in the mental domains of highly polluted, high-level guides and sentinels. They could only be purified by finding the singularity.

A singularity was like the scene recreated in Zhu Rongtian's mental domain, where she had awakened her mental entity on the junk planet. It was the most important moment in a person's life, the most vulnerable to erosion by pollution, and became the source that supplied the pollution with energy.

Without purifying the singularity, purifying any other pollution was merely a drop in the bucket.

Luo Ruzhuo made her way upstream along the lava flow. The farther she went, the higher the temperature climbed. A pungent smell of sulfur filled the air. The lava was right beneath her feet, and when it burst, it splashed searing liquid that inevitably caught on her pant legs.

Large patches of bright red blisters soon formed on her skin.

Luo Ruzhuo seemed not to notice, never slowing her pace in the slightest. She went all the way to the deepest part at the bottom of the volcano.

Then she stopped.

She had finally found it.

A square gray building stood incongruously at the very back.

Its surface was covered in smooth panels, which gleamed with a cold metallic sheen in the volcano's crimson light. Lava flowed past it, but the building stood firm. Flames reflected on its walls like the shadows of ghosts.