In the VIP section, Ning Fengzhi's gaze had drifted, following the path Qian Renxue had taken away from her seat. His eyes traced the direction she was heading — and found, at the end of that line, a young figure standing near the main entrance. The arena's lighting was uneven at that distance, and he couldn't make out the details clearly.
But something about the silhouette tugged at his memory.
He knew that posture from somewhere.
Over in the Shrek Academy rest area — positioned close enough to the main entrance to have a decent sightline — Ning Rongrong had noticed the same thing at roughly the same moment. She had been watching Qian Renxue's unusual behavior with idle curiosity when her eyes found the figure at the entrance, and her pupils contracted sharply.
That profile. That way of standing.
She had not seen Xiao Se in nearly two years, and he had clearly changed — taller, broader in the shoulders, something in the quality of his presence that had settled into a different register than she remembered. But underneath the changes, the recognition arrived with the certainty of something her memory had been holding in reserve.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything, Brother Xue."
Xiao Se's lips curved with the particular mischief of someone who has selected their words with care and is pleased with the selection.
Qian Renxue turned a look on him that communicated precisely what she thought of this — but the arena floor was not the place to have this conversation, and she was wearing someone else's face, and there were eyes everywhere.
"Let's go somewhere else, Brother Xiao Se." She laid particular emphasis on the brother, a deliberate return of fire, and turned to lead the way.
"Afraid we'll have to wait a moment," Xiao Se said, his voice dropping to something that reached her alone. "An old friend is on their way."
"Old friend?" Qian Renxue turned her head.
A girl in a light green team uniform was making her way toward them at a pace that was technically walking but had the energy of running — long hair, quick steps, breathing slightly quicker than usual. Ning Rongrong arrived, came to a stop a respectful distance away, and looked at Xiao Se with a mix of certainty and the residual uncertainty of someone checking their own eyes.
"Please wait a moment—" She'd called it out while still approaching. Now, face to face, she looked him over carefully. "You're... Xiao Se, right?"
Nearly two years had passed. In that time, Xiao Se had added six spirit rings — one black, five red — and his body had continued developing with the additional energy. He was noticeably taller, and the quality of his presence had shifted into something that felt less like a talented young man and more like something that had found its final form. The temperament that came with genuine power, accumulated over real time, was not something that could be faked or approximated, and it wasn't.
Someone unfamiliar might have walked past him without recognizing him.
Ning Rongrong, who was familiar, had gotten there.
"Miss Ning." The words arrived before Xiao Se had consciously selected them, deployed with the smooth ease of a man who has said variations of this sentence many times in many places. "Two years. You've grown taller. And become even more beautiful."
From beside him, Qian Renxue's eyes made a specific motion. Really? Already? We've been here for three minutes.
She decided, not for the first time, that her father's particular gift for this was both impressive and exhausting.
"Xiao Se—" Ning Rongrong's cheeks had gone pink in the way of someone who has received a compliment they weren't braced for. She turned her head slightly, found a strand of hair to occupy her hands with. "You've gotten more handsome too."
"Ahem." Qian Renxue produced a small, pointed cough and gave Xiao Se a sideways look that translated cleanly as please remember where we are.
Xiao Se had the grace to look briefly chastened. The habit of two years across multiple worlds was not easily suppressed on short notice. He redirected. "The second round of preliminaries is coming up shortly, isn't it? Shouldn't you be heading back to prepare?"
"Don't remind me." Ning Rongrong's expression moved from flustered to resigned without much distance between them. "That brothel master — Flander — has decided I'm the trump card for the finals, apparently. I barely get to compete in the preliminary rounds." She spread her hands in a gesture of helpless acceptance. "And the team is an absolute disaster because of those two. Honestly, I regret ever enrolling." She glanced around, then back at him. "Where's Zhu Qing? She didn't come with you?"
"Seclusion," Xiao Se said.
"Seclusion? She's breaking through?" Ning Rongrong's eyes lit up with the immediate, involuntary interest of a Soul Master hearing about someone else's cultivation progress. "What level is she at?"
"Forty-nine," Xiao Se said, in the tone of someone stating a fact rather than a number they had just invented.
"Level forty-nine." Ning Rongrong processed this. "She's breaking through to Soul King." She swallowed. "And you? What level have you reached?"
"Soul Emperor, more or less," Xiao Se said pleasantly.
In terms of soul rings — one black, five red, six total — this was not, technically, incorrect.
Ning Rongrong went quiet.
The math was doing something uncomfortable in her head. Zhu Zhuqing, fourteen years old, on the threshold of Soul King rank. When Ning Rongrong had first met her in Soto City, she had been a Great Dou Master. In two years, her soul power had climbed more than twenty levels. That alone was the kind of achievement that made other cultivators feel their entire approach to the subject needed reconsideration.
And then there was Xiao Se. Sixteen years old. Soul Emperor. A person who, two years ago, had knocked Flander — a Soul Saint — off his feet with a single punch, before any of them had fully understood what they were dealing with. Against this benchmark, Tang San, who had always been the person Ning Rongrong quietly measured everyone else against, looked considerably less exceptional than he had seemed before.
She did not say any of this. But it was visible in her face.
"Where have you both been these two years?" she finally asked. "How have you both gotten so—"
"Here and there," Xiao Se said, with the easy finality of someone ending a line of inquiry without being rude about it. "Wandering around."
He offered nothing further. Ning Rongrong recognized the tone.
Qian Renxue, who had been watching Ning Rongrong's expression cycle through several versions of an existential crisis, took the opportunity. "Rongrong — Brother Xiao Se and I have some things to attend to. Please excuse us."
"Oh—" Ning Rongrong blinked, recollected herself. "Of course. Go ahead." She turned back toward the rest area, walking with the slightly distracted quality of someone whose thoughts are still several steps behind them.
"Rongrong, who were you talking to?" Liu Erlong asked, not looking up.
"Xiao Se," Ning Rongrong said.
Liu Erlong's head came up immediately. She looked toward the entrance. There was no one there. She looked at Ning Rongrong. She looked back at the entrance.
"Where?"
Ning Rongrong didn't have a good answer for that.
Qian Renxue had known exactly where to go. She led Xiao Se through a side corridor and to a private VIP room — the kind of space the arena maintained for people whose business required a closed door — and as soon as they were inside, she turned the lock, reached up, and deactivated the disguise component of her Angel Suit.
Xue Qinghe's face dissolved. Qian Renxue's face emerged.
She stepped forward and pressed herself into Xiao Se's arms with the straightforward completeness of someone who has been maintaining a great deal of careful composure in public and no longer needs to.
"Daddy." The word came out entirely without the princely register she'd been using for the last several hours. "Why did you take so long to come?"
"I was dealing with a Strange Flame." Xiao Se's hand moved slowly across her back, unhurried and warm. "The refinement process took longer than expected. I'm late."
Qian Renxue pulled back slightly, looking up at him with the focused attention of someone cataloguing what's changed. "A Strange Flame — that's why your cultivation has jumped so much." Understanding settled in, followed immediately by concern. "That must have been dangerous."
"It was manageable." He paused. "Close, but manageable." Another pause. "There's also something else."
"Something else?" Her expression shifted into attentiveness.
His lips twitched in the particular way they did when he was delivering news that was complicated. "Xue'er. You're going to have another little sister."
The demonic sword pattern on his right hand pulsed with a brief shimmer of blue light. It drifted free of his skin, settled on the floor, and gathered itself upward into Long Kui's slender, luminous form — less translucent than before, the Returning Origin Soul Technique having done its work over the years, her presence carrying a warmth it had taken a long time to acquire.
"Aunt Long Kui!" Qian Renxue crossed the room and went into her arms without any transition period whatsoever.
Long Kui held her, and something in her expression was different from the last time they had met — warmer, more complete. Something that had previously been held at a careful, uncertain distance had settled into a natural place. "Xue'er. It's been too long."
Qian Renxue stepped back and looked between them, connecting the pieces. "Wait — someone is pregnant?" Her gaze moved from Long Kui to Xiao Se and back, genuinely puzzled. "Is it Xian'er? Zhu Qing?" She looked at Long Kui with the directness of a question that doesn't occur to itself as potentially awkward. "Aunt Long Kui?"
"Should we tell her, Brother?" Long Kui looked at Xiao Se, a small smile at the corner of her mouth.
"Might as well. She'll find out eventually."
Long Kui nodded and turned to Qian Renxue, and told her about Medusa — the Tagore Desert, the Snake-People Clan, the child on the way, and the journey back in time to rescue Die, recounting it in the straightforward manner of someone sharing news rather than a story.
Qian Renxue listened to the whole thing, nodding along — and then her eyes went sharp with a specific kind of interest at the part about the time-travel technique. She looked at Xiao Se with an expression that had moved past surprise into something that was already planning ahead.
"Then — can Daddy use that same technique here? On the Douluo Continent?"
"That's harder to predict," Xiao Se said, honestly. He had a three-day Douluo Continent travel voucher. Whether using it on the Douluo Continent itself would result in controlled time-travel or simply relocate him to a random point was genuinely uncertain. The system's outputs were not always predictable, particularly when stacked against themselves.
"Then Daddy should try it." Qian Renxue's expression had taken on a quality that was knowing and a little mischievous — the expression of someone who has already seen the end of a story and is watching the protagonist walk toward it. "If he ends up back in Mom's younger years, I think there would be quite the surprise."
"Xue'er is right," Long Kui agreed, in the tone of someone who has been briefed.
"A surprise?" Xiao Se looked between the two of them. "What kind of surprise?"
Qian Renxue and Long Kui looked at each other. Something passed between them — the particular communication of two people who share information and have agreed on how much of it to release.
"You'll see when you get there," they said, in near-perfect unison.
Xiao Se stood with the expression of a man who has just realized he is the only person in a room who doesn't know the punchline. He was also, beneath the mild affront of this, genuinely curious. Bibi Dong in her youth — Dong'er, as she had been then, before everything that came after — was something he had wondered about since he first understood the shape of her story.
Well, he thought. Only one way to find out.
(End of Chapter)
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