Yekase never expected a strike like this to erase a shadow that had squatted here for twenty-one years, but her momentum couldn’t bow, like a banner against a storm.

She rose on her toes, a swallow skimming a pond, and sprang across the cramped living room.

Red luminescence burst into a meteor shower, neon rain wheeling into a whirlpool, and her figure wove through it like silk through a loom.

Liu RuoYuan, backed into the dining room, stared, wide-eyed like a deer caught in frost-bright headlights.

That posture wasn’t war so much as dance, like a blade turned ribbon in moonlight.

So this was…the “Evolution” chain-sword, a river of cuts flowing down a cliff.

For the shadow, there was nothing to admire; the red neon vortex was a grinder packed with sawblades, a threshing storm.

A brush—no, not even a felt brush—meant a body part turned to blue smoke and thinned into night air.

He could re-form, like fog finding itself, yet being pummeled under a red tide frayed his edges and rattled his core.

He’d never been a true fighter; in life, a mercenary leaning on toys, his own skill a brittle blade barely fit to show.

Otherwise he wouldn’t have died here, like a candle pinched out by the same wind he served.

“About time we wrap this,” Yekase said, heat banked like a kiln, and stopped moving.

She hefted the Gunblade onto her slim shoulder, bent slightly, like a hunter folding into the grass.

…What?

What was she doing, this ember before dawn?

Was she confident this next move could erase him, like sun on frost?

Alarm bells shrieked in the shadow’s chest like crows in a ruined temple, but the door behind him was a cliff edge.

He had nowhere to retreat, only one gamble left, so he lunged, a net cast at her pale throat.

Yekase didn’t dodge, a statue in a rushing river, and let his hands close around her neck; her red, hollow eyes peered through void and soot.

She looked into the man’s face frozen twenty-one years ago, like a photo left under glass.

Her voice warped under pressure, a reed bent in current, and she sighed, “You two…look a lot alike.”

Squeak—

The door behind the shadow opened, a hinge crying like a gull over gray water.

A woman stood there, a silhouette carved by moonlight that found a perfect alley between towers.

The light fell in, left a long shadow on the dust-locked living room, like a sundial waking.

Shen Shanshan stood there, still as a pine in winter.

“…Dad,” she said softly, a snowflake on the tongue.

The pressure on Yekase’s neck vanished, like a hand lifting from a drum.

The shadow didn’t speak; shadows can’t speak; he only stood, a pillar of dusk, and watched the figure in the doorway.

He couldn’t cross the threshold, a river he could never ford, so she stepped in, feet quiet as falling ash.

He reached toward her, a branch toward rain, and his hand passed through.

He knew she couldn’t see him, like a fish can’t see wind.

But that was enough, like a candle lit behind paper.

He turned to the girl who couldn’t see the world yet could see him, and brought fist to palm in a slow salute.

The Soul Power field in the house unraveled, a net cut and sinking.

“Wait, and who’s this—” blurted Liu RuoYuan, tossed into confusion like a leaf caught in crosswind.

Yekase let out a long breath, a kettle easing off boil, took two steps back, and dropped onto the sofa backrest.

She sat in silence for a beat, the room a held breath, then asked, “Forgot to ask earlier—want me to pretend I was never here, or stick around and brood with you?”

“Brood my ass, but I didn’t expect he’d squat here twenty-one years waiting for me,” Shen Shanshan said, one brow arched like a drawn bow. “Do earthbound spirits have no sense of time?”

She lifted her right hand; only then did Liu RuoYuan see the plastic bag beading with condensation like dew on lotus leaves.

Yekase couldn’t see it, so she didn’t reach; she just fiddled with her Gunblade and slid a red shell from the magazine, a cherry from a stem.

“Mm? Oh, forgot your new setting,” Shen Shanshan said, a laugh like a pebble skipping water.

She strode into the changed old home without ceremony, sat by the sofa, and set the bag on the coffee table with a soft thud.

Yekase rolled backward onto the sofa, pivoting at the waist, a cat flipping midair, ended up head-down, feet-up, and nearly kicked Shen Shanshan’s face.

“RuoYuan, sit,” she said, waving like a fan in summer. “That ghost’s ascended—up, up—no worries now.”

“…Oh. Oh…” Liu RuoYuan answered, mind fogged like glass after a hot bath.

What was this, a puppet show turned inside out; Yekase called in a helper, and the clingy ghost went from throwing hands to resting in peace?

Yekase clapped Shen Shanshan’s shoulder, grin bright as a struck match. “Man, the blade-work I saw last night already screamed ‘you.’”

“And I just fought your dad. That jerk’s fighting chops are about neck-and-neck with yours, so I got even more sure.”

“Oh? You want a round two right here? I’m in full-armor mode now—full armor, you get me?” Shen Shanshan’s smile flashed like a knife’s edge.

They fished out two beers from the plastic bag, cans sweating like stones beside a stream, cracked them, and drank in the pitch-dark living room.

“Say,” Shen Shanshan mused, eyes narrowed like a fox sighting a henhouse, “can I claim this house?

“That’s textbook squat-and-claim.”

“Good point! Once you get the deed in hand, can I borrow the side room as a lab?” Yekase leaned in, a magpie eyeing a shiny coin. “You’ll test all my new toys first.”

“No problem!” Shen Shanshan agreed, crisp as a snapped twig.

Liu RuoYuan watched the two of them toast and talk big like street punks at a barbecue stall; add two plates to the coffee table and it’d fit like rain in spring.

The scene was eerie yet natural, like a crane in a rice field, and somehow she couldn’t even find a question to throw.

“This your sister? Pretty face, just doesn’t look like you,” Shen Shanshan said, savvy smoothing edges like a whetstone.

“Ah, yes…” Liu RuoYuan answered quickly, hands folded like a student in class.

Yekase wagged a finger like a metronome. “You don’t think this face is factory stock, do you?”

“A human-skin mask? You tricked me hard, sister, broke a brother’s heart,” Shen Shanshan said, kneading Yekase’s cheeks like dough. “Doesn’t feel like a mask, though.”

“Hey, don’t twist!” Yekase slapped her hand away, a sparrow batting a cat’s paw.

Shen Shanshan swung back toward Liu RuoYuan with a grin, a lantern lighting a doorway. “I’m Shen Shanshan.

“Your sis and I are brothers-in-arms through life and death, so I’m calling you little sis.”

One sentence and she claimed brother and sister both, leaving Liu RuoYuan stunned like a fish blinked ashore.

“Okay… uh, life and death means what, exactly?”

Liu RuoYuan had figured Yekase would have friends from the street; finding a young woman instead felt like rain after dust.

“When your sister just graduated, and when she quit the organization, money got tight, so I helped,” Shen Shanshan said, shrug soft as falling leaves.

“Her life’s been saved by my gadgets, too. More than once.”

…That sounded downright normal, like tea after wine.

Better than murder-and-robbery, by a mile.

Yekase felt a sudden chill and hunched her neck, like a turtle back into shell.

Liu RuoYuan digested the new info, then blinked, a lamp flaring. “Wait, I’ve still got a question!”

“What?” Shen Shanshan tilted her head, a bird cocking an ear.

“If the five-year-old in that case was really you, why didn’t you come back for twenty-one years?”

“Back then this area was all old shacks, a maze of alleys,” Shen Shanshan said, voice even as a paved road. “I was five, barely remembered the address.

“I spent ten years in the orphanage, hit the street to hustle, worked myself to the bone.

“Yongle Road got rebuilt; couldn’t find the spot in one go, so I let it go.”

She shrugged, a leaf shaking off dew. “This ghost of a place is top-tier for staying hidden.

“Great safehouse.”

“Right? Not like I didn’t work my tail off,” Yekase said, grin crooked like a hook.

They chatted about this and that, emptied the beers, and headed home under a night like black silk.

Yekase had spent the whole day blind; before sleep she planned to restore sight, browse some spicy photo sets of barely dressed girls, then drift off like a boat at dusk.

With the case tied up neatly, her mood floated light as a kite; she told Liu RuoYuan, “I’m gonna get myself off,” then stripped down, shameless as summer heat.

Liu RuoYuan wanted to run and wanted to peek; she ended up crouched at the entryway, watching through her fingers like a child spying fireworks.

…

…

The next morning, Yekase hatched a fresh idea, a spark under dry pine.

If Sandryon could set up a doorway in the mall leading to her Witch Workshop, why couldn’t she?

So she went to ask, a swallow heading back to the eaves.

The answer was yes, a nod like rain on thirsty soil.

Sandryon said her Witch Workshop wasn’t using a portal but spatial folding, a page bent instead of torn.

The difference: the workshop’s address really sat inside the mall, a street tucked into a storefront like a river coiled in a jar.

When she got bored of the Twin Towers, she’d repack the folded space, turn it into a base-van, and roll out like a caravan at dawn.

The more Yekase listened, the more she wanted it, hunger like a drumbeat.

She pestered Sandryon, a cat pawing a door, until the old witch relented and let the latch fall.

“Anyway, you’ve got a long, long run ahead,” Sandryon said, a smile like smoke. “We can be neighbors to the ends of the earth.”

She rummaged a cabinet, tossed Yekase a scroll with a flick, like a fish tossed over a gunwale. “Study it yourself.

“If you can’t crack it, don’t come ask.”

The scroll was the color of pale honey, the paper smooth and full like good parchment, Western fantasy scent bubbling up like mulled wine.

But when Yekase unrolled it, she found symbols and formulas, constellations of ink that echoed her work on Flash Energy.

Its talk of spatial curvature lacked fine scalpels, but it had clean axes; you could wield it, hammer and tongs.

That meant she could follow the formulas and coil a warped pocket of space, held by Infinite Power like a tent by its poles.

…Come to think of it, wasn’t that exactly Coffee Moon’s trick, a crescent cupping the night?

So for the sake of her housing plan, Yekase called Jiang Bailu, a falcon to her wrist, and the two tinkered with spatial folding all afternoon.

Before Liu RuoYuan finished cooking dinner for three, they had a prototype, a seed pushing through soil.

Success: between Coffee Moon’s hands, in a ten-cubic-centimeter bubble, they tucked a full cubic meter of actual space.

The room’s furniture felt like it inched inward, a tide leaning toward the center; probably an illusion playing at the edges.

Dinner was lamb-offal noodle soup with a flatbread, steam coiling like white snakes.

After eating, Yekase went back to the scroll, eyes steady as a mason’s level.

She now knew how to compress space; next, boost efficiency and ratio, like pre-quantum physicists pushing constants another decimal place.

Only she had to run the numbers by hand, abacus in a thunderstorm.

The metaphor hinted at a future squall, a cloud or two on the horizon, but Sandryon had packed a whole street into a storefront without a paradox.

That limit still sat far away, a mountain blue with distance.

The remaining problem was power, the furnace behind the forge.

She couldn’t sit at home forever as a human battery; storage denser than her was military-grade, a locked armory of dreams.

Unattainable…was it?

A blonde woman’s face surfaced in Yekase’s mind, bright as a match and just as dangerous.

No, not her; even aside from personal feelings, she was trouble in every direction, a thornbush in a narrow path.

That left only…that woman, Mikara Aira, a name like a blade under velvet.

Between the rally incident’s clean finish and her turn at the Sovell Conference, she was owed at least a favor, a chip on the table.

For a new home, Yekase threw the dice, heart hard as iron and light as paper.