After that, they took a cab home, city lights streaming by like cold rain on glass.

Liu RuoYuan watched the girl beside her clutching her hand, like a drowning person gripping driftwood. She saw the knit brows, the vacant eyes, and a bright, wordless joy rose in her chest like a hidden spring.

That always-steady big brother—now a sister—who never seemed fazed by anything, actually had a soft, helpless side. Even when she was shrunk down, she’d been a tiny adult, flat as dry toast.

Liu RuoYuan’s breath quickened, fluttering like a sparrow against a window.

Good job, Infinite Force Perception!

No—wrong. She’s your brother. And she’s like this because she threw herself into saving people, into fixing the mess. As family, you should be her harbor, not the wind.

“How do we clear that negative status of yours?”

“Uh, let some blood. The excess Flash Energy drains out with it.”

“No.”

“Huh?”

“I can’t stand seeing you bleed.”

“A small cut heals fast. If I don’t bleed, tears and spit aren’t enough, so I’d have to…”

Yekase trailed off. Her face flushed, color blooming like a sunset, and the words tangled on her tongue.

That hooked Liu RuoYuan’s curiosity. “Have to what?”

“…go in by hand.”

Liu RuoYuan blinked, then her cheeks flared too, heat rushing up like a struck match.

“Uh—oh. Right.” Her neck creaked as she turned away like a rusted hinge.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that…”

The rental was tiny to begin with, the walls thin as rice paper. Even the bathroom was no refuge. Yekase renewed her oath to buy a place, gritting it like a knife between the teeth.

“I’m—uh—going downstairs for a walk!”

Liu RuoYuan shouted, bolted out, and slammed the door, a gust through reeds. Yekase had just started unbuttoning when the door flew open again. Liu RuoYuan grabbed a coat from the rack, fled, and slammed it once more, thunder in a shoebox.

…

Twenty minutes later, in the bike shed, Yekase found Liu RuoYuan trembling in the November pre-dawn like a leaf in frost.

“You done?”

“Mm.”

“That was fast.”

“Touch gets sharper when you can’t see.”

Head lowered, Yekase sounded like a kid who broke a lantern. “…I’ll try to keep Perception off next time.”

Liu RuoYuan spotted a loophole, bright as a crack in ice. “You’re turning it on tomorrow night anyway. Why not kill two birds with one stone?”

“You want me wandering blind all day? You got no conscience?”

“What’s the harm? I’ll take care of you.” Liu RuoYuan wrapped an arm over her shoulders, warm as a shawl. “I’ve never looked after a blind little sister. You can even whine to Teacher.”

“Blind little sister—who?”

Two words, zero matches.

A surge of crisis washed over Yekase like a cold tide. What happened in those years at the Twin Spires that turned a well-behaved sister into this… and she’s in cahoots with Jiang Bailu too. Is home even safe?

Ling Yi, save me!

“You—you don’t have work tomorrow?”

“I can take a day off.”

“A public school teacher?!”

“Public school teachers get leave too. Like a web novelist skipping updates for a day or two is ‘taking a day off,’ and posting only once all year is a corpse twitching.”

“No, that example proves nothing…”

A teacher who shows up once or twice a year would’ve lost the license ages ago.

Yekase spread the sheets, simple as folding clouds. The shower had been handled right after the, uh, self‑care. She slid into the quilt like a fox into snow.

“Sleep early. Stop thinking about women.”

She tugged the blanket over her head and curled up, a silkworm in its cocoon.

…

…

Liu RuoYuan actually took the day off.

After a night of haunted-house sleuthing and freezing air, she killed the alarm and opened herself to sleep like a lotus to dawn. She didn’t wake till noon.

She blinked in the covers, slow as a cat, then saw Yekase sitting beside her, back against the wall like a paper screen.

Laptop on her thighs. Headphones on. Fingers rattling the keyboard like hail on a tin roof.

She was hammering away at full speed, same as always. But her head didn’t dip. Her pupils, when Liu RuoYuan looked closer, gleamed ruby red, like gemstones in shadow.

“Awake?” Yekase lifted one earcup.

Liu RuoYuan snapped fully alert, sitting up in disbelief like a spring unfurling. “You… you really did it?”

“Weren’t you the one who told me to?!”

Her tone skidded rough, like gravel under a tire.

“Hey, someone’s embarrassed.”

Liu RuoYuan scrambled over on hands and knees, a kitten to a sunbeam. She waved a hand before Yekase’s eyes. No reaction. Only then did she ask, “How do you use a computer if you can’t see?”

“After a certain incident, I added full‑screen text‑to‑speech and a mouse‑homing function. Got voice control too, but I don’t need it now. I remember the layout for the programs I use. So I can work blind just fine.”

And typing… right, she touch types.

“No wonder you’re you.”

Liu RuoYuan meant it. The praise settled like warm tea.

“You said you wanted to play,” Yekase sighed, the sound drifting like mist.

She looked like a gentle loli sister indulging a bratty sibling… which, yeah, tracks.

“You cut my work efficiency by three orders of magnitude. My afternoon visit’s shot too. How are you paying me back?”

“I’ll make you fried milk.”

“That’s it?”

“And a bowl of cart noodles.”

“Anything else?”

“Passionfruit double‑shot.”

“Full sugar, no ice.”

“You got it!”

Liu RuoYuan sat shoulder to shoulder with her and glanced at the screen. The window looked like a chat. She looked away at once, privacy held like a closed fan.

She took in the room—the rental they’d been in for two months. A living room just big enough for two to lie down, cramped as a narrow boat. Boxes and suspicious machinery piled by the wall like a scrapyard. The window glass always streaked with water marks, and beyond it the same old city view, gray as dishwater.

“Bro… you’re still the same. Not good at saying no.”

“Why bring that up?”

Yekase tilted her head slightly. With the blank focus and an impassive face, she felt like a porcelain doll in a shop window.

Cute. Too cute.

“You say yes to my nonsense and take the hit—work slower, cancel plans. A kid asks you for power, you hand it over, then you end up dragged into the fight yourself.”

“Correction. Ling Yi’s eighteenth birthday was the day after we met. When she officially became a hero, she was a legally grown, clear‑minded adult.”

So not correcting the “not good at saying no,” huh.

Wordless, Liu RuoYuan reached out. Two fingers slid through Yekase’s side bangs, smoothing a stray green lock like pressing a leaf flat in a book.

Yekase went on, voice steady as a straight road.

“If everyone stayed law‑abiding like me, the Sinister Organization wouldn’t exist. No one would have to go to war. Researchers worldwide would step over borders and profit lines to work together. We’d crack every problem and write the edge of the universe into humanity’s grand blueprint. That’s what I actually want to do.”

“That’s… grand, yeah.”

“Mm. Six months ago, my dream was just to have a small workshop. Hard to say. The workshop’s way more doable.”

She laughed at herself, light as a tossed pebble.

“This afternoon, go check the other haunted units. Pick one you like. Let’s close early and move. I asked a friend. The others turned ‘haunted’ after a hanging or a jump, all rumor blown big. Only this one’s the real deal, and we happened to run into it.”

“Won’t you get lonely at home?”

“I can play with Infinite Power all afternoon.”

…Is this kind of hermit skill something to brag about?

Liu RuoYuan spaced out for a bit, like fog in a valley. The moving schedule poked her awake. She gave up the vision of lazing beside Yekase all afternoon… They could’ve house‑hunted together. That thought stabbed quick regret like a thorn in her heel.

Yekase listened as the e‑scooter’s hum faded like a receding tide. She set the laptop aside, scooped at the air, and caught the Polaris Staff, then levered herself up with it.

Using an iron staff forged by Swordforging Manor as a blind cane—probably the only one in all Huaxia.

“Rice Rice?”

“Meow—”

“Street conditions are yours.”

“Meow.”

Girl and cat left the rental and headed the other way, shadows slipping down a lane.

She did have a friend to meet that afternoon. The plan wasn’t ruined. Sending Liu RuoYuan to view apartments and going alone was the plan.

The Polaris Staff tapped a steady rhythm, clank‑clank like a train on tracks.

Since the cost was already ticking, Yekase kept Infinite Force Perception open and watched the city from a never‑before angle, cool as a night stream.

The base was pitch black, a curtain without a stitch of light. On it, faint flecks of Mind Energy floated in clusters, near and far; some still, some moving.

Like stars across a night sky—those lights should be people.

Humans with normal minds all store some Mind Energy, more or less. She had some too. The difference is whether you can use it, and whether you can control it.

This way, she wouldn’t bump into passersby.

With the biggest hazard gone, her mood eased like snow under sun. She started to enjoy the visual quiet.

After a while, it even felt good.

From the outside now, she wasn’t an inventor or a hero—you couldn’t tell anyway. Every label, chosen or forced, peeled away like old paint. What remained was a frail blind girl with a strange cane.

It felt a bit like that night she changed her face, wobbling out of a shady clinic run by a barefoot old man. Dawn’s first light hit her cheek, and she picked “Yekase” for her new name, like a seal pressed into wax.

Come to think of it, she’d fly to Europe with Mira soon for the Sovell Conference. Lots of mechs on display.

She’d definitely open Perception to peek at their insides.

But flicking it on would set off Sorcery fluctuations and draw eyes. So she’d have to keep it on in advance… and maybe go blind mid‑stare.

To keep Mira from grabbing her weak spot, she needed to practice now, like swimming before winter.

…Keep it running for a few more days.