By the time Yekase finished warming up and drifted back over the start camp, the drivers were already by their beasts, hands on metal like falcons on perches.

She pulled out her phone, the screen a cold moon, and opened the roster the staff had sent.

Eastern Hundred Blossoms’ second young master, Zheng Shu. His co-driver was one of his men, a shadow at his shoulder.

Ghostfire’s next-heir brothers, Li Big Cannon and Li Second Cannon. What kind of dumb-ass names, like fireworks scribbled on a tomb.

From the Many’s dev lead and head planner, Liu Shiyuan and Wang Yihan. Two pens sharp as knives, sheathed in suits.

Unaffiliated civilians, Chen Nuo and Li Juncheng. They looked like a couple, a matched pair of kites tied to one string.

And the Shadow Curtain International Huaxia Branch’s heiress, Gu Xiangshi. No co-driver, a lone comet trailing no tail.

Everyone but Gu Xiangshi ran standard two-person teams. They’d alternate across five stages like tides, racing hard while keeping the machine alive; desert teeth chew steel, so each stage ended with a fixed pit like an oasis.

Guns and explosives were banned, the rule like a line drawn in sand before the wind.

That was all the rules, a small sign on a road that vanished into night.

Yekase didn’t know why Mira sent her to watch a contest that screamed battlefield, like incense inviting moths. Probably she’d bet Yekase wouldn’t ignore civilians if the fight spilled, bait on a hook.

Those two civvies on the track didn’t even care about their own lives, two candles dancing in a storm.

Hire one investigator’s slot, get an investigator plus a fighter; Mira’s thrift cut like a blade of winter bamboo.

Drivers slid into cockpits one by one, doors thudding like drums before war.

The race was about to start; the air tightened like a bowstring.

Yekase tapped her headset, opened the voice channel she used with Ling Yi, tossed out a soft hey, and caught Ling Yi’s voice like a sparrow landing on her palm.

“Doc, I chatted with the staff. These drivers have terminal chuunibyo, right? Who names their cars?”

“Huh? They name their cars?” The thought felt like stickers on armor, gaudy and stubborn.

Back at Twin Towers she ran bikes, not cars. Modded cars were meaner and pricier, like tigers compared to wolves, so she’d never followed car-culture rites. But shells and guts barely matched after mod, masks over new faces, so names did matter… probably.

“Haha. You don’t think they lay on their hoods at night, whispering love to their cars, do you?”

Somewhere, a certain someone who numbered every invention felt poked with a stick, and mumbled, Maybe that’s normal… right?

“For example, that white one. The blonde’s car today. It’s called Pale Knight.”

“Oh, that does smell a bit chuunibyo.” The name hung like frost over steel.

Hard to picture Gu Xiangshi draped over a hood at midnight, purring Pale Knight into chrome like prayer.

“The twins’ car is called Thunderfire.”

“I figured Hell Knight. It’d pair with Pale Knight, a yin-yang of drama.”

“Apparently it was Hell Knight! But it got forced to rename for ‘regional discrimination.’”

“Huh?”

“They pasted a map of the Netherlands on the door—”

“All right, stop right there!” The pun skidded like a tire on black ice.

“New topic. Doc, is your Sorcery affinity bad?”

“Huh? No, who told you that? I remember it being pretty strong. First time I learned Celestial Speech, I burned the textbook. Paid the library a mountain of cash.”

“...Huh?” The silence cracked like thin ice.

Pretty strong? So all those ‘loser-to-legend’ fantasies she and Jiang Bailu had spun were smoke. Yekase didn’t learn advanced spells because—engineer’s pride, a steel ruler across her knuckles?

“What can I say, I’m a genius. Everything but that pure-idealist, no-physics Infinite Power—everything else, I dabble.”

“It’s… fine…” Her voice wilted like a leaf under sun, then steadied again.

While they bantered, five cars rolled to the starting line, nose-to-nose behind the red stripe like caged panthers.

To avoid glare, the floodlights went dark, the desert a lake of ink. Only five pairs of headlights burned, five sets of hunting eyes waiting to spring, not at prey, but at each other.

On the track, civilians, fighters, and the heiress of Shadow Curtain International were just names on the same wind.

The start signal lit.

A swarm of mini-drones rose like fireflies and snapped into a glowing “5” in midair.

They flashed for a heartbeat, died to black, shuffled like shoals, then lit a “4.”

Yekase pushed a Levitation Spell under herself, a clean lift like a kite catching a steady breeze. She buckled that ridiculous half-plastic mask under her goggles, and murmured into the mic, “Bailu can’t fight. You guard her.”

—3.

“Got it.” Ling Yi’s reply was a small blade, quick and sure.

—2.

“Parallel. Continuous. Passion—”

—1—

“—Flight Spell.” The word left like a spark from flint.

Five iron beasts on the ground and one small shadow in the sky shot forward the instant the drones turned green, arrows loosed from the same taut string.

The engines’ roar arrived late, a thunderhead chasing lightning.

Stage One opened with a short straight to warm the blood, then roughly a hundred and fifty kilometers of Gobi mountain road, a dragon’s spine under starlight. The drivers all chose to grab advantage on the easy stretch, wolf-shoulder to wolf-shoulder.

A straight can’t separate elite from elite, not when they’d clawed their way through nationwide qualifiers. From Yekase’s height, the five cars ran so tight their paint almost kissed.

That distance had nothing to do with safety, a breath held next to a cliff. If one car lost control, a chain-collision would bloom like a black flower—but these people lived with death and speed like twin gods sitting in their passenger seats.

Faster. Faster. Keep the pedal buried like a blade in the scabbard.

Gaps began to open, hardware dividing wheat from chaff like a cold wind through reeds.

Right then, Hell—no, Thunderfire spit two pale-blue lances from its exhausts, twin flames like foxfire. Those brothers had stuck a Mind Energy mecha power core into a car’s ribcage.

The co-driver, Li Second Cannon, didn’t sit idle. He poured Mind Energy into the cylinders with his brother, and that wild-painted black JDM monster exploded into a straight-line speed no one could match, a bullet made of night.

Under that pressure, Pale Knight eased off and let them through, a chess piece slipping to bait.

“Co-drivers can add power too?!” Ling Yi’s voice popped like a startled sparrow.

“The rules don’t ban it, so it’s fair game.” Yekase’s tone was dry as sand.

Her initial speed already beat theirs; even boosted, Ghostfire’s brothers hadn’t left her far behind, a comet’s tail within reach.

But a Mind Energy engine… the others wouldn’t be simple, either. This wasn’t a race of cars. From the gun, it was five Infinite Power mecha wearing car shells like masks at a masquerade.

Infinite Power mecha. She didn’t know mod cars, but mecha? She could take them apart with her eyes, and smile.

They cleared the newbie warm-up stretch and knifed into the hills.

Cloudlong City wore Gobi like a cloak, though an oddly lush forest stood nearby, a green island said to be a decades-old windbreak project. That woodland was Stage Two’s den.

The back half of Stage One was classic rocky hills, low swells like frozen waves. The climate had laid a skin of gravel over the road, a rasp against tires, a thief stealing grip.

On a snaking mountain road, speed—or a good drift—lives and dies on grip. Even Yekase, who’d never watched a racing anime, knew that much like she knew her own pulse.

How would they answer?

Ghostfire’s brothers, first into the hills, showed their hand. From Thunderfire’s four hubs, thin tubes tipped out like insect mouthparts and misted water onto the tires; valves clicked, air bled, and the whole car settled a few centimeters, a crouch before a pounce.

“Huh? Purely physical tweaks… I thought they’d sheath the tires in Mind Energy and cosplay Hell Knight.”

“No no no, that’s too much. No way that’s possible… right…” Ling Yi’s doubt fluttered like a moth.

Second into the hills was Gu Xiangshi’s Pale Knight.

As named, so moved. Its tires flared silver-white, drawing long white tails like a rainbow dragged across the sun. At a glance it looked like it ran above the ground, a ghost on a tightrope.

“That’s… Omega Ray.”

“Omega Ray?!” Ling Yi’s breath hitched like a skipped beat.

“She’s using Omega Ray’s self-cleaning to purge sand from the tire grooves. It also kicks up a mini dust storm behind, a veil to blind anyone chasing.”

“What is this, a superpower racing manga? If their cars transformed into mecha right now, I wouldn’t blink.”

“They just might. Never underestimate an Infinite Power engineer’s imagination.” Yekase’s smile felt like a cat’s, amused and sharp.

“They just might?!” Ling Yi’s yelp faded into static and wind.

Yekase didn’t answer. Infinite Force Perception snapped onto the five cars’ power lines, her senses tracing pipes and pulses like fingers on harp strings, catching every tremor.

Ghostfire’s Thunderfire: pure Mind Energy engine. In a word—rustic, a hammer that only knows nails.

Gu Xiangshi’s Pale Knight: pure Omega Ray—no, an Omega Ray–Mind Energy hybrid, two rivers braided into one.

Eastern Hundred Blossoms’ Asura: Sorcery… an alchemy engine? Copper and mercury singing old songs.

From the Many’s sal9000: an Omega Ray–Neptune setup, Omega Ray calming Neptune’s turbulence like a hand on a wild horse. Fresh scars showed temporary Mind Energy injections, a rider who didn’t fear cliffs.

The couple’s Chimera Dreadnought: Soul Power dominant, mixed with Mind Energy, Sorcery, Omega Ray, Neptune, and…

…Flash Energy? Someone here ran Flash Energy?

In the swirling, oil-tank-not-quite-an-oil-tank, a kaleidoscope of power churned. A few pinpricks of red glowed inside like embers under ash, and Yekase’s eyes went wide behind her goggles.

Of course. Flashblade Red and Magical Girl Icarus had stirred up waves these days, and their Flash Energy had finally reached public sight, a new star in a crowded sky.

Flash Energy had never been hers alone, just a river few cared to sail. Once orgs saw its bite, they’d trawl the sea of papers with nets and patience, find threads, and start digging.

The shape of Infinite Power applications had already changed on lands beyond Yekase’s horizon, a silent turn like dawn behind a ridge.

No more a world of two towering peaks, Mind Energy and Sorcery. Orgs had begun mixing fuels in all ratios, a thousand recipes boiling like cauldrons under the moon. But to find the most efficient build among endless blends was a needle in a field of needles.

“I see…” The words dropped like a key into a lock.

The puzzle that gnawed at her all day clicked into place, stones settling in a dry riverbed.

Eternal Green Pages’ Cloudlong branch—what were they doing? Researching ancient Infinite Power engines, dusted bones under glass.

If it’s an engine, you feed it mixed Infinite Power samples and see what it spits, like feeding gods different incense.

But how do you get piles of viable mixed samples?

Answer: let the samples come to you, drawn like moths to a bright lantern.

That was the true purpose of Eternal Green Pages hosting this rally.