Neuvillette: "This rift is changing. Is the other side expanding it?"
Rukkhadevata held up the small soul orb containing Fidelle's essence:
"That creature attempted to cast a Pure Soul into the rift, but I intervened. My theory is that if I hadn't stopped it, the rift would have fully opened."
Ei: "Could it be that giant eyeball?"
Rukkhadevata shook her head, offering no answer. She didn't know either, and hoped it wasn't.
Barbatos: "So, does anyone have a way to close this rift? At this rate, it could engulf hundreds of miles in just a day."
Skirk: "The Abyss's vastness is beyond comprehension. My concern is whether the creatures on the other side might seize this opportunity to cross over."
Neuvillette: "Let me try."
Everyone turned to look at Neuvillette, remembering he was Fontaine's Hydro Dragon Sovereign and had recently regained the Authority of the Ancient Dragons. Perhaps he truly could succeed.
Neuvillette extended his right hand, and the meager Hydro Elemental Power in the desert slowly converged toward his palm. Rings of blue seals coalesced, drifting toward the rift.
Then... they were swallowed by the rift...
Neuvillette: "..."
Ei stepped forward. "Let me try."
Morax: "Brute force will be useless."
Ei retreated behind the others.
Subsequently, the group attempted various methods—freezing, tearing, attacking—but none yielded any results.
The rift continued to widen, its suction force and corrosive effects intensifying. Had Rukkhadevata not forcibly stabilized the sand, the area would have long since been sucked into a massive pit.
Nahida clutched nervously at her skirt, gazing up at her Mom.
Rukkhadevata sighed helplessly. The rift had already extended beyond the reach of Irminsul, leaving her powerless to intervene.
Morax: "Perhaps... we should try entering it..."
Before he could finish, Barbatos clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Don't be rash, Old Man! There must be another way!"
Preventing Morax's impulsive act of self-sacrifice, Barbatos began racking his brain for a solution.
With the Heavenly Principles slumbering, who could mend this rift?
The Ruler of Death?
Her gaze should have been fixed on this situation, yet she remained inactive. Could it be that even she was powerless to act?
Venti wasn't the only one wracking his brain. Neuvillette, Rukkhadevata, and the others were all desperately searching for a solution.
-
Just as the suffocating silence threatened to solidify completely—
Ten meters above the desert floor, without warning, the very fabric of space shattered with a sharp, ear-piercing crack like glass being forcefully fractured!
CRACK!
Since everyone was hovering dozens of meters above the ground, they instinctively looked down.
The space below them twisted, folded, and shattered without warning!
Through the distorted fissures, instead of the expected maelstrom of turbulent elemental energy, a wind surged forth—a wind so intensely sweet it bordered on the absurd, mingling the cloying scent of candy with the acrid tang of sulfur and the bizarre aroma of some alchemical concoction!
The scent was jarring, utterly out of place.
Then, a figure shot forth from the spatial rift, less like a "descent" and more like a "launch," landing lightly on the scorching sands.
She wore white, skin-tight pants that merged seamlessly with her shoes, draped in a red dress, and crowned with a latticed hat.
But what truly caught the eye was the glistening, spherical candy she held in her hand, coated in rainbow-colored sugar. She casually tossed it into her mouth, the crisp crunch echoing through the air.
"Aiya ya!"
A spirited, even exaggerated, complaint pierced the heavy silence of the desert:
"Who's so inconsiderate! Carving such a huge hole in this beautiful sandbox? It's hideous! Seriously dragging down Teyvat's overall cityscape rating! How are we supposed to print the next tourism brochures now?"
Alice chewed on her candy, scrutinizing the rift with deep disdain.
The Abyss again, trying to sneak through this fissure? Not a chance. They had come fully prepared for this, but R (Gold) was at a critical stage and couldn't join them.
"Alice?"
Venti was surprised to find Alice here. Considering her bizarre methods, she might actually be able to resolve this rift.
The spatial fissure Alice had emerged from didn't close. Instead, it seemed to be smoothed and stretched by an invisible force, transforming into a vast, deep blue curtain.
Countless brilliant stars suddenly blazed across this curtain, swirling, pulsating, and tracing dazzlingly intricate patterns. A figure stepped silently through this celestial tapestry.
She wore a deep blue robe adorned with countless stars, its hood pulled low, obscuring most of her face, revealing only her exquisitely sculpted yet icily indifferent jawline.
Her presence was utterly unique. Though physically standing there, she seemed to exist in another dimension entirely. The space around her warped subtly, and light bent strangely in her vicinity.
In her hands, she held a complex, three-dimensional astrolabe crafted from pure starlight. Countless tiny motes of light swirled within it, colliding, merging, and reforming with dizzying speed, emitting a low hum like the whispered secrets of the stars.
Barbeloth's gaze pierced through the shadows of the hood, focusing directly on the chasm of the Abyss.
The speed of the light points within the astrolabe suddenly accelerated a hundredfold, a thousandfold!
The low hum instantly surged into a high-pitched, ear-splitting shriek.
In the void before her, countless incomprehensible symbols, lines, and distorted light-shadows flickered wildly, vanished, and reassembled in a frenzy.
Time seemed to stretch infinitely under her focused observation, or perhaps it had been compressed to its absolute limit.
"Chaos... Disorder..."
Barbeloth's voice rang out, clear and cold like dewdrops falling onto metal, utterly calm and devoid of emotion:
"Spatial coordinates... Multiple Superposition State... Self-Collapse..."
Beneath the shadow of her hood, her gaze seemed to pierce through the superficial darkness, staring directly into the abyss's core.
"...Core Anomaly Point... Projection of High-Dimensional Imaginary Branch... Entanglement of Disordered Time Flow... Teleport... Not of This World..."
Her words came in a rapid torrent, each syllable laden with layers of information far beyond ordinary comprehension.
Neuvillette's dragon eyes narrowed sharply. Raiden Ei's knuckles whitened as she gripped her blade. Even the Irminsul's radiant glow within Rukkhadevata's eyes flickered momentarily.
Barbeloth's concise analysis, delivered in mere moments, revealed more profound truths than all their previous probes and attacks combined, striking at the very essence of the abyss.
"So that's it," Barbeloth finally murmured, her voice laced with an icy, penetrating insight.
The light emanating from the astrolabe in her hand dimmed slightly, yet the countless beam-like probes remained firmly fixed in the fissure's darkness, as if anchoring onto their target.
Alice let out a sharp whistle, rolling a sugar cube between her teeth.
"Wow! That sounds even more complicated than Little Klee's latest invention, the 'Ultra-Boom-Boom Grand Adventure'! How intriguing!"
Just as Alice's voice faded and the radiant glow of Barbeloth's Astrolabe continued to swirl—
Time itself seemed to become unreliable the moment Witch N appeared.
There was no tearing of space, no surge of elements, not even a flicker of light or shadow.
She seemed to have crystallized from the very concept of "existence," or perhaps her presence was simply the inevitable consequence of everyone's gazes converging on that particular space at that precise moment.
One moment, the scalding sand lay bare and empty; the next, a figure clad in a plain, gray-white robe stood motionless upon it. She, too, possessed pointed elven ears and wore a matching gray-white hat.
She tilted her head slightly, gazing at the deep chasm that bisected the land.
"This," she declared, "is a wound that should never have existed."