In the end, Thunderbolt really flashed into first place, like a streak of lightning across a storm-black sky.

Gu Xiangshi burned like hot iron, yet the rules stood like cold stone; their move was clean, not a seam to pick.

The mid-camp of the third leg sat on a high hill, a lone knuckle of earth. You could see the deep mountains, bare branches like ribs in November wind.

Gu Xiangshi sat on a dead stump, a bleached bone in the grass, staring into the mountain’s dark throat.

She still wore that thin women’s suit, a paper shield in the night breeze. No subordinates came to lay a coat; she’d come alone, a shadow with a purpose.

She felt the mind go tight like a bowstring.

What was she thinking, under this moon like a chipped plate?

The appearance of that “Jingzhe” had hit like sudden thunder. If she could be mine…

But no. That topic had blown past like a storm already spent.

“Out of smokes…”

She toyed with her favorite lighter, the little flame snapping like a firefly in a jar, click-click to break the silence.

She wanted to think, but without a slim cigarette at her lip, the gears in her head ground slow, like a mill with no water.

“Ahh…”

To others she was the young iron-blooded elite, a blade fresh from the forge; yet here, blocked by a kiosk sold out of White Pagoda Mountain cigarettes, she sighed alone at camp’s edge like a damp match.

“…Huh?”

Something stirred in the mountain, a ripple through leaves like ink.

Gu snapped back, eyes hooking onto a tiny pixel of motion, a lone spark on a dark canvas.

It flickered—irregular—no, that was metal catching the moon, a fish-scale gleam in the brush.

A suspicious figure at a knife’s-edge moment—enemy contact.

A chill raced her spine like cold water. She rose from the stump, the trap sprung in her chest. Don’t waste this chance.

She vaulted the camp fence, a night bird over wire, and ran toward the glint like a hound on a silver scent.

…

…

She finally stopped before a massive building, a block of shadow among the hills.

In the mountains outside Cloudlong City, a thing stood that looked half factory, half sanctum—a steel lotus with a locked heart.

Maybe a secret lab of Eternal Green Pages, she thought, a leaf pressed between iron covers.

The figure stood ahead at the door, a hinge between light and dark.

A girl in dark green tracksuit, a huge pack on her back like a mountain shell.

Gu knew her.

The perennial champion of the Pugilist Covenant—Luzhixing.

Why was she here, a hawk out of territory?

So that’s it. An assassin of Swordforging Manor, come to plunder Eternal Green Pages like a night thief with soft shoes.

No declaration, just a blade into the rear camp—so base, so muddy.

She can’t be allowed to succeed.

“Your opponent is me!”

Luzhixing had a hand on the Spiral Force Research Institute’s door when the shout cut the night like a bell.

She’d noticed someone tailing her on the road, a shadow in distant brush. She’d ignored it—until that shadow dared to bark a challenge at her heels.

Luzhixing lifted one eyebrow, turned half her face, voice cool as river stone.

“Who?”

“Huaxia Branch. Surname Gu, given name Xiangshi.”

Names laid down like cards on a table.

So we’re fighting?

Luzhixing didn’t see why. She didn’t use many words; if it was a fight, then fight. Beat first, ask later. Steel speaks.

“Swordforging Manor. Luzhixing.”

She drew a miao-dao long saber from the pack’s side, steel like a sliver of frozen moon.

Quick battle, quick decision, like rain that doesn’t warn.

She tossed the scabbard back and brought one overhead cut down, a falling guillotine of winter light.

Frames vanished from Gu’s world like clipped feathers. She’d known fighters stood above her, horizon beyond horizon; she hadn’t known speed could be this cruel, like a hawk stooping.

It was a simple vertical cut, path as pure as a river. Yet the air around her locked like ice; blade-light and blade-shadow sealed every path like bars.

If she couldn’t dodge, then she could only—

“Microcosm Phenomenon!”

Her snap cracked the air. A black cube with gold-red lines flowing like lava rose over her head and caught the falling moon of steel.

“You actually made me say the name…”

A power needs no chant; saying the name sharpens it—so says rumor. Gu did it to steady herself, a hand on the rudder in rough water.

She pushed her power. Two cubes bloomed like dark flowers—one swallowed the saber’s body and fixed it in space like a pinned insect, one shot for Luzhixing’s brow like a brick from a sling.

The first cut failed. Luzhixing tried to withdraw, but the blade stuck inside the cube, frozen mid-fall. Even with Mind Energy, it wouldn’t budge—steel in amber.

She abandoned it without a blink, stepped back, and pulled a second weapon—a straight sword—holding it crosswise to meet the rushing cube. That blade too hung in midair, a swallow caught in glass.

Third, fourth.

Luzhixing kept drawing steel and striking like a rainstorm; Gu could barely stave her off. When Gu countered, Luzhixing met it with another weapon, her pack a bottomless armory like a bamboo grove of blades.

Soon the courtyard before the institute filled with black cubes and blades fixed at every angle, a garden of iron freezing the wind.

It looked like a cold-weapons exhibit under moonlight, a silent ledger tallying every battlefield Luzhixing had walked through.

It looked like—

That sword formation.

Gu stared at the embedded blade lines and jolted awake. Weapons placed in a spatial lattice around her—wasn’t that this woman’s signature, a sword formation laid from ground to sky?

Only now the flat plane had risen into space, and the weapons were locked by her power like stars in a firmament—

Swords can’t move. But she still can.

Whoosh.

Another horizontal slash, a comet across her cheek.

Gu raised a cube and took it again, skidding with the impact. She slipped left, using the denser cluster of frozen steel to wedge Luzhixing’s sightline like a wall of reeds.

Luzhixing flowed around, steps light as a cat. She cut the angle, two steps, and abandoned the blocked line.

They chased and slipped through a forest of edges, a deadly hide-and-seek among thorns.

Gu began to read the rhythm in that storm of steel. She found the beat. Her counters started to land; cubes shaved shallow wounds on Luzhixing’s skin, red threads on green cloth—she couldn’t box her outright; the speed tore the net.

Gu took more cuts. The cubes swallowed the hammer-force of each incoming chop, but the sword-aura that split air like seams in cloth still scraped her. And as more weapons filled space, her dodges brushed steel, nick by nick, like a swimmer in coral.

No patch of her remained unmarked. Blood ran in warm streams; her fresh cubes lost bite, corners loosening like damp paper.

“Watch your feet.”

“Ugh!”

She ducked under a locked tachi and stepped back, only to kick a spiked club. Pain blossomed like a struck nerve; a muffled cry slipped out.

The gap was clear, a canyon.

Luzhixing breathed easy, even bleeding; she moved through the steel like a fish in reeds, attack never thinning. Gu’s vision darkened at the edges like a closing iris.

She could match now. What about a minute from now?

She could still hide now. What about a minute from now?

Cubes born without a shot-path got dodged. fired cubes got parried. What else—what door—

The box can close. It can open. A heart is one, inside and out.

Her father’s face rose in the fog, a lantern in mist.

Open.

Open, open—she had to open.

…

“Microcosm Phenomenon!”

Luzhixing flew backward like a leaf in a gust.

The cube’s six faces unlocked, panels exploding outward like petals blown by wind. The force hurled Luzhixing away, a body caught by a burst.

The same fate hit the weapons. Every frozen blade resumed its motion as if a paused clock ticked again; trajectories crossed, steel kissed steel, a thunder of iron filled the yard, then blades rained down like hail.

Gu sank to the ground, strings cut. She couldn’t rise; even a finger-snap felt like a mountain to lift.

Luzhixing looked ragged, a storm-tossed pine. Years had likely passed since she’d met such a foe outside a Pugilist final. On the tumble back, she’d struck several blades; her tracksuit hung in ribbons, stained red and green like a torn banner.

“Hah… hah… With power like that, why sneak like a thief at midnight?”

“You… crazy woman. Are you brain-sick or what?”

Luzhixing opened with a jab at the person, not the argument. Gu nearly fainted from the hit to pride.

“Swordforging Manor and Eternal Green Pages… the Silver Star Furnace. I’m here to light the forge. Who… needs your permission?”

…Ah?

Swordforging Manor and Eternal Green Pages? A joint project?

Gu knelt, head heavy as wet clay—now the ache began, a hive waking.

So it was a misunderstanding? She’d let nerves twist her, chased the wrong shadow, bit the wrong heel?

“Damn… I’m all talk on paper…”

Her body sagged forward. Hands hit dirt, palms trembling, and she bowed her head crookedly, a battered reed.

“This humble woman, Gu Xiangshi, begs Miss Lu’s pardon!”

“No time for your pardon. …Can’t you feel it?”

Feel… what?

Gu suddenly noticed the mountain air thick with breath, the undergrowth rustling like fur. People. Many.

They were surrounded, a ring of wolves in brush.

Luzhixing lifted her chin to the trees. “Which organization?”

“Who goes there? Name yourselves!” Gu pushed up to shout; the force ripped her arm wound open again, warm blood loosening like wine.

The uninvited stepped out from the trees one by one, unhurried as mist.

The leader’s face sharpened under the moon, a coin held to light.

Zheng Shu of the Dong Baihua.

How could it be him—

So that was it. Even if he didn’t personally die to that esper’s hand, he’d end up a puppet on its strings.

“Zheng Shu” smiled. “The snipe and the clam fight. The fisherman takes the net.”

The faces around him were the same face, a creepy mirror—his meek little secretary copied and pasted. Both had fallen under Thunderbolt’s blade tonight; now the copies wore their deaths like borrowed coats.

“Kill them. With two strong models, the rest are weeds to scythe.”

Wipe out Cloudlong’s competitors in one night? For what harvest?

Gu couldn’t stand. Luzhixing gripped a straight sword and a tachi in either hand, a cross of dawn and dusk, and faced Zheng Shu in silence.

“Hmph. Spent arrows. Go.”

Luzhixing said nothing, then moved. She met the tide of secretary clones like a rock meets surf, sparks and breath and steel.

How long could she last? Gu could feel it—she was at the last pull of the bowstring.

It was shameful, but even if Gu died here, she wouldn’t let the woman she’d cut to this state die beside her. Not for her mistake.

What to do? What could she do, in this thicket of knives?

In her almost-desperate mind, a thought she’d scorned before rose like a moth to light—if, right now, one person could appear—

When she was little, she’d called that person—

A hero.

Boom.

As if the sky heard her, a meteor dropped, a burning seed tearing the night.

It hit with a roar that shook dirt like drumskin, molten chips spraying like sparks. A swath of secretary clones mowed down like wheat.

At ground zero, a small figure stood with a slender staff-like weapon, smoke curling like incense. She threw a thumbs-up back at Luzhixing and Gu.

“Super Perseids can do this, too—”

Dust parted like a curtain.

Yekase stood there with a high-frequency vibrating dagger between her teeth—the one Lu Yao gave to Ling Yi, and Ling Yi passed to her. She smiled with eight bright teeth and spoke around the blade, words sweet and muffled.

“Supersonic. Nice to meet you.”