Fang Xiaoxia, Happy Birthday

"You've suddenly brought out this bow and arrow. What are you going to do?" Beside him, Crow's gaze also settled on him in surprise. Though a divine object dulls its own light, Crow was not about to be fooled by the Thunderous Heavenly Bow. Surprise showed in her eyes at first, then they grew grave. She knew Bai Zhou had obtained this Spirit-Name Secret Treasure, but she also knew that drawing a secret treasure was no easy thing. This was the present world, not Yuanmeng Middle School in the Reflected Ruin Realm... "Guess what I saw in the fragments of images passed along by the notebook and the school uniform?" Even as he answered Crow, Bai Zhou turned the question back on Fang Xiaoxia. "What?" Fang Xiaoxia remembered the notebook that had been pressed against the top of her head before. Her heart tightened, and she realized at once that this had to concern her. "Little Fire Dragon, I'm asking you." Bai Zhou, the bow in his hand, had eyes unusually clear in the wind and rain tossing over the summit. He asked, low and quiet, "Back in elementary school and middle school, were your grades really that poor? Were there really never any friends around you?" At the mention of it, Classmate Fang felt her cheeks burn. "...I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm afraid that's really how it was." "Really... was it really like that?" Bai Zhou turned his head, looked into Fang Xiaoxia's eyes, and asked a second time, his meaning unclear. This time, even Crow sensed that something was wrong. "What else would it be?" Fang Xiaoxia answered without a second thought. "How could I not know my own—" Her voice cut off short. Fang Xiaoxia froze, then slowly knit her brows. Because when she recalled her years in elementary school and middle school, she suddenly found those memories a complete, hopeless blur. Every memory was light as air, broken and without order, carrying the distance of an outsider. And yet she clearly did remember. She remembered always shrinking into a corner in elementary school, watching the other children go about in groups, envy on her face. She remembered the prank graffiti someone had drawn on her desk in middle school, and the empty classroom after school, with only herself in it. These old memories always left a bitter ache, so Fang Xiaoxia had never been willing to look back on them. But when Bai Zhou asked, when Fang Xiaoxia herself took the initiative to remember carefully— the edges of these memory-images suddenly flickered and warped a few times, like a television screen with a bad connection. "Crackle." Like a snow-static screen flashing a few times through her mind. Fragments utterly strange, yet carrying an eerie sense of familiarity, leapt without any logic out of the depths of her head. These images clashed with the memories Fang Xiaoxia had originally possessed, tangling together in confusion. Fang Xiaoxia "remembered" a female classmate maliciously scrawling graffiti on her seat, with an extremely vicious joke written there. And yet she also "remembered" that same female classmate stuffing a childish fruit candy into her hand, giggling as they held hands and said they would be best friends for life. Fang Xiaoxia "remembered" that her grades had always been poor, her test papers covered in red crosses. And yet she also "remembered" placing first in the class on the final exam, and her mom and dad taking her to the supermarket to buy four dolls in one go. Even the cashier had said a child who studied well ought to be rewarded. Contradictions. What... what was going on?! Bewilderment showed on Fang Xiaoxia's face, and a measure of panic. She felt as if something had gone wrong with her memories, but before this she had always taken the memories of the past for granted. If her parents' existence was, for Fang Xiaoxia, a clear-eyed sinking—if her subconscious had already found the problem, and she had willingly taken the pills only to keep her parents and this family— then these memories of the past were something Fang Xiaoxia had never been aware of at all. "My memories... it seems someone changed them..." Fang Xiaoxia grew frightened. The girl was as flustered as a helpless little beast. Her lips trembled as she lifted her head toward Bai Zhou. "I... what's wrong with me?" "As expected." Bai Zhou understood. A girl as good-looking and kind as Fang Xiaoxia—how could she be overlooked to this extent at school? How could she be so... unnoticed, unwelcome, without even a single friend? That was not normal, of course. An abnormality disguised as normal, so taken for granted, was the most chilling thing of all the longer one thought about it! "You told me," Bai Zhou said, "that your grades in elementary and middle school were not ideal." "And that you had no friends." Of course, Bai Zhou had heard all of this from Fang Xiaoxia back when he had turned into a black cat to recover from his injuries. "But I read the Caged Bird Project concerning you. It mentioned a passage like this." Bai Zhou said: "[Observation Day Ninety-Three. The target's tenth day since school began. She failed her first exam in high school and is caught between anxious self-doubt and the urge to rouse herself and catch up. I advised her to let things take their course and not to work so hard. No matter how poor her grades, her parents would love her, and so on. Everyone has a fate destined from birth. One ought to learn to yield to fate, and accept one's mediocrity in advance. The target seemed to half understand. I will continue to exert influence.]" "Wang Axu..." Fang Xiaoxia's heart went cold, and a shudder ran through her. "She was the neighbor who lived downstairs from my home..." She had long known these people were a problem, but hearing it spelled out now still left Fang Xiaoxia a little sad. "Yet this passage contradicts the past you described yourself." Bai Zhou said, "If your grades had always been poor, then there should not have been a state of anxious self-doubt and of rousing yourself to catch up. Nor would they have needed to go to such pains to influence you, so you would fall into mediocrity with peace of mind." "Unless you were not like that at all before." "Before, I..." The look in Fang Xiaoxia's eyes seemed a little lost. Bai Zhou nodded. "In your home, in the images transmitted through the notebook and the school uniform, I saw roughly three broken scenes. One of them told a story... a story of salvation." "A story of salvation?" Fang Xiaoxia repeated, puzzled. "There was a girl with poor grades, extremely introverted, who didn't dare speak to her classmates—until the most popular, gentlest class monitor in the class took the initiative, in art class, to borrow a pair of scissors from her. Then they became friends." "That girl was saved by the gentle class monitor. She began to grow cheerful. She began to look forward to school. She felt she would do anything for the class monitor. From then on they were inseparable, and even for the graduation photo they had to stand together." Fang Xiaoxia's eyes gradually widened. She felt the story Bai Zhou told was utterly strange. She had no impression of it at all, and yet she instinctively felt the matter was bound up with her. "So the girl who was saved by the class monitor..." Fang Xiaoxia's lips moved. "That was me?" I had a class monitor like that—my pure, unreachable first love? True or not, how could I myself not know at all? "No." But Bai Zhou shook his head. "You were the one who saved her." "You were Class Monitor Fang, the most popular and gentlest one in the class." "Wh-what..." Fang Xiaoxia froze. Those bright red checkmarks in the notebook—Bai Zhou had once thought they symbolized the dreams Fang Xiaoyan had fulfilled in Fang Xiaoxia's place. But why was it only the last one that Fang Xiaoyan could not "replace" Fang Xiaoxia in completing? Why had Fang Xiaoyan always believed Fang Xiaoxia could do anything? Seen now, the truth was perhaps that those bright red checkmarks were not things Fang Xiaoyan had completed in her place, but signs that Fang Xiaoxia herself had always been walking the road of realizing her ideals. In reality, the Fang Xiaoxia of the past was exactly the image the childhood Fang Xiaoxia had imagined. She really had once become the person she idealized. She had only lost that past self. "Class Monitor... Fang?" Fang Xiaoxia murmured to herself. Then she frowned on instinct, and her expression turned pained. Inside her mind, as if a dike had burst, memories of every kind wove together and attacked one another. For a moment she clearly "remembered" that the class monitor in her middle school had been someone else, a very good, very cheerful girl... but that class monitor—who had she been? A little later, she vaguely "remembered" that the class monitor in her middle school had been herself... "So someone altered her memories?" Beside them, Crow frowned. "Seeing her parents by taking pills is one thing. But if someone had directly tampered with her memories, I shouldn't have failed to see it..." "Because whether it was those calcium tablets, or Fang Xiaoxia's memories..." Bai Zhou shook his head. "None of these methods has anything to do with ordinary spirituality, nor with rituals, magic runes, or anything of the kind." "Or rather, these memories may truly exist, but they did not originally belong to 'Fang Xiaoxia'!" "They belonged to that girl!" Bai Zhou turned to look at Fang Xiaoxia, and his expression gradually grew grave. "The other memory I saw was of that female classmate you once saved. Later, together with the other students, she was transferred by Major into the Reflected Ruin Realm." "And after that, she was chosen by the demon, and became the core vessel of the demon's descent." He said to Fang Xiaoxia, "Originally, you fell into the Reflected Ruin Realm together with that female classmate, and together with the other classmates became fodder and offerings for the demon." "Me?" Fang Xiaoxia cried out. But wasn't she standing here now, perfectly fine? Bai Zhou went on, voice low. "However, the will of that chosen female classmate's main body to resist was too strong, so she made a bargain with the demon." "Let you go back, and she would willingly fuse with the demon." "Until the end, when she was about to fuse with the demon completely and lose all personality and consciousness, the last thing she did... was return to the school in the present world, and take a graduation photo with you, who were about to graduate and leave the school." "And then everyone forgot she had ever existed." At those words, Fang Xiaoxia's eyes flew wide. "She... I..." The girl seemed to remember something, and also seemed to remember nothing. There was only an emptiness in her heart. "Clearly, you had already forgotten her long ago... the same as everyone else." Bai Zhou let out a breath. The person who had left last words on the graduation photo was the girl Fang Xiaoxia had saved, and also the vessel the demon had chosen. The girl once saved by Fang Xiaoxia had at last gathered her courage to bargain with the demon, and in the last of her life had saved Fang Xiaoxia's. The memories Bai Zhou had seen in Fang Xiaoxia's home were extremely broken. Even after he did his best to sort them, he could only group them into roughly three memories. One was the warm, beautiful time when the girl and Fang Xiaoxia were inseparable. Those images came from the notebook Fang Xiaoxia had left. Another was the memory of the girl bargaining with the demon, releasing Fang Xiaoxia back to reality, and at the last taking a graduation photo with her. That memory came from the school uniform the Exam King had left. And the last memory from the school uniform... "You were extremely important to that classmate. You were the last thing she clung to, and the last thing she worried over... so the demon that later fused with her likewise needed you to exist." Bai Zhou said, voice solemn: "Why you possess those memories, and take it for granted that her experiences were your own past—" "Perhaps it is because there is some link between you and the demon that we cannot yet know. And so you would, through that link, have illusory visions of that girl's past." Bai Zhou offered his analysis and his guess. "What happened in between, we cannot yet know." "Why they needed you to stay mediocre, I'm not very clear on either..." "I suspect they needed you to remain in the same state as that female classmate back then—the female classmate who had never met Class Monitor Fang." Bai Zhou said gravely, "At least I can be sure they needed complete control over you. And I also know why you became like this." "Because in the last fragment of memory, I saw that female classmate, who had completely become a demon, take something from your body and seal it inside Takizawa Private Middle School." "It seemed to be..." Bai Zhou said, voice heavy: "A soul!" A flickering shadow that looked very much like Fang Xiaoxia, but only half a human figure. Bai Zhou did not know what a soul was. His level was far from being able to touch such things. But in the instant he saw that shadow, understanding came to him as if of its own accord— That was a soul! Half a soul! "So it really is spirit sight..." Beside him, Crow's heart sank. The worst, most dreadful guess from before had come true. The reason ordinary means of detection were useless was that someone had tampered with Fang Xiaoxia's soul. This method was beyond Major. It was beyond his subordinates too. It could only be the demon's inconceivable method. "A person has good and evil, clarity and turbidity. They took the soul that stood for your spiritual aura, talent, keenness, and perception." "And they left you only the half-soul of listlessness, dejection, mediocrity, and fear." "That is why you became as you are now." Bai Zhou spoke words that collapsed Fang Xiaoxia's whole view of the world. So... she had become like this, and there really was another reason? "That's why I said it long ago, Little Fire Dragon." Now Bai Zhou's voice reached Fang Xiaoxia's ear. "You were never ordinary. Much less awful." "It's only that... someone did not want to see you grow." "Those people well deserve to die." "Fortunately, between souls there is a pull beyond compare." Bai Zhou turned his head toward Crow again. In Fang Xiaoxia's eyes, it looked as if he were talking to himself. "If I break the school, the soul will return as well, right?" Crow thought for a moment, then nodded in confirmation. "That's right." Crow said, "At least, an attack at your level has no reason to take effect on a pure soul." "Good. This is exactly what I'm about to do—" Bai Zhou turned back, feeling the power boiling inside him, and activated the spirituality within his body. "It's time they gave it back." It was both to expose the underground base hidden beneath the school, and to break the seal on Fang Xiaoxia's half-soul. This school no longer had any reason to exist. As for how, exactly, to fulfill the promise he had made back then, and blow the school up... Bai Zhou drew a deep breath. The air on the summit was very damp. He raised the Thunderous Heavenly Bow in his hand. The ancient bow even seemed marked by the traces of worms, yet this length of rotten wood flowed, faint in the rainy night, with a dim dark-blue glow, as if answering the lightning overhead. Then Bai Zhou bent the bow, fingers hooked on empty air. "Crack!" A blinding pale-blue arc of lightning appeared from nowhere, flickering and leaping in the middle of the withered-branch bow. In the instant that dangerous hiss exploded, Bai Zhou felt the spirituality in his body pour madly out like a flood through an opened gate, greedily swallowed by this seemingly rotten bow. "This is..." Beside him, Crow's face was lit by the lightning, a riot of strange color in her eyes. A Spirit-Name Secret Treasure was beginning to revive. Frankly speaking, with Bai Zhou's strength at this moment, he was not yet enough to draw the Thunderous Heavenly Bow. Even an entry-level arrow—not the Thunderous Heavenly Bow after metamorphosis and awakening, and not its final form, the "Thunderous Heavenly Palace." But Bai Zhou was the master the Thunderous Heavenly Bow had chosen and to whom it had utterly submitted, so it would still make him a little allowance. Not only that. He had the "burst reagent," and the Nine Basic Slashes! The Nine Basic Slashes could also be the Nine Basic Punches, the Nine Basic Spears... In essence, this was a secret technique used to burst forth. It ought to be called the Nine Basic Stacks, or the Nine Basic Bursts: a supreme secret technique that combined spirituality through a formula, achieving the effect of "three times four" rather than "three plus four." The Third Basic Slash, the peak slash that fused the first three, let the user strike with their own spirituality at 4.5 times the amplitude. The Fourth Basic Slash went a step further on that basis, and could burst out at five times the amplitude! And after Bai Zhou drank the burst reagent, this amplitude would rise further, to 5.5 times! A Destined Adventurer standing before the level-5 threshold, burning his spirituality with all his might at 5.5 times the amplitude? In raw power alone, this had already touched the threshold of a level-6 Titled Extraordinary! It was just barely enough to reach the threshold for drawing the Heavenly Bow. "Strength Enhancement" ritual, on. "Spirituality Enhancement" ritual, on. "Robust Body" ritual, on. At the tips of all ten of Bai Zhou's fingers, the light of ritual runes bloomed. All 291 motes of spirituality in his body, corresponding to the positions of stars across the sky, lit one by one! "Spirituality, burn! Refine! Burst! Stack! Stack upon stack upon stack!" Surging spirituality compressed and refined within him, combined and reacted, used Bai Zhou's body as the furnace in which it detonated and stacked, then traveled out along his arms. Bai Zhou felt both arms close to exploding. But it worked. Beneath Fang Xiaoxia's gaze, shocked as if she were beholding a god, Bai Zhou shook arms whose muscles looked ready to split at any moment, and by sheer force slowly drew open the thick bowstring formed of a lightning arc. But it still was not enough. He had drawn the bowstring with every ounce of his strength. But the arrow? The same worry and the same doubt rose in Crow's heart. Then Bai Zhou lifted his head and looked at the sky. Today was a day of thunder and rain. "Hum!" The sky went blank white in a flash. Lightning crossed the horizon and lit Bai Zhou's bloodless, pale face. At the same time the Heavenly Bow in his hands sent out a hum, the bow body shaking without cease. Bai Zhou's pupils tightened. He clenched the Heavenly Bow in answer. He knew... The heavenly moment had come! "Boom!" Hard on the lightning's heels, a heaven-shaking roar came from the horizon. Silver-snake thunder spread across the sky, tore the black clouds, and flew straight down. Like a river of stars, it suddenly rolled out of the nine heavens. It lit the sharp gleam of Bai Zhou's eyes. Bai Zhou hesitated no longer. A fierce glint flashed in his eyes. He raised the bent bow and pointed it far into the sky. "Heavenly thunder, aid me!" This was the intent the Thunderous Heavenly Bow transmitted now, caught by Bai Zhou. "Hum!" The Heavenly Bow shook again! A grand peal of thunder echoed, and the lightning at the horizon flew over in an instant. "Boom, rumble!" The summit of Zhenlu Mountain was lit by a vast sheet of lightning. The falling bolt came from the nine heavens, forcibly drawn by the Heavenly Bow on the peak. With a grand, majestic peal from the bow, the falling lightning came like a subject answering a summons, and settled into place of its own accord. It became the Thunderous Heavenly Bow's— thunder arrow! "Hum, hum, hum!" The shaft was like lightning-slurry. Scalding pale-blue liquid smelted and cast itself. Stream after stream of flowing slurry spiraled like dragons and fused into one arrow. Electric light sprayed from the arrowhead. The force of it was tremendous. Ask where the arrow is. Answer: the arrow is nocked upon the string! On an ordinary day, merely forming this thunder arrow, without even loosing it, would have been enough to drain Bai Zhou empty. But now? Heaven and earth bestowed it. To draw upon the forces of heaven, earth, and nature was in itself a function unique to a Spirit-Name Secret Treasure. Yet a Spirit-Name Secret Treasure was proud and untamable. Only Bai Zhou, the master who had developed the "Heavenly Palace" form, could win the Heavenly Bow's allegiance and use this function. Someone like Deputy Director Liu back then had simply... This was also why Bai Zhou had come to the summit of Zhenlu Mountain. In ancient times, Extraordinaries often had legends of undergoing tribulation on a mountaintop in a rainy night. The summit of a famous mountain drew falling lightning best of all. He would draw the bow on the summit, and then—shoot the school to pieces! The school was supposed to be blown up. How was shooting it apart not a kind of explosion? "Crack! Rumble!!!" The thunder arrow nocked on the lightning-arc string. Bai Zhou gripped its tail. Rolling thunder swept his whole body. Fierce lightning wound around his arms and torso. Every strand of hair stood high. His whole person seemed to become an ancient divine statue cast of lightning, standing atop the tossing rainstorm on the summit. Like a god, and like a demon! In this moment the wind and rain seemed to recede. The lightning-slurry beside them was scalding. Miss Crow's figure swayed, and Fang Xiaoxia was frozen entirely where she stood. They all held their breath and stared at Bai Zhou without a blink, yet the look in every eye was that of someone seeing a stranger. Whether Crow or Fang Xiaoxia, this was the first time either of them had seen Bai Zhou like this. This was utterly different from the usual flippant, simple and honest boy from Wancheng. He was simply like... like a deity who held heaven's might and carried out heaven's punishment! "It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts!" But for Bai Zhou, pain and a load he could hardly bear were the true feelings the thunder brought him. His whole body groaned. His muscles were drawn tight to the limit, at risk of snapping at any moment. Searing arcs of lightning ringed Bai Zhou's whole body, yet the armor of lightning made his muscles wither and shrink at a speed visible to the eye. Blue-black blood vessels bulged and throbbed beneath the skin like twisted earthworms. Flesh wrapped tight around the sudden jut of bone. In the grand lightning on the summit, Bai Zhou's figure looked thin and tiny, and yet somehow tall and imposing. Extreme pain struck his mind like a tide, each wave higher than the last. Anyone could see it. Anyone could see that Bai Zhou was in pain. He had paid a great deal. It was as if all the flesh and blood on his body were being greedily wrung out by that thunderous Heavenly Bow in his hands. Fang Xiaoxia did not know what Bai Zhou was doing, and she had no way to stop him from doing it—but she could see that he was desperately burning everything he had. Anyone could see his pain. In some way no one could understand, he was paying the price of this arrow. And so Fang Xiaoxia's heart clenched. She was tense, and at a loss. She looked at the boy wrapped in rolling thunder, and suddenly felt that what Bai Zhou had said before was right. Life did not begin at birth. So long as you were wrapped in love and someone cared about you, those people were with your life at every moment. To realize this at any time was like being born a second time. Like a phone, whether shut off or left with only one percent of its battery, automatically entering super power-saving mode and due to shut down in thirty seconds... it would still turn itself on in the morning, and ring the alarm on time to wake you. At a moment like that you would think life might not be so bad after all. At least the alarm was still going all out for you. Yes. The world might not be so bad. Because there was still someone going all out for her. He had made a shining entrance at the class gathering where she was most miserable, driven up in an elegant sports car, mounted a roaring tricycle, like a knight riding a swan, and carried her away from the life she hated. What a lightning-flash of a man. He appeared like lightning, and lit her life like lightning too. He stood on a mountaintop in a rainy night, bow bent and arrow nocked, like a god who drove thunder descending into the mortal world. Spreading lightning drove off the dark at the edge of the sky, and also opened for the girl the door of a new world. But... Fang Xiaoxia pressed her lips together. Looking at the boy in unbearable pain before her, she was cold all over, hands and feet at a loss. What could she do for him? And yet, in truth, although that face of Bai Zhou's, wrapped in grand lightning, was twisted in a grimace of pain... his gaze was actually quite calm, calm almost to the point of ease. Because he knew that once this arrow was loosed, it would be as good as taking up a megaphone and announcing Major's glorious grand plan to the whole world. No need to transfer me fifty, either, to hear the Major's grand plan of Ascension to Sainthood. Surprised? Didn't see it coming? Thunder roared in his ears, as if Bai Zhou were speaking to fate— I run no more. I am here. Because from this moment the offense and defense have switched. It ought to be Major making his grand flight through the rainy night. The hands on his wristwatch turned, about to point to the end of this night, and also to tomorrow's new beginning. Bai Zhou even had the leisure to turn his head and speak to Fang Xiaoxia. "Eight Thousand Questions of Naughty Black Cat says that if someone sets off fireworks with you at night, don't ask her whether to look at the rising flowers of fire from below or from the side." "Say instead—" He said, "showmetheflower." (Let me see that flower.) At this moment, the hands of the wristwatch reached 0:00. "Hey—Little Fire Dragon! Look up. There are shooting stars." Bai Zhou released the lightning-arc bowstring in his hand. "Skree!!!" Fang Xiaoxia felt her eardrums about to burst. Like a thousand birds crying at once, and like a phoenix dancing through the nine heavens. The string loosed. The thunder arrow flew to the sky. A pale-blue, perfectly straight light pierced the howling wind, tore the rainy night thick as ink, and ignored the long distance of space. In an instant, two hundred and sixty li had passed. Traces of lightning filled the sky behind it, like a dense spiderweb flowing across the heavens, and like an incomparably grand meteor shower. When you see a meteor shower, should you make a wish? The thought flashed through Fang Xiaoxia's mind for only an instant, just as her eyes saw a single shooting star recede, and yet arrive at its target in a blink. Then, beneath Fang Xiaoxia's stunned gaze... "Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!!!!!!!!" As if tens of thousands of thunderbolts roared at once, countless buildings were torn apart in an instant, and a symphony of destruction bloomed grandly in a single moment. The school had exploded! The school had exploded on a physical level. On the far horizon, a point of white light, blinding to the extreme, first swelled open, and in an instant swallowed the outline of Takizawa Private Middle School. Right after, crimson, indigo, pale purple, blazing white... surging thunderfire covered the whole school. Countless violent energies sprayed from within, like a volcanic eruption, blooming on the surface of the earth into a flower of destruction made of lightning and flame. The ground collapsed. The city shook. It was as if the whole sky were ringing. "Rumble." Echoes rolled. Lava-like lightning-slurry sprayed hundreds of meters into the sky, then poured down like a rainstorm, igniting everything within range. Countless buildings vaporized in an instant. Surging flame danced madly under the lash of lightning. Even as it tore the earth open layer by layer, it became huge fire-meteors spinning across the sky, becoming grand and brilliant... Fireworks. Above the hell of thunder and fire, resplendent, bursting, magnificent "fireworks" bloomed just like a face laughing wide open. They lit the dead night sky of the whole city, and lit, on the summit of Zhenlu Mountain, Fang Xiaoxia's dazed face, colored in every hue by the fireworks. Ten million blooming fireworks flowed in Fang Xiaoxia's eyes. She stared blankly, as if scared witless, and yet before she knew it the rims of her eyes had suddenly gone red. "Whoosh." All at once, something like a faint, pure point of white light shot out from the center of the thunderfire explosion, traced a graceful arc across the sky, crossed the long rainy night, and dove without a sound into Fang Xiaoxia's arms. "..." An indescribable feeling swept Fang Xiaoxia's whole body, as if some invisible heavy shackle had quietly melted. An unprecedented, weightless sense of freedom, together with a faint bewilderment, rose from the bottom of the girl's heart. Then the girl heard Bai Zhou's voice, especially hoarse from exhaustion, reach her ear. "After this arrow, Major will take the stage in full paint before the world, and at last offer this long play a grand finale." Bai Zhou's face was pale with a greenish cast. The bangs on his forehead were soaked through with sweat and rain. He was so weak he could barely keep his feet. He looked truly wretched. But his eyes seemed forever clear, and carrying a light. That gaze fell now upon a Fang Xiaoxia who seemed somehow different. He said: "Little Fire Dragon, congratulations. Your new life has come." Mist curled over the summit of Zhenlu Mountain. In the unbroken rainstorm, the dim yellow light of an old streetlamp barely pierced the curtain of rain, and cast the shadows of the two figures standing side by side onto the wet ground. The shadows were drawn out long, swaying slightly in the standing water, shoulder to shoulder. In the distance, grand fireworks shook the whole city. A thousand thunders bloomed in splendor, points of light brilliant. For the white-dress girl who cradles stuffed dolls, this would surely be a sight she would not forget in all her life. The time was September 9, 0:00:18. In this moment, the cage became burning ruins amid the fireworks, and the caged bird was reborn in the rain. "Eighteen." "A new life is about to begin. But don't forget to make a wish." Bai Zhou put away the Thunderous Heavenly Bow in his hand and turned around. The hem of the gliding windbreaker snapped in the wind. Bai Zhou looked at the girl in the white dress, dazed and lost, her eyes still reflecting the grand fireworks far away, and said softly: "Fang Xiaoxia, happy birthday."