Shen Shanshan turned out her pockets and the teleport chest three times, like fishing an empty net from black water, and found no new miracles.

She did dig up the razor-blade box Yekase once gave her—N-173 [Infinite Blade Maker]—back when Yekase still thought Shen was a guy, a joke curling like smoke.

The little box could press stray metal into razor blades, a clever pebble that felt both handy and useless in the palm.

She also fished out the [Twin Devils] goggles she’d worn once, two dark moons promising borrowed courage.

Besides that, only three magazines, three cold loaves at the bottom of the bag.

Fire a gun in enemy turf, kill one and ten swarm like hornets; caution whispered like rain against tin.

She should scavenge easy metal and feed the box, make throwaway blades, little teeth to bite with till she broke free.

She slid on the goggles and felt a shell settle over her nerves, a turtle drawing in, then drifted through the container maze like a stray cat.

She came up on a staff bar crouched between iron walls, a lantern in a scrapyard night.

Orange Glow, the sign said, a sunburn that didn’t warm.

No spinning lights, no laughing clusters; only orange-red haze pooled like rust, with a smell that crawled into the throat.

Two or three women dressed like fireworks watched the bottom line of the menu, four digits winking like lures.

Beside them, men ranged from print tees that wouldn’t pass a decent lobby to suits so thin you could read light through them, cologne and shame wrestling.

A folk singer cradled his guitar like a baby bird, but every note fell like a bent nail; nobody listened, so the lie held.

Side hustlers, off-the-clock drifters, and small bosses playing hooky moved like fish in stagnant water.

Shen Shanshan narrowed her eyes and let her gaze skim them like a skipping stone, then stopped on a woman at the bar.

She looked a few years younger than Shen, a fresh leaf against scarred bark.

Elbow on the raw wood edge, one hand scrolling her phone, a milky drink waiting like a cloud beside her.

A common jacket blended her into the room; the T-shirt gaped, flat as glacier ice under a gray sky.

Denim hotpants shaped a decent curve, long legs sheathed in black knit; if not for S·P·O·R·T on the side, they’d pass for tights in the dim.

Decadent, flat-chested, long legs—three strokes, one picture, a bell struck in Shen’s ribs.

Simple truth—she was exactly Shen Shanshan’s strike zone, an arrow that found its target in mist.

Compared to Yekase’s never-quite-grown frame, this alive, springy body pulled her like tide; then a thought—wasn’t Yekase’s chest bigger?

Whatever, desire moved like wind through bamboo; the stalks swayed anyway.

Before the lightning could blind her, she caged it—reason first—then sat on the other side of the bar, a fox choosing shadow.

She moved cat-quiet; the bartender didn’t even blink, dust settling on still air.

A few bottle caps and an opener lay at the corner like coins at a shrine; she palmed them and fed them to the blade box.

Then she sat in the corner and studied the woman, a hunter tasting the wind.

No place to hide steel, no fighter’s lines; a factory girl, a staff family member, a honey-trap? The labels fluttered like paper tags.

A slap cracked from the booth to her right, sharp as frost; a woman stormed off with her bag like a storm cloud leaving.

Annoyance pricked Shen’s watching, a moth singed by flame, and she glanced over.

The suit the slap had stained stood up with a cheek red as a carp gill, pride and panic wrestling on his face.

He wanted to chase, but the room’s eyes pinned him like needles; shame flared, and sitting back felt like crawling into a shell.

His pig-brain churned for seconds, steam puffing, and he chose to prove his charm by hunting another doe.

He angled for the bar, a shark that smelled its own blood.

Wait—that one’s mine, her mind growled like thunder behind hills; she didn’t flip the table, not while running for her life.

He stopped before the flat-chested woman and flashed the gold badge on his chest, a coin in torchlight.

“Beautiful miss, you’ve captured me,” he purred, syrup poured on gravel. “Would you share a—”

She sipped her milk-white drink, lifted her eyes like a river stone, and cut him off.

“No,” she said, voice husky like smoke after rain.

Good—slam the door hard; the sound rings sweet.

That rasp scratched pleasantly at Shen’s nerves, notched her score up; give her above-average fighting chops and Shen would have charged in like a drunk moth.

“You… you don’t know me? I’m the MVP of Team Seven,” he puffed, a bullfrog on a leaf.

His hand reached for her shoulder, a hook gliding for a still lake—

It landed; no ripple, no splash—no resistance at all, a pond that hid no fish.

Civilian, then, no fighter—soft clay under lacquer.

“They call me Wu Zi, the Submachine Gun’s Vessel,” he bragged, a circus banner in stale wind. “I favor you, so why the ice—”

“That’s enough,” another woman’s voice struck from behind him, clean as a snapped twig.

He turned, mouth open like a hinge. “Huh?! Who asked you? She dressed like this to sell—”

Chak.

A silver flash skimmed his neck like a swallow, and blood bloomed a heartbeat late, a red chrysanthemum opening.

He screamed, clutched his throat, and toppled like a felled sapling.

The silver thing flew five, six meters, lost steam like a spent spark, and clicked to the floor.

An old-school razor blade, thin as frost.

“How dare you draw blood in a garrison? Where are you—” someone started, voice breaking like thin ice.

Shen Shanshan, heart smiling like a thief’s moon, stepped over the dying man and let her arm rest on the flat woman’s shoulder.

Aha—same-sex advantage, a key that turns a quiet lock.

She breathed into her ear, voice a ribbon. “Time to go.”

The bartender had slipped to the back room like a mouse; the container held only the two of them—and everyone else, a ring of wolves.

“You…” the woman tilted her head, a bird listening. “You’re not with Emerald Pool?”

“I’m the hero who came to save you,” Shen said lightly, a lantern joke in a dark alley.

First, leave a soft, easy impression, like warm tea; then pull a clean rescue and let the halo stick.

Her skills could only skim off trash fish, sure; but if she held till Yekase punched a door through the garrison, the reunion would blur the ceiling.

See, when your friends are one-man armies, the mist hides your own ladder.

After that, let the classic rope-bridge effect do its work, fear melting into interest.

A young man in workwear lunged, his muscles honed like rope; even his grab seemed to pull wind.

He clutched air; her shadow wasn’t where his hand landed, a ghost stepping sideways.

Shen’s palm supported the woman’s soft back, and together they dipped a comic bow, a pair on a stage.

Her other hand reached to the man’s eight-pack, moonlight on a washboard.

Between her fingers glinted three blades, twins to the one that had flown, three cold dragonflies.

She didn’t plan to cut cloth or skin; there was likely cutproof padding under that yellowed shirt, a turtle under moss.

Her thumb pressed, then let go; the blade between index and middle finger spun out, a coin flipped, and sank into the soft under his chin.

“Urgh!”

“Say hello to the one on the floor,” she murmured, lazy as a letter to an old friend.

She grabbed the empty glass, squeezed; the round foot snapped off with a crisp sigh.

Without looking, she drove the remaining stem into his eye, a nail into wet wood.

Her right hand brushed his pain-wrinkled face, slid to his jaw, and pushed the lodged blade inward—through tongue, soft palate, to the skull’s door.

“Which squad?!” someone barked, panic flaring like dry grass.

“An intruder!”

“An intruder? How could there be an intruder here?!”

Shen parked the flat woman on a barstool like setting a vase, then stepped back one pace, a dancer finding her mark.

She tossed two blades over her shoulder, careless as flicked seeds.

They arced down onto the path of two knife-men; they batted them aside with bored steel and strode—

“You shall come no further,” she said, voice like a line drawn in sand.

They couldn’t take the next step; the tide stopped at their ankles.

In the breath after parrying, old force spent and new not yet born, their reflex recoil became their last human motion.

Shen slid between them as if greeting friends, arms opening like wings, and hooked their necks.

Then she bent them toward the floor, a willow snapping in hidden wind.

That slender frame burst with a thousand-pound snap; bodies lifted, then dropped like hammers.

They fell onto the blades they’d swatted, nails they themselves had set.

The spinning steel met flesh at a perfect slant; it slid like hot knife through butter, kissed fat and muscle, parted vessels, and pinned the spine’s seams.

“Two go as one,” she quipped, a paper lantern joke in a storm.

No one answered; laughter had crawled under the tables to hide.

On one knee, she stripped their knives with quick hands, fed them to the blade box, and lifted her eyes to the rest like a fox over a chicken yard.

“Anyone else? If you don’t wanna die, face down,” she said, words flat as a blade’s back.

Three small knives jumped at her neck and back, wasps aiming for bare skin.

She slid a step into the nearest attacker’s arms, braced shoulder and waist, and pivoted like a tango, 180 degrees of silk.

His spine caught the other two knives, a shield made of bad luck.

Using his slow fall as a curtain, she skimmed along the floor to their backs and clipped both Achilles like snipping threads.

In the dim bar, Shen moved like a wraith in reeds, back and forth on a dark current.

No time to make blades; she stole knives; when a knife stuck, she grabbed a bottle and broke glass like ice.

A clear crack rang; glass fell like rain; fearing his skull too stubborn, she drove the jagged neck into his brow and gave it a twist, a key in a swollen lock.

“No wonder they call it a legendary weapon,” she breathed. “It really fits the hand.”

When the words cooled, only bodies and the surrendering lay there, trembling like leaves; no one stood.

Good thing they were all here to slack off; a dozen fighters couldn’t scrape together a single gun, a drought of bullets.

“All done. Let’s run,” she said, turning to the flat woman who’d watched the whole show like a cat behind glass.

She reached to pull her along and realized she didn’t know her name, a cup without a handle.

“Right—what do I call you?”

The woman rose from behind the bar, her calm face out of tune with the copper stink, as if she walked through rain without getting wet.

She held a Sprite from the cabinet; why a bar stocked Sprite was a question for another day.

“Need a sugar top-up?” Shen asked, a smile on a thin wire.

“Ah, I’m good… so, your name?” Shen added, curiosity peeking like a sparrow.

The woman twisted the cap off the 1‑liter bottle and raised it to her mouth, a spring pouring into a clay jar.

Glug, glug, glug—the sound ran like pebbles in a brook; she drained it in one breath.

She set the empty back, closed the cabinet as if nothing had happened, and looked at her, eyes like calm water.

“I’m Xiaoyuan,” she said.