Chapter 54: The Price of Resurrection and a New Magic

In principle, Su Qingyao served as the team’s “doctor,” yet she didn’t resort to healing magic for every ailment.

During the apocalypse, it had become clear that excessive use of healing abilities could lead to the body rejecting treatment, or even to the growth of aberrant organs due to healing oversights.

Consequently, the application of “healing” type Transcended abilities was typically reserved for emergencies or severe, compounded injuries.

Minor scrapes or common colds were still treated with conventional methods or lower-tier Transcended abilities from the Ascended faction.

Thus, when Su Qingyao saw Jiang Jiuli enter the tent, clutching her arm, she was understandably a little surprised.

“What happened here?”

Su Qingyao glanced, slightly startled, at the hand Jiang Jiuli was cradling, swiftly applying her healing magic.

From her perspective, the arm, twisted and deformed, was far beyond a mere “sprain or bruise.”

“I—I accidentally fell from—from mid-air,” Jiang Jiuli stammered, wincing in pain as she explained.

Beside them, Su Muxue released her own magic. Before they had arrived at Su Qingyao’s, Muxue had been continuously using low-temperature analgesia to prevent Jiang Jiuli from passing out from the agony.

“Alright, let me treat this first, then we can talk.”

Su Qingyao rose, summoning her Spirit Gear.

****

Jiang Jiuli sat on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Unlike Su Muxue, who had been pulled away for a magic spar, Muxue’s “magic” always appeared far more elegant.

Hers, however, was quite different.

The premise of a spar was always “to stop before causing harm.”

Jiang Jiuli’s magic was not only unsightly, but she inexplicably struggled to control it herself.

Her supposed “Third Tier” status was practically a title in name only.

Even her contracted entity had, at one point, wondered if Jiang Jiuli had perhaps hit her head too hard.

‘How could a magical girl fail to control the magic born from her own “heart”?’

Yet, Jiang Jiuli genuinely had no issues.

Even the Tower’s doctors declared her perfectly healthy, and her academic performance at school was far from poor.

The only explanation offered was that becoming a magical girl too early had, by accident, resulted in a lingering effect of an insufficiently mature “heart.”

Everything, they said, would simply be left to time.

Jiang Jiuli often felt that such a conclusion was rather arbitrary, but seeing the pigeon cawing loudly as it treated her hair like a nest, she swallowed her doubts once more.

‘Unexpectedly, Little Muxue seems more reliable.’

In any case, this was why Jiang Jiuli would hide in the “dorm” to sleep after classes.

It definitely wasn’t because she’d been sleep-deprived these past few days and had secretly snuck in for a nap, *ehe*.

Jiang Jiuli hugged the fragrant blanket, and for the first time in ages, felt no ominous premonition. She closed her eyes and drifted into a deep sleep.

****

“So, you just slept, and then sleepwalked from your bed all the way to… the sky?” For the first time in a long while, an emotion called “novelty” stirred within Su Qingyao.

This was truly a first for a magical girl.

Jiang Jiuli, wearing a guilty expression, clamped her mouth shut and said nothing more. No matter how Su Qingyao questioned her, she maintained resolute silence.

“Actually…”

Su Muxue, who had been sitting nearby, slowly sipping plain water, set down her cup and said with a smile:

“I can explain on her behalf—mmph.”

Before she could finish, Jiuli, still halfway through her treatment, lunged forward and clapped a hand over Muxue’s mouth.

Disregarding her injury, Jiuli was now wincing in pain, baring her teeth, while simultaneously looking on the verge of tears with a wronged expression.

For some reason, this made Su Qingyao feel a pang of sympathy.

“Alright, alright, Jiuli, please sit down first.”

Su Qingyao soothed her, then resumed meticulously reattaching Jiang Jiuli’s muscle fibers with her magic, piece by piece.

It was largely as she had suspected.

The girl’s injuries were essentially just compression damage from a high-altitude fall.

She likely woke up already airborne, and in her panic, inadvertently cut off her magic.

This caused Jiang Jiuli to plummet from mid-air. Fortunately, Su Muxue had been strolling nearby at the time and promptly brought her to Su Qingyao.

Her internal organs were protected by her Spirit Gear, but given Jiang Jiuli’s current, barely Third Tier status, her arm was beyond its aid.

Luckily, her arm had served as a buffer, preventing the Spirit Gear from sustaining damage beyond its threshold.

In a way, it was sheer luck that Jiang Jiuli could be brought before Su Qingyao “unscathed.”

Still, could “sleepwalking” truly lead this child to float into the sky?

Dreams were not a field Su Qingyao specialized in.

“It’s almost time for dinner, you know.”

The words drifted into Su Qingyao’s ears, causing her fingers, suspended in mid-air, to tremble.

Su Muxue suddenly reminded her, hopping off the bed. “Should I bring a portion for both you, Mama, and Jiuli?”

“No need,” Su Qingyao waved her hand dismissively.

“I’ll be done in a moment.”

Her current display of effort was entirely part of her “role-playing.”

During the apocalypse, she had even faced situations where she had to piece back together “Lu Zhichuan’s fragments.”

At that time—

Su Qingyao’s control over her magic faltered.

The slightly loosened magic flared into a dazzling net of white and green, inadvertently reattaching Jiuli’s hand in an instant.

‘I actually forgot…’ Su Qingyao murmured softly.

The scene from back then was now painted with blurred color blocks; the people, objects, emotions, and words had all become [BLANK].

That had been a rare and embarrassing moment for Senior Lu Zhichuan. Shouldn’t she have gloated about it for a long time?

How could she have simply forgotten it?

The young woman sat still, momentarily lost in thought, until the calls of the two little ones pulled her back into the medical tent:

“Mama?” “Mama Muxue!?”

“Ah… I’m fine.”

Su Qingyao snapped back to reality, then offered an even brighter smile than usual, ruffling both their heads.

“I was just thinking about things from a long time ago.”

“How long ago?” Muxue asked curiously.

Su Qingyao, as expected, answered patiently:

“It was even before Muxue was born.”

It seemed resurrection did not come without a price.

Perhaps her price, much like Xu Yiyi’s, was the loss of certain “memories.” The overall narrative might be clear, yet strange blurs and gaps appeared at specific “points” along that line.

If Su Qingyao’s conjecture held true.

Then perhaps, since her awakening, all of Su Qingyao’s perceptions and actions carried the potential of being logically overturned.

Ah—yes, indeed.

Especially concerning the true origins of Su Muxue, her precious daughter.

So many peculiar and strange possibilities had just emerged.

Could it be that before the apocalypse, Su Qingyao had truly used her transformed “heart”…

…and fallen in love with…

…someone?

****

It was on a battlefield, before the establishment of “Hope City,” still dominated by [DISASTER], between two individuals driven to despair by coincidence and malice.

When she re-entered the fray from a corner of the battlefield, all that remained before the young woman was a “feast” awaiting consumption.

Lines casually sketched pieced together fragments, and with the “sword” of her senior, she delayed a death that should have arrived much sooner.

The young woman knelt, hunched over someone’s shattered “fragments.”

“Do you mean to cast me aside again?”

Amidst countless whispers and threads that wove nightmares, she swallowed tears named “hatred.”

“Hush.”

A trembling voice halted the man’s questioning words.

Then, her fair hands cradled her own fragile, exquisite “second heart,” known as the “Magic Core.”

It was a teal, hourglass-shaped pendant, two vibrant teal crystals radiating a warm glow even in the darkness.

Yet at this moment, the young woman’s hands gripped both sides, as if having made a profound decision.

Snap.

She crushed it.

The teal light burst forth from the cracks, scattering and then vanishing instantly, replaced by countless coiling, pure black serpents, given physical form by overwhelming emotions.

They clung to the magical girl’s small frame, forcing uncontrollable, pained gasps from between her lips.

Threads woven from the materialized “pain” and “despair” ultimately encased the young woman’s body in a pitch-black cocoon.

And cutting through the countless layers of dark sorrow was the young woman’s angry, yet helpless, bite at that moment:

“Truly, Senior, you’ve outmaneuvered me.”

Once, in a flash of fury, the young woman had glimpsed a way for her normally non-aggressive magic to gain combat capabilities.

It meant turning away from every piece of her own heart.

Denying herself, killing herself.

Only then could she grasp the “impossible possibility” within her “heart.”

This was the young woman’s “other half” of magic.

Beginning with hatred, facing the very person she wished to protect.