After the second stage ended, Gu Xiangshi lit a cigarette outside the budget hotel at the mid-camp, smoke curling like a pale ribbon against the cooling dusk.

She’d slipped today and only took third, a pebble in the shoe of her pride, grinding with every breath.

But what truly needled her, like frost under the nails, was the message Yekase brought after catching up to Pale Knight on foot.

“Someone plans to harm the competitors.”

Gu Xiangshi wanted to stop that person, not just to run the course properly, but because honor throbbed in her chest like a steady drum.

If you want something, declare it openly; don’t loot the desperate, don’t sever an enemy’s line; take responsibility for your own turf till the grass lies flat.

Her father taught her that—the pride that belongs to a Sinister Organization, a blade wrapped in silk.

Yet when she looked around this world, how many groups still lived by that steel?

She remembered the question Yekase had asked her.

What is a Sinister Organization?

Then the extra words he gave her with the warning:

The enemy might be a superhuman—or something not human at all. Now, it’s time to keep your promise.

“…Even if you hadn’t said it, I’d smoke him out, press him flat, and grind him to dust…”

Face shadowed, Gu Xiangshi lifted her gaze to Cloudlong City’s night sky, dark as wet ink.

There was no big-city glare here. The Milky Way lay bare like a silver river. Her smoke thread rose and braided into the starlight, like weaving a gauze veil across the heavens.

—Go do something.

Yekase had left her a comm line, and added: if she called first, she’d have to take his orders.

What a joke. Gu Xiangshi was a cadre of a Sinister Organization, a future head of Huaxia. How could she lower herself to a kid’s command, even for a minute?

But those stupid, airtight management rules penned her in like a caged hawk—tight range, tight intel, tight breath.

If only she’d brought private soldiers from home—regret was a stone; no point chewing it now.

At this pace, never mind smoking out the enemy; she might not even keep the other racers and crews alive.

“…”

[—You called after all.]

“I shouldn’t have?”

[Then thank you for calling. Mind your comm security. I want to share what I’ve inferred so far.]

“Comm security? There aren’t many officials in this camp. And what’s so secure about your end?”

[I’m ten kilometers above Cloudlong City.]

Gu Xiangshi looked up.

In the direction of downtown, a single point of light hung still in the sky. At first she’d blended it with the nearby stars, but now it flickered fast, like it had felt her stare.

“…I see.”

She snapped her idle left hand, a casual crack of knuckles in air, and a black cube dropped over her like a shadowed bell. She vanished in an instant; only a burning butt fell and winked out on the gravel.

She herself was both here and not, fixed in a state like a Phase Shifter’s constant glide—sight sealed, body locked, world muted.

Her signature ability, the “Black Box.” Folks mistook it for sorcery, yet it was a one-of-a-kind superpower. Since it awakened at thirteen, it had ferried her across a hundred rapids and swallowed a hundred foes.

She named it the Microcosm Phenomenon.

“…No one around anymore.”

[Uh, you didn’t wipe every witness, did you?]

“Do you want me to?”

[No, no. Business, then… I’ll cut to it. I think this incident was done by a superhuman. I’m going to analyze his power.]

[The first two victims were racers from the group Everyone. Their cars were fed fuel at the 631 death ratio… you know the 631 death ratio, right?]

“I do.”

[In short, the engines blew and self-ignited. Death scattered like ashes. By the time staff checked, they were burned to gray. The third victim died almost at the same time in the city, backstabbed with a cleaver. The prints on the cleaver… came from Wang Yihan.]

“What? Impossible.”

[In pure whodunits, sure. Add superpowers, and it’s possible.]

Hadn’t he said that just recently? Whatever.

[So is the killer Wang Yihan who faked death? At first I thought so. But two things don’t sit right.]

[The SAL9000 blew up and burned on a stone beach with a wide open view. If Wang Yihan survived and fled to the city to kill, there’s no way he slipped every staffer and camera. Unless he’s also a mole, tunneling from under the chassis. And the near-simultaneous timing would need a teleport on top.]

Gu Xiangshi hesitated, then offered one thing she knew. “Superhumans… powers can show up many ways, but at the core there’s only one ability.”

[I know.]

…So he’d dug deep, down to the roots.

[The other sore point: the Wang Yihan who killed the staffer in the city. Given the blood spatter, he’d have blood on him. Up the stairs was a residential block. Down the stairs was a crowded snack street. Where could he vanish?]

“These two cases—”

[Right. They’re one question at heart: where did ‘Wang Yihan’ go after the crime? The answer is, he disappeared on the spot.]

“Then the corpse in the racer—”

[Gone. I told you, the car burned to ash. The night wind was strong. In a cloud of drifting gray, no one notices a missing person’s weight.]

“…!”

[We can’t crack the ‘simultaneous’ problem, so take it as an axiom instead: the power creates puppets of the dead in two places at once. Like a plague that spreads. Pale Knight, right?]

“You dare suspect me?!”

[I wouldn’t dare. By the way, I just got back to the hotel and checked the hallway cams. On the second-floor corridor, Liu Shiyuan shows up. He tried a few doors, but staff were warned and didn’t open any. Then he walked into a blind spot and vanished.]

—Liu Shiyuan.

Once we clear Wang Yihan, he was the first victim of the incident.

He got puppeted too?!

[Also, about superhuman awakening—online it says they come in pairs. I don’t quite get it. Mind explaining?]

“…It’s literal. Superhumans attract each other. Two latent superhumans must meet; they resonate and awaken separately.”

[What a weird rule. Sounds like some kind of coherence problem in particle physics…]

Silence on the line.

He was thinking. A kid, yet his mind spun like a veteran’s, blades clicking in a clock.

[Forget it. No point adding another hypothetical enemy now. Since the enemy uses the dead, a night with no deaths hurts him most.]

“Then I have a question—why tell me all this?”

Because we met eyes at the opening? Because she’s with Shadow Curtain International? Because he wants her muscle? Because he’s testing her? Or is it just instinct, groundless but loud?

Depending on Yekase’s answer, her judgment would shift like a weather vane.

[Do I even have to say?]

He laughed over the line, light as a bell over water.

As if he found Gu Xiangshi amusing—asking the obvious like a girl needing reassurance, “do you love me,” on a moonlit bridge.

[Because a superhuman only has one ability.]

…

…

Under those undercurrents, the third day arrived on time, the sun rising like a gong strike.

By day, Yekase “investigated” Cloudlong City by strolling. He played to his heart’s content in a board game shop and an arcade, then headed back past eight. He met up with Ling Yi and Jiang Bailu, and the three went to the track.

Stage three. Mostly mountain roads again, but with far fewer trees—finally, drones could film clean lines.

Yekase flew his camera over the course. Only then did he grasp why this stretch counted as a track—across late autumn hills, the road wriggled like a hungry snake. Every hundred meters, a 180-degree bend, then a hundred-meter straight, then again and again!

Running the official route might be slower than hopping it like stairs, rung by rung…

…and apparently, Li the Cannon thought the same.

At the start signal, Thunderbolt, which took fourth last night, didn’t launch. It just sat.

Staff thought they’d stalled and moved to check. Thunderbolt suddenly went clack-clack, its shell splitting into layered plates, baring a forest of moving gears!

—it transformed into a humanoid mech!

So it couldn’t corner because the car was too heavy—Yekase clicked his tongue at the idea, forgetting to watch Pale Knight and Asura dueling through the third bend.

From the car now five meters tall, Li the Cannon roared like a parade drum:

“Thunderbolt, transform and roll out—!!”

Thunderbolt ran onto the course.

Steel legs hit asphalt with a quarry-drill thud-thud, cut every straight-line shortcut, and in one burst blew past the Chimera Dreadnought in third, closing on the front two!

“They’re cheating!” Zheng Shu, driving Asura, ground his teeth. “That heiress from Shadow Curtain International isn’t reacting at all? That’s obviously illegal—just hop out and take them down!”

“But, young master, the rules don’t say a racer can’t turn into a mech. And they don’t ban shortcuts…” his secretary murmured from the passenger seat.

Pale Knight still ran ahead of them, shedding another bend like a serpent shedding skin.

She seemed in a water-calm state. It was the third day, she hadn’t rested in the co-driver seat, and yet every motion was exact, every line clean.

So this is a Shadow Curtain International elite…

A heavy helplessness pooled in Zheng Shu’s gut. Was the undefeated lord of the Northern Wilds going to lose here? Go home and tell the crew, your underboss went out and shamed you all?

“…Y-young master…”

“Don’t bug me!”

“Um, above us…”

He looked up only then, reflex slow as syrup.

Darkness loomed—no, not night. Something covered the sky over their heads. That was—

What was that?

“Thunder—Crescent Slash!”

…So it was a massive guandao.

Surely the rules say you can’t attack other racers with a cold weapon, right?