Chapter 5

Chapter 5: She Said You Look Too Cold

【Bright Future Chat Group】

【The chat group's first adaptive upgrade has concluded.】

【New Module: Group Member Cards】

【Module Details: Upon unilateral authorization from a group member, their Ability Card may be temporarily generated and invoked.

During invocation, partial base attributes or specific skills may be shared.

PS: When multiple group members simultaneously invoke the same source, a shared output cap applies. Allocation follows a first-come-first-served or equal-split basis, determined by the authorizer's subconscious inclination and coordination among invokers.】

Kitchen

"Why isn't it a capsule?"

Wangshu grumbled, then found two cards materializing in his hand.

One shimmered in a cool, moon-blue hue, its edges traced with faint sword-gleam patterns, its center bearing Jingliu's silhouette holding a sword in profile... with a streak of red at the corner of her eye. The other was a warm pink-gold, speckled with stars and streams of data.

Both were currently dim and unactivated.

Wangshu: "@Jingliu, Senior, Senior~!"

Asta sat in her station chief's office, her pink hair meticulously groomed, a few strands falling beside her ears.

She agonized for quite a while.

Asta: "@Jingliu, Senior, Senior!!!"

She'd even added two extra exclamation marks!

Jingliu's past aside, the combat power of Flawless Radiance was beyond question. She probably couldn't beat Ms. Herta, but as the station chief of Herta Space Station, Asta felt it was necessary to consider the matter of strength.

Training was too hard. She wasn't exactly frail, but at the end of the day, she was still a young lady of privilege.

Jingliu: "..."

Jingliu: "How do I know you won't use my power to do something terrible?"

More importantly, her current combat strength had already reached a dangerous threshold.

Wangshu replied instantly: "To protect! To protect peace, to protect the things that matter!"

Asta followed right behind, rolling out a more formal guarantee: "I swear on the name of the Interastral Peace Corporation!"

That's even less trustworthy!

Jingliu sighed.

【System Notification: Group member Jingliu has granted you temporary invocation access to her Ability Card. Valid until she manually revokes access or a protocol conflict occurs.】

Yes! As expected of the beautiful madwoman! She didn't even ask any follow-up questions — just agreed outright!

Wangshu activated the card almost immediately. The azure card dissolved into a stream of moonlit radiance. He felt an unfamiliar yet powerful warmth surge through every limb and bone, muscles tightening as if tempered by an invisible force, bones humming with a faint but clear resonance. All five senses sharpened to an extraordinary degree — he could even faintly trace the drifting trajectories of dust motes in the air.

Nothing had changed on the outside, but Wangshu felt like he could punch a polar bear to death right now.

Though saying that felt a bit rude to Caesar.

Asta: "Office_in_ruins.jpg"

Jingliu: "..."

Wangshu: "?"

Asta: "@Wangshu, careful — the card only grants strength, not control. On_the_verge_of_tears.jpg"

Wangshu reined in his focus, suppressing the urge to punch a load-bearing wall, and continued familiarizing himself with the kitchen utensils, trying to make dinner for himself and little Jingliu.

A short while later, the living room —

"Wangshu? Little Wangshu?"

Having finished cleaning the rooms and piling all the supplies into the storage closet, Jingliu called out loudly.

Normally she couldn't be bothered to clean, but Wangshu was seventeen. With a sigh, Jingliu — who had always been indifferent to the dust accumulating around the house — decided she needed to step up. A strange sense of responsibility had suddenly taken root in her heart.

"Why do you have to add 'little'?"

Wangshu poked his head out from the kitchen, spatula still in hand.

"Because you're seventeen."

Little Jingliu answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, her crimson eyes carrying a subtle sense of superiority that she herself hadn't noticed — the kind that came from being the older one.

I'm actually twenty-three, though I guess twenty-three isn't that much different. Who would've guessed that the petite, delicate-looking Jingliu was actually eighteen?

Come to think of it, it made sense. There was no way Jingliu could have been too young. A year from now, she'd pick up a sword and survive Rahu's consumption of Cangcheng. She couldn't possibly have been a genuine little kid.

"Don't feel down about it."

Jingliu walked up to the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame, her tone attempting magnanimity. "Think about it — two thousand years old and seventeen, versus eighteen and seventeen. The gap actually feels about equally vast."

She paused, then added quietly: "At least... it sounds better than fifty or sixty and seventeen."

What kind of bizarre consolation was that?

Half an hour later, the sky outside the windows had darkened. Though it was an artificial sky, the weather changes were indistinguishable from a real starlit night.

On the dining table sat a simple spread of two dishes and rice.

Jingliu poked at her rice, her movements a bit slow. After being used to eating alone, having another person in the house suddenly felt a little unfamiliar. But this complicated feeling carried a certain warmth of daily life with it, and maybe that wasn't so bad.

She sneaked a glance at Wangshu eating quietly across from her, and after a moment's hesitation: "Wangshu, did the future me ever give you anything?"

Like, say, a keepsake of their love — or how exactly had she tricked him?

In any case, every time Jingliu remembered that Wangshu was seventeen, she felt a fresh wave of stunned admiration for her future self.

Amazing!

"And honestly, you're way too trusting. You're this weak — what would you do if you ran into bad people here?"

The more she thought about it, the more she suspected her future self might be a heartless woman. Maybe even the type who cast a wide net — because with even a little critical thinking, it was obvious that Wangshu's current abilities couldn't possibly support such a grand objective.

Maybe Wangshu's entire purpose in coming here was just to deliver that history book.

Wangshu: ...

His mind suddenly drifted back to that card. And with it came a creeping unease — things had been going too smoothly these past few days. It felt like something bad was bound to happen.

Little Jingliu sighed heavily. "Wangshu, why aren't you saying anything?"

Could it be that her future self really was a heartless woman? One who hadn't even given the most basic, most worthless promise? Wouldn't that make it purely freeloading?!

Wangshu tapped the concept card he'd just received. Whether it was the chat group's impeccable timing or Jingliu's extraordinary cooperativeness, these newly acquired abilities always seemed to arrive right when they were needed.

"You taught me a great deal. At the very least, whenever I'm in danger, I can borrow your future power."

He chose his words carefully.

This was starting to sound more and more like borrowing someone else's power on credit. So when do I get to start my own bonded form?

I want to walk a Path too!

"Borrow my power?"

Little Jingliu blinked, the fragrant rice in her mouth suddenly losing all flavor. She pointed at the woman in the image.

"That's me?!"

This cold-looking woman wearing a black silk blindfold, with what appeared to be a faint red glow at the corner of her eyes — looking every bit like some sort of grand villainess — was supposed to be her? What kind of joke was this?!

"Doesn't look like you?"

Wangshu tilted his head, studying the card, then carefully examined the girl before him — still carrying traces of youth, yet already showing the first hints of a sharp, gallant air.

For long-life species, appearance typically stabilized after reaching adulthood. The Foxian were an especially classic example.

So little Jingliu and the future Sword Champion shared a remarkably similar facial structure.

"...She looks so cold."

Little Jingliu murmured under her breath, then resumed shoveling rice into her mouth. But thinking about how Cangcheng would be destroyed in the normal timeline and she'd end up as this cold, ice-queen villainess... it wasn't entirely incomprehensible. It just looked so cold.

She asked in a muffled voice: "Will I be hard to talk to in the future?"

"No, you're actually pretty easy to get along with."

Speaking of the future Jingliu, Wangshu's impression was of the type who'd casually call him "little boy" at every turn — a beautiful madwoman. But the Jingliu he'd interacted with in the group chat so far was indeed surprisingly agreeable.

Was this what it felt like to hold the emperor hostage and command the realm?

Little Jingliu watched the expression on Wangshu's face — as if he were lost in some fond memory — and after a moment of silence, asked the question she'd been turning over in her mind: "Can you still go back? Back to your original time or world..."

Wangshu's tone was calm. "Probably not."

But it didn't really matter. He was an orphan anyway. After transmigrating, maybe he'd even get to experience the beauty of walking a Path.

Little Jingliu sighed again, set down her bowl, propped her chin in both hands, and looked at Wangshu. Her eyes were full of complicated emotions.

That means you were tricked by the future me. Long-life species' appearances reflected their inner selves — there was no way her future self was actually easy to talk to.

It was all to lure you here!

My future self is terrible!!!