“You look like you just got ten thousand years younger.”

Warm should’ve flowed like spring tea, yet the scene skewed strange like a mirror lake in wind, all because she was an Elf.

Among them, age marched with strength like shadow with body, so calling one “young” rang like a thrown glove on stone.

Especially now, when she had literally shed ten millennia like a snake slipping an old skin.

“Heh…” Her smile was a paper fan in cool shade, polite and sharp.

“Shame on me, and all thanks to you, Miss Adelaide.”

“Ah, listen to my forgetful tongue,” Adelaide’s tone danced like sunlight on ripples.

“You’re magnanimous, so please don’t stoop to fuss with a mere human like me.”

“Oh? Can’t promise that,” the other’s voice tapped like rain on eaves.

“The last time I suffered a big loss, it was at the hands of a ‘mere human.’”

“What, there’s actually someone who can trick the unfailing Queen Dreamlan?”

Adelaide’s mouth made an O like a round moon, and earned a playful eye-roll like a tossed petal.

She let the theater fall away like mist and exhaled a steady breath.

“But please accept my sincerest thanks, Your Majesty—every word solid as stone.”

“You’d better mean it.”

The ever-gentle Menglan shot the white-haired human a slanted glance like a hawk skimming a field, her tone cool as mountain shade.

It was restraint, and it was earned, because those glorious golden locks had become springy short hair like new bamboo shoots after rain.

Once, her hair fell to her ankles like a waterfall of light; then the Lama volcano drank most of it like a furnace swallowing straw.

After the war, it still brushed her collarbone like a last lingering breeze, not the jaw-length cut that now framed her like a sharp crescent.

As for why, the blame circled back to Adelaide like a kite string to hand.

“I am grateful,” Menglan said, eyes dropping to steam that curled like mist over hills.

“Without your help at any cost, the nationwide magic lines for the live broadcast wouldn’t have risen so fast, like vines racing up a wall.”

“When Bingxia came to me about it, I was struck like thunder under clear sky,” she added, sipping.

“Someone dared to promise such trouble without so much as a hello… heh.”

Adelaide wet her lips with tea that felt like warm rain.

“That’s why I came today, to knock on your door and beg forgiveness, like a pilgrim with dusty feet.”

“Forgiveness?” Menglan set the cup down with a whisper like a leaf landing.

“No, you didn’t come just to thank me… and empty courtesies are smoke anyway.”

She didn’t rise; she simply swept a sleeve, and ink-green mana moved like a woodland wind.

When it cleared, a plain Han-style sword lay in her hand like a river stone.

“The Ceremonial Sword,” she said, her gaze still as a deep pool.

“It’s the only weapon you can bring into the Flower Rite.

See if it sits well in your hand, like a glove warmed by the fire.”

“Oh? Handing me the ceremony’s blade already—sounds like a decree falling like a gavel,” Adelaide teased, voice light as a drifting seed.

“Whether it is or isn’t, you’re the one among us who sees most clearly, aren’t you?” Menglan’s tone was a cloud that refused thunder.

She set the sword on the table and nudged it across like a boat crossing a narrow stream.

Adelaide caught it, and weight dropped into her palm like a hidden stone.

“Mm…?” Her brows knit like crossed twigs.

A blush of pink mana wandered from her sleeve like dawn through lace and lifted the heft with an easy tide.

She wrapped the hilt, and the draw hissed like a snake in dry grass.

“As a weapon, it’s a bit too blunt, isn’t it?”

The blade mirrored like water, smooth as ice, with almost no edge, and she glanced at Menglan like a swallow checking the sky.

“The Ceremonial Sword wasn’t born to kill,” came the quiet reply, cool as night over rice fields.

“So there’s no edge… at least on the surface.”

“On the surface?”

“Pour in mana and see.”

Adelaide blinked like dew on a petal, then lowered her lashes like shutters.

Red ran along her spell-lines like molten threads, and the moment it touched the hilt, it plunged like a whirlpool into deep sea.

In a breath, the sword filled and went light as a reed in hand.

She opened her eyes to find dense arrays crawling the blade like frost-ferns, each line flooded with her blood-red, then splitting and gathering along both sides.

There, where there’d been no edge, a thin, translucent film bloomed like a glass leaf.

Surprise stirred in her chest like a bird under straw.

She knew this shape like a half-remembered song; she’d held its cousin before.

Yes—back in Lama City, that magic-core sword had sung like a bell in her bones.

She’d mourned when the Forging Hammer pancaked it like a comet hitting soft earth.

Ancient Nacha craft had been a marvel, stole her breath like a mountain view, stronger than her own conjured Bloodsword in every way.

She looked at the tiny hole in the guard like an eye in the wood, and the answer clicked like flint.

“A replica of the magic-core sword?”

Menglan nodded, a willow dipping to water.

“Strictly, a Ceremonial Sword revised with that sword as reference.

It’s heavier than the original, like a pebble more in the shoe, because the Flower Dancer’s costume has no inner pockets for offerings.

So I set a little space spell in the hilt like a secret drawer.

Inside are most high-grade offerings I know, enough for about ten high-tier casts—for humans, that’s legion-class magic.”

Adelaide’s face smoothed like slate under rain.

She stood, rolled her wrist, and the mana-edge parted the air like silk, leaving faint marks like scratches of moonlight.

Her silver hair touched those scars and snipped clean like frost-bitten threads, falling without a sound like first snow to floor.

Such sharpness plucked her breath like a string.

“Good sword!”

“Save the praise for a moment,” Menglan smiled, a crescent rising behind thin cloud.

“This is its lowest-cost mode.

Slot in a magic core and it learns new tricks like a blade remembering fire, but once you choose, it won’t change—”

Before her words could land like seeds, Adelaide had already drawn a cream-white gem from her breast pocket like a pearl from shell.

She pressed it into the guard’s little eye, and pushed.

Light flared like a lantern in fog, then sank back into the steel like a tide tucking itself in.

The blood-red tint drank the gem’s hue and turned a soft, girlish pink like cotton candy at dusk.

“Mm! Looks great!”

“…”

Menglan’s silence hung like a windless banner, then she found her voice again, dry as bark.

“Too late to ask now, but you heard my last line, right?”

“I did,” Adelaide said, light as kites on spring wind.

“Once it’s in, it’s locked.

Doesn’t matter—I like this one.”

“Oh?” Curiosity replaced confusion like sun after drizzle.

“You know I have stronger cores to offer, don’t you?”

“I’m honored, truly,” Adelaide said, bowing with theater like a curtain fall.

“But the Dreamfeast Spider fits me like a thread to a needle.

And I’ve always liked this core—it carries a memory like a scent in an old scarf.”

“A memory?”

“How to put it… There was someone fantastically awkward, all corners and detours like a mountain path in fog.

She gave this core to my friend with loops and loops of misdirection, just so my friend would ‘naturally’ pass it to me.

She went to all that trouble just to hide her feelings from me, like a squirrel hiding a single nut.”

Heh, thinking about it now, she was so stupid it wasn’t cute, and so stubborn it scraped like sand.

Adelaide slid the sword home with a sigh like wind through chimes, eyes on the core glowing in the guard like a little moon.

Her words complained like light rain on paper, yet her mouth lifted like a tide, the look in her eyes warmed by memory like embers under ash, full of happiness and calm.

Menglan’s eyes widened a fraction like petals loosening, surprised but silent.

She listened like bamboo listens to wind until Adelaide sat again, shaking her head like a horse tossing its mane.

“So I’m putting it where it’s most obvious,” Adelaide finished, nose tilted like a proud cat.

“Let that person stop dreaming of fooling me, hmph.”

“I see.” Understanding softened Menglan’s voice like dusk over water, with a touch of self-mockery sharp as a reed’s cut.

“Seems I made a mistake.”

“Eh? That’s on me, how would you know? No ‘mistake’ needed.” Adelaide tried to patch it like a quick stitch, but Menglan only shook her head like a slow bell.

“Not about the core.”

She topped Adelaide’s cup, steam unfurling like white silk, then spoke.

“I have to admit an error.

Do you remember what I said when we first met?”

Adelaide blinked fast like moth wings.

“Uh… you said you didn’t much like humans.”

“Yes.

I also said your hair and eyes always reminded me of someone I can’t stand, like a thorn in the thumb.”

“Ah…”

“I said it again a few times after that, said you were very like her.

But that was my prejudice, a fog on my own path.

You may look the same, and share a gift for masks and a mind like a clockwork maze…

Yet the blood your heart pumps carries a different warmth, like sun through winter glass.”

That other one would never care so fiercely for anything but herself; in that one thing, no matter how many lives you stack like rings on a tree, a soul doesn’t change.

Menglan finished like a brush stroke, and Adelaide shrugged after a small stillness like a held breath.

“I’m just human, Your Majesty, and humans don’t do reincarnation, do we?”

Her voice was a pebble tossed in a pond, ripples small and neat.

Menglan only sipped tea and let the thought sink like ink in water.

Seeing she meant to close the book like a quiet cover, Adelaide raised her own cup and followed.

Silence did the work of a door closing like dusk falling.

When the clear tea lay bare as a dry brook, Adelaide stood.

At the threshold, she left one last line like a ribbon on a branch.

“Then let’s meet at the World Tree, Your Majesty.”

She tilted her head in a nod like a crane by a stream, then lifted her gaze as if to a far watcher beyond the ridge.

“I’m ready.

The question is—”

Are you ready?

To dodge that watcher’s eyes, the back half broke off like a twig, but it was enough, like a lantern seen through fog.

It didn’t need asking; Menglan already knew the missing words like a poet knows the last line.

And she knew her own answer like a promise etched in jade.

Of course.

For that coming moment, she had prepared like stone patient in rain—for a full ten thousand years.