Watching Qingque hold forth with passionate, stirring eloquence, Caelus pulled out his phone and handed it to Stelle so she could record a video — a keepsake for the ages.
A Qingque in a limited-edition Grinding Mode was a rare specimen indeed. Without a Heliobus possessing her, not even Fu Xuan cracking a whip at her back every single day could make Little Sparrow this industrious.
He exchanged a few quiet words with Fu Xuan, then skirted around the edge of the crowd blocking the way and slipped behind Qingque. He reached out both hands and covered her eyes, grinning:
"Guess who?"
The old Qingque would almost certainly have flinched at the sudden movement, then traded playful barbs and banter with Caelus. Not today.
"Oh, you're here, Old Caelus!"
The girl in green — eyes covered, composure unbroken — yanked his hands away with clean, decisive efficiency. Every last trace of the languid, boneless slacker who'd spent her days melting into a recliner was gone; in its place was the crisp, get-it-done energy of a startup manager in the thick of launch season.
"Old Caelus, I've done a full retrospective on my past KPIs and I've had a genuine awakening. Grinding away inside the Divination Commission day after day for hundreds of years — what have I actually gotten out of it, besides three meals and a roof over my head? Flat as still water. Pathetic! Pathetic! Absolutely pathetic!"
"I'm resigning from this cushy, zero-risk sinecure — and listen up! It's not running away. It's personally stuffing a deck of Celestial Jade tiles onto every entertainment table in every household across the galaxy. First, we make Xianzhou people obsessed — then we have the IPC on their knees begging us for a licensing deal!"
The little sparrow-shaped hair clip pinned at the tip of her hair bobbed up and down with the force of her excitement. As Qingque stepped forward, the heels of her boots struck the floor in a rapid drumbeat like war drums before a charge.
Then she stopped abruptly. Her voice dropped, turned softer:
"So, Old Caelus… I need you. I need those lost ancient house rules of yours. I need wherever you're hiding more ideas — ideas that can accelerate the rise of our commercial empire."
Qingque closed the distance until she was almost nose-to-nose with him, her breath warm enough to brand. She seized both his hands in hers; the fine sheen of sweat across her pale palms burned like the fire of ambition itself:
"Come with me. I need you!"
"We're the galaxy's greatest duo! Let's take Celestial Jade and turn it into a carnival for the entire universe!"
"Make Celestial Jade Great Again!"
"Am I the only one getting serious marriage proposal vibes right now?"
From the outer edge of the crowd, Stelle was crunching through a bag of chips, crunch crunch crunch.
The assembled Diviners, who'd had their blood pumping from Qingque's rousing cadences, were abruptly snapped out of the mood by that remark and exchanged bewildered looks with one another.
Fu Xuan's elegant brow gave a barely-perceptible twitch.
Was Caelus's plan actually going to work?
Considering the track record — repelling a Lord Ravager, annihilating a demon — Fu Xuan decided she still trusted Caelus, and let out a long, world-weary sigh.
"Quiet! This is the Divination Commission's archive hall — what kind of spectacle are you making of yourselves!"
The diminutive Fu Xuan planted her fists on her hips, chin lifted. Her voice rolled through the entire archive courtyard, thunderously clear, the disciplinary authority radiating off her in waves — a dignity that a certain Academy Principal could only dream of matching.
"Master Diviner!"
"Oh! I just remembered I still have half a divination reading to finish — I'd better get back to it!"
"Wait for me! We need to align on the granular details!"
The moment Fu Xuan opened her mouth, every Diviner present had their eyes go immediately clear. The whole group scattered like startled birds.
It was exactly like a bunch of classmates who'd been plotting to skip school and pull an all-nighter at a cyber café — right up until the head teacher and the principal came leaping out of the bushes the very next second.
"Master Diviner, you've arrived at just the right moment — I'd like to submit my resignation in person!"
There was exactly one person present who did not flinch at Fu Xuan. It was her. It was her. Our hero, Little Sparrow~!
Fu Xuan drew a deep breath and didn't even deign to acknowledge Qingque. She turned her head and looked at Caelus.
Noticing the Master Diviner's move, Qingque turned her head to follow. Limpid jade-green eyes met golden ones — Qingque's gaze was earnest and solemn:
"Old Caelus — you'll back me up, won't you?"
"Of course!"
Caelus answered without a moment's hesitation: "Making Celestial Jade Great Again — that's a shared goal we swore to a long time ago!"
"Old Caelus, I knew you wouldn't let me down!"
Qingque blazed like a lone warrior who had at last found a comrade for the road — or a pair of old battle-brothers heading to the front lines together.
"But…"
Caelus pivoted smoothly: "Before we can market any version of Celestial Jade, we — as the company's founders — need to have an absolutely thorough mastery of every version of the game. As the saying goes: a craftsman must first sharpen his tools. Don't you think?"
"…Hm."
Qingque propped her chin in her hand and thought it over for a moment. "That's… actually a fair point."
"So then."
Caelus rummaged through his spatial ring and produced the new-edition Celestial Jade set Qingque had gifted him earlier, then looked around at everyone:
"Let's play a few rounds of Celestial Jade first!"
"This…"
Qingque fell into hesitation. Caelus did have a point — if she wasn't even fluent in the new gameplay, how could she possibly promote it?
Her body wanted to charge ahead and grind. Her brain, though, was like a donkey tethered to a post — completely unable to drag her eyes away from the Celestial Jade tiles.
Just as her left and right brain launched into a full civil war, Qingque suddenly noticed something was slightly off. She looked at the mahjong table in surprise.
Caelus and Fu Xuan had each taken a seat. March 7th and Stelle were standing together — together they scraped up approximately 0.5 functioning brain cells between them.
"Master Diviner — are you playing too?"
"This Seat intends to see for herself exactly what makes this trinket so bewitching that you've become this obsessed with it."
The Matrix of Prescience Eye between Fu Xuan's brows flickered:
"This Seat will admit — the thing does have genuine value as a training exercise for divination and calculation."
Board games and card games are mind-sharpening activities after all!
Qingque's gaze locked onto the empty 'three-short-one' seat. A visible struggle played out behind her eyes — then she bit her lip, stomped her foot, and her right brain won over her left brain:
"Fine! Deal me in!"
The hem of Qingque's cyan dress swept past the wooden chair, and the moment her trim little self settled into the seat, her entire bearing shifted.
The depths of her green eyes lit up with a spectral azure flame — but that flame was flickering, unstable, wavering out of rhythm.
What the—?
Even Heliobus, currently possessing Qingque, was shaken.
It could feel its control over the host becoming extraordinarily difficult. The tile addiction carved into her very bloodline let out a half-breath of a "Pung!" from deep in her throat — as though her very soul, summoned by the game, was trying to tear free from Heliobus's shackles.
What was wrong with this person?
How had her consciousness become this strong all of a sudden?
Heliobus surged with force, crushing Qingque's awareness back down.
But as the game unfolded and they kept sampling the brand-new version of Celestial Jade, Heliobus could feel that other consciousness beginning to blaze hotter and hotter.
"Chow!"
"Pung!"
"Kong!"
On any normal day, Qingque played tiles for the pure joy of it. But whenever she chose to go all-out in earnest, short of catastrophically bad luck, she could win until she had no friends left.
Going up against Caelus — a four-core processor — and Fu Xuan — who was counting tiles with the Matrix of Prescience Eye — was like a grandmaster of the martial world finally encountering a worthy opponent at their own level, and the euphoria was intoxicating.
"Collect the mount, not the star."
"Material round."
"Any real players here?"
"Touch grass."
"It's open, isn't it? I'm talking Spirits of Starfire."
Under the refined and amiable verbal sparring that Caelus kept stoking, even Fu Xuan's competitive streak had been well and truly hooked.
One round… three rounds… five rounds…
"It's getting late — how about we break for dinner?"
Caelus glanced at the sun sinking low on the horizon.
"What do you mean 'late'? One more round! We have to settle this today!"
At this point, Caelus, Qingque, and Fu Xuan were all dead-even in score. March 7th and Stelle's tallies were frankly pitiable — in fact, if the other three hadn't been busy checking each other's advances, those two wouldn't have scored a single point at all.
"Still want to keep going? You sure?"
Caelus tilted his head toward Qingque — who was already rubbing her hands together — and his gaze carried a very clear message: "Kid, you're not gonna cut it, are you~?"
Heliobus inside Qingque's body was furious!
This person was provoking it!
But it had to admit — this was the first time it had ever encountered a host capable of resisting it. Not just resisting, either; the host was actively trending toward breaking free entirely.
No. It wasn't over yet!
Heliobus unleashed its inner tryhard, cranking its beast-of-burden power to the absolute maximum.
[Go to work! Go grind!]
[No — I want to play Celestial Jade!]
[Go do overtime! Grind grind grind grind grind!]
[No — I want to play the brand-new version of Celestial Jade!]
In that moment, Qingque's left and right brain launched once more into full-on civil war.
Is Celestial Jade my life?
No — Celestial Jade is my career.
So what is Celestial Jade to me?
Obviously my life!
Left brain proposed the hypothesis. Right brain attacked left brain. Left brain counter-attacked right brain. And the tip of her chin bore the weight of all this deep deliberation.
Heliobus and Qingque's will clashed in fierce, pitched battle. Qingque's body seized up like a computer where Tencent and 360 Antivirus had been murdering each other into a mutual soft-crash.
"Qingque looked almost back to normal just a moment ago — why has she suddenly gone blank?"
Stelle crouched down and tilted her head, noticing that Qingque's eyes had gone completely out of focus — empty of all light.
"Whoa!"
The next second, a spectral azure flame erupted from Qingque's body. Stelle's pupils snapped to pinpoints. She let out a shriek and toppled backward, crashing into March 7th's arms.
"What is that?!"
"That's Heliobus."
Fu Xuan rose to her feet.
From behind came a warm, perfectly fitted softness — the tactile feedback of Stelle's body pressed against his back. Caelus's fingers tapped against the mahjong table like a pianist running scales. At some point, a single crimson-red feather had appeared between his fingers.
"Qingque's consciousness is fighting back against Heliobus. Let's go take a look."
With two fingers, Caelus pinched the white-to-scarlet-red gradient feather and fanned it out like a magician spreading a deck of cards. The feather bloomed open into a red lotus, radiating a soft halo of light that wrapped around everyone present.
Fu Xuan watched as crimson feathers began drifting down through her field of vision like snowflakes, and stood there in a daze for two full seconds — then she realized the entire world around her had changed.
"This… this is…"
"Wow, this is incredible!"
March 7th let out a gasp of wonder.
Sweeping upturned eaves, painted rafters and carved beams — exquisite pavilions and towers stretched out in dense, magnificent rows. Stately and breathtaking, sleek-lined grand halls clustered together in a vast formation.
At the center, a towering structure pierced straight through heaven and earth, soaring into the clouds — ringed by orbiting Celestial Jade tiles as though they reached infinitely upward, the words CELESTIAL JADE GROUP carved in enormous characters across its face.
The queue of visitors lined up outside the main entrance stretched so far it had no visible end.
"This is Qingque's inner dreamscape."
Caelus explained: "She should be inside that building."
"Let's go!"
Stelle led the charge, sprinting into the lobby — only to be intercepted by the front desk: "Excuse me, are you here for an interview? Or a business meeting?"
"I'm here to start a fight!"
Stelle brandished her bat with a flourish.
"Hey, cut it out."
March 7th grabbed Stelle by the scruff of the neck and hauled her to the back, then turned to the receptionist with a polite smile:
"Hello! We know Qingque — we're her close friends! Could you take us to see her?"
"Correct, and I am her direct superior. Go fetch her out of this get-rich-quick fever dream of hers at once."
Fu Xuan strode in, arms folded across her chest, expression imperious.
"Secretary Fu? Are you feeling all right? What are you talking about?"
The receptionist's expression twisted strangely the moment she saw Fu Xuan, and grew even more visibly baffled — like she was looking at a ghost — as she heard what Fu Xuan said.
"Sec… Secretary Fu?"
Fu Xuan froze. She stared, jabbed a finger at herself, and very slowly produced a question mark.
"Me? A secretary?"
"That's right. You've been serving President Qing since the very beginning of the startup journey — she holds you in the highest regard."
The receptionist's words nearly made Fu Xuan's lungs explode on the spot!
"I — I —!"
"Don't take it to heart. It's just an illusion."
Caelus's voice came from behind her, soothing Fu Xuan whose face had gone completely black.
And then the receptionist caught sight of Caelus — and her entire demeanor instantly transformed. So did every other staff member within view. They all snapped to attention in unison and bowed deeply toward him with impeccable respect.
"Welcome, sir! We're honored by your presence!"
"Sir?"
Stelle and March 7th both looked thoroughly at a loss. Only Fu Xuan's expression was complicated and hard to read. As for Caelus — the atmosphere, the ambiance, the sheer theater of it all — one corner of his mouth hooked up into a dramatically exaggerated arc. It had exactly the right flavor. ✓
"It's perfectly normal for me to appear in Qingque's inner dreamscape — I'm at least a half-owner of this enormous Celestial Jade Group, aren't I~? Though shouldn't my title be President Caelus? What's this 'sir' business?"
Caelus asked the receptionist directly.
"Have you and President Qing had a quarrel, sir? Everyone in the company knows — you're President Qing's… ahem, her consort — her dear one. We wouldn't presume to address you by something as stiff as 'President Caelus.'"
The receptionist — dressed in a jade-veined qipao — chose her words with extreme delicacy.
"Hold on. Were you just about to say something very different?"
Caelus's expression turned strange.
Kept man?
I'm actually being kept by Qingque?
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