“Doctor.”

“I’m here.”

Jiang Bailu walked the night sidewalk, a pale reed under neon rain. Yekase hurried beside her, two strides braided into one like a winded sparrow.

“The flights are booked. We leave at one p.m. the day after tomorrow, a gull cutting south. We land at Changyun by dusk, like a coin dropping into dark water. Rally staff will scoop us to the hotel, steady as oars.”

“Mhm.”

“We’re using the boss’s pull, like a hidden current. We won’t race. We just clear hazards, like weeding a field before fireflies rise.”

“Mhm.”

“The event runs a week, five teams total, five banners on a ridge. It’s a rally, but the rules got modded, like a river dammed then diverted. The boss didn’t explain much, fog over a marsh.”

“You don’t have anything else to say?”

…

“…About the survey on Infinite Power fusers, there’s one more finding.” She stared at the city’s neon, ink bleeding through rice paper. She gripped Yekase’s hand like a castaway clutching driftwood, knuckles white as salt. The squeeze hurt, a thorn pricking through the glove.

With Flash Energy suppressed, that clean, unfamiliar sting cut through Yekase’s haze like frost on glass.

“What did you find?”

“Of the dozen known fusers worldwide, Infinite Power isn’t only at Neptune Energy. It’s scattered like seeds on wind. Among them, aside from the ones still too young to ripen…”

Jiang Bailu’s tone lay calm as a lake, but an undertow dragged at the sand.

“—Every other individual shows signs of not aging. Their clocks hang like stopped pendulums.”

Yekase’s head snapped up, a sparrow startled into sky. She looked at her former assistant—no, a full-fledged researcher now, a blade drawn from its sheath.

“Doctor, will you become one of them?” Jiang Bailu didn’t look at her. Her voice trembled like a kite string in a gust.

“…I don’t know,” Yekase said, truth bare as a winter branch. “My main track is Infinite Power machinery, iron and lightning. Bio-side… you may know more than me, a candle held steadier in wind.”

“In fifty years, I’ll be a bent old woman, white as river frost. Everyone else will go the same way, leaves yellowing toward soil. From zygote to grave, a human life is a short story under a hundred years, a moth’s arc around a lamp. If by then you still look as young and bright as now…”

She let go of Yekase’s hand, a bird unperched. The last time they walked shoulder to shoulder at night—wasn’t it during the Quan Yuan Tournament? Back then Yekase had released Jiang Bailu’s hand first—now the tide turned.

“When you come see me, I won’t know what face to wear, mask or bare skin. I’m scared I won’t leash the jealousy that climbs like tentacles up a mast. I’m scared… I’m scared you won’t bear the hollow where we used to be, a room after the lamps go out.”

She walked on, into the gaudy and the pitch-black, fireworks and ink sharing one sky.

“—When that day comes,” Yekase’s voice broke across her steps like a hand on the bridle.

“Your footprints will live in some corner of the internet, amber holding wings. They’ll etch a star on a horizon with no beginning or end, and even a thousand years won’t sand it away. By then, the birth and death of galaxies won’t weigh more than my memory of being with you, fireflies bottled in the dark. Just knowing that is enough light to keep me walking.”

“…Doctor, you’re still so good at pretty words, silk over steel.”

Yekase only watched the moon, a cold coin on black velvet.

“Well, look at it this way.”

“Ten years makes you feel the length of time, like a mountain path at dusk.”

“A hundred years makes you remember elders three generations back, names like incense smoke.”

“And a thousand years is nothing but romance, a paper lantern on a distant river.”

Jiang Bailu didn’t turn. She tilted her head, cautious as a deer, and tested the air.

“—Then, how many pages do I get in the Doctor’s story, a lotus folded into your book?”

“That’s not up to me. It’s up to you,” Yekase said, a mirror offered to sunlight.

“I see.”

She stepped into the night crowd and vanished, a fish slipping into reed-shadow.

Yekase went to tuck her hands into pockets by habit, found the dress had none, clicked her tongue, and folded her arms like a shield.

“…Let’s go home and pack.”

…

…

It was the last rest before a business trip, yet it was Monday, a bell that rings either way. It was Monday, yet Yekase didn’t need to go to school, a cloud drifting past the bell tower.

Woke up small, so no high school—blessed.jpg, a sticker over a sunrise.

She’d barely attended that high school anyway, a desk kept for a ghost. Whatever. Let the river carry it.

When she woke, it was already ten in the morning, sunlight like warm water across the floor. Liu RuoYuan had left for work, leaving one person and one cat in the rental like two teacups on a tray.

Yekase lay under the covers and stretched her legs, silk against quilt like rain over leaves. The friction gave a strange little spark, not unpleasant, a firefly in a jar.

She turned her head and met Rice Rice’s eyes, two blue marbles in fog. Instantly, a staring contest ignited, flint to tinder.

Rice Rice watched and watched, then arched its back and hopped backward like a coiled spring. It shot onto the dining table, a silver fish leaping, and started chasing its own tail, sweeping tissues and a teacup into the river of air.

“Ah—”

The instant the teacup started free-falling, like a peach blossom blown loose, Yekase dove out of the covers. But the four polite things she could call restraints—stockings, garters, lace, and lace again—did their job like quiet chains. They held her strength down to what the body could bear, a hawk with bells on its legs.

She face-planted on the floor, a sparrow in dust, and watched the teacup she’d lived with for six years kiss the ground. From bottom to brim it fissured and burst, a porcelain chrysanthemum.

“…”

Between two of the larger shards, Yekase lay prone and hugged her head, a turtle under fallen tiles.

Rice Rice padded over and peeked through the crook of her arm, a curious moon through bamboo.

“…You! This is on you—”

Yekase roared and reached for it like lightning reaching for a tree. Rice Rice stared back with wide eyes, round and blue, two gemstones cut clear.

Silence pooled, a pond without ripples.

“…Don’t jump on the table next time, got it?” She flicked its forehead, a finger-tap on a drum.

“Awoo.”

Yekase took a broom and swept the shards, moonlight gathered into a dustpan. After two days watching, she’d found Rice Rice’s smarts matched a cat’s, maybe a bit higher, maybe dog-level, a clever paw. That was all.

After all, Neptune wasn’t a species famed for brains, more like tides for power.

If you didn’t give it orders, it acted like a normal pet. It played alone or came to rub against her like velvet. It also messed up, a leaf in a gust. But when she tried to communicate, it understood and obeyed perfectly, sharp as a trained military dog, a whistle and a leap.

Yekase knew nothing of alien ecology, a blind hand feeling an elephant. But she knew someone who might have ideas, a lantern in fog.

“Rice Rice, let’s go meet a friend,” she said, a path opening in her head.

“Meow?” It answered on a rising note, a question-mark feather. Then it obediently shifted back to its original form and twined around Yekase. With no need to fight, it didn’t cover her whole body. It became a cloak, raven-feathered and light.

—Half an hour later, Yekase lifted the curtain of the Witch Machina Workshop, a bead curtain over a secret cave.

The answer was Sandryon.

She had centuries for ballast, like an old tree’s rings. Her research was Alchemy, odd as dew on iron. It wasn’t impossible she’d had secret contact with visitors from the stars, fireflies drifting through a forge.

“Hey, you in—?” The shop was a well with no echo.

No answer.

“Master—?” Still no answer, a flute with no reed.

“You damned old hag, sky-cursed merchant. That hooked little nose says old money to me—are you a vampire, bleeding coins at night—”

—!

Tendrils slid from under her skirt like seaweed and wrapped her legs. They yanked her back in a blink, tide snapping a boat rope. A fireball slammed where she had stood, blossoming into a crafted flower, glass petals thrown wide.

“If I were a vampire,” a voice chimed like silver, “you would’ve become a blood thrall the first time you spoke to me alone.”

Sandryon appeared on the smithy roof, moon silk around a blade. She drifted down before Yekase, a petal on a breeze.

Before her feet touched ground, she summoned an iron staff and tapped it lightly. With a ringing clang, she hung there like spun cotton candy, paused in midair, a swallow frozen mid-dip.

Yekase felt zero dreaminess from that pose. She felt only this—single hand holding up a full body in midair?! What caliber of arm strength was that? A woman tempered for hundreds of years—purity too high, steel bright as frost.

“So what are you, then? —Right, about that question you dodged last time,” Yekase said, a hook cast back into a deep pool. “You never answered me.”

How did Sandryon live five hundred years—how did she become a Longlifer? Before, it was idle curiosity, a cloud over tea. Now, the same question burned with urgent daylight, tinder catching.

Sandryon swept her gaze up and down Yekase, a jeweler’s eye on a blade. “Excessive energy burn. Triggered a regression in form,” she said, a diagnosis like a stamp.

“Right.”

“That means your danger rating has reached nonhuman class, a bell rung across a canyon. Congratulations. Flash Energy is the most invasive Infinite Power I’ve seen, a vine that eats walls. It completed basic assimilation in very little time, a flood carving a new bed.”

“I knew that already. No need to remind me,” Yekase said, a knife kept point-up.

The amount of Flash Energy in her body could even tune her apparent age, a sunrise rushed or paused. That said enough: the current Yekase was best described as an energy-organic hybrid, lightning braided with muscle.

Closer to Rice Rice than to human, a mirror turned the other way.

“Mhm. By the way, Goth suits you,” Sandryon added, a black rose pinned to a grin.

“…You didn’t have to say that.” Yekase didn’t bite. She pressed on. “I want the answer to that question. If you don’t want to say, just refuse at the start. Don’t bait a fish with no hook.”

Sandryon shook her head, a bell without malice. “It’s a long story. I’ll close the shop and tell it slowly, like pouring tea.” She flexed a finger and hooked another. A table and two long stools slid from the alley’s end to their side, moonlight moving furniture.

Two celadon teacups sat on the table, water smooth as glass, steam lifting like silk.

“Milk tea for me,” Yekase said, hand up like a schoolkid.

“You’re demanding,” Sandryon sighed, a cat flicking its tail. She sank onto a stool and raised her cup. Today she wore an ornate dress of powder blue, a rose-window of fabric. It clashed delightfully with the old-style teacup, east-wind meeting west-wind.

“A long time ago… the ’50s, I think,” she began, a lute tuned low.

“Wait, the ’50s? Which century’s ’50s?” Yekase cut in, a pebble skipping.

“1452. I was born,” Sandryon said, a candle lit in a stone room.

“From that far back?” Milk tea denied, Yekase grudgingly took the cup and sipped. Honeyed black tea spread like amber sunlight—surprisingly good. She sipped again, a second coin dropped in the same well.

“I was a famous prodigy from the start, a comet over a small town. At twelve, the king summoned me to court, to paint among silk and steel—France’s court,” she said, banners unfolding in memory.

“You’re not Italian? A turncoat to your pasta?” Yekase teased, a leaf in mischievous wind.

“Must you be so rude?” Sandryon’s fine brows drew together, two willow leaves touched. “Back then, Europe’s borders weren’t this clean. Inviting foreigners to be kings was common, like exchanging rain between fields.”

“Fine. Call it flexible citizenship, a passport like a fan,” Yekase said, palms open.

“At that time, Ancient Alchemy was at its zenith, sun at noon. In court, by ear and eye, I began to study it. No teacher—self-taught, a vine finding a trellis. Then, when I was seventeen, the alchemists of France planted an apple tree in the palace garden, a seed under a crown,” Sandryon said, voice soft as moss.

“France is a hexagon of land, a hive cut by the sea. Sorcery in the soil flows naturally toward the hexagon’s center, a river to its low. At the precise middle they planted that tree. It drank the earth-vein like a newborn at the breast, and it soon grew thousands of meters tall, hundreds of people around in girth, a mountain of bark—”

“—As those alchemists wished, it became the World Tree,” she finished, the last note hanging like a star over a dark forest.