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

Ye Shuli knelt amidst the scattered bronze fragments, the detection runes on her medical gloves flickering on her fingertips.

She removed the rubber gloves stained with Quantum's blood and gently brushed her fingertips across the crack on Jiang Ye's brow bone.

The static in the boy's pupils made her throat tighten. The red oil splattered when she was fighting for tripe at the hot pot restaurant, and the mints she used to watch the star trails from the top of the cultivation tower, all turned into a stream of data jumping in her memory crystal.

“If we fail this time, I’ll preserve you in formalin as a specimen.” She gritted her teeth and tore open the protective membrane of the crystal core, and the prism, gleaming with a cold light, automatically floated between the two of them.

The transparent crystalline veins on Jiang Ye's neck suddenly emitted a buzzing sound, and the fluorescence of the Fibonacci sequence climbed up his collarbone to his earlobe.

The moment the crystal nucleus touched the boy's forehead, the remaining spacetime dust in the laboratory suddenly solidified.

Ye Shuli saw the torrential rain of the day she transmigrated materialize on the surface of the crystal core—the image of Jiang Ye holding a lotus leaf to shield her from the rain was so clear that the trajectory of the water droplets rolling down could be seen.

The runes on the medical gloves suddenly turned a warning scarlet, but she turned the energy output valve to the maximum setting.

"Hot pot... the tripe needs to be dipped seven or eight times..." Jiang Ye's broken vocal cords squeezed out a breathy sound, and his eyelashes, which were blued by the fluorescent light of the crystal veins, trembled violently.

Those memories torn apart by the turbulent flow of time and space are being reassembled; Ye Shuli can even see fragments of the hot pot restaurant sign floating in his sea of ​​consciousness.

The laboratory dome suddenly exploded with spiderweb-like cracks.

Countless energy flows in the shape of Klein bottles surged from the blue brick floor, enveloping the two in a constantly self-replicating Möbius strip.

Ye Shuli used one hand to create a spiritual energy shield, while using the other hand to firmly hold onto the memory crystal core that was about to slip from her grasp.

A bronze cauldron pattern appeared on the back of Jiang Ye's neck, a sign that the time-space contract was about to take effect.

"Anyone violating this rule, immediately terminate the energy infusion!" The old man, wrapped in a nebula robe, stepped out of the distorted space and slammed his bronze scepter heavily onto the ground.

All the testing instruments in the laboratory simultaneously emitted electric sparks, and the oppressive aura of the guardian of the spacetime rift made Ye Shuli taste blood in her throat.

Jiang Ye suddenly rolled over and shielded her with his body, and the boy's back was instantly cut with seventeen wounds by the spatial turbulence.

A drop of quantum-state blood dripped onto Ye Shuli's neck, scalding her so much that her heart nearly stopped. "92.7%..." she roared, staring at the crystal core reading, the protective layer of her medical gloves already burned through by the energy. "Give me thirty more seconds!"

The bronze beast head atop the Time Guardian's scepter roared, and the laboratory began to pixelate and collapse.

Ye Shuli touched the bronze fragment on Jiang Ye's waist—the very same one they used to play rock-paper-scissors when they first met.

The moment the tip of the fragment pierced the fingertip, the memory crystal core suddenly burst forth with a supernova-like burst of light.

"Watch closely!" She held the blood-stained fragments above her head, and the repaired spacetime data suddenly materialized into a panoramic projection of the hot pot restaurant.

Cultivation manuals floated in the boiling red oil pot, while Jiang Ye's crooked, smiling face, carved on the corner of the table, absorbed the turbulent energy. "This isn't destruction, it's calibration!"

The guardian's scepter hovered at the edge of the light burst, and the old man's stardust-filled eyes narrowed slightly.

Ye Shuli felt Jiang Ye suddenly tighten his grip on her hand, and the static in the boy's pupils was being evaporated by the steam from the hot pot.

The collapsed bricks and stones of the laboratory solidified in mid-air, turning into countless suspended bronze tripod parts.

As the buzzing sound of the last memory fragment returning to its place rang out, Jiang Ye's blood-stained lips suddenly curled into a familiar smile.

His fingers, stained with quantum blood, traced circles on Ye Shuli's palm, a dull chuckle like sandpaper scraping in his throat: "The tripe... it's getting old..."

The Time Guardian's scepter fell heavily, enveloping the two in a bronze barrier.

A torrent of data poured from the old man's gilded cuffs, and the repaired spacetime nodes were shimmering on the surface of the barrier.

Ye Shuli shielded Jiang Ye behind her, and the emergency mode of the medical gloves automatically activated, with twelve detection runes lighting up simultaneously.

"You know the price of forcibly altering the spacetime contract." The guardian's voice carried an electronic reverb, and the remaining bronze cauldron parts in the laboratory began to rotate in reverse.

Ye Shuli touched the deformed hot pot restaurant membership card in her pocket; the gold-stamped numbers on the card were the completeness values ​​of the memory restoration.

Ye Shuli wiped the quantum blood seeping from Jiang Ye's mouth with the back of her hand, her fingertips still feeling the coolness of the bronze fragments.

She looked up at the guardian suspended at the top of the barrier, where the parts of the collapsed bronze cauldron in the laboratory were rearranging themselves along some kind of gravitational trajectory.

"Have you ever seen a self-healing Möbius strip?" She suddenly held up a hot pot restaurant membership card. The moment the gold-plated numbers jumped to 99.3%, a holographic star map was projected onto the bronze cauldron pattern on the back of Jiang Ye's neck. "For every 0.7% decrease in memory entropy, the curvature of the spacetime rift contracts by 3.14 radians—"

The guardian's gilded sleeves suddenly froze, and the torrent of data that had been flowing across the barrier's surface solidified into icicle-like crystals.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Ye Shuli tore off her medical gloves, revealing her palms that had been burned by energy, with fluorescent patterns of the Fibonacci sequence pulsating on the surface of her skin.

“In a state of quantum entanglement, the direction of collapse of the memory crystal nucleus affects the continuity of spacetime.” She tossed the blood-stained bronze fragment into the air, and the fragment shattered into countless bronze gears the instant it passed through the barrier. “What you prevented was not destruction, but the self-correction of spacetime itself.”

Jiang Ye suddenly reached out and grabbed a gear, the boy's knuckles being cut by the sharp bronze edge.

The trajectory of the quantum blood droplets formed the topological structure of a Klein bottle in the air, and the originally chaotic spacetime dust suddenly began to rotate in an orderly manner.

“Old stubborn man, have you ever seen someone use hot pot broth as a coordinate system?” As he turned around, the wound on his back brushed against Ye Shuli’s shoulder, and the still-uncongealed quantum blood stretched out thin strands of light between the two of them. “Look at this—” His blood-stained finger suddenly poked at a certain spot in the barrier, and the repaired memory crystal suddenly projected a panoramic view of the hot pot restaurant where they first met.

The guardian's stardust-filled eyes suddenly narrowed.

The patterns on the bronze cauldron projected on the screen resonated with the data stream on the surface of the barrier, and the cultivation manuals floating in the boiling red oil pot automatically arranged themselves into spacetime coordinates.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Ye Shuli pressed the detection rune on the medical glove onto the surface of the barrier, and the scarlet warning symbol suddenly turned into an emerald green color that represented safety.

"You are permitted to continue operating for three minutes." The Guardian's scepter struck the ground with the sound of bronze chimes, and the collapsed dome of the laboratory suddenly reformed into a circular screen, displaying real-time data from thousands of spacetime nodes.

Jiang Ye suddenly stumbled and bumped into Ye Shuli's arms, the boy's blood-stained forehead pressed against her carotid artery.

The restored memories flooded his consciousness like a tide. He saw himself holding a lotus leaf on a stormy night, and saw the sparks of spiritual energy exploding when Ye Shuli kicked him down the stairs at the top of the cultivation tower.

"At 92.7% of the time..." His fingers unconsciously tightened their grip on Ye Shuli's waist, the quantum blood staining the fabric in a nebula pattern. "Your hand trembled for 0.3 seconds."

Ye Shuli pressed the memory crystal core against his chest, the emergency runes on her medical gloves flashing between their skin. "Nonsense, who can stay calm with seventeen wounds on their hands?" Her voice was hoarse, but she deliberately poked his ribs with the sharp edge of the crystal core.

The instant the countdown on the circular screen reached zero, all the bronze parts in the laboratory suddenly emitted a series of chiming sounds.

The noise and snow in Jiang Ye's pupils completely disappeared. The boy suddenly reached out and grabbed Ye Shuli's nape, his blood-stained thumb brushing against the spot three inches below her earlobe—the mark of their contract left when they first teamed up.

“The tripe is getting old,” he whispered in her ear, his breath carrying the coolness of a mint, “but its ups and downs are perfectly timed to resonate at a specific point in time.”

The Time Guardian suddenly waved his scepter, and the remaining bricks and stones of the laboratory instantly reformed into a bronze altar.

The stardust on the old man's gilded robe automatically arranged into warning text, and the repaired spacetime nodes were projecting a strange double helix structure onto the surface of the altar.

“Northeast, 37 degrees elevation.” Ye Shuli’s medical gloves suddenly vibrated at a high frequency. She stared at the bronze compass that appeared on the surface of the altar. “The spacetime curvature is fluctuating abnormally. There…” Before she could finish speaking, Jiang Ye had already pulled her up to the edge of the altar.

The unhealed wound on the boy's back oozed blue light, and drops of quantum blood corroded the surface of the altar, leaving dents that emitted a chilling aura.

Ye Shuli suddenly grabbed his wrist, which was holding the sword: "Wait!"

These bronze patterns... "She brushed her fingertips across the grooves on the edge of the altar, where the condensed dust of time and space suddenly materialized into the barcode pattern on the back of a hot pot restaurant membership card.

The moment the two touched the groove at the same time, the entire altar suddenly rose vertically into the sky.

The spatiotemporal node data streams on the circular screen converged into a dazzling bronze-colored pillar of light, tinting the clouds within a radius of hundreds of miles with a metallic luster.

Ye Shuli saw a familiar star trail pattern appear at the end of the pillar of light—it was the graffiti that Jiang Ye had carved on the top of the tower with his spiritual power during his cultivation that day.

"Looks like someone's using us as hotpot ingredients." Jiang Ye suddenly smiled and pointed to the end of the pillar of light, where the surface of the bronze giant door, which was faintly visible, was covered with honeycomb-like holes resembling tripe.

Each hole was seeping out silvery-white spatial turbulence, and the beast-head keyhole in the center of the door was exactly the same as the shape of the copper pot in the hot pot restaurant.

Ye Shuli's medical gloves suddenly emitted a piercing alarm sound, and twelve detection runes simultaneously pointed to the lower right of the bronze giant gate.

The condensed dust of time and space there is forming a strange smiling face pattern—completely overlapping with the crooked smiling face that Jiang Ye carved on the corner of the hot pot restaurant table.