The Mouse Hole Beneath the Desert

"Little Shrimp! How did you sneak out here?" Lily Bai called out. "Get back now!"

"Sis, Sister Tanya already agreed to let me come with you," Bobby Bai said with absolute seriousness.

Tanya Quinn looked at him in surprise.

This kid was no ordinary quick thinker.

Only six years old, and he already knows how to use tactics to get his way.

"Divine Lord?" Lily Bai called out in confusion.

"If he wants to come so badly, just bring him along!" Tanya Quinn said. "With me here, nothing dangerous will happen."

Lily Bai shot Bobby a glare and said, "Fine! I'll let our Empress Mother know."

Tanya Quinn actually liked Bobby Bai a lot, so she kept him close the whole way, letting Lily Bai focus entirely on searching for their target.

On the way, Lily Bai sent a sound transmission to Divine Lord Tanya Quinn: "Divine Lord, am I really not Lucia Lu reincarnated?"

Lily Bai wasn’t the only one curious about that question—Nine Li wanted to know too.

But honestly, she wanted to know even more herself.

She’d just been holding it in all this time, never daring to ask.

Tanya Quinn asked, "So what if you are? So what if you aren’t?"

Lily Bai said, "If I am... then everything that happened to her feels like it happened to me. If I’m not, then it’s just someone else’s story."

Tanya Quinn didn’t say anything.

"Divine Lord..." Seeing her stay quiet, Lily Bai started to panic.

Tanya Quinn gave her a faint smile. "You really want to know, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Help me find Lord Noctis first."

"If you tell me first, I can't just run away!"

"I'm not worried you'll run."

"Then what are you worried about?"

"I just love watching people squirm with anxiety!" She grinned mischievously.

Lily Bai: "..."

...

With the hairs shed by Lord Noctis, searching was actually pretty easy.

He wasn’t staying in the Sealed-God Pocket Realm anymore.

He was in a cave beneath a desert.

Flying through the winding, branching tunnels that plunged thousands of feet down, Divine Lord Tanya Quinn sighed, "If Lily Bai hadn’t come along, I’d be hopelessly lost in this big mouse hole."

She was hopeless with directions.

When they found Lord Noctis, he was busy digging.

He didn’t seem to move much, but the soil in front of him was pressed aside by some invisible force, forming a tunnel tall enough for two or three people.

Lord Noctis held a luminous pearl in his hand, dressed in a black robe, his long hair falling to his knees. From behind, his figure looked tall, slender, and graceful.

His most distinctive feature was his hair—not the usual black, but tinged with reddish-brown.

"Huh?" Bobby Bai exclaimed. "Why is his hair that color? It’s so pretty!"

Lord Noctis turned around.

He was no longer in his Baxa form.

He was an extraordinarily handsome man.

Snow-white skin, long narrow eyes, and a dark, elongated teardrop mark on his forehead.

That long reddish-brown hair was clearly a passionate color, but on his face, it only made him seem bold, sharp, and incredibly cold-hearted.

Lily Bai stared at him, stunned.

But his gaze went straight past her, landing on Divine Lord Tanya Quinn.

"What are you doing?" Tanya Quinn asked him. "Sick of living in the Divine Realm, sick of living on the surface, so you came to this desert to dig a hole and live underground? Is this just your true nature showing?"

"Divine Lord, you’ve come for something?" he asked coldly, turning back to his digging.

"Was it you who slaughtered those cities and pinned it on Fifth Highness?" Tanya Quinn got straight to the point.

Noctis: "I only handled the slaughter. Leo Li handled the framing."

"Why? Why would you help him do something like that?"

"What’s it got to do with you?"