Yekase stepped forward.

Li Erpao raised an attack stance, then froze. Her silhouette was wrapped in crimson flame like a burning cloak. She vented all Flash Energy from rear exhausts. She shrank back to normal size.

Gigantification barely held even. What good is shrinking?

He watched the two girls hug face to face, engines revving toward him.

No— they didn’t come.

Midair, their figures warped like a mirage. They looked like they kept accelerating. Their position barely changed, stuck like a lagged game. They were… spinning in place?

What are they doing?

Ling Yi whispered by Yekase’s ear, a wind in reeds. "Doctor, Spiral Force… I feel the power of rotation."

Yekase still frowned. "We don’t know the mixing ratio of the six Infinite Power types. Do we force it? No one’s ever—"

[1, 8, 2, 5, 3, 1.]

"What?"

"What what?" Ling Yi blinked, blank.

"Didn’t you hear? A voice on the comm read a string of numbers—"

[Heard nothing! It’s just us three on the channel.]

Yekase looked down at the midway camp. Jiang Bailu stood in the open, staring up, one hand on her earpiece.

Beside her stood a girl in a rust-colored long dress, the color of rain-bitten iron.

The girl raised a thumb to Yekase, then walked away toward the barren northwest hills, like a breeze that wouldn’t turn back.

She vanished in a blink.

1, 8, 2, 5, 3, 1.

Like a dream at dawn, the six numbers blurred fast in Yekase’s mind. Shift your focus, and they slipped away like dry sand.

These six numbers… a golden ratio?

Who was she? That red— wait.

Can’t remember?

Yekase parted her lips. A déjà vu loss swept her for half a heartbeat. The enemy yanked her focus back like a hook in the ribs.

At this point… we try first, talk later.

Everything aligned with cruel neatness. Two months of detours found a straight road. From Sorcery to Omega Ray, to Ancient Alchemy and Spiral Force, every winding path lit up.

In this moment, a circuit to tomorrow locked into place.

"With this, the conditions line up."

"It’s wind… we’re riding Infinite Power’s gale!"

First, the base— Ancient Alchemy as crust and bone.

Two triangles overlapped in Belkan symmetry, antlers crossing. A Mid-style circle embraced all like a full moon. Hexes linked. White light drew a hexagram above them.

Then, the six raw elements.

Flash Energy, Sorcery, Mind Energy, Spiral Force, Omega Ray, Soul Power.

They seated the six Infinite Power types at the six corners, lamps around a shrine.

Li Erpao watched them fiddle, wary. He couldn’t fathom why they ignored that grand bridge of light. Letting them continue felt like inviting a storm.

He thrust a giant hand toward the array, aiming to rip its bones.

"Coffee Moon!"

His teal-blue lightning, palm-shaped, shattered mid-flight into crackling sparks. It scattered his condensed Infinite Power like seeds in wind.

"How did I not think of that…" Jiang Bailu wiped sweat, smiling fearless, an ember in ash.

Coffee Moon bends only things that pass fully through its field. If only part enters, it won’t bite. The arm snaps back whole.

But Li Erpao is different.

Right now, he’s an energy aggregate, a storm wearing a human outline. Each strand of lightning is its own body. Each passed entirely through Coffee Moon’s palm.

The scattered light re-knit fast, a rain running back to its river. But it bought time.

Under the hexagram’s glow, their wills synchronized like twin tides. Their voices overlapped: "Evolution, struggle, survival, fusion, order, mutual understanding!"

"Six radiances, now as one!"

"The myriad things arrive here!"

The hexagram erupted white, brighter than the sun, bleaching the world. You could see it clear from Cloudlong City.

"What are those heroes doing?!" Gu Xiangshi stood on the guest-room balcony of Eternal Green Pages. He slipped on sunglasses. The glare still stabbed like noon ice.

"The forge’s essence is Infinite Power… So that’s it." On a rooftop, Luzhixing closed his eyes and thought, calm as stone.

…

…

…Like an endless stretch of time unspooled.

Sound and sight were swallowed by white. Only the magnified array remained, with six soft lights swaying at its corners.

— Click.

Glass-breaking rose from nowhere.

Crack. Click.

Fractures multiplied. Louder. Closer.

Crack. Cr-ack. Crack-crack.

Space itself split like glass.

With a thunderclap, the crazed lattice shattered in an instant. Through the rift, another starfield blinked cold.

A black claw reached from the hexagram and gripped the tear’s edge.

Something crawled out.

Pitch-black, taking no shine from moon or Li Erpao’s light. A black hole wearing a skin. It moved like a snake, yet bore four long claws.

It floated after the rift, swimming through air like a deep-sea creature.

The blank space, the crack, the sky beyond winked out like they’d never been.

Only that thing remained, turning slowly, silent as frost. It chased its own tail, yet pressed on reality like an iron ball on cloth.

The whole world fell quiet.

…

On the boundless Gobi, two inhuman beings faced each other without a word.

Li Erpao’s old crisis sense screamed like a siren in a blizzard. Those indescribable eyes didn’t fix on him. One sidelong glance split his heart with cold.

He shouldn’t fear. He shouldn’t.

He’s stronger than his brother now. Stronger than anyone.

He went mad and drank the Silver Star Forge dry. His shape swelled, a sky-piercing silver-blue giant, a primordial behemoth.

Heaven and earth changed color like a storm rolling in.

Near his feet, trees carbonized to shards. The ground showed nuclear ground-zero scars, hot and crushed.

The black thing only waited. It let him grow, gather, and swing.

"—"

It roared in a voice that made no sound. Half of Li Erpao’s body vanished without warning.

But he kept going, a wave refusing to break.

Next, half of that half went dark. The shapeless silver-blue energy knotted into a lightning sphere. It still pushed forward, stubborn as a ram.

Then, half of that half of a half fell away.

The last filament died inches from the thing, dissolving into nothing.

"—"

The thing gave a final long howl, then vanished without transition.

In its place, Yekase and Ling Yi popped into midair. They dropped from about fifty meters, free-falling like stones into a well.

Clouds parted. The moon showed her face.

Everything truly settled, a cold after-fire. It felt like those nights in Cloudlong City after boilers cooled. Colder than late-autumn Gobi.

"Feels like I have to free-fall every so often… Is this the event’s closing ritual?" Yekase sighed from her crater.

"Hey, did I just become the first girl to fuse with the Doctor?" Ling Yi mumbled from the nearby pit. She seemed to have landed face-first.

"As far as dirty jokes from a fresh adult go, not bad." Yekase said.

She sat up, delighted to find her seventeen-year-old mode back. Her limbs were fine. No price exacted by the feat.

She looked around. They’d fallen square in the midway camp.

Jiang Bailu lay not far away.

Yekase hurried over and helped her up.

"I’m fine. Just fell asleep from exhaustion. Twice in one day— so very her."

Ling Yi let out a breath she’d been holding.

"So the matter’s closed, right? We won’t get Li Sanpao or Li Sipaos popping out, claiming the first two were puppets?"

"Then don’t call them puppets. Call it matryoshka."

The camp lights were wrecked. Staff had evacuated. They sat in pitch-black wilderness, a thousand crickets hushed, and laughed.

"Eh…"

Yekase scratched her head. "I want a drink."

They carried Jiang Bailu into the camp’s quick hotel. They picked a random empty room and set her down.

Then Yekase pried open the minimart freezer with brazen fingers. She grabbed two beers and a sleeve of disposable cups.

Yekase defended it. "We protected Cloudlong City. Taking a protection fee isn’t too much."

"Sinister Organization behavior!"

"This wave says the enemy and I share roots."

[You’ve realized it too. Heroes and the Sinister Organization differ in no essence.]

Ling Yi heard that mirror-self voice in her head. She shook it off like a dog after rain.

"Then I’m drinking too. I’ve never had alcohol."

"Drink. You can drink."

They dug up two folding loungers from the camp. They hauled them out to bare ground, sat, and poured.

"A toast, a toast…"

Ling Yi’s cup wobbled midair, words lost like birds in fog.

"If you can’t think of one, don’t force it."

"To the Doctor’s comrades— may they all return safe!"

"Uh."

That move’s kind of cheating.

Yekase turned her face aside and kept her tone stubborn. "That’s not for toasting. That’s something we finish with our own hands."

"Then what will the Doctor toast?" Ling Yi grinned.

"Hmm…"

Before picking a blessing, Yekase took a long swallow. Then she raised the plastic cup to the moon like a lantern.

"Then to all the unarmored under heaven— may we share one robe."

…

"This one, we finish with our own hands too."