The sword measured two feet one inch, and nothing was left of it but a ruined edge and a snapped blade.
Felutina had recovered it for her from the battlefield.
Jingliu sat in the training hall with her head bowed a little, a dull weight pressing at her chest.
Ever since they had escaped Cangcheng, Felutina had never once looked at her with anything but gentleness.
But out there on the battlefield, Felutina’s face had been deadly serious.
There had even been a trace of anger in it.
That frightened Jingliu.
She must have done something wrong, she decided, and she dropped her gaze and gripped the hem of her skirt.
She knew she ought to apologize.
She simply had no idea how to begin.
So she stayed where she was, letting the minutes drain away one after another.
Until the door swung open again.
Felutina had clearly changed clothes.
Every trace of blood and every wound was gone.
She walked over to Jingliu and sat down.
Jingliu lifted her small face without thinking and looked up at her.
“Can you still hold a sword?”
Felutina’s voice came out light and soft, and it made Jingliu think of her mother.
Jingliu’s parents had died when she was very young, so she had learned to stand on her own early, and had grown almost accustomed to being alone.
If Felutina hadn’t come crashing into her life three years ago like a shaft of sunlight, she would probably have gone on being alone forever.
At that thought, Jingliu’s fingers tightened on her skirt.
It struck her then that somewhere along the way, without noticing, she had gotten used to having Felutina beside her.
There was no grand reason for it.
Only that they had spent so long together.
“Jingliu?”
Felutina’s voice pulled her back out of her own head.
The girl raised her eyes, still glum, and looked at the woman leaning slightly toward her.
“I’m s—”
The apology was already forming, but a slender index finger came to rest against her lips.
“No apologies needed.
I understand.”
Felutina gave her a playful wink.
After living side by side with her day and night, she knew perfectly well that the Jingliu in front of her was no character running preset code in some game.
She was a person.
A living, breathing person.
She got happy.
She got scared.
She would tilt her head back and ask you adorably stupid questions.
And right now she was only a child trembling in the face of terror, a child who needed comforting.
“Don’t be afraid.
The war’s over for now.
I came to take you home.”
Home.
In a haze, Jingliu remembered the first time she had ever seen Felutina, three years ago.
Felutina had done much the same thing then, holding out her hand to a lonely girl standing in front of the Academy.
It had looked a bit like the work of a swindler luring little girls away, but back then Jingliu had reached out anyway, as if some spirit had guided her hand, and answered with a soft, muffled sound in her nose.
“Mm.”
“Let’s go home.”
…
The Xianzhou Alliance’s campaign reached its conclusion soon enough.
Word came down from above that it had been a sweeping victory.
Most people understood what that really was: a phrase chosen to lift morale.
The Xianzhou Alliance fought the abominations of Abundance again and again as they came surging back, and their own people paid for it endlessly, over and over.
That cycle was the whole of history.
But that was how the world worked.
Whatever happened in the night, the sky still brightened, and people still woke and went on living.
“Sis.”
Jingliu had changed into a blue-and-white skirt.
It was the first outfit she had picked purely because she thought it looked pretty, since she and Felutina had settled on the Luofu.
She spun a grand little circle in front of Felutina.
“Well?
How is it?”
“Super cute.”
Felutina never stinted on praise.
People kept saying Jingliu was still a child, but that was only true measured against a Xianzhou lifespan.
In practice, ordinary Xianzhou natives grew at much the same rate as the short-lived species.
They simply stopped once they reached their prime and stayed fixed there.
Girls developed quickly to begin with, and at sixteen or seventeen she had very nearly finished growing into herself.
“…”
She had asked the question herself, yet now that the compliment had actually landed, Jingliu ducked her head, trying to hide a face that had gone pink.
“You’re cute when you blush, too.”
Felutina offered up her praise without the slightest sign of tiring of it.
Jingliu turned redder still, the color creeping all the way down her neck.
“…Not fair.”
She held it in for a long moment, and that was all she managed to squeeze out.
“Right?
So unfair.”
A bright, cheerful voice rang out from not far off.
Baiyun was draped over the wall, grinning down at Felutina and Jingliu.
“Leaving me out of the fun again.”
“Why are you back on the Luofu?
Hasn’t the Xianzhou Yaoqing shipped out yet?” Felutina raised an eyebrow.
Because of the Calamity of Cangcheng, the great Xianzhou had gathered to plan a joint strike against the abominations of Abundance.
Now that the fighting had died down, the other ships ought to have set off already.
The Xianzhou Yaoqing especially.
Word was that the current General of Yaoqing had no intention of stopping, and had sworn to hunt across every planet the abominations of Abundance had seized and save as many innocents as possible.
“Listen to you.
Anyone would think you’re trying to chase me off.”
Baiyun puffed out her cheeks like an indignant pufferfish, then broke into a mischievous grin a heartbeat later.
She sidled up next to Felutina, raised one pale index finger, and waggled it as she explained in a conspiratorial hush, “I hear the General of Yaoqing struck some kind of deal with your General Tengxiao.
Anyway, even if the Yaoqing really does leave, I can just fly a starskiff back myself.”
“I’m an adventurer carrying on the spirit of the Nameless, after all.
I’d get to tour all the great sights of the star sea along the way.
Sounds pretty good to me.”
The Foxian girl was still grinning.
Nothing hard or bitter seemed capable of blunting her enthusiasm, the way morning mist can never blot out the sun.
Jingliu watched quietly as Baiyun and Felutina chatted and laughed together, and a small heaviness settled in her, mixed with envy.
She wanted to be like Baiyun.
To talk and laugh with Felutina that easily.
Because giving ran both ways, and she couldn’t stay the little girl who only ever waited to be coaxed.
“Starskiffs really are amazing,” Felutina said with feeling.
They could go anywhere.
Nuclear-powered, apparently.
She wondered whether the things needed fuel at all.
“Heh heh, right?”
Baiyun beamed.
Hearing something she loved get praised only made her already brilliant smile brighter.
She turned to Jingliu and extended the invitation with equal warmth, “Come to think of it, little Jingliu, you’ve never felt what it’s like to fly, have you?
Want to give it a try with me?”
Not as a plain means of transport, but as a vehicle in the hands of a flier as gifted as Baiyun.
“I, I’d rather not,” Jingliu answered stiffly.
She tugged at Felutina’s sleeve, careful and small about it, a little like a kitten pawing for attention.
“Sis, it’s time we went back for sword practice, or Master’s going to lecture you again.”
Felutina laughed, reached out and ruffled Jingliu’s hair, mussing the neatly kept white strands into disorder, then smoothing them back into place one lock at a time.
“All right.
But before we head home… let’s go wander around a bit first.”
She glanced at the system screen unfolded beside her.
[Task complete.]
[Qualification to appear in the Act One main story acquired.]
[The main story will open in two days.
Host, please prepare for your role.]
She had no idea how long those so-called two days could be stretched, and no idea how time here would run once she left for the main story.
So at the very least, she hoped Jingliu would settle into life on the Luofu soon.
____
________________________________________