When Ye Fan opened his eyes, the moonlight outside the window was spilling over the ridge of his nose. The warmth of the golden liquid of the Longevity Fruit still lingered in his palm, and the phantoms of the four small dwellings within his Inner World had completely solidified: the plum blossoms on Su Qingxue's qin desk were stained with night dew, the Qingfeng in Lin Zhaoyue's sword case was vibrating slightly, the colorful butterflies in Chǔ Hóngzhuāng's Gu Insect jar were flapping and crashing against the jar walls, and the military manual on Qín Wǎnshuāng's desk was blown open a page by the wind, the ink of the still-wet characters "Break Array" striking a particularly prominent note.
The door was pushed open gently. Su Qingxue's moon-white skirt hem swept in first, followed by her scent carrying a bitter fragrance. She was holding a celadon medicine cup, and the pearl hairpin in her hair cast a soft luster in the moonlight. The tear mole at the corner of her eye trembled slightly with her hurried breathing—just as she had looked earlier in the night when standing at the doorway, the very picture of extreme worry.
"Are you all right?" She placed the medicine cup on the desk, her fingertips hovering half an inch above Ye Fan's wrist, ultimately not daring to touch. "When you were breaking through just now, the spiritual energy in your Inner World surged as if it were about to flip the roof off. I could hear the clashing of metal and stone from outside the courtyard."
Chapter 242