In the end, Fuli successfully persuaded the berserk middle-aged security guard to retreat with a single sentence: "Instead of chasing us up and down the street here, you'd be better off hurrying home to cut your losses!"
"When you catch them in the act, remember to call the woman's parents and her whole extended family! You need all the witnesses and material evidence perfectly gathered so you can nail it as an absolute dead case!"
Waving at the man's desolate, hurriedly departing back, Fuli coughed lightly under the subtle gazes of his companions. "Anyway, let's go look at the house."
"Heh."
Topaz crossed her arms, her face expressionless, the red inner highlights of her silver hair fluttering in the breeze.
She secretly thought to herself that this guy's facial features were the most attractive out of anyone she had ever met—so why did he have to be cursed with such a mouth?
Fu Hua, having located the position of the ghost courtyard via the map in the security room, smoothed things over. "Outside vehicles aren't allowed inside the residential area. Let's walk over."
"Alright."
"Wait a moment, I'll call someone to cover his shift."
Topaz picked up the walkie-talkie on the desk and gave a few instructions. Soon, another staff member who had been out patrolling jogged back to the guardhouse to take over.
After leaving, the three walked along the quiet road toward their destination.
This villa district was laid out very spaciously. The asphalt road was flat and empty, flanked by towering poplar trees. The sunlight was sliced into scattered dapples of light, forming a tranquil and beautiful canopy corridor overhead.
Along the way, they encountered a few elderly people out for a stroll, who initially greeted them enthusiastically.
However, upon hearing that this group was heading for that ghost manor, the warm smiles on their faces instantly froze, and they quickly distanced themselves as if avoiding something ominous.
"Talk about some innate neighborhood tension," Fuli couldn't help but comment.
Topaz shrugged, looking thoroughly unfazed. "Young people might feel excited and curious about these mysterious urban legends. Adults only worry that it will drag down housing prices in the area and affect asset values."
"Would people who live in mansions like this really care about a little fluctuation in housing prices?"
"Why wouldn't they? This is the Third Ring of the Luofu's administrative center. The prices here are equivalent to a courtyard house in Shenzhou's Yingtian Prefecture." Topaz shot him a glance, filled with the certainty of a veteran investor. "No one's money grows on trees. Take you for example, Mr. Fuli. As the creator of the Light Cones, the total value of your transactions with Miss Asta is more than enough to buy a dozen aerospace transport ships. Yet, didn't you make a beeline for the discounted haunted houses the moment you walked into the trading center?"
"That's because—"
"I know, Hyperion's Massive Electric Corp is a bottomless money-swallowing beast for R&D." The girl interrupted him, a knowing smile curling on her lips. "But how can you assume that the families living here don't have projects or hobbies requiring massive capital investments just like you do?"
Fu Hua nodded in agreement. "In the real world, everyone is the protagonist of their own life."
"Alright, you're right."
Miss Yelena, having resumed her corporate executive persona, had sharp rhetoric. The newbie Jail-Li lacked the debating prowess of Zhuge Liang verbally sparring with the scholars, so he gracefully bowed out of the argument.
About twenty minutes later, the three stood outside a Sui-and-Tang-dynasty-style courtyard surrounded by high walls.
With its gray bricks, dark tiles, flying eaves, and bracket sets, it looked old, yet one could still catch a glimpse of its former majestic grandeur.
Topaz took out the key and swiped it over the access sensor. The heavy solid wood doors slowly parted, revealing a massive, classical mansion that covered a vast area.
Fuli stepped forward and rapped his knuckles against a pillar thick enough that it would take a person's arms to encircle it. It produced a dull, solid echo, leaving him somewhat surprised.
"The quality of these materials is really good."
Anyone who has bought detached villas or traditional courtyards knows that the most expensive part of such properties is often not the purchase price, but the subsequent renovation and maintenance costs. It was like those high-end luxury cars; many people grit their teeth and buy one, only to find the upkeep costs are fatal, forcing them to sell it off quickly to cut their losses.
Topaz added professionally, "I've read the complete architectural assessment report provided by Deputy Manager Liu Zhen. Theoretically, even if it sits vacant for another fifty years, the main structure of this manor will absolutely not collapse or suffer severe damage."
"Is there a hidden story?" Fuli, who had only looked at the price and the lot size at the time, blinked.
Topaz wasn't annoyed. He had specifically asked her to accompany him to look at houses. The more casual he acted before, the more it showed he trusted her. Staking her professionalism as the Topaz of Debt Retrieval, she wouldn't let this transaction have any flaws.
"It's not really a hidden story; it's considered a rather famous case in the Luofu's architectural history." Topaz recalled, "When this house was being built, there was a Vidyadhara tester on the inspection team. She possessed a unique technique that could accurately locate the 'Eye' of any material—the most fragile point of its structure—and destroy it instantly with a heavy strike."
Fu Hua's eye twitched as she listened. "If the developers didn't bribe her, she would secretly channel power into the 'Eye' during the inspection and destroy the building's structural integrity?"
"Yes. As long as the money wasn't right, a single punch from her could turn a Level 9 earthquake-resistant building into a tofu-dreg project." Topaz sighed. "But the owner of this mansion happened to be incredibly stubborn. After the house failed the inspection, before the Vidyadhara could even send her extortion signal, the owner brought in special ores mixed with Honkai energy to reinforce the foundation and sought out Master Yingxing—one of the High Cloud Quintet of that era—to design the main structure."
"Things blew up and even involved the High Cloud Quintet." Fuli grew interested. "And then? Did she get caught?"
"Yeah. Before becoming a Stellaron Hunter, Blade was one of the top master forgemasters in Zhuming, with a reputation even greater than Miss Yunli's." Topaz shook her head. "The Vidyadhara Preceptors initially tried to mediate, but the Imbibitor Lunae of that time, Dan Feng, insisted on handling it impartially. Ultimately, that Vidyadhara was sentenced according to the law to ten years of solitary confinement in the Shackling Prison."
"To think a simple house could involve two members of the High Cloud Quintet. Truly worthy of a place I set my sights on." Fuli sighed in admiration. "So, do the haunted rumors here have anything to do with these special building materials?"
"Perhaps."
Topaz couldn't give a definitive answer either.
She walked briskly around the perimeter of the main building to inspect it carefully before forcefully pushing open the heavy main doors.
"Cough! Cough, cough!"
Dust that had accumulated for who knows how many years rushed at their faces, dancing wildly in the thin light. No matter how good the materials were, they couldn't stop the dust from settling over the years. If it wasn't midday with a few rays of sunlight piercing through the broken window panes, the scene inside the hall would likely have been even more eerie and terrifying.
"The Luofu's territory is vast, spanning millions of square kilometers. Who knows how many legends of spirits and monsters are generated every day?" Topaz waved her hand to disperse the dust in front of her. "Even the Cloud Knights find it difficult to verify and handle all the rumors, let alone this type that has persisted for over a decade without expanding or causing any substantial harm."
"But it doesn't matter." The girl looked back, flashing a bright, confident smile. "We'll do them a favor and handle this little problem for them today."
"Next, we just wait until midnight to confirm if that so-called monster really exists, and what its true identity is."
With a thought from Fuli, numerous phantom swords mimicked various cleaning tools and began to efficiently tidy up the place.
"If it doesn't exist, everyone is happy. If it does, we'll just conveniently get rid of it."
Fu Hua glanced at the gradually darkening sky outside the window and walked over to the two who were cleaning up. "There's still about nine hours until midnight. I have some food here, do you want some?"
Saying that, she magically produced a jar of pickled mustard greens.
"Uh..."
Fuli and Topaz looked at each other in dismay.
They were both people used to eating delicacies. It wasn't that they couldn't endure hardship—they had both suffered quite a bit in their childhoods, after all. But looking at the extremely plain jar of pickles in Fu Hua's hand, the two of them, unwilling to eat bitterness when they didn't have to, reached a tacit understanding to just order three portions of takeout later.
Time slipped away quietly as they waited. The projected sun above the Luofu gradually set, and the bright moon and stars replaced the sunlight, taking dominion over the canopy of the sky.
Taking advantage of the time to finish discussing the details of the Light Cone press conference with Topaz, Fuli glanced at the digital watch on his left wrist and found that there were less than twenty minutes left until midnight.
"Mmh... it's about time."
Topaz stood up, stretching her waist and legs, which had grown slightly stiff from sitting so long.
With a reach of her hand, a translucent, lustrous topaz emitting a gentle energy fluctuation appeared out of thin air.
Noticing the gazes of her companions, she took the initiative to explain, "This is the Topaz of Debt Retrieval. It's my Cornerstone."
Fu Hua nodded slightly.
She had also heard that the IPC's Ten Stonehearts had a peculiar biological fragment implanted in their bodies. The Cornerstone was the trigger that induced the fragment's power. Once activated, even an ordinary person could gain immense strength sufficient to hold a place within the Critical-Class level.
The reason Topaz had been overwhelmed to the point of agony by Fuli's feedback was largely due to this system. No matter how much of a genius the girl was, it was impossible for someone so young to climb the intricate corporate ladder while simultaneously achieving a Critical-Class combat rating on her own. Her personal strength was only around A-Rank; she usually relied more on her subordinates and mechas, so she naturally couldn't withstand Critical-Class feedback.
But then again...
Fu Hua's gaze lingered on that Topaz of Debt Retrieval. She couldn't shake the feeling that the energy aura it emitted gave her an extremely distant and vague sense of familiarity.
It shouldn't be recent—at least two or three thousand years ago.
What could it be?
She tried to recall, but drew a blank.
Yes, the memories of the Previous Era could be recovered through the descriptions of Prometheus and Dr. MEI, and the memories of the last five hundred years could rely on records from Schicksal and the Taixu Front. But for the portion stuck in between, which had been completely erased by Fenghuang Down's First Zeroth Power, she was currently powerless to remember.
As the saying goes, the night is deep and quiet; when the children are silent, they are either sleeping or causing trouble.
Time ticked by second by second in the tranquility. Standing back-to-back in a triangular formation, the vigilance of the three reached its peak.
Until the moment the hour, minute, and second hands overlapped.
CRACK!
A slight but exceptionally clear, strange noise echoed without warning through the empty, silent hall.
Immediately after, the world spun, and a bizarre sensation like a mirror flipping washed over them. The space around the three of them mutated drastically.
The solid walls vanished like illusions, and the bluestone floor beneath their feet turned into damp, soft, dark red soil. The entire sky became dim and oppressive, faintly tinged with an ominous blood-red hue. The air was thick with a cold, dead silence—a nauseating, twisted sensation that did not belong to the real world.
Scrutinizing the bizarre environment around them, Fu Hua frowned. "This is a Fragmentum Erosion phenomenon."
The Fragmentum—a spatial erosion phenomenon existing within the Sea of Quanta. Its essence was a special domain that continuously expanded and eroded worlds. The more unstable the space-time barrier, the more frequently it appeared. It was also a sub-species of reality-warping fields.
Squeak!
With another soft sound, a round, peculiar creature popped out of thin air in a panic. Looking terrified as if it was being chased by something, it blindly bolted straight toward Topaz's chest, which was the closest to it.
Fuli reacted the fastest. He shot out his hand like lightning, grabbing the little creature by the scruff of its neck and lifting it into the air.
Topaz looked closely. "It's a Warp Trotter! Is something chasing it?"
A Warp Trotter—a peculiar creature in the Sea of Quanta with the ability to traverse space. It looked like a black-and-white piggy bank walking on four limbs. It had a mild temperament, tasted sweet (though inedible), and spent the vast majority of its life eating and running away. Travelers who occasionally encountered one considered it a sign of good luck.
At this moment, the little guy was struggling desperately in mid-air. Various spatial coordinate calculation formulas continuously popped up above its head, as if it planned to teleport away.
Unfortunately, Fuli's Stigma of the Void could divert 80% of spatial attribute effects. Probably guessing that teleporting rashly would result in its head being separated from its body, the formulas above the Warp Trotter's head vanished, but it continued to tremble violently, seemingly having encountered an existence that terrified it to its core.
Glancing at his companion's bulging chest, Fuli said casually, "Let's just call it Numby. Catch."
He casually tossed it into Topaz's arms, then deployed his Cold River Reflecting the Moon domain, attempting to probe the truth of this twisted space.
However, the moment his mental power expanded outward—
SLASH!
A fierce sword intent, seemingly capable of severing anything, abruptly flashed through the sensory field of Cold River Reflecting the Moon, slicing his extended mental probe cleanly in two!
Fuli let out a muffled groan, his expression suddenly turning incredibly solemn.
Without a doubt, an extremely powerful enemy was lurking nearby!
And the tall figure that slowly stepped out from the blood-red mist and twisted light and shadows thoroughly confirmed his judgment.
Tap, tap, tap...
Crisp, rhythmic footsteps, like beats striking against their hearts, approached from afar.
Appearing in the trio's line of sight was a peerless swordswoman with an utterly cold and aloof aura.
She wore tight-fitting black and blue armor, over-the-knee combat boots wrapping her straight, elegant legs, and snow-white hair that cascaded down like a frozen waterfall, tied neatly into a ponytail. She looked absolutely breathtaking.
Her face was stern, like a meticulously carved sculpture of ice and jade. Her skin was as pale as the moon, radiating a chilling aura, and her crimson eyes were clear and penetrating, instilling a sense of freezing dread while making one irresistibly captivated.
"It really is you, Jingliu!"
Topaz held the whimpering Numby in one hand and gripped her Cornerstone tightly in the other.
During the entire afternoon prior, aside from discussing the post-conference arrangements, the three had also sat together to debate who the mastermind behind the anomaly here could be. Ultimately, all clues pointed to the former Sword Champion of the Luofu who had defected from the Taixu Front, one of the legendary High Cloud Quintet, the former supreme sword instructor of all Shenzhou, bestowed the title of Transcendent Flash—Jingliu.
Yes, the former owner of this haunted mansion was exactly this legendary swordswoman. Otherwise, a trivial matter like a failed building inspection wouldn't have alarmed the illustrious Yingxing and the previous Imbibitor Lunae, Dan Feng.
Combined with the abnormal low temperatures late at night and the eyewitness reports of a pale blue monster emitting biting frost, the answer was practically set in stone.
The only question was: as a traitor, how had she managed to slip past the Luofu's heavy blockades and remain hidden here all year round?
"The answer is simple." Fu Hua silently took off her glasses, the Grips of Taixu quietly materializing over her hands. "The Jingliu before us is not the legend herself, but a Fragmentum Creation."
In addition to erosion, the Fragmentum also recorded the etheric data of the things it touched. Mixing this with its own stored data, it produced a grafted entity known as a Fragmentum Creation. These creations generally existed in the form of erosion; they retained a portion of their prototype's memories or behavioral habits, but their outward expressions were vastly different, often displaying intense xenophobia.
Professor Veritas Ratio, who had systematically studied the Fragmentum, had repeatedly warned: items eroded by the Fragmentum and their original prototypes must be treated as completely unrelated entities. Entertaining any fantasies about them would lead to severe consequences!
"In other words, the Fragmentum eroded this mansion and subsequently projected a powerful impression of its original owner."
Fuli breathed a sigh of relief. The real Transcendent Flash was an incredibly rare, rule-breaking S-Rank monster who could hold her ground against Sequence powerhouses for a short time. Even the Celestial Phoenix at her peak would need quite a while to take her down, let alone his cousin whose condition was currently heavily impaired.
This counterfeit in front of them wasn't so bad. After Fuli carefully sensed it, he found that the opponent's power level fluctuated around the Critical-Class. Even if she inherited Jingliu's masterful swordsmanship, combining the strength of all three of them meant they still had a fighting chance.
It was fortunate that they were the ones who came. If an ordinary Cloud Knight squad had come to investigate such a thorny incident requiring several Critical-Class fighters to handle, they would have likely faced complete annihilation.
Having figured this out, the wariness in the boy's eyes was gradually replaced by a burning desire.
His gaze towards Jingliu became excited and scorching, looking like Rita seeing a shota-fied Fuli and wanting nothing more than to immediately pounce on him and slowly devour his essence.
Don't misunderstand; he didn't have any improper thoughts about this Sword Champion who looked identical to the real person. Nor did he harbor any absurd fantasies about using her as a surrogate for a certain someone, making her let out heavenly moans while crazily swallowing a Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannon, her eyes rolling back to show the whites, and getting completely covered in investigation material.
Rather, he realized that right in front of him was a once-in-a-lifetime, perfect opportunity to practice his swordsmanship.
During his battle with Fu Xuan, Fuli had already realized something: he had almost completely exhausted the capital he had accumulated from his previous life loop, and his progress in swordsmanship had been stagnant for a long time.
It wasn't that he hadn't asked his cousin for guidance. The problem was, as early as the Kanas Lake incident, Fu Hua's evaluation of her little cousin's sword skills was "similar to my own." Ultimately, the Celestial Phoenix was most adept at fist techniques, not the sword. She was already wrung dry; she truly had nothing left to teach him.
But the phantom of Jingliu before him was completely different. Her prototype was a peak figure who had truly reached the pinnacle of swordsmanship, surpassing even Fu Hua herself in that specific regard.
This was completely normal. The accumulation of time was never the sole metric for measuring skill. If Fuli could bring his sword realm close to the Celestial Phoenix's in two and a half years, why was it impossible for an unparalleled genius whose heart was wholly devoted to the sword to surpass her?
A person always has to look forward.
Like right now.
He needed to figure out a way to defeat her, but ideally without completely destroying her.
Thinking this, Fuli lowered his voice and quickly spoke to his two companions who were standing by in strict formation:
"Cousin, Director Topaz, do me a favor. I want to capture her alive and keep her as a long-term, free sparring partner!"