Henan Road Pedestrian Street.

Shuangta’s famed, time-worn night market flowed bright as a river of neon, thick with snack stalls, internet cafés, arcades, and bric-a-brac shops—a rare patch the Sinister Organization barely dared touch.

Why? Because the name Xiaoyuan fluttered here like a banner in the night breeze.

Specifically, she lived in the corner twin booth at No. 11 Henan Road, Summit Internet Cafe, a long-term lease carved into the dim.

Between researching Alchemy and entering tournaments, she often used her undying body to earn side cash only she could—live tests of lethal prototypes.

She’d sit there and let a new weapon blow her into ash like a phoenix, then stand, brush off soot, and stroll to Finance for her pay.

That gig weighed heavier than an elite-eight purse.

Because of it, her web of ties across Shuangta’s major groups stretched wide and held long; they all gave her face and kept their feelers off her beloved Henan Road.

A human test-post that useful—stirring her anger for one street’s take would be a loss dressed as gain.

After finishing their first bottle of grape wine under the moon’s cool mirror, Yekase and Jiang Bailu wore a soft blush; warmth pooled like lamplight.

“…Why does it feel cozy?”

Jiang tugged open her lab coat collar and draped it over her arm, a fairy robe shed in a lazy glide.

Yekase usually drank higher proof and stayed sharp, smiling: “Maybe we look like sisters. Two muddled sisters, half-drunk together.”

“Hahaha… Right. Doctor, I remember you said you had a real younger sister?”

“Mm. She’s come to Shuangta lately too.”

“To find you?”

“To find me.”

Jealousy rose like a small tide; Jiang swayed her head. “Lucky. I’m an only child. I envy people with siblings. It feels like the world isn’t just you alone; even if elders leave, there’s still a home to return to… it gives courage.”

“Uh, does it? I thought that line only belonged in romance arcs…”

“You don’t know how blessed you are, Doctor.”

The topic broke like a string; Jiang drifted into rumors about Luzhixing and Xiaoyuan, gossip tossed like seeds.

Luzhixing belongs to Swordforging Manor, which, like Eternal Green Pages, isn’t exactly a “proper” organization. Their base sits on a nameless peak inside the Daxing’anling no-man’s zone, forge fires glowing like stars. They don’t do the usual business; instead, they sell high-price custom weapons nationwide and abroad.

Despite the name, pay enough and their anvils ring for more than swords.

Yekase knew—Polaris Staff was commissioned there. Wartime made everyone pull like one rope, so they only paid a symbolic fee.

“But Luzhixing’s path veers. They say she mastered the hardest craft within two years of apprenticeship. After that, she forged nothing.”

“Why? Too busy with tournaments?”

“She traveled the country, hunting the famous… fighters who wield cold steel.”

She beat them, took their weapons as trophies like a winter harvest, then walked on. The management law approved a victor plundering the defeated. Those who came to avenge were beaten again and sent home empty-handed.

After she had plundered every swordsman, bladesman, staff master across the land once, she went to compete.

“Wow… like a wuxia novel…”

“Right?! It’s badass! I’ve been an A-Lu fan for ten years!”

It kind of clicked… Luzhixing’s social malfunction on the guest bench, swaggering into the studio with a bag of weapons, fit a matching unhinged past.

…Alright. It is cool.

Yekase had done her share of messed-up things too, a mirror clouded by the same storm.

They stepped into the pedestrian street and were swallowed at once by the crowd’s tide, steam and spice curling like incense. It felt like there was no night—or that life here starts at night—which gave Yekase a long-lost familiarity.

Day belongs to society; night belongs to oneself.

For Ling Yi, Yekase handed daylight back to society, so night became precious again, a jewel cupped in the palm.

She took Jiang Bailu’s hand, warmth sparking like an ember.

“Crowded here. Don’t get separated.”

“Eh? Ah, mm…”

Fluster bloomed small and shy; Jiang lowered her head, blinked, then turned her face away.

“…What do you want to eat, Doctor?”

Yekase shrugged. “I should ask you that. I invited you, and I know this street way better.”

“Why? It’s not close to Tianxin District, right?”

“These past months, when there was nothing to do, I often came.”

These months.

The months Jiang thought she’d lost the Doctor, a gap like a winter river.

She never imagined that on a weekday night months later, she’d be walking this night-life street—once not her world—with a Doctor turned so… adorable.

“Oh, that grill’s good! The grilled nian gao rice cakes are especially good. We need two skewers.”

Yekase tugged Jiang to the curb and, with practiced hands, ordered over a dozen skewers, smoke rising like ghostly ribbons.

“Ten-minute wait. Let’s grab milk tea next door.”

“Oh, oh…”

Dragged again, across the street’s glowing stream.

“Passionfruit double shot with coconut jelly, full sugar, no ice!”

How is she this fluent… she’s basically a schoolgirl now, this woman…

Jiang watched Yekase’s profile lit by the shop’s soft lamps. Noticing the stare, Yekase turned and gave her a small smile, moonlight inside the eyes.

Suddenly, Jiang felt a strangeness drift over her, a mist.

“Doctor…”

“What’s up? What do you want to drink? It’s on me.”

“Are you the Doctor?”

“? I am.”

“Prove it?”

“If you believe I am, then I am.”

That’s a self-proof…

Yet it felt exactly like something the Doctor would say, and her baseless unease melted like dawn frost.

Yekase pinched the receipt between two fingers, stepped back, and, even without music, tapped her right foot to an invisible beat.

“No, no, no… Doctor, you’ve gotten way too girly. It’s kinda gross.”

“Huh??”

Her neat, pretty brows twisted like reeds in wind.

“No way? Back in Development, I often munched skewers and milk tea…”

“And still with that ‘no way’ tone! That’s exactly it! Full-on girly collapse!”

“‘Girly collapse’?! Where’d you even learn that?”

Yekase lunged and yanked her cheeks; Jiang flailed and swatted back. They tussled for minutes, sparks of laughter in the street’s hum, then stopped when the clerk called their number.

They stayed close, shoulder to shoulder, and smiled.

Yekase always felt she owed this strong, independent, hungry-to-learn apprentice, even after all those nights they burned under the same lamplight.

She planned to treat her like Liu RuoYuan—guide and look after her as an older peer. Like adding a distant cousin to the family. Both twenty-two, a mysterious age like a sealed envelope.

“Bailu,”

Yekase eased away, tilting her head toward the crowd’s murmur, a river of faces.

“Keep calling me Doctor if you want, but drop the formal ‘you.’ It’s too stiff.”

The tilt read like shyness; Jiang’s voice slipped gentle.

“Really?”

“Yekase and you have no hierarchy between you.”

“But I really respect you.”

She switched fast. Nice.

“Your designs upend my understanding every time. It feels like standing at the doors of a hall of knowledge. Even if my dull mind may never enter, I can see a beam through the crack.”

“That’s a little dramatic, no? Ah, skewers are ready.”

Yekase took the bag, pulled out two, and handed them over. “I do think I’m a genius, but the world is packed with them. It’s not that special. Some never touch their true field their whole lives. If you think of it that way, it’s like a gacha game.”

“Gacha game…”

“Some clear the game with R cards. You at least pulled an SR. Treasure it. Bailu, you cracked my Flashblade System and built mass-production units. Calling yourself ‘dull’ kind of insults me by proxy.”

“No, no! I’d never—”

“Then lift your head.”

Jiang raised it and met Yekase’s eyes. Those almond eyes were two pools of autumn water, clear to the bottom, catching soft light.

She no longer knew how she felt about the Doctor.

From simple senior colleague, to the mentor who pointed toward possibility, to the betrayer who vanished—

And finally, the girl beside her, smiling with quiet happiness and puffing at steaming grilled nian gao.

“Hiss, hoo… I didn’t teach you every strand of knowledge. Instead, I’ll take you to see all kinds of landscapes from now on.”

“...Doctor, I like you.”

“You mistook respect for love.”

“Did I?”

“You did.”

After that, the two sat in silence for a long while, the night’s tide ebbing around them.

The end of the eat-and-wander line was Summit Internet Cafe, its sign glowing like a small lighthouse.

Xiaoyuan lived in a tiny booth at the end of the second-floor hall. But seeing this superstar came with rules:

1. Each person gets one chance per month, and only solo. Groups take a number and queue.

2. Knock three times; if Xiaoyuan doesn’t respond, leave immediately.

3. If Xiaoyuan isn’t inside or is sleeping, leave immediately.

4. Visit length is unlimited, but once she orders you out, leave immediately.

It cost nothing; come a few times and you’d catch her. All told, a very down-to-earth star, like a comet lounging low.

After the skewers, Jiang went quiet. At the moment of truth, she chickened out, booted a PC, and watched today’s daytime match, the screen’s glow washing her face.

Yekase couldn’t move her; she signed in at the front desk and walked down the hall, into deeper shadow.

Peeking through the small glass in the door… there!

The silhouette she’d seen on TV slouched lazy in the double booth’s sofa, thumbing a controller, a cat in a blanket.

Yekase knocked three times, then cocked her head at the swiveling camera.

“Please come in,” the camera spoke, and the light flipped green, a little leaf of permission.

Pretty smooth… Yekase isn’t a fan of any particular fighter, but plenty must try to see her. Pure knocking could drive anyone mad, so Xiaoyuan must have a solid temperament, rock under river.

She pushed the door in.

A four-square-meter standard double booth. One sofa bed, two PCs. The table piled messily with takeout boxes and beer cans, plus an inexplicable surplus of straws, junk like driftwood.

Wrapped in a blanket, Xiaoyuan paused the game, slid her gaze from the screen to Yekase, and put on a formulaic faint smile:

“Morning.”

…Morning to you too!