Meanwhile, the scene slid to Ninghai City; in a seaside villa where the surf hissed like knives on stone, Gu Xin and Marilyn stood in Li Muyan’s bedroom, brows knotted. On the bed, her condition plunged like a cliff-fall; the black infection spilled like ink, swallowing her skin, and only her eyes kept their color, laced with blood-red threads.

“Not good! The Host’s signal just vanished!” Marilyn blurted, voice snapping like a wire.

“What happened—what’s going on?!” Gu Xin asked, worry burning under her ribs like a coal.

“I don’t know. Just now, my link to the Host cut out,” Marilyn said, a stormline furrowing her brow.

Gu Xin’s frown deepened; fear for Tang Coco tugged like a tide, but this crisis roared closer like thunder.

“Ah!!! Ah!!!!” Li Muyan screamed, raw and high, body thrashing like a netted fish straining to tear free.

“I… I won’t give up!!! Ah!!!!” she cried, as a swarm of black particles rose like soot in a gale and wrapped her tight.

“Come on, Muyan.” Gu Xin’s voice was steady, but tears brightened her lashes like dew; she flung out her Anomaly Power, and frost raced the walls like white vines. Marilyn cradled a massive energy cannon, its core humming like a caged storm.

“Ahhh—!” A single scream tore out from the black particles, then dropped to a hollow quiet, like a drumskin going slack.

“Muyan…” Gu Xin clenched her fists; her gaze held the dark cloud like a blade to a knot.

Hoo—hoo. Li Muyan’s awareness fell into a lightless space; panic struck first, and her breath rasped like sawteeth.

“Sorry… everyone… I… can’t hold on…” She spoke into the dark, voice breaking like thin ice.

“Muyan~ we’ll be best friends forever, okay~” A child’s voice chimed, bright as a bell on a breeze. She forced her eyes open; a pane of light bloomed in the dark like a lantern in fog. On it, two six-year-old girls—Ye Yiyi and little Li Muyan—laughed like spring water.

“Yeah, yeah~ we’ll be best friends forever~”

“Mm-hmm~ Pinky swear—hook fingers, hang it high—no takebacks for a hundred years! Break it and you’re the bad egg!”

“Yiyi…” she breathed, the name a warm ember in her chest.

“Then hear me—I won’t let anything happen to you.” Another pane lit to her side, soft as sunrise; Tang Coco in Ye Yiyi’s room, sitting on the bed with Li Muyan, their voices low like rain before it falls.

“Why suffer like this?!”

“Enough! No matter the side effects, end the fusion early!”

Coco’s face flashed again and again around her, scenes blooming like lanterns in a festival night.

“Yan’er, you’re the pride of our Li family~” Another image unfolded beside her like a kept letter.

“Grandpa…” she said, and her eyes grew misty like glass in rain.

More moments unfurled, orbiting her like slow fireflies—each one a warm hand she couldn’t quite grab.

“Everyone… I…” She covered her face, sobbing, despair swallowing her like a well gone bottomless.

Kek-kek-kek… A sinister cackle rippled through the dark like oil, and a vast black shadow lunged in like a living eclipse, smashing the light panes one by one.

“No… don’t… stop… stop it!!!” Her plea sounded small, like a reed against a storm.

The shadow raised an arm to crush the last pane—the three of them at dinner, Ye Yiyi, Tang Coco, and her, steam rising like home.

“No!!! Get away from me!” she shouted, charging the black thing; her hands sheathed in black particles that shaped into blades like night-ice. She hacked and hacked, each strike a flare in the dark.

“Back off! Back off! Back off! No one touches them!!!” Her voice cut like steel, and under her frenzy the shadow shredded to tatters; with a single boom, it burst, and silence fell like snow.

Boom! In the bedroom, the black particles on Li Muyan’s body detonated, a storm breaking out of a bottle.

“Not good! Wall of Ice!” Gu Xin cried; she thrust more Anomaly Power, and ice climbed the walls in brutal layers like armor plates.

“I Field!” Marilyn shouted; the energy shield blossomed around them like a crystal dome.

Boom, boom! The blasts hammered for ten seconds, a drumroll of ruin, then dwindled to quiet; Marilyn’s I Field flickered but held, while the ice walls crazed with spiderweb cracks and stayed standing.

As the energy thinned like fog at dawn, Gu Xin and Marilyn looked toward Li Muyan. The restraints lay snapped like old rope; Li floated in the air, draped in black Armor, the Mech’s edges razor-clean and cold enough to bite. On her left forearm, a long-barreled energy rifle gleamed with a dangerous red, like a coal ready to spark. Her skin looked paler and softer, moonlit porcelain, eyes closed toward them, while black particles drifted around her like slow ash in water.

“Mu… Muyan?” Gu Xin asked softly, her voice barely above the hush of melting ice; she didn’t know if control had slipped or held.

Li Muyan answered the question by opening her eyes. They weren’t black; they were her own, only colder, winter laid over spring.

“Tell me where Coco is,” Li said to Marilyn, her tone flat as a drawn blade.