So the picture was already clear, like fog lifting at dawn.

It was because she’d copied Yekase’s mind that “Yekase” wised up so fast, a mirror cutting with irony.

“—Yekase.”

“Why were you under a transformation spell yet didn’t transform?” Her voice fell like a pebble into still water.

“Why can’t you start Yekase-only machines?” The question tapped like a finger on glass.

“Why is your link to Flash Energy gone?” Her words snapped like dry twigs.

Liu RuoYuan stood before her, windless and steady, and kept unspooling the answer like a silk thread.

Both sides had reached the same shore, yet some words had to be spoken to set the sun.

“There’s only one answer.” Her tone rang like a bell.

“Because—”

“—Because you—I—are actually Rice Rice turned into Yekase’s face, even the thinking copied over.” Their voices hit together, like two swords crossing.

Silence poured through the Ambition Divine Ship, like night flooding a canyon.

Rice Rice sat on the main console, a green still pond, without a meow.

Yekase laughed twice at herself, two hollow chimes, then her eyes flew wide like shutters.

The back of her head swelled in a heartbeat, a blister bulging, twisting and trembling bigger.

It thumped to the floor and unfurled into a human shape, like a shadow hatching.

Realizing she wasn’t Yekase, Rice Rice flowed back into green slime, a wave rolling to shield Liu RuoYuan.

“No body-snatching this time. I thought I could hide longer,” the meat-mass said, regret painted bright like a carnival mask, yet cheerful as spring wind.

From its chest, a middle-aged woman’s face bloomed, like a peony opening from flesh.

“My task’s done,” she sang, like a lark on a wire. “I slipped into your base… a floating island, what lavish thunder.”

“Now I’ll kill you, carry the island back as tribute—guess the faces of those three who won the best-of-three when they return.” Her smile gleamed like a knife.

Liu RuoYuan was an ordinary human, a leaf in still air, with no force to throw.

After the grinder under Gear Street, Rice Rice was drained like a low battery, barely a wrap of protection on Yekase.

Head-on, she wasn’t this meat-mass’s match, like a candle before a gale.

The real Yekase was a Siamese, whiskers and soft pads, not even bipedal, let alone a fighter.

Was the meat-mass really about to take their home, like a thief lighting a lantern in their hall?

Yet Liu RuoYuan didn’t move, her calm a stone in a stream.

The meat-mass frowned, doubt rippling like oil on water. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

“You don’t think I can fight head-on, do you? Or you’re waiting for those three to do a hero’s rescue?”

“Oh, I was only thinking,” Liu RuoYuan said with a smile like sunlight through bamboo.

“We both got it halfway and both understood, but you still had to nanny the whole speech.”

“You only realized you’d exposed yourself after saying everything out loud. With that IQ, maybe a bit…?” Her gaze was a needle.

“You—!” The woman’s face on the mass widened with fury, eyes like saucers.

Liu RuoYuan pulled a syringe from her pocket, quick as a cat’s paw, and stabbed it backward into Yekase-the-cat.

The syringe was all metal, a cold reed of steel, loaded with rose-gold liquid swirling like a tiny vortex.

She pressed her thumb and drove it all in, like pouring fire into a hearth.

“Don’t you dare pull a stunt—!” the meat-mass roared and pounced, a boulder rolling downhill.

Under five meters was a blink, a hawk’s stoop; even dying here, she’d kill the mocking woman.

She’d make Yekase watch her own sister die, like frost on an eyelash—

—And got blocked, like a wave hitting a cliff.

“Everyone else wins lying down. Why’re you the one lying down waiting to lose?” The voice was dry as sun-baked wood.

“With my sis and a copy-of-me Rice Rice, I can loaf as a cat for two days and still win. You?”

Sitting on the desk was a female-type robot, cool as moonlight on metal.

She wore Yekase’s face from the files—seventeen and bright—yet ears and joints were steel, like clockwork petals.

“Next time pick a better hour. Don’t crash a place on someone’s day off. You might crawl away with a life.” Her tone was a breeze with frost.

The robot’s belly opened to both sides, like doors on a shrine.

She reached in and drew a weapon, a star set in iron.

A Gunblade with bright radiation stripes, blazing like tiger stripes under neon.

The meat-mass tried to ditch the limb in her grip, tried to bolt for the door, a roach under a lamp.

Luckily for her, the grip loosened just enough, perfect as a lock clicking, and she scuttled toward the portal to the ground.

…Snap.

The portal shut like a book.

Yekase lifted her hand from the panel, fingers still humming like strings.

“Oh no, looks like it’s out of power. You can just jump, then?” Her voice was a bell with dust.

She called to the mass from the living room, like a hostess at tea.

“It’s only thirty thousand meters. You probably won’t die.” The words smiled like winter sun.

“T-thirty… thousand meters…” The meat-mass trembled, fear drilling to the marrow like ice.

Even this body couldn’t live through a free fall from that sky; either way, it was death, a cliff with no path.

So she finally stopped thinking, like a flame that chose to lie down.

…

…

Yekase disengaged the mech-girl state and flowed back into human, like tide leaving a bay.

The Oni Serum, with steps as fussy as lace, had been used just to season the answer arc.

If Sandryon heard, she’d blister Yekase for waste, lightning in her tongue.

But they hadn’t known where the mastermind hid, a shadow behind a lantern.

To draw her out, Yekase and Liu RuoYuan set an empty-fort bluff last night, a city with gates wide and drums quiet.

Cat Yekase could only meow, so the plan got typed with her right forepaw’s pads, one letter at a time on the phone, like pawprints in snow.

“When she lunged at me, I almost died of fright,” Liu RuoYuan slumped into the sofa, a willow bending. “I feared you wouldn’t change back in time.”

“And I’ve got a few questions.” Her eyes were clear as wells.

“What?” Yekase lay sideways on the sofa, head pillowed on Liu RuoYuan’s thigh, a cat still missing its sunbeam.

After two days as a cat, she couldn’t snap fully back, like a spring that remembered.

“When did you realize the fake Yekase was Rice Rice, not the mastermind?” The question came like a thrown pebble.

“Because she cracked a Crimson Field joke the moment she woke.” Yekase’s smirk was a knife’s shine.

“Just that?” Liu RuoYuan’s brow drew a small cloud.

“Kidding. If it could become me, it could read my memories and mimic my habits. I was never sure.”

“So I posed as Rice Rice and watched from the side,” she said, like a fox in reeds.

“Second question. Why could it open the sky-island portal, but not the teleport box or the main console?” The rhythm clicked like beads.

“Teleport permission’s one level below main control,” Yekase said, simple as rain.

“No, I mean why could it—”

“I gave Rice Rice teleport permission. It’s not a regular pet cat.” Her shrug was a leaf falling.

“If it wants to go out one day, opening a portal makes life easy.” Her pride glinted like a coin.

Liu RuoYuan pictured Yekase hugging Rice Rice up to the main console to register the permission, a slapstick painting.

She went speechless for a beat, a blank page.

“…Third question.” Her finger lifted like a reed.

She pointed at the Siamese on the sofa arm. The cat blinked like twin stars.

“Why’d it change back to a cat?” Her tone was half-sigh, half-laugh.

“It said being human is tiring. Being a cat is comfy.” Yekase’s envy was a warm breeze.

“If I could, I’d switch human-and-cat on the fly too.” Her eyes were two wishing wells.

“Meow,” Rice Rice chimed, a bell on a collar.

“…Do what you want.” Liu RuoYuan dropped it like a pebble into a deep pond.

She too gave up thinking, a sail slack in no wind.

…

Later, Yekase suddenly remembered the Beast King Squadron were still transformed, like masks that stuck.

The culprit had been diced to mince, neat as scallions, yet their transformations still held, a knot not undone.

She rushed into Valhalla and saw Crimson Field and Wang Zhewei perched at the bar, two birds on a rail.

Before them steamed hot tea, white threads of mist, and a scatter of cups big and small, a whole health altar.

“Uh… did your transformations lift?” Her voice paused like a heel at a step.

“Doctor.” They bowed with tea-warm faces. “We didn’t help at all this time. Sorry,” they said, like rain on eaves.

Yekase stared, eyes hopping between Crimson Field and Wang Zhewei, words frozen like frost on glass.

Wang Zhewei explained, voice steady as a drum. “We found out hot water brings us back. Cold water turns us into girls.”

“It seems fixed as some kind of constitution now, like a mark in bone. Better than not coming back,” he said with a wry smile.

“Huh? That’s how it is—” Yekase’s face fell like a wilted flower. “This is a betrayal!”

“Doctor…” Crimson Field saw her wounded-little-beast face—yes, acting—and suddenly snatched the ice cup.

He flipped it over his head with a shout, “Ha!” Ice rushed like a waterfall.

Poof—he turned into a red furball, like a maple puff in frost.

“So cold, so cold, so cold…” His teeth chattered like dice.

“What are you doing? No need to demo—” She reached and stopped, a hand in air.

“To show support for Doctor, I, Crimson Field Souba, swear to the sky I’ll never take a hot shower again!” His vow was thunder on a blue day.

“Uh…” Yekase blinked, a cat at a window.

Icy water streamed down loli-Crimson Field’s face. He grinned wide and threw a V-sign, like a street idol.

“That works, right? From now on, crossdressing creeps in Twin Towers City won’t be just one—” His tease danced like a paper kite.

“Who’re you calling a creep?! Hey, who’re you calling a creep?!” Yekase pounced and grabbed his neck, a playful fox.

Crimson Field laughed and dodged, a squirrel around a tree.

Half a year ago, when Yekase chose to be a girl, she wanted to shed her past, like a snake slipping skin.

Crimson Field clearly could turn back, yet swore to be a girl from now on—what wind moved his heart?

If it was just support, he didn’t need to go this far, like burning a field for one stalk.

Yekase didn’t know. She knew reality wasn’t a detective novel; some backstories were better left unasked, like sealed jars.

After all, she figured her EQ beat Rice Rice’s by a head, a lantern brighter by one candle.

Wang Zhewei watched them roughhouse, and the pressure fell on him like a mountain.

He gulped, a cork in a bottle, stared at his half cup of ice water, and didn’t find the courage to speak.

“By the way, tomorrow’s Christmas,” Yekase said suddenly, a snowflake in the room.

“What’s that to us? This is Huaxia!” Crimson Field sprawled on the floor, a starfish on tile.

“You and the Professor aren’t from Huaxia, though,” she teased, a feather-flick.

“Though I wear Western clothes…” he started, a line half-remembered, like an old banner.

“It’s not about clothes! Oh, wanna try some on?” Yekase’s grin was a fox-tail.

“I don’t. Ling Yi’s eyes feel dangerous, like she’s seeing a toy,” he shivered, a mouse under an owl.

“Maybe it’s not ‘like’,” Yekase said. Her tone was a knowing bell.

She’d stuffed a whole bookcase with gender-swap fiction, that woman—one of the few “I can’t even” in Ling Yi’s otherwise normal, sunny life.

Yekase didn’t know why she loved that path so much, but keeping secrets before her was wise as a locked chest.

“We’re back in triumph!” Speak of Cao Cao, and he arrives. Ling Yi and Lu Yao walked through the door like a breeze.

“By the way, Doc, I heard you used to be a boy?” Ling Yi tossed it like a pebble.

…

Yekase’s neck creaked like a rusted hinge as she turned, face twitching like a caught fish. “W-who told you…”

“Sister Bailu told me on the way,” Ling Yi said, sweet as spring.

“Where is she…?” Yekase’s smile cracked like thin ice.

“She said she was scared you’d hit her, so she went home early,” Ling Yi answered, a sparrow’s chirp.

“…”

“Doctor,”

“…”

“Why hide it from me? I won’t eat you,” Ling Yi smiled, warm as tea. “So we’re not close enough to share secrets?”

“My fragile little heart is hurt—” Her voice cooed like a dove.

No, that was not a hurt face at all; it gleamed like a cat who’d found cream.