An hour and a half of ship-time later. Exalting Sanctum, Ningxian Avenue.
"Absolutely satisfied — this is paradise, pure bliss!"
Stepping out of the armory shop, Little Gui and Dummy Sushang looked like people who'd just been thoroughly healed by the world's softest kitten. Every cell in their bodies felt at peace.
"Even if I died right now, it would've been worth every coin, I tell ya!"
Dummy Sushang's cheeks were flushed pink.
"Everyone, we'll head back first! Oh, and help me brainstorm — what should I post on Luofu Myths this time? This is huge news, this episode is going to absolutely explode my subscriber count~!"
Back in her normal outfit, Guinaifen clutched her phone, vibrating with excitement.
"No wait — our livestream earlier is already the biggest topic on Luofu right now! I need to strike while the iron's hot! Convert the traffic into followers!"
Little Gui punched the air with her little fist.
"You really do have follower-count on the brain twenty-four seven, don't you."
Stelle offered her auspicious commentary.
"It's called professional dedication."
Once Little Gui and the two Sushangs had departed together, the rest of the group made their way toward the Express crew's courtyard.
"The bunny twins, calling the Express home~?"
"The Stellaron spirit is everyone's mama~?"
"They love peace, they love freedom, chasing the Trailblaze through spring and summer~?"
The gray-haired raccoon bounced and swayed as she sang, her white off-shoulder tee printed with gray-green patterns hanging loose and easy, just barely caught at the waist. A black camisole strap looped over her pale neck and lay snug against her delicate collarbone.
Her black-and-purple short skirt was cinched by a wide belt that carved a clean, sharp waistline. As her long legs — wrapped in black stockings — skipped along, the blue crystal on the belt buckle trembled with each step.
She'd only eaten one candy, and now that its duration had run out, Stelle had returned to her normal state.
She carried Caelus tucked against her left side — his cheeks beet-red, the shoulder straps of his overalls halfway down to his elbows — and had her right arm looped around a completely overloaded Haxxor Bunny, all while singing whatever was floating up from her subconscious.
"They're kind-hearted and they're brave, they'll conquer Destruction without a care~ Express divine kids~?"
"Stop singing, stop singing! My liver hurts just listening to that."
The tiny young lord — who had been forcibly changed into adorable little-kid overalls by a gang of female delinquents — pressed a hand to his chest with the expression of a man experiencing cardiac arrest, and reached up to cover Stelle's mouth.
Haxxor Bunny was completely limp, melting into the crook of Stelle's arm.
She had once stayed up all night trying to crack the IPC branch's encrypted protocols without breaking a sweat — and yet this one hour of being changed into kiddie clothes had been more exhausting. An absolute hell on earth.
At least she hadn't suffered alone.
The bunny ears on her hood drooped and swayed. Haxxor Bunny's eyelids were half-closed as she sluggishly tilted her head up:
"Objectively speaking — sure, it's all feeling and no technique, but it wasn't actually bad, was it?"
Stelle was at least singing in key.
"You don't get it."
Caelus-baby fiercely swatted at Stelle's arm, his little leather shoes kicking twice against her waist. His golden eyes were veiled in a twilight-hued melancholy: "That's the feeling of a tiny, innocent young soul being brutally carved hollow by traumatizing storylines!"
Even as an adult, Caelus had always wondered — what kind of demon writes children's cartoons that traumatizing?
And they just kept going, right to the bitter end.
Of course, from an adult perspective, those two kids in the show were pretty hopeless fighters.
Having eaten both grow-big and shrink-small candies at the same time, the conflicting doses had landed March 7th at around six or seven years old. Without the effects layering on top of each other, Little March was set to return to normal about half an hour after Stelle did.
The moment she spotted Caelus making a melancholy expression with his pudgy little baby face, her eyes lit up. She whipped out her camera and started snapping away.
"Wow, little Caelus-cub brooding and shaking his head is so adorable~ Let big sister get a picture!"
But the camera screen popped up a notification: storage full.
"Ah, I took a few too many in the shop earlier."
Tiny Caelus and tiny Haxxor Bunny had been simply too cute for words — while everyone else was getting changed, March 7th had gone into full shutter-maniac mode.
"Storage full. Classic."
The corner of Caelus's mouth twitched. He happened to know exactly how much storage March 7th's camera had left.
Even with the extreme image quality and ultra-high resolution making each single photo over a hundred megabytes, the remaining storage when Caelus had last used it had still been measured in terabytes.
"I have a fantastical dream, dashing through time and space everywhere~?"
A bright, melodious ringtone chimed like a lark — Caelus's phone ringtone, a limited-edition set by Little March.
Caelus fished his phone out of the big front pocket of his kiddie overalls, glanced at the caller ID, held it up toward Stelle, then tapped to answer and held it up to Stelle's ear.
"Hey, little Jing Yuan."
Jing Yuan was Jingliu's disciple, and Jingliu and Caelus-cub had a... complicated relationship. By rough approximation, Stelle figured she qualified as something like Jing Yuan's martial-aunt-in-law.
The reason Caelus hadn't answered himself was, of course, because he currently sounded like an absolute baby.
Around familiar companions on the Express, he could afford to be casual — but Jing Yuan was someone Caelus had long enjoyed pulling seniority on. If Jing Yuan saw him like this now, that scheming old fox would absolutely tease him mercilessly.
That Jing Yuan would be calling was no surprise to Caelus at all.
In fact, just over ten minutes after Goss and Yue'er had taken out DanteMon, Jing Yuan's communication had already come through.
After all, this was no small matter.
The combo attack Goss and Yue'er had used to destroy DanteMon — if that had been aimed at the Luofu, it might have punched a hole right through the Xianzhou.
Even though the Express crew were allies, given their famously abstract personalities and spectacular mental states, the fact that they'd engaged in combat with something approaching Emanator-level without him present had still made Jing Yuan break into a cold sweat.
Watching Guinaifen's live broadcast of the final exchange, Jing Yuan's hand around his teacup had trembled ever so slightly.
Thank the stars it hadn't spread to the rest of the Luofu.
To trade one Fyxestroll Garden Grotto-Heaven for taking out a near-Emanator-level monster — that was already an extremely favorable exchange!
What had stunned Jing Yuan was that the Giant of Light that the Star Rail crew had transformed into had actually repaired the battle-ravaged Fyxestroll Garden and the Grotto-Heaven that had nearly shattered entirely!
A truly inconceivable power.
After the Ten-Lords Commission's underworld officers helped the Star Rail crew collect the Heliobus sealed away by Yue'er's Six-Phased Ice, the three Judges — Xueyi, Hanyan, and Huo Huo — departed.
Xueyi needed to compile a detailed incident report and brief the Ten-Lords and the General, particularly regarding intelligence on DanteMon's demonic arts.
Hanyan had even more on her plate than Xueyi. Huo Huo was entrusted with the mission of hunting down the Heliobus that had scattered outside — less than ten percent of them had managed to slip away, either too weak to capture or possessed of a personality eerily similar to a certain celestial lord famous for running away from everything.
Jing Yuan's call, beyond another round of thanks, was to further inquire about intelligence on DanteMon.
"I have no idea! They said there was food so I came."
Stelle wasn't putting on an act — she genuinely had no idea why a Digimon had shown up on the Luofu.
Zero performance, one hundred percent sincerity.
Faced with this response, Jing Yuan fell silent for a long moment after learning about Digimon lore, and was finally about to hang up.
"General Jing Yuan! I did save the Luofu again, you know — don't forget the boss reward~"
Stelle piped up as a reminder.
"Heh heh. Rest assured, both of you. Gratitude and obligation are the anchor-stakes by which the Xianzhou sails the sea of stars."
On the other end of the line, Jing Yuan leaned back against his chilong-carved table.
'Little Jing Yuan' when opening the call, then 'General Jing Yuan' the moment rewards are on the table — these two... what delightful characters.
"This time everything relied on the two of you. Jing Yuan extends his gratitude. The Heliobus that the Ten-Lords Judges capture going forward will still require your assistance... Oh, right — if I may ask, where did that Universal Synthesizer that dissolved the Heliobus come from?"
Having heard Xueyi's full account of events, Jing Yuan was extremely interested in the Universal Synthesizer.
These little Heliobus couldn't be easily destroyed — every Xianzhou in the Alliance could only manage to contain and imprison them. Methods to completely annihilate a Heliobus did exist, but the cost was too steep.
Every General before him, himself included, had pulled their hair out over the problem. He never expected the Star Rail crew to have a way to permanently eliminate the Heliobus threat.
Caelus pulled out the bow-tie voice changer and tuned it to Stelle's voice. "That would be from the greatest inventor on Greenpasture Meadow — the Wolf King, Gray Wolf."
"Greenpasture Meadow?"
Jing Yuan twirled his teacup between his fingertips. A place he'd never heard of?
The name sounded a bit odd — but the Galaxy was vast. Even as a Xianzhou General, he couldn't possibly know everything within it.
"Would Martial Aunt be able to make an introduction, or perhaps place an order on the Xianzhou's behalf with this great inventor for several Universal Synthesizers?"
If they could acquire these synthesizers, the Xianzhou's Heliobus problem could be solved permanently!
If she could change what she called him, so could he~!
Integrity, after all.
A thousand-year-old fox had very little of it to spare.
"Regrettably, I have no contact information. Otherwise, forget about Phantylia being unable to leave the Luofu — even Nanook would limp home with his tail between his legs."
"..."
Jing Yuan went abruptly silent, his expression shifting to something complicated: "You're serious?"
The Star Rail crew could be as abstract as they liked, but more often than not, the things the two of them said in a casual, joking tone that everyone else dismissed as banter — turned out to be completely true.
"That's the first-gen wolf, unweakened. Do you have any idea what that kind of comic-relief character is actually worth~?"
Caelus held up the bow-tie and stifled a yawn.
We're talking about the guy who could hand-craft a time machine from scratch in a bathroom in one second flat, with zero materials, capable of crossing into this timeline's past. Which Aeon could shatter a temporal paradox like that?
"?"
Jing Yuan couldn't parse what that meant — but his instincts told him Caelus wasn't lying... they've really improved their acting, haven't they?
How could any inventor possibly stand up against an Aeon? Even the geniuses of the Genius Society aren't in the same league as an Aeon.
They exchanged a few more words, then the call ended. Caelus was just about to put the bow-tie voice changer away when Stelle snatched it from him in a flash.
Under Caelus's bewildered stare, Stelle first set Haxxor Bunny down on the ground, then clicked the voice changer's dial with her fingertip, tuning it carefully to match Caelus's baby-ferocious, sticky-sweet little voice. She deliberately raised her pitch and stretched out the syllables:
"March Mama~! Caelus wants a hug~!"
And she thrust Caelus forward as she said it.
March 7th had been flipping through photos, clearing out duplicates to free up camera storage. At that sound, she nearly dropped the camera. Her whole body jolted like she'd been electrocuted.
Stelle, seeing this reaction, immediately got into it. She launched a sustained assault using Caelus's baby voice:
"Mama~ Mama~!"
"Eeek~! Don't talk like that!"
Saying that, March 7th still took little Caelus into her arms with a red face.
Haxxor Bunny seemed to have learned something from this. Her eyes lit up.
Right! In this little-kid form, she could go snuggle up to Seele~!
She immediately stretched her little arms out toward White Seele, who had returned to normal size, asking for a hug.
Caelus-Seele's lips curved ever so slightly. Wouldn't let me ruffle you back at the shop — and now look who's throwing herself into my arms.
Seele scooped up Haxxor Bunny and gave her a thorough ruffle. Haxxor Bunny beamed and nuzzled her head contentedly against Seele's chest.
Laughing and playing, the group made it back to the courtyard.
"Uncle Welt, Dan Heng~!"
March 7th pushed open the door and called out brightly.
In the warm light of the main room, besides Welt and Dan Heng, there was one more figure — a flame-red, gracefully alluring silhouette. Himeko.
She was sipping from a coffee cup. Welt was reading a newspaper. Dan Heng, phone in hand, was walking out with quick steps as if about to say something.
At that moment, March 7th's voice reached all three of them, and they turned to look simultaneously.
The first thing they saw was the tiny adorable Caelus in her arms, in his little overalls.
All three pairs of eyes went wide in an instant.
"Pfft — cough!"
Himeko's coffee sprayed out of her mouth.
Having a child with yourself?
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