A magical journey of a sharp-tongued woman and a goofy man

Blood beads slid down Jiang Ye's forehead and into his pupils, causing him to stagger back half a step.

The turbulent winds stirred up by the spatial turbulence severed the last three inches of distance between the two. Ye Shuli's outstretched hand was still suspended in mid-air when she saw Jiang Ye suddenly clutch his head and kneel down on the ground.

"Who...are you?" Blood seeped from between the young man's fingers, mixed with cold sweat, and fragments of the bronze compass rolled out from his sleeve, drawing eerie arcs in the void.

Ye Shuli felt a sudden burning pain on the golden mark of the shared destiny bond on the back of her neck. She saw her reflection in Jiang Ye's pupils melting away—like ink being washed away by rain, fading away at a visible speed.

The chains of the guardian of the spacetime rift grazed past her ear. As Ye Shuli spun around to avoid them, bronze fragments suddenly exploded at her feet.

The spiritual energy surging in Jiang Ye's palm was wrapped in stardust; it was clearly the starting stance of the Big Dipper Sword Technique that she had just taught him last month.

"Jiang Ye, wake up!" Ye Shuli's cheek was slashed by sword energy, and the edge of the spacetime vortex was just five steps behind her.

She suddenly pulled open her collar, revealing shimmering gold patterns beneath her collarbone. "The covenant of fate is still in effect. You promised to plant camellias all over my land!"

The guardian's cold laugh pierced the energy storm: "Interesting, the memory erasure spell was actually partially neutralized by the Fate Pact." Six Binding God Chains suddenly wrapped around Ye Shuli's ankles from different angles, causing her to stagger and shatter a floating fragment of spacetime. Amidst the swirling crystalline dust, Jiang Ye's sword light suddenly shone.

Ye Shuli instinctively raised her hand to form a hand seal, but at the last moment she flipped her wrist.

The crimson spiritual energy grazed her throat and disappeared into the void, and she used the impact to pounce on Jiang Ye.

The unfamiliar killing intent in the young man's eyes was colder than the blade of the sword, yet his hand holding the sword trembled uncontrollably.

"Why didn't you dodge?" Jiang Ye's sword tip pressed against her heart, and the blood-stained golden runes of their life-sharing bond suddenly burst forth with a blinding light.

Ye Shuli gripped the blade and pushed it forward half an inch, blood trickling down the frosty white blade like a stream. "You taught me," she said, "that the real killing move is to get three inches from the opponent's heart before unleashing your power."

The guardian suddenly stopped attacking, and broken chains floated beside him.

Jiang Ye's pupils contracted sharply, and fine cracks suddenly appeared on the sword's blade—it was their natal sword that they had repaired three days ago in Chishui City, when Ye Shuli deliberately melted the Heaven-Mending Stone for an extra quarter of an hour.

"You said sword cultivators should cherish their natal sword as they would their Daoist partner." Ye Shuli's bloodstained finger suddenly touched Jiang Ye's brow, and the dormant star map in his spiritual center suddenly lit up. "That night in Starfall Valley, you begged me to teach you modern mathematics to construct spiritual power models..."

Jiang Ye suddenly let out a beast-like growl, and dazzling starlight burst forth from the cracks in the sword.

Ye Shuli was thrown onto the floating fragments of time and space. When her lower back hit the fragment of the bronze compass, she saw the chain patterns on the guardian's neck suddenly begin to grow in reverse.

"So that's how it is." The guardian's ethereal figure suddenly solidified, and the shattered God-Binding Chains reformed into a blood-red spear in his palm. "The Fate Pact can actually resist the spacetime correction force." The moment the spear tip was aimed at Ye Shuli's back, Jiang Ye's broken natal sword suddenly slashed across.

Ye Shuli coughed up blood and grabbed Jiang Ye's wrist. The struggling clarity in the young man's eyes was like a candle flickering in the wind.

The spacetime rift behind the guardian suddenly expanded three times, and the coordinates of the black dot in her arms emitted a sharp cry in her sea of ​​consciousness—it was clearly the star pattern that Jiang Ye had engraved on her natal magic weapon three months ago.

"Don't touch mine..." Jiang Ye suddenly choked on his own throat, and tiny golden lights exploded deep in his pupils.

The guardian's crimson spear had pierced the fabric of Ye Shuli's shoulder blade, but the moment it touched the golden pattern of the Fate Pact, it was pulled off course by half an inch by a sudden reversal of spacetime turbulence.

A temporal turbulence swirled in Jiang Ye's pupils, creating a gray mist. Ye Shuli could clearly see their memories being torn to pieces.

Suddenly, a purplish-black beam of light erupted from the crack behind the guardian, and the Six Binding God Chains coiled around her waist like venomous snakes.

"It's not smart to get distracted at this time." The blood-red spear that the guardian had condensed at his fingertips suddenly split into twelve phantoms. Ye Shuli leaned back to avoid the fatal blow, but deliberately let the spear tip cut her forearm with her left hand.

The moment the blood splattered on Jiang Ye's eyelashes, the young man's sword-wielding hand suddenly convulsed.

The excruciating pain caused Ye Shuli to crash into the floating fragments of the bronze compass. Three days ago, Jiang Ye left behind fragments of the Sky-Mending Stone when he repaired the gap, and they suddenly glowed.

She endured the burning pain from the golden markings on her collarbone, grabbed some shards, and pressed them against Jiang Ye's spiritual center: "Do you remember how you reconstructed the spiritual energy circuit using the Fibonacci sequence?"

Jiang Ye's sword suddenly deflected three inches, the sword energy slicing off the stray hairs at Ye Shuli's temples.

The spacetime fragments manipulated by the guardian formed a cage around the two of them. Ye Shuli's heel happened to step on the star pattern coordinates that Jiang Ye had engraved on the compass three days ago, and blue-purple electric arcs suddenly flowed upstream along the Binding God Chain.

“A futile struggle.” The guardian shattered three fragments of spacetime with a wave of his sleeve, and the sharp crystal chip left seven bloody marks on Ye Shuli’s back.

Using the force of the impact, she threw herself into Jiang Ye's arms, her bloodied fingers precisely striking the young man's Tanzhong acupoint on his chest—a spiritual pivot node she had specifically marked during her cultivation last week.

Jiang Ye's pupils suddenly contracted to pinpoints, and the cracks on his natal sword burst forth with a dazzling galaxy.

Ye Shuli grabbed his wrist and forcibly turned the sword. As the sword tip pierced her left shoulder, the metal pattern of their life-bound bond suddenly emitted a buzzing sound like a dragon's roar.

A painful roar escaped Jiang Ye's throat, and the starlight on the sword began to automatically repair the wound.

"You taught me... to disinfect wounds with hydrogen peroxide..." Beneath the bulging veins on Jiang Ye's forehead, fragments of memory flickered like fireflies breaking free from their cages. "In Starfall Valley... you used trigonometric functions to help me calculate the trajectory of spiritual energy..."

The crack behind the guardian suddenly twisted, and the blood-red spear was blocked by the bronze fragment that flew out of her arms just as it was about to pierce Ye Shuli's heart.

Three months ago, the star patterns that Jiang Ye had carved were projected into the void in three dimensions, and the twelve star tracks formed an energy matrix to counteract the spacetime turbulence.

"Enough!" The energy erupting from the guardian shattered the spacetime fragments within a ten-meter radius. As Ye Shuli was thrown away by the shockwave, Jiang Ye suddenly reached out and grabbed the jade belt around her waist.

The golden light surging in the young man's eyes tore through the fog of memory, and the starlight of his natal sword drew in the sky the camellias covering the mountain where they first met.

When the crimson spear struck again, Jiang Ye's sword tip had already formed the phantom image of the Big Dipper.

Ye Shuli grasped his trembling wrist with her other hand, and their spiritual energies resonated perfectly the moment they touched.

The guardian's cold laugh froze in the burst of white light, and a strange whale-like cry suddenly echoed from the spacetime rift.