[Luofu, Seat Of Divine Foresight]
Under Yanqing's arrangements, Herta sat quietly in the room.
She had originally thought Jing Yuan would arrive soon, but unexpectedly, an entire afternoon had passed, and the sky outside was about to turn dark.
There was still no sign of Jing Yuan returning.
With nothing better to do, she looked around at the internal structure of the Divine Foresight Palace. Seeing that Jing Yuan still hadn't shown up, she felt a slight trace of dissatisfaction.
"Herta…"
Ruan Mei's voice sounded beside her ear. With a shift of Herta's thoughts, another scene appeared before her eyes.
It was the view seen by the puppet staying at the Herta Space Station.
Ruan Mei and Screwllum were standing in front of Herta's puppet.
Screwllum spoke, "Lady Herta, Miss Ruan Mei and I both still have research that needs to be advanced."
"Regarding matters related to the Simulated Universe, we have already compiled everything and handed it over to Miss Asta for safekeeping…"
Clearly, they had come to say goodbye to Herta.
The virus on the space station had already been cleared, and the missing Asta had also returned.
The two of them each still had their own research work to carry out in their respective domains.
For geniuses like them, time was money. Naturally, they wouldn't continue staying on the space station.
Ruan Mei was actually fine. At this space station, Herta had specially set aside an area for her to conduct life science experiments.
During this period, Ruan Mei would disappear from time to time. Screwllum didn't know what she was researching, and of course he didn't care what she was researching either.
But recently, her research seemed to have run into a bottleneck.
Or perhaps it simply needed more time to move forward.
After listening to Screwllum, Herta nodded.
With the two of them leaving the space station, she naturally had no reason to stop them.
After ending the conversation with Screwllum and Ruan Mei, Jing Yuan, who Herta was just about ready to classify as missing, finally arrived at his base of operations, the Divine Foresight Palace.
Meeting Herta's expressionless face, Jing Yuan laughed twice. "Sorry, sorry, I kept Lady Herta waiting!"
"There were just too many matters over there. I had to push myself to the limit just to make it back before nightfall. I hope Lady Herta won't hold it against me."
'Too many?'
Recalling the scene at Scalegorge Waterscape, aside from the water of the ancient sea lowering a bit and exposing some of the architecture there, it didn't seem like there was anything that should have kept a general like him busy for this long.
"Lady Herta left in a hurry, so naturally you don't know what happened afterward."
Thinking about what happened there, a trace of wariness appeared on Jing Yuan's face.
Beneath the calm surface of the ancient sea, who would have thought there were so many monsters no one had ever seen before?
Bronze heads and iron arms, bodies abnormally tough. Even the weapons of the Cloud Knights could barely cause them any damage.
They had to continuously attack a single point to break their defenses and actually hurt those monsters.
And after those monsters died, they didn't leave behind corpses. Instead, they turned into purple energy.
That purple energy could strengthen other monsters and heal their injuries.
What made Jing Yuan even more wary was that this unknown energy had a powerful corrosive effect on the human body.
If too much was absorbed, a person would turn into another kind of humanoid monster, and possess the same terrifying strength as those afflicted by mara-struck conditions.
Their madness was no less than that of mara-struck soldiers.
Jing Yuan was even starting to suspect whether this was something created by the Abundance to persecute the Xianzhou people.
But the biggest suspects were still Levi and Phantylia.
There had been none of these things in the ancient sea before, but after the two of them fought above it, the sea was now full of those things.
There were so many that even after clearing them until now, there was no sign of their numbers decreasing.
Just like the Swarm from the past.
The only fortunate thing was that these monsters weren't everywhere like the Swarm. They could only move within the ancient sea, for now…
"General!" Yanqing's anxious voice rang out. "Reports from the front lines say those monsters are already able to move onto land!"
"…"
Jing Yuan silently withdrew his earlier evaluation that they posed little threat to the Luofu for the time being.
He gave Herta an apologetic look. "If Lady Herta wishes to search for that person on the Luofu, please feel free. As long as you don't violate Xianzhou taboos, naturally no one will stop you."
"Wait!"
Herta stopped Jing Yuan as he was leaving. Her originally expressionless face now showed interest.
Seeing that expression, Jing Yuan naturally understood that she was interested in the monsters from the ancient sea.
"Going together, that's fine, right?"
"Of course."
Jing Yuan did not refuse her request to come along. With a genius like Herta present, they could also understand those monsters more quickly.
———
At this moment, Levi still didn't know what was happening on the Luofu. He was currently staring at Tingyun with clear displeasure.
Tingyun looked embarrassed, the tail behind her gently swaying.
"Benefactor, I'm truly sorry!", She first bowed to him in apology.
"Lady Yukong is my superior. When she pressed me for answers, I didn't dare refuse… but please rest assured, benefactor! I only told Lady Yukong."
After Tingyun finished apologizing, Yukong, who had been sizing up Levi since just now, finally spoke, "I really didn't expect that just an ordinary diviner from the Divination Commission would be hiding such powerful strength."
Yukong let out a small sigh of admiration.
"Your Divination Commission really is full of hidden talents."
If all the hidden experts there revealed themselves, they might be able to push the Luofu's combat strength straight to the top among all the Xianzhou ships.
"Thank you for stepping in to save Tingyun.", Yukong gave Levi a solemn thanks.
She already knew everything that had happened to Tingyun.
She truly hadn't realized that the Tingyun she had been interacting with recently was actually Phantylia in disguise.
However, she actually had noticed differences between the two, but hadn't thought too deeply about it.
Who could have expected that someone by her side was disguised as a Lord Ravager?
"If it weren't for you, Tingyun might have…"
At this point, Yukong looked at Tingyun beside her, a lingering fear rising in her heart.
"You're too kind, Lady Yukong. Miss Tingyun is blessed by fate. Even if I hadn't acted, someone else would have helped her."
Levi handed the dinner in his hand to Qingque. Qingque didn't take it, and Levi looked at her in confusion.
"I already ate."
After saying that, she added another sentence.
"Tingyun treated me."
His gaze moved back and forth between Qingque and Tingyun. Levi let out a deep sigh and quickly finished the food in his hands in a few bites.
After wiping his mouth, he said, "Looks like food someone else treats you to just tastes better than mine…"
'And here I rushed back out of kindness, afraid you'd go hungry!'
Levi's tone was full of quiet grievance. "In the end, it was my feelings that were misplaced."
Qingque: "Huh?"
Yukong: "?"
Tingyun: "..."
How did eating someone else's meal suddenly make it sound like she had done something to wrong him?
Yukong looked at him and gained a preliminary understanding of what kind of person he was.
Levi didn't pay Qingque any more attention. He found a place to sit and calmly looked at Yukong.
"Go on. What do you want from me?"
He didn't believe Yukong came just to thank him for Tingyun's matter.
There had to be something else, which was why she came to find him.
"..."
[🎉 Shoutout to Little_Demon, Thanh, WetWatee, Slashdog, Darklouche and Michael for joining p@treon. Thank you very much.🤗]