Farushiel didn’t know what to say for a moment.
She had prepared a stomach full of comforting words, but now they were all stuck in her throat, neither going up nor down.
Looking at the person in front of her—clearly wrapped up like a silkworm cocoon, yet still bouncing around like a fighting rooster—a complex mix of emotions surged in her chest: wanting to laugh, to be angry, and a little like crying.
She walked to the bedside, pulled over a chair, and sat down, her movements tinged with a helplessness even she hadn’t noticed.
“Your leg is broken in three places, five ribs are fractured, and your left arm is a comminuted fracture. The physician said the qi and blood in your body are as empty as a leather bag pierced with countless holes.”
Farushiel recited Zhao Yingyue’s injury report in a tone as calm as a weather forecast.
She tried to use these cold facts to extinguish the overly vigorous fire that burned in the other’s eyes for no apparent reason.
However, her efforts were clearly in vain.
“Ah, just minor injuries, minor injuries! For a martial artist, bumps and scrapes are nothing!”
Zhao Yingyue waved her free hand carelessly, as if those injuries—enough to leave an ordinary person wailing for half a year—were nothing more than an itch to her.
“This bit of flesh pain is nothing compared to the grandeur of my slash! I’m telling you, you didn’t see it!”
She grew more animated, her bright eyes shining with the unmistakable light of “praise me.”
“When that big beast opened its mouth to eat you, I—Zhao the Heroine!—just went Duang and dropped from the sky! The Cangsoul in my hand was humming, and the feeling… tsk tsk, it was like grasping the dragon vein of an entire mountain!”
She described it vividly, even imitating the weapon’s buzzing with her mouth as she spoke.
“I thought at the time, this beast is so big, its bite must be strong, but compared to the hardness of our Night Dragon Nation’s mountains? Not qualified! So I sank my qi into my dantian, focused my mind, and shouted Bawang Meets the Mountain! Just one slash! A simple, unadorned slash! Split its head open right there!”
“It was a tooth.”
Farushiel corrected her expressionlessly.
“You only broke one of its teeth.”
“Details! Don’t sweat the details!”
Zhao Yingyue lifted her small face, rebutting righteously.
“The key is momentum! Do you understand what momentum is? That slash stunned it completely! I guarantee, that giant mud eel had lived for thousands of years and this was definitely the first time it experienced an in-home dentist visit!”
Farushiel’s mouth twitched slightly.
She found herself unable to argue.
That scene was… undeniably striking.
“And the second slash!”
Clearly unwilling to let her off, Zhao Yingyue grew even more excited, even trying to sit up in bed to gesture—only to wince in pain again.
But she stubbornly continued her personal epic of heroism.
“That move was called ‘Mountain Cracker’! When I swung the blade, I felt like I became a whole mountain—not just slashing it, but smashing it down with a mountain! That feeling… was incredible! It’s a pity my strength gave out, or I would’ve let it taste the third style, ‘Star Shatterer.’ I swear, I would’ve turned it into a pool of green mush!”
Farushiel listened quietly.
Watching Zhao Yingyue’s animated, saliva-flying storytelling, the gloom and worry in her heart unconsciously faded, replaced by this silly vitality.
She even started to think that this bandaged patient was more endearing than the war goddess brandishing her blade on the battlefield.
At least, in this state, she was proof that she was still alive.
Alive and… full of spirit.
“When you can walk by yourself, come boast to me about your third style.”
At last, a faint trace of a smile touched Farushiel’s voice.
She picked up the kettle from the table, poured a cup of warm water, and brought it to Zhao Yingyue’s lips.
Zhao Yingyue gulped down more than half the cup, then flopped back onto the pillow with a satisfied sigh, as if she’d exhausted her bragging energy.
The atmosphere in the infirmary finally eased, shifting from a one-sided hero’s report to a casual chat between friends.
“To be honest, Fannie,”
Zhao Yingyue smacked her lips, still savoring the taste.
“This time, I really owe your sage friend. If not for that gold-shining net, I’d have been flattened into a meat pie.”
At the mention of [Jingwei Sage], a subtle shadow flickered in Farushiel’s eyes.
She put down the cup and fell silent for a moment before speaking.
“Yingyue, about this ambush…”
Her voice regained its calm, but now carried a gravity that was hard to ignore.
“Don’t you think it was a bit too coincidental?”
“Coincidental?”
Zhao Yingyue blinked, her brain—still whirring from excitement—struggling to shift into analytical mode.
“What was too coincidental?”
“Our marching route was finalized only the day before departure. Fewer than five people knew.”
Farushiel’s speech was unhurried, but each word fell like a stone into still water, stirring ripples.
“The Abyssal Lord’s resting place just happened to be one of our backup sites for exploring the Gate of Dolos. And the Seventh Apostle Zeheriel… his ambush was targeted, precisely timed, and aimed straight for the prophecy stone at my waist.”
The smile faded from Zhao Yingyue’s face.
She wasn’t a fool.
With Farushiel laying things out so clearly, if she still missed the implications, she had no business serving as an ambassador of the Night Dragon Nation.
“You mean…”
Her voice dropped, and a dangerous glint flickered in her phoenix eyes.
“There’s a traitor among us?”
Farushiel said nothing, only nodded slightly.
“Damn!”
Zhao Yingyue cursed under her breath, wincing again as the pain flared, but her anger was undimmed.
“Who is it? That oil-soaked king, or those useless, embezzling nobles? Are they so scared of your power that they want to use monsters to get rid of you?”
It was the most direct and plausible guess for the political environment of Arslan Royal City.
But Farushiel shook her head.
“Dulannil may be a fool, but he isn’t stupid enough to destroy his own walls. As for those nobles, they may be greedy and short-sighted, but none of them have the courage or ability to collaborate with something on the level of a Demon King’s Apostle.
Their minds are filled with nothing but gold and beauties—they can’t grasp schemes at this scale.”
Her analysis was cold and objective, as if dissecting a corpse.
“Besides, my focus isn’t on how our movements were leaked, but on… why the enemy is so obsessed with the prophecy stone.”
Farushiel’s gaze grew deep and distant, as if piercing through the infirmary walls to glimpse a deeper darkness.
“Zeheriel’s goal from the start wasn’t to kill me, but to seize the prophecy stone. This means there’s someone, or a faction, among our enemies who understands the prophecy stone very well—even enough to devise a plot that evades its warning.”
She paused, then spoke a conclusion that made even Zhao Yingyue shudder.
“Anyone around us could be a spy… including [Jingwei Sage], or even… Senior Nilo.”
The infirmary fell into long silence once more.
Outside, sunlight still shone brightly, but it couldn’t penetrate the shadow that suddenly grew in the hearts of the two girls.
The easy atmosphere had vanished, replaced by an invisible, icy tension.
“Shit.”
After a long while, Zhao Yingyue, whose wounds had gone numb from pain beneath the bandages, summed up her feelings concisely.
This time, Farushiel nodded in complete agreement.