The captain of the soldiers respectfully led Aoba and the others forward.
"Aoba, have you ever been to this place before?"
On the road, Temari leaned close to Aoba's ear and quietly asked.
Yakumo, Hinata, and Kurenai also looked at him curiously.
They had grown up together since childhood, and they had no idea when he might have come to such a place.
And they had never heard him mention it before either.
Aoba shook his head, looking at the scenery around him that was nearly overlapping with his previous life, his face full of confusion as well, "I don't know either."
Everyone felt that this matter was becoming more and more shrouded in mystery.
They followed the captain into a tall tower, and soon stopped at the entrance of a room, knocking on the door.
"Your Majesty the Queen, we have already brought Lord Aoba here."
"All right, let him in."
From inside the room came a mature yet dignified woman's voice.
The soldier respectfully opened the door.
When the door opened, what appeared before them was a beautiful middle-aged woman, looking about thirty-something, sitting behind a desk.
The woman had short black hair, her expression gentle and calm, and she radiated a noble and elegant aura.
Her complexion was rosy, her vitality strong, clearly well-nourished. Even though the years had eroded her, they had left almost no traces on her face. She still carried her charm.
When Aoba and the others entered the room, the moment the woman saw him, ripples stirred in her elegant eyes, as though she couldn't restrain her emotions.
But when she saw the girls following behind him, her expression immediately turned sorrowful again.
As if looking at a heartless man.
"This…", That gaze made Aoba feel somewhat guilty, as if he really had done something wrong to her.
But his eyes immediately fell on her forehead, there was a diamond-shaped mark.
He knew exactly what that meant—
'Yin Seal?'
"Are you… looking at this?"
Seramu gently touched the mark on her forehead, giving a self-mocking smile, "My talent isn't very good. I studied for several years before I barely managed to learn it."
Aoba couldn't help but swallow, and probed, "Your Yin Seal… who taught you?"
"As expected, the you of now doesn't know anything. Although I knew there would be a day when we'd meet again, I never thought it would truly make me wait over twenty years."
"That farewell back then became twenty years of wait. Meeting again now, I've already become an old lady."
At the end of her words, she couldn't help but gently touch her cheek, her eyes filled with unconcealable sorrow.
This scene made Aoba's scalp go numb, 'Could it be that I traveled back over twenty years, dumped her, and then immediately traveled back here?'
'Does it have to be this outrageous?'
'Then where's Sara? Looking at this age, could Sara be his daughter?'
"Wait a second, aren't you mistaken about something?"
At this moment, Yakumo, who had been watching from the side, couldn't help interrupting, "Aoba is only a bit over ten years old right now. How could he have known you over twenty years ago? At that time Aoba wasn't even born yet."
Seramu let out a light sigh, "That's because it was the Aoba of the future who traveled back more than twenty years to Roran. We met, misunderstood, came to know each other, and became close, then even…"
"Stop!", Just as Yakumo and the others were becoming more and more confused listening, Aoba suddenly interrupted Seramu's words.
Though he had been somewhat flustered just now, he had also been carefully observing this queen of Roran.
He discovered that while her eyes did indeed contain the joy of reunion after a long separation, the sorrow of twenty years apart, and some special emotion, there was also something else clearly mixed in.
Like the slyness of someone who had just played a successful prank.
"What's wrong?"
Seramu looked at him innocently, "Don't tell me you don't believe me?"
Aoba's face tightened, "Perhaps part of what you say is true, but our relationship shouldn't be like that, right?"
"Eh?"
Seramu was slightly startled, "You saw through me?"
'So it is just as I thought…'
The corner of Aoba's mouth twitched, "Can you tell me the real situation now?"
"This matter can all be talked about slowly later. We have plenty of time," Seramu's gaze became incomparably sorrowful again.
"The urgent matter now is, you should return my daughter to me!"
"Daughter?", Aoba froze.
"My daughter disappeared twenty years ago…", As Seramu spoke, she stood up from her seat, groped along the wall, and then opened a hidden door.
"Come with me. Oh, and your few little girlfriends can come along too."
"?"
Yakumo and the others, who had still been immersed in the bizarre idea of traveling through time, immediately snapped back to their senses.
They looked at each other, then silently followed.
Everyone entered the hidden door, but inside was only a very small square space.
Right after, the hidden door closed, and they could clearly sense they were continuously descending.
Aoba blinked, 'Isn't this an elevator?'
When the door opened again, they had already arrived in a completely different space.
It was a huge underground hall, surrounded by dark passageways stretching out endlessly.
In the middle stood a stone platform.
The entire stone platform was enveloped in a square space resembling a barrier.
Inside the barrier was the phantom of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl. The girl had cherry-red hair, a shade deeper than Sakura's, like burning flames, and her features bore some resemblance to Seramu's.
"That is my daughter, Sara."
Seramu looked at the girl within the barrier with gentle eyes.
And Aoba had already recognized what that barrier was. A Sealing Barrier.
Within it, everything was frozen at the instant of being sealed.
The girl before them was the same.
"Back then, when sealing the rampaging Dragon Vein, Sara should have gone with you to the future."
Seramu explained sorrowfully, "Then she just disappeared, as though she had vanished. Only her chakra remained within the Dragon Vein. The Dragon Vein was sealed by you, so you should have a way, right?"
If not for still being able to sense her daughter's chakra within the Dragon Vein, and pouring all her energy into developing Roran, she wouldn't have known how she managed to endure these years.
"I see…", Aoba pondered for a moment, then walked up to the stone platform. His eyes changed, and the chakra within him connected with the space sealing Sara.
Then the barrier melted away like snow, but at the same time, his expression shifted slightly.
Just earlier, he had been wondering why the sealing space could continue to exist without his chakra.
As expected, in the very next second, the long-sealed Dragon Vein's chakra erupted wildly outward.
Like a breached dam, it surged into a sky-piercing pillar of light, endlessly expanding outward.
"Aoba!" ×4
The anxious voices of Yakumo and the others suddenly rang out.
Aoba turned at the sound and immediately saw their nervous faces.
"Ah!"
But the next instant, Hinata suddenly clutched her eyes with a cry of pain.
The range of the light pillar expanded rapidly, leaving Aoba no time to think. In just the blink of an eye, the pillar of light had completely enveloped him.
That day, Aoba also turned into light…
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