CHAPTER 101 — WHERE THE GROUND IS NOT REAL
The battlefield no longer collapsed.
It hesitated.
After Luo Qinghe's domain surged and the arena answered him—after the abyss roared and the stabilizers burned themselves raw—the chaos did not continue its spiral. It slowed. Not because it was repaired, but because something fundamental had shifted.
The ground was still breaking.
But it was breaking selectively.
Stone ribs drifted in wide arcs. Platforms rose and sank with a delayed rhythm. Heat from below curled upward in lazy, dangerous spirals. Wind moved strangely, sometimes pushing, sometimes pulling, sometimes doing neither. The arena had become a place where certainty arrived late.
And in that lateness, Bai Qianlan opened her eyes.
She had not moved during the worst of the collapse.
Not because she was frozen.
Because she was listening.
