“Um… Shu-gege, you let me go now?” Sun Li asked, her voice hesitant as she dangled from Jin Shu’s grip.

  Jin Shu coughed awkwardly, realizing he had pletely fotten about the two unruly little ones he was still holding. He gently set them down, l Sun Li and Yin’er until their feet touched the ground.

  The moment Yin’er’s feet hit the floor, she leapt into the nearby puddle of blood with a spsh. Crimson drops scattered through the air, nding on everyone nearby.

  “Yin’er! What are you doing?!” Jin Shu excimed, wiping the blood sptter from his face.

  Yiilted her head ily. “Yihought it was fun,” she said, her tone as sweet as if she’d dohing wrong.

  “Get out of the blood!” Jin Shu ordered, his voice taut with exasperation.

  “Okay…” she muttered, shuffling out of the puddle with a pout.

  Jin Shu sighed, already dreading the bath he’d have to give her. The memory of the st chaotic bath time fshed vividly through his mind, making him grimace.

  As he kept a wary eye on Yin’er, a sudden movement in the er of his vision caught his attentiourned just in time to see Biyu colpsing.

  “Biyu!” Jin Shu spun on his heel, rushing to catch her as she crumpled. He steadied her gently, his hand slipping under her arm for support. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?!”

  “I-I’m fine,” Biyu murmured weakly. “I just… overdrew my qi…”

  Jin Shu’s worry eased slightly as uanding dawned. He had his own fair share of experieh qi exhaustion, though her resilience impressed him. The few times he’d overdrew his qi, he’d passed out immediately.

  Without hesitation, he crouched down and slipped one hand behind her back, the other beh her knees. With a swift motion, he lifted her into his arms.

  “Ah!” Biyu yelped, her cheeks flushing red. “W-What are you doing?!”

  “You’re too weak to stand,” Jin Shu said, a soft smile pying on his lips. Her blush deepened as she averted her gaze. “You did an incredible job proteg Sun Li and me. Now, it’s time for you to rest.”

  “But I—” she began, only to be silenced by Jin Shu’s gentle shushing.

  “Just rest,” he murmured, adjusting his hold to pull her closer to his chest.

  “Ah! How e she gets to be carried like a princess while I get hauled around like a cat? That’s so unfair!” Sun Li huffed, crossing her arms as she watched Jin Shu’s careful princess carry.

  Jin Shu gnced down at her, one brow raised. “Maybe try burning through your qi first? You still seem pretty eie.”

  “Uh… well… I’d rather not…” Sun Li stammered, looking away as her face flushed.

  “Jin Shu, be o Sun Li. She saved my life,” Biyu murmured weakly from his arms, her voice faint but ear.

  Jin Shu blinked, surprised. “She did? How?”

  Biyu struggled to lift her head, but exhaustioook her. “She… she… ah—” Her head drooped to the side as she fell unscious.

  Jin Shu’s expression tightened with worry as he gazed down at her. There was nothing more he could do for her now; this was the natural toll of overdrawing qi. Truthfully, he was amazed she’d stayed scious for this long.

  “Is she okay?” Sun Li asked, panic fshing across her face as she hurried to his side.

  “She’ll be fier some rest,” Jin Shu reassured her, though his tone was tinged with . Adjusting Biyu in his arms, he turoward his . “e with me.”

  Sun Li nodded and followed obediently, gng back toward Yin’er, who had wandered off.

  “Yin’er, e here!” Jin Shu called, his tone firm but not harsh.

  Yin’er hesitated, her attention lingering on the ground, but eventually shuffled after them, dragging her feet and muttering under her breath.

  The four of them piled into Jin Shu’s small . He gently id Biyu down on the bed, making sure she was fortable before turning to the other two.

  “You two stay here and watch over Biyu,” he said firmly.

  “What? Where are you going?” Sun Li asked, her brows furrowed in .

  “Yeah! Where’s Daddy going? Why ’t Yin’er go?” Yin’er piped up, puffing her cheeks in protest.

  “I o check the situation outside. We don’t know if all the enemies have bee with,” Jin Shu expined, meeting both their gazes with a steady look. “I need you two to stay here and keep an eye on Biyu, okay?”

  Sun Li hesitated but eventually nodded.

  “Okay! Yin’er will stop any bad guys who e in!” Yin’er said fidently, flexing her cws in a show of strength.

  Jin Shu gave her a pat on the head, a small smile tugging at his lips, before stepping out the door.

  On the hallway, his expression turned serious. He sed the area cautiously before heading down the corridor toward Huai Jiahou’s lifeless body. The first order of business was to dispose of the corpses and check if any enemies were still alive. While at it, he decided to search them for clues.

  Huai Jiahou’s robes were shredded from Jin Shu’s bullets, and as he rummaged through the fabric, the pieces fell apart like fetti. There wasn’t much to find—just a bag of s and the tattered remains of a letter. The paper was riddled with holes, rendering most of it illegible, but oact er was the unmistakable Sign of the Demon—the same emblem they had seen earlier on the daggers.

  Jin Shu straightened, letting out a small sigh as he eled his qi into his ste earring. He wasn’t fond of the idea of st bodies inside, but there was er alternative. With a resigned shrug, he stored Huai Jiahou’s body and moved on to the others.

  The three hostage-takers turned up empty, as did the two demonic cultivators. He finally came to the group he had shot earlier wheried to shield themselves.

  Kneeling beside them, Jin Shu examihe bodies. Foam dribbled from their mouths.

  “Poison,” he murmured, his expression darkening.

  Each corpse told the same story—they had all bitten into poison capsules hidden in their mouths, taking their lives before they could be captured.

  Finally, Jin Shu arrived at the first man he had fought. The man’s wrist was missing a hand, severed ly where Jin Shu’s knife had struck.

  “Hm, the Sharpness Rune is even more effective than I thought,” Jin Shu muttered. He hadn’t inteo sever the hand—just to ssh the wrist.

  Stepping out onto the deck, he found the sean he'd fought. His chest was caved in, the aftermath of Jin Shu’s pellet infused with the Density Strike Rune.

  “Effit,” Jin Shu remarked under his breath.

  He didn’t even bother cheg the man before st his body.

  “You’re st him alive?” Nano’s voice suddenly chimed in.

  “Alive? What?” Jin Shu froze, fusion knitting his brows. “What are you talking about? What’s alive?”

  “The man you just stored was alive. Did you not know?” Nano asked, its tone almost curious.

  Jin Shu blinked in shock. “He… he was alive? And I put him into the ste spa my earring?”

  “It would appear so,” Nano firmed.

  Jin Shu shook his head in disbelief. “No. That ’t be right. Space artifacts ’t store living beings. That’s impossible.”

  “Your earring isn’t a space artifact, though,” Nano replied calmly.

  “What do—oh, you’re right.” Jin Shu rubbed his thumb against the tiny engraved runes along the earring’s surface. “It doesn’t use a space gem. Nano, do you know what ruhese are?”

  “We reize a few recorded in the pendium of Runes. However, the majority seem to be ized.”

  “ized…? That’s possible?” he asked incredulously, before a sudden realization hit him. “Wait, hold that thought. Is he still alive in there?”

  Without waiting for a response, Jin Shu focused his thoughts, and his miered the ste space.

  He gnced around, momentarily awestruck. He hadn’t been back here since first acquiring the earring, and the sight was as breathtaking as he remembered. The space was like a vast starfield—pitch-bck void speckled with millions of pinprick lights that glimmered like distant stars.

  For a brief moment, he wondered what those lights were. They seemed impossibly far away, like they existed light-years apart, but surely the space within the earring couldn’t be that expansive.

  Shaking the thought off, Jin Shu turned his focus to the task at hand. He sed the area, looking for the pile of corpses he’d deposited in a er. Not that there were actual ers in this pce—there were no walls or boundaries, just endless void. To reduce the strain on his mind wherieving items, he only used a small se of the space.

  He quickly spotted the man atop the pile of corpses. With a thought, the man’s body floated toward him. Even after all this time, Jin Shu still didn’t fully uand how the earring worked. And he doubted he would for a long time yet.

  As the body hovered before him, Jin Shu ied it closely. While he couldn’t physically touch the man—his presence here urely mental—he could observe him iail. To his surprise, the man wasn’t breathing, yet her was he dead.

  Jin Shu focused, sensing the faint flow of qi beh the man’s skin. It wasn’t just there—it was visible, pulsing rhythmically through his meridians like glowing threads beh the surface.

  “Nano, what do you make of this?” Jin Shu asked, his fusion mounting.

  “This appears to be a state of suspended animation,” Nano replied. “Fasating. The space within the earring seems to have artificially verted his qi flow, pg him in a state analogous to cryosleep—without the o freeze his body.”

  Jin Shu blirying to his head around the expnation. “I’m not even going to pretend I fully uand what you just said. But are you saying he won’t die in here?”

  “That is correct. However, we ot determine for how long this state be maintained. It could be days, years, or even indefinitely. There is a possibility that this space operates without a timeflow, meaning the man could theoretically survive forever.”

  Jin Shu sighed, rubbing his temples even though it was more out of habit than y in this space. “Well, I’m not pnning on keeping a living person in here forever. But… I could test this for a few days.”

  Jin Shu let out a slow breath, his eyes narrowing as he watched the man’s qi pulse faintly in his meridians. The discovery of suspended animation within the earring brought more questions than answers, but it also presented possibilities—dangerous, fasating possibilities.

  “Alright,” Jin Shu muttered under his breath. “Let’s see how this pys out.” With a thought, he let the man’s body hover he pile of corpses and withdrew his mind from the earring.

  The real world snapped bato focus, the tang of blood and gunpowder heavy in the air. Standing on the bloodstained deck of the ship, Jin Shu felt the weight of the battle lingering around him like a shadow. But now, there was something else.

  If the earring could preserve life like this, what else was it capable of? Could it save someone on the brink of death? Or even reverse it?

  He gnced up at the rising sun, its light glinting off the crimson-streaked deck. “Questions and more questions. Never any answers,” he sighed, clutg his mother’s earring that he kept in his pocket. Its cool surface pressed into his palm, grounding him. “I swear, I’ll find the answer soon. I have to…”