Fyxestroll Garden — ten minutes earlier.
Moonscar's toes barely kissed the blue-grey flagstones as she glided forward, robes billowing like streaming silk.
"Heh~"
Two fingers, pale as spring onions, held upright before her chest — she shaped Honkai energy particles and Taixu Heart Qi into the semblance of a Ruoshui God's air-sword, her footwork light and leaping.
She landed atop the blade and rode it like a heron skimming snow, weaving through the winding gallery corridors.
[These bronze mirrors are very strange.]
In the background of her shared body, Li Sushang drove the Taixu Sword Heart to support Moonscar.
"Even so, we can thank these mirrors — they've saved us quite a bit of time."
[Why's that?]
"Don't you think something's off with Little Gui?"
[Off? How?]
Everything received by eyes and senses was transmitted simultaneously to both Li Sushang and Moonscar — aside from having no control over the body, not a single detail of the field of vision was lost.
Li Sushang gazed at the girl in the distance.
Reddish-orange hair slightly disheveled, a few smudges on the fiery-red long dress, black stockings torn in several places — probably snagged by the dense, overgrown vines and brambles of Fyxestroll Garden during a panicked run.
Fortunately, no injuries.
[I don't see anything wrong with her.]
Li Sushang couldn't spot anything unusual about Little Gui.
"Don't you think she's become... more alluring?"
For a girl, those torn black stockings actually added a certain charm. Ordinarily, Guinaifen was — to be honest — not exactly the type to make anyone's heart skip.
But right now, standing on tiptoe, leaning over the railing, waving eagerly at Moonscar, she gave off an inexplicably soft and beguiling air. Quite captivating.
[Ah?]
Li Sushang blinked, baffled.
Moonscar, whose core self was Caelus, was far more sensitive to shifts in a girl's allure than Li Sushang — a woman — ever was. Let alone the fact that Moonscar was also a Masked Fool.
"Sis~ Sis! We're over here!"
The brown-haired girl in the apricot-yellow dress, who had been anxiously tugging at her little hair antenna, lit up the moment she spotted the familiar figure in the air — she bounced straight up, leaning out over the railing and waving furiously at Moonscar as though she'd just spotted her savior.
"Sister Sushang! You finally came~!"
Guinaifen sprinted to the edge of the pavilion terrace.
[Found them — it's Shangshang and Little Gui. Let's get over there!]
Li Sushang's delighted voice rose from within.
"No hurry."
Moonscar's bright eyes glimmered as she adjusted course and flew toward the two of them, playing the role of a worried big sister perfectly, fussing over them the moment she landed on the terrace.
"What happened? Why are you two here?"
"It's all Shangshang's fault. She's completely useless."
Guinaifen puffed out her cheeks and let out an indignant huff. "We went to find a bathroom, then a bat came flying out of nowhere and scared us half to death. We panicked and ran deeper into the courtyard — and then we found one of those bronze mirrors."
"When we went up to look at it, the reflection inside just — su~dden~ly — came to life!"
Guinaifen raised her voice dramatically, hands flying every which way in a frenzied mime of a demon lunging out of the glass.
"Hands reached out from inside the mirror, grabbed us, and then — BLAHHH~ Ugh—!"
The words 'ugh', 'blahhh', 'gah' tumbled out in a torrent, accompanied by wildly expressive but thoroughly non-specific gestures. Moonscar nodded along attentively.
She touched the crimson feather at the end of her hair. If she hadn't swept with Fenghuang Down just moments ago, she might almost have believed every word.
The behavior was extremely on-brand for Little Gui.
"I see."
Moonscar gave a grave, understanding nod — I have grasped the full picture — then turned to look at the blissfully oblivious Sushang. She pulled out her phone, typed a few characters, and held the screen up in front of her.
"Shangshang, read this out loud with me: 又双叕, 火炎焱燚, 水淼淼淼."
(Translator's note: This is a tongue twister, I couldn't translate it.)
"Huh?"
Sushang tilted her head in puzzlement, clearly unsure why she was being asked to read this, but seeing how serious Moonscar looked, she obediently opened her mouth and followed along.
"又双叕, 火炎焱燚, 水林淼赫."
[...]
In the background of the shared body, Li Sushang went silent.
The real Sushang would have stared at those characters and gone: 'What on earth are these?! What?! What?!' — or at best, she would have tried to muddle through by reading 又 as 'you-you-you-you-you.' But the one standing here had rattled them off without a second's hesitation, each character enunciated with the crisp, commanding authority of Jing Yuan reading out a general's decree.
"Very good. Keep going."
Moonscar nodded in satisfaction. "茕茕子立, 沆瀣一气, 绵绵瓜瓞, 龙行龍龙."
She passed the phone to Little Gui to hold, then untied Fenghuang Down, the red-white feather floating in her open palm.
"茕茕子立, 沆瀣..."
'Sushang' read it fluently to the end.
"Fenghuang Down — second rated output —禤大."
"Fenghuang Down — second rated output..."
'Sushang' opened her mouth and fell silent. Those last characters — she genuinely didn't know how to read them.
Just as she was scratching her head, about to ask her 'sister' how to pronounce them, something felt very wrong.
White feathers fading to crimson rained across her field of vision, like a sky of scarlet blood — they transformed into foot-long sleeve-swords and came slashing in from every direction in a dense, relentless barrage.
"AHHH AAAHH AAAAAGHH~!"
A screech like Teacher Tom getting sat on by a piano — as though a swarm of wasps had jabbed every stinger into her at once — and a plume of pale-green ghost-fire shot clean out of Sushang's body.
"You — how did you figure it out!?"
"Did you not notice that Shangshang can barely read her way out of a paper bag? She's textbook illiterate."
Moonscar smiled brightly and opened the Yue-Hiding Gourd that Xueyi had given her before they set off.
She had held back when activating the second rated output — the possessing Heliobus shouldn't be killed. Turning it into a snack was much more cost-effective.
As for the Yue-Hiding Gourd, it was a magical instrument produced by the Artisanship Commission — not mass-manufactured exactly, but not in short supply either.
"I — AHHHH!"
Just before being sucked into the gourd, the Heliobus let out a full-on breakdown howl of existential anguish.
So being literate was its own downfall now?!
Should've never bothered learning human characters!
"Hel — a Heliobus! Shangshang was possessed by a Heliobus!"
The small hands holding the phone trembled. Guinaifen looked like she'd been blindsided by the sudden twist.
Moonscar took the phone back and tucked it temporarily into the dazed Sushang's hands. Her smile was radiant as she turned to the gourd.
"Quite the impressive acting. I think you Heliobus lot should go into phantom theater — you'd make legendary award-winners. So: did you walk in here on your own, or shall I wait until I've turned you into sashimi first?"
Guinaifen's expression — startled with a tinge of panic — stiffened into genuine alarm.
It had learned about this person from Guinaifen's memories. It had not expected her to be capable of expelling a possessing Heliobus.
"Please don't hit me, please don't hit me! I'll leave!"
After two seconds of hesitation, it made the wisest decision of its afterlife — a wisp of pale-green ghost-fire extracted itself from Guinaifen's body and was pulled into the Yue-Hiding Gourd.
This time, 'Sushang' — hit by the second rated output and left in a daze — shook her head clear. She blinked in bewilderment, scratching her ear.
"What just — what happened just now?"
The picture of adorable confusion — who am I, where am I, what am I doing — then she looked down at the phone still in her hands and read out the characters on the screen without thinking.
"Ah... ah..."
Her mouth opened and closed several times, and after a long stretch of 'ahhh,' she finally managed:
"So many 又s. So many fires. So many waters."
"荧荧子立... 亢韭一气... so many 龍s. What even are these?"
Faced with a screenful of hell-tier rare characters capable of crashing any normal person's brain, Sushang's CPU took all of two seconds to spike from zero to full load — third place, critical overload, system crash — dizzy, ears ringing, vision swimming.
"Now that's the real thing."
Moonscar let out a soft laugh, took the phone back, and pinched that soft, pretty face — identical to her own — between her fingers, giving it a gentle squish.
"Wake up, cosmic superhero. Open your eyes. I'm your homeroom teacher."
"Here!"
Still half-dizzy, Sushang caught the keyword and nearly lost consciousness entirely — but her body snapped to attention on pure reflex.
[...]
Li Sushang was speechless.
This little sister had clearly gotten the ruler across her knuckles more than once back in school.
"Sis? What are you doing here?"
This time, Sushang came back to herself for real.
"I remember... after the ghost in the mirror grabbed me and Little Gui, I got so scared I..." She paused.
Perhaps deciding the rest of that sentence wasn't exactly flattering, Sushang just laughed it off.
"Little Gui! Little Gui! Sis, is Little Gui okay?"
"She's fine — same as you, briefly possessed by a Heliobus. It was short, barely any effect."
Moonscar watched as Sushang shook Guinaifen awake.
"What happened? Where's my phone? Why did the stream cut out?"
"You're still thinking about the stream?! Do you know how dangerous that was?! We both got possessed by Heliobus — if Sister Moonscar hadn't shown up in time—!"
"Hehe, but it was such a rare opportunity."
Little Gui scratched the back of her head sheepishly. "I mean — we're literally the first streamers ever assigned to work for the Ten-Lords Commission. Content like that? Never been done before!"
"Oh well, the stream cut out. Such a waste — didn't even get any video recorded." She swiped through her gallery. No footage. Guinaifen let out a long sigh.
What had just happened was the stuff of nightmares. With a title like 'Afen's Ghost Hunt: Cloud Knight Beauties Encounter Evil Spirits on a Night Walk — Watch Her Make the Demon Regret It in Three Seconds,' the views would have been absolutely insane.
Side note: 'making the demon regret it' referred specifically to the demon begging Sushang to please stop being scared to death — otherwise it would have been hacked to pieces alive by Sister Sushang's wild sword swings.
Moonscar nodded inwardly. This cheap little disciple of hers truly had professional dedication.
"Little Gui — want to film something really exciting?"
"What? What?!" Guinaifen perked straight up.
"Outdoors, non-human, bound, restrained, love, girls..."
"Wait, wait, wait! Sister Sushang, which kind of exciting are we talking about here?!"
Little Gui's face flushed scarlet.
"Come with me and you'll see. Hold on tight!"
Moonscar converted her Qi into a sword, scooped Little Gui under one arm and Sushang under the other, and launched into the air — silk and satin ribbons snapping in the wind.
Neither of them found the close physical contact the least bit awkward.
In Little Gui's and Sushang's eyes, Moonscar was a reliable big sister. What was there to feel embarrassed about, being held by a good friend or a sister?
As for Moonscar herself — it was difficult to feel any kind of desire toward Sushang in the first place; idiots were off the table as a matter of principle. And if she ever did want something more exciting, she could always wait until the next time she and her original body were already in bed, then suddenly call Li Sushang over.
As for Little Gui... well, she hung around with Sushang.
That said enough.
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