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

Dark purple mist rose from the direction where the crimson meteor fell.

Ye Shuli embedded the jade fragments into the grooves of her medical gloves. Blue light scanned the charred stardust on the ground, projecting fine, spider-web-like golden trails into the void.

“Following the remnants of fate.” She grabbed Jiang Ye’s wrist and ran forward, thick black blood seeping from the cracks in the stones crushed by her boots. “That thing is luring us over.”

Thousands of translucent threads float above the place where fates clash, each thread entwined with the afterimage of a struggling creature.

Jiang Ye's Fate-Defying Lock suddenly emitted a buzzing sound, and a dark gold totem spread from the back of his neck to his right eye. Instantly, countless red dots appeared in his field of vision—behind the stone pillar thirteen steps away, the gray-robed man was twirling half of a jade pendant identical to the one in Ye Shuli's hand.

"Found you." The moment Jiang Ye swung the black iron chain, the entire space suddenly froze.

As the gray-robed man turned around, his hood slipped down, revealing a face that bore a striking resemblance to Jiang Ye, but was covered in cracks. The threads of fate binding him suddenly tightened.

Three hundred bronze puppets emerged from the ground, and the purple mist gushing from their joints condensed in the air to form the character "囚" (prisoner).

Ye Shuli flung out poisoned silver needles, shattering the skulls of the three nearest puppets, only to find the fragments instantly reforming upon hitting the ground. "Attack the Tanzhong acupoint!" she suddenly remembered her anatomy notes. "These puppets use resentful energy to connect their joints!"

Jiang Ye spun around and kicked the puppet's neck, breaking it. The Reverse Fate Lock transformed into a long sword and pierced its chest cavity.

The moment the black energy dissipated, Ye Shuli suddenly staggered and clutched her chest.

The image of Jiang Ye feeding her brown sugar glutinous rice cakes in her memory suddenly distorted into poison, and the totem that appeared during the laboratory explosion completely overlapped with the lines on Jiang Ye's back at this moment.

"Why did you lie to me?" Ye Shuli's willow-leaf knife grazed Jiang Ye's ear and drove into the ground, the hilt still trembling.

Seven puppets pounced at the opportunity, and Jiang Ye crushed the heads of two of them with his bare hands. The flying copper pieces cut bloody marks on his collarbone.

Sensing the danger to its master, the Reverse Fate Lock automatically deployed a barrier. The moment the dark golden light enveloped the two of them, Jiang Ye tightly embraced Ye Shuli's trembling body from behind.

His blood-stained chin rested on the top of her head, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down with each swallow: "The time you failed thirty-seven times in developing the antidote, I stole the last licorice candy."

The struggle in her arms suddenly stopped.

The silver light deep in Ye Shuli's pupils dissipated like the receding tide, and the alarm of the medical gloves pierced the barrier—the jade fragments were absorbing the blood beads seeping from Jiang Ye's wound, and a blurry star map outline emerged from the cracks.

The gray-robed man let out a laugh that sounded like sandpaper rubbing together, and the puppet horde suddenly stopped attacking, tearing open their own chests in unison.

"The time has come." Three hundred beating puppet hearts floated into the air and condensed into a blood-red compass.

Ye Shuli suddenly pressed the jade pendant onto the totem on Jiang Ye's back, and the shockwave generated by the collision of the two energies sent boulders flying within a ten-foot radius.

When the smoke and dust cleared, only half a withered leaf remained where the gray-robed man had stood, and a lightning-shaped crack appeared on the jade pendant in Ye Shuli's palm.

The jade fragments were burning hot in Ye Shuli's palm.

The totem on Jiang Ye's back suddenly shrank into a dark golden light spot, which burrowed into the medical bracelet on her wrist along the skin where the two were touching.

The alarm turned into a rapid beeping sound, and the bracelet projected a three-dimensional meridian diagram—a blood-red compass formed from the puppet's heart was slowly rotating above its head.

"Let go!" As Ye Shuli broke free from Jiang Ye's embrace, a scalpel automatically popped out of her medical gloves.

The moment the blade sliced ​​through the fingertip, thirteen drops of blood floated in an equilateral triangle, reflecting the purple light pulsating within the chest cavities of the three hundred puppets.

Her pupils suddenly contracted—the trajectory of those light spots actually matched the Fibonacci sequence.

Jiang Ye's Fate-Defying Lock suddenly transformed into a black iron umbrella, blocking the blood rain falling from the compass.

As the umbrella surface was corroded and scorched, he glimpsed Ye Shuli drawing a prime number spiral on the ground with the tip of her boot: "Give me thirty-seven seconds!"

Seven puppets rushed in from the southeast.

Jiang Ye spun around and kicked the kneecap off the foremost puppet, while the tip of his black iron umbrella precisely pierced the Tanzhong acupoint of the second puppet.

The moment the black energy dissipated, his back collided with Ye Shuli's taut spine—she was using silver needles to guide the geometric patterns formed by the blood droplets, and energy circuits composed of stardust appeared on the ground.

"Now!" Ye Shuli drove three poisoned silver needles into the nodes of the energy circuit.

The crimson compass suddenly trembled and shifted by fifteen degrees, and the twenty-four puppets were swept into the suddenly appearing energy vortex.

The purple mist at their joints was torn into bands of light, which condensed into a continuously collapsing octahedron at the center of the vortex.

The gray-robed man's cold laughter came from the clouds.

The crimson compass emitted a blinding light, and seven hundred new puppets burst forth from the ground.

The eerie blue flames dancing in their eye sockets form the pattern of the Big Dipper, leaving scorched marks on the ground as they walk, emitting wisps of smoke.

"Lower your head!" Ye Shuli suddenly grabbed Jiang Ye's collar.

A blade of light formed from the power of fate grazed his hair, severing three strands of his flying silver hair.

As Jiang Ye turned around, he saw that Ye Shuli's medical gloves were operating at full capacity. The moment the blue light barrier unfolded from her palm, the gray-robed man's second light blade was already in front of him.

Amidst the cracking sound of the barrier shattering, Jiang Ye saw a pattern identical to the cracks in the jade pendant appear below Ye Shuli's collarbone.

She suddenly ripped open her collar and pressed the burning jade pendant against the bleeding wound: "Press the point three inches above my Tanzhong acupoint!"

When the gray-robed man's third blade of light came slashing down, Ye Shuli used a scalpel to cut open the palm of her left hand.

The blood droplets and jade fragments floated in the air simultaneously, forming a hexagonal energy matrix.

Jiang Ye's Reverse Fate Lock sensed the crisis and automatically disintegrated, with three hundred fragments of black iron embedding into the matrix gaps, forming a transparent shield with a metallic luster.

"boom!"

As spiderweb-like cracks spread across the surface of the shield, Ye Shuli suddenly felt a burning sensation on the back of her neck.

The medical bracelet projected a warning message in red: [Consciousness Link Overload].

Before she could react, the surrounding scenery suddenly distorted into flowing blocks of color, and the roars of the three hundred puppets turned into sharp buzzing.

When her vision cleared, Ye Shuli found herself standing in a cube-shaped space woven from luminous threads.

The floating bronze fragments are engraved with cuneiform script, and each fragment reflects images of her and Jiang Ye at different points in time—the scene of Jiang Ye protecting her during the laboratory explosion suddenly splits into twelve different versions.

“Non-linear causal chain…” Ye Shuli pressed her throbbing temples as the medical gloves automatically analyzed the nearest bronze fragments.

When the projection displayed the hexagrams transformed from binary code, she suddenly tore off three strands of hair and threw them into the air—the trajectory of the falling hairs perfectly matched the star map on the fragments.

The gray-robed man's voice boomed from all directions: "You cannot decipher the seventh layer of encryption in the Fate Matrix."

Ye Shuli's fingernails dug into her palm.

She noticed that a certain fragment showed the scene of Jiang Ye stealing licorice candy from the herb field, with a countdown in the lower right corner—the flow of time in the real world is seventy-two times that here.

A muffled groan came from outside.

Ye Shuli saw bloodstains suddenly appear on the bronze fragments in front of her, and immediately bit her tongue to stay awake.

The medical gloves started smoking due to overclocking, but she stared intently at the hexagrams dancing on the fragments—the annotation of the third line of the Kan hexagram suddenly overlapped with the periodic table.

"So that's how it is!" She pressed the blood-stained jade fragment onto the Kan trigram position.

The entire space suddenly trembled violently, and the six key fragments automatically pieced together to form a star map.

When the position of the seventh star of the Big Dipper lit up, Ye Shuli in the real world was surrounded by a dazzling white light.

Jiang Ye was using the Reverse Fate Lock to choke the throat of the thirty-ninth puppet.

His right leg was pierced by the power of fate, and blood pooled in the scorched earth, forming a small puddle.

As the gray-robed man condensed the tenth blade of light at his fingertips, he was suddenly burned in the eyes by the intense light emanating from Ye Shuli.

"Don't touch him!" Ye Shuli's voice resonated with a metallic quality.

The jade fragments in her palm are being quantized, and the medical glove projects a constantly recombining multidimensional geometry.

When the first geometric object was embedded in the crimson compass, all seven hundred puppets froze simultaneously, and the eerie blue flames in their eye sockets turned into pure silver-white.

The gray-robed man retreated seven feet, and strange black flames ignited from his sleeves.

He was about to tear open a spatial rift to escape when he discovered that the geometric shapes projected by Ye Shuli had already sealed off the entire battlefield.

Taking advantage of the moment, Jiang Ye threw out the Reverse Fate Lock. The moment the black iron chain wrapped around the gray-robed man's left ankle, Ye Shuli suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood.

The bright light began to flicker erratically.

Jiang Ye saw burn marks on Ye Shuli's back that corresponded to the star map, and the alarm on the medical gloves turned into a continuous long whistle.

As the gray-robed man broke free from the shackles of the Fate-Defying Lock, Ye Shuli used her last strength to slam the three luminous geometric shapes into Jiang Ye's totem.

A second before the space collapsed, Jiang Ye grabbed the unconscious Ye Shuli and rolled into the suddenly appearing teleportation array.

Blood was seeping from the dark gold totem on the back of his neck, with three geometric shapes slowly rotating within it, while the gray-robed man's furious roar was isolated outside the collapsing barrier of fate.