"Who are you?"
"Why are you here?!"
Two identical voices reached Yu Jin's ears. However, while the voices were the same, the emotions contained within them were poles apart.
Rosalyne saw Yu Jin with surprise and relief, as for the Lady, it was pure shock.
It seemed Yu Jin had left quite a psychological shadow on her.
"Why shouldn't I be here?" Yu Jin retorted to the Lady, then with a flick of his hand, the Lady's illusion was peeled away from Rosalyne.
Two identical people, but one was filled with arrogance and disdain, while the other exuded youth and vitality.
In short, one was a menopausal woman in her forties, and the other was a young girl fresh out of college in her twenties.
The Lady looked at Yu Jin, who was glancing around. Yu Jin's previous position should have been Rostam's, who had died, but now it had changed.
The destined outcome had been broken. All because of this guy in front of her!
"Rostam..., Rostam, you can save him, right! Please..., please save him!" The Lady quickly stopped dwelling on why Yu Jin was here. There were too many mysteries about Yu Jin; one more or one less didn't make a difference.
Her gaze burned as she looked at Yu Jin, a rare plea appearing on her arrogant face.
"Seriously, big sister? A dead man from five hundred years ago! You want me to save him? Are you treating me like a wish-granting machine?" Yu Jin listened to the Lady's request and helplessly spread his hands.
Rostam was a genuinely dead man! And he had been dead for five hundred years, leaving no remnant soul, completely vanished into the river of history.
If Yu Jin were to save him, it would probably just result in another monster popping out.
"You're lying! You can do it, can't you? You can!" The Lady suddenly became sharp for some reason, as if convinced Yu Jin could do it.
"Hiss—, why didn't I notice your eyes were so sharp before?" Yu Jin scratched his head, as if he had been seen through.
The Lady and Rosalyne's expressions immediately brightened upon hearing this. The gloom had lasted for five hundred years, and now they finally saw a glimmer of hope.
However, their joy didn't last long, as an unspeakable dread emanated from Yu Jin's body.
Everything fell silent. Memories truly became memories, frozen in this moment, gradually yellowing.
The faint sound of kindling Burning began in the silence. Finally, it grew louder and louder, overwhelming the thoughts of the Lady and Rosalyne.
"I could do it in the past, but not now. Because I don't want to relive the past; now I only want to move forward."
"I'm not hungry yet, I don't want to eat anything."
Flames, flames that Burned everything, flames that created everything, flames that used souls as fuel, appeared before the two of them.
These flames had Burned countless souls, finally forging the "monster" before them.
"Now, do you understand?" The unspoken dread dissipated, like a tide that had submerged the two of them receding, allowing them to breathe again.
"Besides, why should I help you?" Yu Jin's tone became light again. He continued:
"I'm a refined and easygoing person, but that doesn't mean I don't have preferences. Your friendship, in my heart, is at the bottom tier. Is that clear?"
Yu Jin bent down and gestured on the ground with his hand, indicating that he didn't have much goodwill towards the Lady.
"Then why did you come here?" The Lady's face was pale, seemingly not yet recovered from the suffocation she had just experienced.
"Big sister, don't you know your own problem? If I hadn't come, you would have set the entire Cider Lake on fire." Yu Jin stood up, and the yellowed scene was consumed by tiny flames, like a photograph set ablaze.
Yu Jin disappeared, and Rosalyne and the Lady re-Melted into one. In the endless darkness, a ray of light shone in.
The Lady felt something and began to run towards this beam of light. The light grew larger and larger, gradually filling her vision.
The pure white light stung the Lady's eyes, making her unable to open them. She raised her hands, closed her eyes, and stepped forward.
"King, what's wrong with her?"
"I don't know, she might be dying. You're finished, Lanssangx, get ready for jail!"
"Huh? No way? I didn't do anything!"
...Noisy sounds entered the Lady's ears. She opened her eyes and saw a large hole in her ice cocoon.
Sunlight shone through the large hole into the ice cocoon, illuminating Yu Jin and Lanssangx's heads so clearly—the two were peering into the ice cocoon.
"Looking good, big sister. Haven't seen you in a while, why the new hairstyle?" Yu Jin saw the Lady wake up and immediately pulled out a mirror and held it up to her face without a word.
Distorted makeup, wild, flowing curly hair, rising ashes. Everything was vastly different from her usual self.
"By the way, your hair is curled quite nicely. Where did you get it permed?"
"I split it!"
Yu Jin and Lanssangx, in unison, commented on the Lady, who had transformed into the Crimson Witch.
"Could you please move aside?" The Lady looked at Yu Jin and Lanssangx, who were critiquing her, and asked calmly.
She couldn't help but be calm; she seemed unable to defeat either of them.
"Oh."
"Come out."
Yu Jin and Lanssangx quietly stepped back, then silently watched the Lady, who only had her head exposed inside the ice cocoon.
Only then did the Lady realize that Yu Jin and the others had indeed only made a small opening in the ice cocoon; to truly get out, she still had to rely on herself.
"Hmph!" The Lady took a deep breath, and a scorching airflow sprayed out with her exhalation, Melting a pit in the ice cocoon.
The ubiquitous flames within her body began to flow. Fiery red patterns began to appear on the ice cocoon formed by the Delusion.
"Boom!" The gushing flames did not choose to Melt the solid ice, but instead directly shattered it.
The Crimson Witch, consumed by fire, descended upon the world once again after five hundred years!
"Wow! So tall!" Yu Jin looked up at the Lady. Her enormous skirt lifted her, making her appear even taller than the Blackblade.
"Fire! Fire!" Lanssangx's voice came from afar. Yu Jin turned his head and saw Lanssangx repeatedly swatting at the rekindled flames with her dragon claws.
"Can you rein it in a bit?" Yu Jin looked up at the Lady. Heat surged from her body, and invisible flames scorched everything around her.
Of course, to Yu Jin, this amount of heat was like a gentle breeze, completely imperceptible.
"It seems..., I can't." The Lady was silent for a moment, then replied with some embarrassment.
If she could rein it in, she wouldn't have used the Delusion as a shackle to suppress herself.
"This move of yours..., it's quite ruthless." Yu Jin glanced at the Lady's condition. The power gained from Burning herself out, it was normal for it to be uncontrollable.
"But your stage two transition is too long? If you were fighting me, you'd be dead before you could even activate it." Yu Jin saw that with Lanssangx's efforts, the green surroundings quickly disappeared.
So he no longer worried about fires—everything was already Burned, what else could catch fire?
The Lady didn't know how to respond to Yu Jin's words. Breaking through her shackles was called "stage two" by him, and she had no intention of being hostile towards Yu Jin at all.
She felt that if she really angered Yu Jin, it would be better to just slit her own throat, lest she couldn't even find a corpse in the end.
"I'll teach you how to quickly enter stage two." Yu Jin suddenly seemed to think of something fun, and immediately ran behind a charred piece of wood in the distance.
"Screech—" A harsh scraping sound rang out. The Lady and Lanssangx looked up in Yu Jin's direction.
They saw nothing. The tree that had turned to charcoal was distorted. It and everything behind it seemed to have detached from the world, showing no valid information.
The sound of metal scraping didn't last long. The distant scenery was no longer distorted, and Yu Jin walked out from behind the charcoal wood.
In his hand, there was a clump of embers glowing with faint sparks.
Embers—the lingering embers within heroes. Items that the Ashless ones could not obtain, and therefore were attracted to.
They could gain the power of fire, increasing their maximum health until death.
"Try squeezing it?"
The embers flickered with firelight, somewhat bloated, looking like a Burning person.
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