110: Chapter 110: Dissatisfaction!

Moonlight spilled across the bluestone pavement.

Wei Xiaoyu stood at the far end of the courtyard, dark gold magic flickering on the surface of her body. Her stance was beautiful—her center of gravity lowered, her fists tucked at her ribs, a textbook Berserker starting stance.

If any other sparring partner saw this posture, they would probably already be rehearsing in their minds how to hold back later without leaving any trace.

Su Bai glanced at her.

What a pain.

That was his only thought. Nothing else.

He reached out and touched the soul gem on his chest.

Light overflowed from it.

It was a warm, soft light with a pink halo—reminiscent of the warmth of a quilt basking in the spring afternoon sun. The light flowed outward from inside the gem, crawling along invisible circuits across his collarbone, shoulders, arms, and fingertips.

The transformation took only an instant.

Deep purple eyes opened. His school uniform had vanished, replaced by a black-and-gray combat dress. The upper body was neatly tailored, his shoulders adorned with a diamond-shaped emblem of time, and the hem of the skirt fell just past his knees, the fabric shimmering with a faint, starry sheen under the moonlight. A small, diamond-shaped shield hovered on his left wrist, its face embedded with a slowly flowing hourglass.

His hair had also grown a bit longer, the ends resting just against his shoulder blades.

Enveloped in the moonlight and the residual glow of magic, his deep purple eyes quietly reflected the girl opposite him.

However...

At this moment, Wei Xiaoyu forgot to breathe.

She truly forgot.

The breath in her chest caught halfway. Her lips parted slightly, and her fists loosened.

Immediately after, her mind buzzed.

Wait!

What is this?

This person—was he the Tier 2 Card Creator from just now? Was he the guy wearing a crumpled uniform, with an expression as flat as someone picking vegetables in a wet market? Was he the man she had just pointed at and cursed as a "lolicon, crossdresser, the founding father of little-girl aesthetics"?

No.

No, no, no.

The creature before her eyes...

His skin glowed with a faint pinkish-white under the halo of the soul gem, the lines of his facial features carved clean and sharp by the moonlight. The black-and-gray combat skirt was gently nudged by the night wind, the hourglass shield spun quietly, and a few pink star-like specks from his transformation still lingered on his right fingertips.

He just stood there.

So beautiful!

So beautiful it was practically cheating!

He was so beautiful that those were the only words left in Wei Xiaoyu's mind, frantically spamming her brain, rolling across from left to right like bullet comments. She desperately wanted to suppress those words, to pull up other thoughts—he's Tier 2, he's a Card Creator, the card he made changes people's gender, he's the enemy—but they were all knocked away by those words.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!

What the heck, he's just a guy.

Why does he get to look like this!

Wei Xiaoyu's lips moved.

No sound came out.

The remnants of her sanity made a final stand: *What are you doing? You are a Tier 4 Berserker, the daughter of the War Emperor, you are preparing for battle, why are you staring blankly at a man's face? Say something! Curse him! Hurry!*

She opened her mouth.

"...Y-You—"

Su Bai tilted his head.

"What is it?"

Head tilt...

He tilted his head!

He actually added a head tilt!

A string snapped in Wei Xiaoyu's mind with a "pop." She took a sudden step back, her heel catching on a gap in the bluestone pavement, causing her to stumble. The tips of her ears turned visibly red, the heat burning all the way from her earlobes to her auricles.

Cute...

This guy is actually kind of cute!

No. No. That adjective absolutely could not appear in her mind. She immediately shredded those words in her consciousness and flushed them down the toilet. However, her mouth was much more honest than her brain—

"Y-You—how—how do you look like this?!"

Su Bai raised his hand and looked at the hourglass on his wrist.

"You mean the transformation?"

"Yes! You—you're clearly a guy! Shouldn't a guy's transformation be that—the kind of image where a two-meter-tall burly man is stuffed into a skirt?!" She heard her own voice crack. "What on earth is this! This is way too unfair! How is anyone supposed to fight when you're this cute! How do you expect all the Berserkers in the world to throw a punch at this face of yours?!"

The moment the words left her mouth, she regretted it.

She regretted it so much she wanted to stuff herself into the cracks of the floor tiles.

Wait.

What did she just say?

Cute.

She said cute!

Right in front of Su Bai, right in front of her dad, and right in front of that white cat squatting on the windowsill laughing at who-knows-what—she said cute.

Su Bai was dumbfounded and said:

"...Did you just say I'm cute?"

"I said unfair! Unfair!" Wei Xiaoyu's ears were completely red as she desperately tried to salvage the situation. "Cute was just a slip of the tongue! A slip of the tongue! It doesn't mean anything! You're just using—a shameless tactic of using your appearance to confuse your opponent! Yes! Tactical fraud! Who would dare to hit you! Who would hit you!"

Su Bai looked down at the hem of his skirt.

"You said it twice."

"Even three times—wait, I didn't say it a third time!"

"You just added a third time in your head."

"Who—who would add something like that in their head! Stop talking nonsense!" Wei Xiaoyu's entire neck burned red, her voice rising higher and higher. Halfway through, she suddenly realized that Su Bai's face was still quietly looking at her under the moonlight.

Damn it.

He really is good-looking.

She snapped her head toward the door, not daring to look at Su Bai anymore, and turned her firepower on her dad instead: "Dad! What are you laughing at!"

War Emperor Wei Potian stood at the doorway. He rubbed his chin with a hand as large as a clay pot, the corners of his mouth twitching uncontrollably.

"Cough. Xiaoyu, you just said he was cute—Dad isn't trying to stir up trouble, but you've never praised anyone's appearance since you were a kid. Not a guy, not a girl, not even your mom. This kid is the first."

"Shut up!!!"

Steam was practically rising from the top of Wei Xiaoyu's head. She grit her teeth, shoving all her wavering and burning ears into a corner and suppressing them fiercely.

Time to fight.

As long as the fight starts, everything will be fine!

Once they started fighting, all her attention would be on the battle. Who would care if he was good-looking then? She assumed her starting stance again, this time putting some effort into lowering her center of gravity even more than before, as if using the posture to suppress her chaotic heartbeat.

"Come on," she grit her teeth. "Let me see what else this form of yours has—besides being good-looking!"

"You said good-looking again."

"THAT! IS! NOT! THE! POINT!"

Su Bai looked at her.

"Are you going to draw a card?"

"No need! Fighting a Tier 2 like you doesn't require cards—"

Before her voice could fade.

Su Bai placed his hand on the hourglass.

The world froze.

Moonlight stopped mid-air. The night wind halted halfway. The leaves of the old locust tree were all frozen at an angle away from the branches.

War Emperor Wei Potian maintained a half-smiling expression, his eyes completely still. Wei Xiaoyu's starting stance remained frozen right there—knees slightly bent, center of gravity lowered, right fist gathering power—the angle of every joint perfectly static in that single instant.

Wei Xiaoyu was completely unaware within the frozen time, but as Su Bai looked at her beautiful posture, a complaint popped into his head—*What's the use of striking such a nice pose?*

He walked through the frozen moonlight and stood in front of Wei Xiaoyu.

He didn't use a weapon. Reaching out a finger, he gave her forehead a gentle flick.

He stepped back a few paces.

He brushed the dust off his hands.

The hourglass spun back.

The instant time resumed flowing, Wei Xiaoyu was sent flying.

She didn't know how she had flown backward. Her body traced a completely uncontrolled parabola in the air, her back slamming into the trunk of the old locust tree. The tree's canopy shook violently, and several leaves swirled down, landing on her head.

The fall didn't hurt.

But her mind was completely blank.

"...???"

Wei Xiaoyu sat on the ground, looking down at her hands, then at the bluestone pavement where she had just assumed her starting stance, and then back at her hands.

What had happened?

She didn't even know how she had fallen!

One moment she was still striking a pose, frozen in that stance, and the next second—she had already crashed into the tree. That entire continuous block of time in between had been plucked away by something. Clean and neat, leaving no trace.

Su Bai brushed off his sleeves.

"The fight is over."

"—??!!"

Wei Xiaoyu sprang up from the ground.

What did he mean, the fight was over?! She hadn't even made a move! She hadn't even clenched her fists! She hadn't even drawn a single card! And it was already over?! She glared at Su Bai, her mind in utter chaos as anger, confusion, and disbelief surged up together.

"You—what did you just do! Did you use that time—you used that time, didn't you! You cheated!"

Su Bai didn't speak.

She turned toward the doorway.

"Dad! Did you see that! He cheated! Even if I don't know what he did, it must have been unfair—a Tier 2 against a Tier 4, there's no way he could win in a head-on fight, so he relied on a Time Stop! This doesn't count at all! This absolutely doesn't count!"

War Emperor Wei Potian leaned against the doorframe.

He had his arms, solid as granite, crossed over his chest. The "smiling spectator" expression on his face slowly sank, settling into a somewhat unfamiliar look that Wei Xiaoyu didn't quite recognize.

"You lost."

Wei Xiaoyu's pupils contracted sharply.

"...Dad?!"

"You lost," War Emperor Wei Potian repeated. His voice was calm, completely different from the doting tone he usually used when calling her "daughter." "Before that kid even used Time Stop, the center of gravity in your starting stance was off. You lowered it too much, and the opening at your left shoulder was even larger than usual. You didn't even plan to draw a card."

He paused.

"You planned to use pure physical techniques to beat up a Card Creator who can craft a Rainbow Card system. His use of Time Stop was giving you a way out with some dignity. If he hadn't used it—you probably wouldn't have lasted three moves. He let you lose with some dignity."

Dignity.

This word stung in Wei Xiaoyu's ears, feeling even more stifling than the moment she crashed into the tree.

It wasn't cheating.

It wasn't that she lost because Su Bai had Time Stop.

It was that "even without Time Stop, she still couldn't have won."

Her lips trembled. Of course she wanted to argue back, to find a powerful retort to shut her dad's mouth, but her mind was completely flooded with the analysis Su Bai had given in the living room—"Seventeen punches, twelve of which had their trajectories predicted. Your center of gravity is too high. Your left shoulder drops half an inch."

At the time, she had thought it was a provocation.

It turned out he was just stating facts.

This realization made her feel worse than the defeat itself. A hundred times worse.

"I'm not convinced!"

She grit her teeth and roared out.