In this room, where the ceiling was framed with wooden planks and slanted beams, the angle of the glass skylight gave it the feel of a terrace built to reflect the starry night sky.
Yet right now, beneath the bright, gathering sunlight of summer, the heartbeats of the two people inside were hammering out of control.
"Tata, things aren't what you think," Lanqi denied immediately.
"They aren't? You weren't thinking what I just said?" Seeing Lanqi deny it so briskly and firmly, Talia sounded a notch angrier.
"No—don't take things out of context." Cold sweat beaded Lanqi's brow. Talia could detect lies; the more he tried to explain, the more tangled it would get.
"Which means I didn't misread it..." Talia's breathing grew rapid and shallow, a tempest of emotion surging within her. A faint, involuntary flush tinted her cheeks—a physiological reaction to the extremes of shock and nervous agitation.
"Calm down, calm down, Talia!" Lanqi's palms turned clammy. Gripped by the tie, he could feel the dangerous heat radiating from her at point-blank range. Talia right now was exceedingly dangerous—far more dangerous than when they had first met on the second floor of the Wilfort residence the previous week!
For starters, Lanqi couldn't comprehend how she had suddenly read his inner thoughts without warning.
Furthermore, Talia's mind-reading magic was half-baked at best right now, and with his [Mark of Truth] granting him a degree of resistance against divination-type magic, it seemed she hadn't even read everything!
A second ago, Lanqi had felt steady as an old dog. Now, never in his wildest dreams did he expect Talia to have awakened mind-reading magic at such an accelerated pace!
"Please hear me out this time, all right? I was in the Northern Continent for a full half year, and so much happened in that time that it can't be cleared up in a few sentences. I won't lie to you. Let's sit down and talk things through slowly, okay?" Lanqi spoke deliberate and measured words like a bomb disposal expert, trying to get Talia to cool down.
"..."
Talia's movements were stiff and mechanical.
There were already far too many things she couldn't make sense of.
Why did Antanas, Sinora, and Pranay trust Lanqi, get along with him so amicably, and return together?
In her memory, with the exception of Antanas whose aggressiveness was relatively low, the other two great demons would likely have annihilated Lanqi the instant they laid eyes on him, leaving no room for negotiation whatsoever.
Even if he managed to secure a chance to talk, the odds of Lanqi getting them to trust him were microscopic.
Unless... Lanqi had exploited her identity as the demon princess.
Recalling Lanqi's thoughts just now, Talia grew more horrified the more she thought about it.
Did she really just sit at home while a husband fell from the sky?
"Tata, listen to me. We need to talk. Don't worry, there's nothing that can't be resolved, and even if you truly feel it's irreversible, I won't run away."
Lanqi continued his soothing efforts.
He could sense Talia's turbulent emotions gradually settling back down from the shock.
Even if there had been a minor hiccup, he could still salvage this.
He had always been cautious and steady; the concept of crashing and burning didn't exist in his vocabulary. After all, he was by no means a comedic clown.
Right at that moment, an indistinct commotion drifted up from the first-floor dining room below the floorboards.
"Eek! Why is there a rat in the restaurant?!"
A young girl's shrill shriek pierced through the floorboards, carrying up the stairs and corridor into the living area of Talia's room.
Right after that came a caterwaul:
"Meow-meow-meow! Where's a rat?!"
Boss Cat seemed to have been frightened right onto a cupboard.
What followed was utter pandemonium.
"It's a fox!"
It turned out Antanas had discovered that the big fox had shrunk down too small, scurrying across the floor, which the Poet of Great Love had mistaken for a big black rat.
In an instant, the noise downstairs quieted down again.
Just from the sounds alone, Lanqi could piece together what had happened down in the first-floor dining room.
A simple incident, hardly shocking in itself.
And yet...
The expression on Lanqi's face froze completely solid.
Had the clock on the wall of Talia's home not still been ticking, one might have thought time had stopped.
At a moment when Talia's mental state was this fragile, any outside influence was utterly terrifying.
Let alone the alluring, sultry voice of the Poet of Great Love that amplified emotions tenfold!
For a moment, Lanqi couldn't tell whether the Poet of Great Love was genuinely afraid of rats or dead set on getting him killed!
"Tata...?"
Feeling his entire body stiffen and sweat pouring down his face, he forced out a strained smile, looking at Talia, whose eyes were already swirling with dizzying chaos.
As if she had lost her soul, Talia fumbled blindly along the cabinet for a good while, and the first thing her hand found was a fruit knife.
"Lanqi—!"
Pinning Lanqi against the wall, Talia held the knife to his throat.
"Y-You have to take responsibility for me! If you can't take responsibility, I'll... I'll..."
Her voice, a wreck of rage, breakdown, and helplessness, trembled in incoherent fury.
At this point, Lanqi could no longer parse the exact composition of her emotions.
All he knew was that the Poet of Great Love had just detonated a bomb far more terrifying than the Nuclear Fusion Wolf.
"..."
Lanqi could not utter a word. If he dared utter the slightest evasion right now, Talia might drag him down to mutual destruction.
Yet if he didn't deflect and promised too much, once Talia regained her senses, they might still blow up together.
Right now—
he was merely half a step away from death!
There was no way he could talk reason and fudge his way out like before!
...
On the first floor of Boss Cat Restaurant.
"Hmm?" Antanas looked up in confusion. She sensed that Talia's mana fluctuations had just surged violently.
"What are the two of them doing up there?" Sinora asked, equally perplexed.
"..." Pranay continued polishing a glass.
Hyperion rested her chin on her hand, frowning in deep thought.
It had originally been a touching reunion, yet on top of being moved and dazed, Tata's face had unexpectedly seemed flushed.
"...Wait, in your memories, wasn't Tata vastly different from how she looked just now?"
Hyperion lifted her head as if struck by sudden realization.
"Yeah," Antanas and Sinora nodded.
"Hiss—"
Hyperion sucked in a cold breath.
*My dearest best friend, if you're hell-bent on dying, I really can't stop you!*
Hyperion clutched her head, finally understanding what had happened.
As everyone knew, mana airships had the lowest crash rate of all aviation—but once one crashed, the survival rate was also the lowest!
Worst of all, the sound made—intentionally or not—by the Poet of Great Love just now, if carried to the second floor, might have already thrown the situation in the room into complete chaos.
Hyperion immediately recalled the Poet of Great Love, who was sticking her tongue out, keeping her securely under lock and key and refusing to let her out again.
"You three!" Hyperion urgently addressed them.
Antanas, who had also sensed something wrong with the mana fluctuations upstairs, nodded and followed Hyperion toward the foot of the stairs.
"What's going on, meow?"
Boss Cat didn't understand why Hyperion's expression had changed so abruptly and curiously padded after them.
Soon, they all arrived outside the door of Talia's room on the second floor.
Listening through the door panel, the inside was calmer than expected—only the sound of two people breathing more heavily than usual. It seemed no one had died yet.
"..."
Hyperion was anxious. Gripping the spare key, she didn't know whether she should force the door open to save Lanqi.
Yet from her past experience at the Wilfort residence, she knew that barging in might trigger an even more unpredictable tragedy.
Fortunately, aside from Lanqi's family, no one else knew about that incident.
In the end, she clutched the key tightly and signaled the three great demons with her eyes to be ready to rescue Lanqi at any moment.
Unable to tell what was happening inside the room right now, they would listen first, and if things went south, save Lanqi immediately!
Chapter 520