Xiao Se looked at the semi-transparent light panel floating before him, ran through the numbers one more time, and murmured quietly to himself: "Two months since I left the Monster Mountain Range, and I didn't even notice."
System — run a draw.
[Ding. Congratulations — you have drawn a Tablet Computer. Unlimited data, unlimited battery, pre-loaded with 180 gigabytes of films and various additional functions.]
Xiao Se stared at this result for a moment.
Films. He had been given films.
"I have so many wives," he said, to no one in particular, in the tone of a man confronting an irrelevancy. "When would I watch films?"
System. Continue.
[Ding. Congratulations — you have drawn a Versatile Puppet.]
"A versatile puppet." He turned the concept over. "What does it actually do?"
[Ding. Blood-binding activates its functions. It can transform into designated forms, including accurate replication of aura signatures.]
Xiao Se's eyes sharpened with something considerably more interested than his expression had suggested a moment ago. An aura-replicating puppet, bound by blood — the applications of that were not small. He filed it away carefully.
"What are you thinking about?" Medusa shifted against him, looking up at his face with the particular alertness of a woman who has spent enough time watching someone's expressions to know when something is happening behind them.
"Our daughter's name," Xiao Se said, without missing a beat.
Medusa gave him the look this deserved. "The child isn't even born yet. And what makes you so certain it's a girl?"
"My premonitions are reliable," he said pleasantly.
"You're the father." Medusa's tone settled into something slightly more earnest. "So you should be the one to name the child. Regardless of what he or she turns out to be."
Xiao Se was quiet for a moment. Something moved in his expression — a warmth that had a shadow in it, or a shadow that had warmth at its edges, something that was both present and remembering.
"Xiao Cai," he said. "Nickname Cai Cai."
Medusa went still. She looked at him.
"You're thinking about that little one," she said, quietly. Not a question.
"She became part of you," Xiao Se said. "This would be a way of keeping something of her." He didn't dress it up or deflect from it.
Medusa was quiet for a moment longer. Then: "Xiao Cai." She said the name once, letting it sit. "Alright. Boy or girl — Xiao Cai."
They stayed like that for a while, without talking, the morning light coming through in its unhurried way.
When they eventually got up and dressed, Xiao Se caught Medusa's reflection in the mirror and spoke to it rather than turning around — a small domestic intimacy, talking to her face in glass.
"Sasha. I'm thinking of going to the Douluo Continent for a while. I need to hunt a few hundred-thousand-year soul beasts to fill my soul rings and soul bones. A breakthrough at the Dou Zong level might follow if the soul power accumulation is right."
"And you'll see Bibi Dong and Xue'er as well," Medusa said, without inflection. She met his eyes in the mirror with the expression of someone whose intelligence does not require things to be spelled out for her.
"Wife." Xiao Se turned and kissed her cheek with the unironic warmth of a man who considers this a complete and sufficient response.
"Come back soon." Medusa's voice had the practiced firmness of someone establishing a boundary while knowing they'll hold it regardless of how it sounds. "Don't miss our wedding. If you're not back in time—" Her eyes had the specific quality that precedes a very credible threat.
"I'll be there," Xiao Se said, completely certain.
He was already preparing the spatial technique when her voice reached him again, quiet and precise.
"You've worked out by now that Xue'er is your daughter, haven't you." It wasn't a question. "Bring her back to see me next time."
"I will," he said.
And then he was gone.
Douluo Continent. The Heaven Dou Empire.
Space distorted in a specific room of the Crown Prince's residence, and Xiao Se stepped through.
A maidservant was waiting — not as though she had known exactly when he would arrive, but as though someone had arranged for someone to always be in the vicinity of this room, just in case.
"Lord Xiao Se." She bowed. "His Highness the Crown Prince departed for Spirit City some time ago, leading the Heaven Dou Empire's competing academy teams to the finals of the All-Continent Advanced Soul Master Elite Tournament. He left word that when you emerged from seclusion, you should come directly to Spirit City."
"Understood." Xiao Se took a moment to calculate the travel window — the competing teams should be arriving in Spirit City around now, or shortly after. He unfolded his Evil God Wings, stepped out onto the residence's upper terrace, and was airborne before anyone on the ground had noticed his departure.
The distance between Heaven Dou City and Spirit City was not trivial. But at the Dou Huang peak, with the Evil God Wings multiplying his base speed, he was moving at something comparable to a mid-level Dou Zong in flight. An hour, at most. He banked south and let the wind take him.
Spirit City. The Papal Palace.
The throne hall of the Spirit Hall's supreme seat was built to communicate power before a single word was spoken — the scale of it, the gold, the particular quality of silence that very large and very empty spaces produce. It did all of this effectively.
At present, the woman reclining on the throne was doing rather more to communicate power than the architecture was.
Bibi Dong.
The gold gown moved with her as she shifted — not the stiffness of ceremonial dress but the fluid ease of fabric that had been made to follow its wearer rather than define her. Her pale purple eyes were half-lidded, directed at the letter in her hand with the particular focus of someone reading something they are both pleased and amused by.
Little Se should be arriving in Spirit City soon.
A smile moved across her lips — private, unguarded, the kind that surfaces when no one is watching and there is nothing to maintain. She folded the letter with deliberate care and tucked it into the storage ring on her left hand's ring finger. The ring sat there as it always had, as it had for years, a quiet and constant presence.
Her daughter's letter. Her husband's gift. Both precious. Both kept close.
"Teacher."
A voice from the doorway — clear and musical, carrying the specific quality of someone who has a naturally beautiful voice and has stopped noticing it.
Hu Liena entered the hall. Nearly one hundred and eighty centimeters, a figure that would have stopped most rooms, short golden hair framing features that were, by any standard, exceptional. Not the kind of exceptional that sat in the same category as the woman on the throne — few things did — but exceptional nonetheless.
Two years had passed since Xiao Se had left the Douluo Continent. Bibi Dong had spent a handful of days with Qian Renxue before returning to the demands of the Papal Palace and the many interlocking responsibilities of being the Spirit Hall's supreme authority. The work did not pause for personal sentiment.
"Nana." Bibi Dong's voice was gentle in the particular way it was only gentle with certain people. "Something to report?"
"Teacher." Hu Liena's expression carried the slight stiffness of someone delivering news they expect to be poorly received. "Yu Xiaogang is here."
Bibi Dong's eyebrow rose by a precise increment. "Then throw him out."
"He has a Papal Decree." Hu Liena's own expression communicated exactly what she thought of this development. She knew enough about Yu Xiaogang — the incident with Tang San and the two students that had become Heaven Dou City's most retold story, the theories he published under the Spirit Hall's academic aegis that were either common knowledge repackaged or outright incorrect, the general texture of the man — to find the visit distasteful regardless of the paperwork that enabled it.
"Tell him I'm in seclusion," Bibi Dong said. "Unavailable."
"Then this disciple will relay the message and send him out," Hu Liena said, already turning.
"Wait." Bibi Dong's voice stopped her.
Hu Liena turned back. Something in Bibi Dong's expression had shifted — the measured composure had not left, but something had surfaced alongside it. Something with a glint in it.
She beckoned. Hu Liena crossed the hall and leaned in, and Bibi Dong spoke quietly, a series of instructions delivered in a murmur too low to carry beyond the two of them.
The smile that appeared on Hu Liena's face was not the smile of someone receiving an order they find burdensome.
"This disciple will see to it immediately," she said.
In the council hall of the Papal Palace, Yu Xiaogang waited.
The hall was large enough to hold several hundred people for formal proceedings. At this moment it held one — Yu Xiaogang, seated at a modest position near the center of the space, with a cup of fragrant tea and an expression of careful patience.
He had come with a purpose. The plan was straightforward: Tang San's Clear Sky Hammer had been exposed during the preliminary rounds of the competition, which meant Bibi Dong now knew about it. Before she had fully processed the implications and moved on them, Yu Xiaogang intended to leverage the Papal Decree and whatever goodwill or obligation it carried to extract from her whatever she knew about twin martial souls. It was a narrow window, and he intended to use it.
He glanced around the hall with the expression of a man who has assessed his surroundings and found them adequate but not impressive — a slight, unconscious downward angle to his regard. He returned to his tea.
The door opened.
Crisp, measured footsteps in the corridor, and then Hu Liena came through the entrance.
Yu Xiaogang looked up, and his expression shifted immediately. Not Bibi Dong. His brow creased slightly.
Hu Liena crossed the hall to the main seat of the council chamber — the position that placed her, functionally, across the table from him in a position of authority — and sat. She looked at Yu Xiaogang with eyes that made no effort to conceal what they thought of what they were looking at.
"You're the one with the Papal Decree?" Her voice had the ambient temperature of a room someone has just opened the windows of in winter.
Yu Xiaogang straightened. The frown that had started at her entrance settled into something more fully formed. "That's me. Where is Bibi Dong?"
The hall went very still.
The soul energy that erupted from Hu Liena a moment later was not violent. It was simply — present. Like a door being opened onto a space considerably larger than the room they were in. It pressed down across the hall with the flat, comprehensive weight of authority demonstrating itself without particular effort, finding Yu Xiaogang and resting on him with the specific intensity of something that had been given a direction.
"Insolence." Her voice, under the soul energy, had acquired a different quality — not louder, but more completely filling the space. "You will address her as Your Holiness the Pope. And you will do so now."
(End of Chapter)
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