That night, Yekase cut the string and flew like a kite, true colors flapping in the wind.

Fresh from the shower, she didn’t even drape a towel, drifting through the house bare as moonlight, claiming her clothes were in her room like a dropped leaf. In truth, she looped downstairs like a curious cat to watch Liu RuoYuan play an MS game, until XiaoLei hooked her by the ear and hauled her back upstairs like hauling in a stubborn fish.

“I’ll pretend my son of eighteen turned into a daughter overnight. At least give me a daughter’s look,” her mom said, voice like a wooden ruler tapping a desk.

Yekase did the math, a bead-abacus clicking in her head, and it actually lined up. She was eighteen when she left home; now she looked seventeen and had lived half a year since. Call it eighteen again, a clock face that refused to move.

Her time felt stuck, like a lake iced over to the horizon.

“But when I live alone I like to just air-dry,” she grumbled, warm steam still hugging her like a fog. “We’re thirty thousand meters up. No one’s peeping from the clouds—”

“Mm?”

“I’ll wear it, I’ll wear it.”

Pulled-long face like stretched dough, Yekase retreated and put on underwear. She stepped out and got blocked again, a door slamming like a gust. Back she went to dig for pajamas… and only found the blue teddy-bear set Liu RuoYuan had snuck in, soft as a cloud.

What else could she do? She put it on, like slipping into a joke and letting it land.

She couldn’t shake the feeling: becoming a girl felt like swapping skins like a cicada shell, her insides unchanged for half a year. But the two at home seemed dead set on reshaping her core, like running a little sister/daughter raising sim—active as bees in spring.

She stepped out for a maternal inspection, moon-eyed and resigned.

Fresh-bathed skin held a rosy heat like sunset on snow. Warmth curled off the gaps the pajama didn’t cover, a faint mist over a hot spring. Damp strands clung to her temples and neck like willow leaves after rain, a shy, early-green youthfulness.

XiaoLei looked her up and down, gaze a ruler, then nodded. “Mm. Look close and—no surprise—you’re my girl. Good genes. You’ve blossomed pretty.”

“So weird. Please don’t,” Yekase muttered, head bowing like a reed in wind.

Only then did Mom leave, drifting to the living room to eat fruit with Liu RuoYuan, like birds sharing a branch.

Sometime earlier, Lu Yao had vanished into her room like a turtle into its shell, then cracked the door a sliver, a cautious dawn, and poked her head out. “Your mom?”

“Yeah…”

“You’re similar when it comes to forcing people,” she said, voice like a cold needle.

“I ever forced—ugh, forget it.”

Lu Yao withdrew again, a retreating tide.

“Are you a turtle?” Yekase shouted at the shut door, knocking like rain. “At least come say hi?”

No response. This woman was trouble, a knot in a fishing line.

Yekase sat, then thunked her way down the wooden steps, one bump per stair like a bead string, and slid into the living room like a drop of oil.

Mother and daughter already had controllers in hand, engines purring like cicadas. Liu RuoYuan leaned left with every turn as if the kart tugged her with a rope, while XiaoLei kept kissing the wall, sparks like fireflies.

Yekase sat on the floor and watched them, shoulders dropping like a backpack set down after a long road, a boulder finally thudding off her back.

“What’re you staring for? This has three-player.”

“I’m not great. You two play.”

“You bought the game and can’t play? Move it!”

Liu RuoYuan yanked her up like pulling a turnip, shoved her down by the sofa like planting a sapling, and handed her a controller warm as a fresh bun.

…

…

The next day, Yekase stormed Unrecognized Consortium X like thunderheads rolling in, to demand answers from Jiang Bailu.

“I thought she knew!” Jiang Bailu blinked, innocence painted on like powder.

Yekase’s smile went sharp, a knife under paper. “You thought she knew, so you made sure to bring it up, huh? What exactly did you plan to discuss?”

“I’m framed, Doctor, I’m truly framed!” she wailed, hands up like a scarecrow.

“I order you to cover all my milk tea this month,” Yekase said, gavel dropping like a stone in a pond.

“I’ll go bankrupt!”

Yekase just let a thin laugh curl, a winter wind.

Afraid she’d stew and pile on more, Jiang Bailu hurried to pivot, spinning like a wind vane. “R-right! I’m working on a mecha chip with a Submersion Loop…”

“Submersion Loop?”

The new term flashed, and Yekase’s eyes brightened like sparks on coal. Jiang Bailu hid a grin, then explained. “Yeah. We spread Infinite Power evenly across the explanation layer, let edge-node particles sink and soak into metal like rain into soil. The waveform gets smoother, layered like tree rings.”

“How do you do dynamic allocation?”

“Build a model and let the AI handle it.”

Let the AI handle it. AI… Yekase thought of Labyrinth City’s deep-learning circuits, and interest rose like a tide.

“Show me a sample.”

Jiang Bailu pulled out the prepped chip like a rabbit from a hat and handed it over. Yekase took it with both hands, careful as if cupping a firefly. She opened her Infinite Force Perception and scanned the structure like lantern light sweeping rafters, then fed in a trickle of Flash Energy and watched its flow like dye in clear water. It behaved as promised: Infinite Power spread evenly over an area like mist across a field.

“Nice… With this, we might mass-produce reusable morphing machines,” she said, ideas falling like seeds. “With the right AI control, we can derive a few fixed modes from a core chassis—”

“Like Sky Striker mass-production units?”

“Exactly… You’re still hung up on your Sky Striker line?”

“My year-end bonus rides on it!”

Back then she’d boasted she’d cracked Flash Energy’s good-alignment check. Then, silence. No new units, no spinoffs. Yekase had thought she’d turned over a new leaf. Turns out the progress bar had jammed?

“So how’d you break the check?”

“Uh… that,” Jiang Bailu said, face pink like a slapped apple at the Zec unit black history. “I went on the street to find a passerby to start the system. Finally found someone who’d never done anything bad, booted it, then had the operator suit up.”

“…”

Yekase was speechless, a page flipped to a blank.

So Flash Energy machines had a hole that big you could drive a truck through. Even if you rolled it out, you’d only feed innocent people into the gears of organizational grudge matches.

Then again, what standard did Flash Energy use for its check, and who enforced it in the dark? She still didn’t know. Like how Mind Energy wanted emotion to surge, and Soul Power wanted multi-person sync, these special qualification checks of the super systems stayed a fog in Infinite Power research.

She felt it in her bones: cracking the how and why of that qualification would rival industrializing Flash Energy, a dawn bright enough to change the world in ways people wouldn’t notice until their shadows had shifted.

But alone, head down in a lab, she’d need centuries. By then, what would the world be, and what would she be? The sea answers no one.

Sandryon adored Ancient Alchemy, yet never burned to revive it. How could Yekase be sure she wouldn’t become the next Sandryon in a few hundred years—cooped on the Ambition Divine Ship, the last one aboard, holding power to change the world like a storm bottled in glass, with no will left to uncork it?

Time stands with no one, like wind that never owes a branch.

Jiang Bailu watched her drift silent, her face darkening like clouds over the sea, a thin fear threading through like cold rain. She didn’t know the thought, but she knew the weather was bad.

“Uh, Carol’s in the boss’s office now. Want to see her?”

“Better not… I’m not suited for meeting like this.”

She wasn’t cutting off an old comrade. In this shape, she couldn’t tell the truth. Meeting as a mere friend or classmate felt crooked, like walking in boots on the wrong feet. Pretending to be a stranger tired the soul like lifting water in a sieve.

She’d crawled back from the Void. Mira was willing to keep her fed. Let her game and drift for a while, like a leaf on a slow river.

Jiang Bailu took it another way, reading the wind wrong.

She eyed Yekase up and down. An old-school-hero dark red scarf hung like a battle flag. A streak of red threaded her long hair like a comet, spilling over a high-neck knit like a warm wall. A black plush pleated skirt, matte fleece tights like night silk, and military-inspired brown knee-high boots planted like stakes.

“Yeah. If she knew you were that Dr Ika from back then, she’d probably puke on the spot.”

“That bad?!”

“Flip it around. As long as you don’t tell her, she’ll never connect you to Dr Ika.”

Yekase gave her a thin, skeptical look, a blade of grass bending but not breaking.

“I swear I won’t say a thing!” Jiang Bailu said, hand up like an oath under heaven.

Even so, Yekase didn’t plan to see Carol. She honestly had nothing to say. Seeing she was living well was enough, like checking a lantern still lit.

Same with Dongyue and Hong when they returned. They’d died once already. Asking them to chase an unreachable ideal with her again felt cruel, like hitching a plow to a wounded horse.

She waved it off and left Unrecognized Consortium X, steps light as a falling leaf.

Back home, she dove into the lab to reverse-engineer the Submersion Loop, headfirst like a kingfisher.

Most Infinite Power ports worked like this: the port spewed Infinite Power like a spring, and a control loop right beside it divvied up the particles on-site like a shepherd with a flock. That approach had a near-century of polish, solid as old stone. Errors were rare enough to count on one hand.

This Submersion Loop… after another careful study, she found the AI was the least important reed in the marsh. Change the output port’s structure so Infinite Power falls evenly into channels like rain into terraced fields. As long as flow speed doesn’t swing wildly—in short, anywhere outside actual combat—you don’t even need the AI.

The Loop’s edge was elsewhere. Infinite Power alloys it soaked out came denser and more pliable, like steel kneaded by lava. Their various properties showed clearer, like colors under clean light.

In short, it’s tight for battle, but it makes a hell of a lathe.

Same mechanic, same tolerances, same raw materials. Swap in a lathe with a Submersion Loop, and your mecha comes out tougher, like timber cut with the grain instead of against it.

“Daughter—”

“If I add a diverter here…”

“Daughter, you in there? I’m coming in—”

“No… that might overload like a river hitting a bend.”

XiaoLei pushed open the lab door and walked in, presence like a hand on your shoulder.

“Girl, I want to discuss something.”

“Spatial structure… Eh? Ah! What is it?” Only then did Yekase realize that “daughter” meant her, heat rushing like a blush.

Always the strong one, XiaoLei softened, tone like warm tea. “New Year’s is close. It’s rare we’re all together. How about we go back to the old hometown? I heard there’s a temple fair this year.”

“Uh… The relatives won’t know me. That’s awkward. And I barely remember any of them,” she said, heart tugging both ways like a kite in crosswinds.

“We’ll say I adopted you in the city.”

“Then I’m officially the unfilial kid,” she muttered, a bitter laugh like a cracked seed.

“You pilot the sky island home and let the aunts and uncles come aboard for a look…”

Yekase shook her head like a rattle drum. “No. Absolutely not. My sky island is lab and hangar both. Secrets everywhere. One ping on the coordinates, and even flying back up won’t shake it off.”

“Sinister Organization might shoot you down?”

“Very possible,” she said, voice flat as winter earth.

It wasn’t alarmism. It had happened in many cities—heroes brought home trophies with shady origins, and the trophies phoned home, handing over base coordinates like a traitor whispering a map. The purge came next, iron rain.

“That won’t do then,” XiaoLei said, regret like a sigh. “Safety first. Yuán said you almost got killed several times?”

“It wasn’t that extreme…” she tried, voice a thin branch.

“Right now I want to slap you,” XiaoLei said, wind stiff in her words.

“Uh.”

Her callused palm hovered by Yekase’s cheek, and Yekase braced to spin like a top. She shut her eyes, but a rough-stroked caress came instead, like sanded wood over silk.

“Promise Mom you won’t disappear one day without a sound,” she said, voice low as dusk.

“…”

“You’ve been stubborn like your dad since you were small—bullheaded, like a mule. I can’t stop you. That said… you can fight, right?”

“Kind of,” Yekase said, pulling up her mental stat sheet like a HUD. “As long as I don’t meet the very top few, I can take them.”

“Good,” XiaoLei smiled, pride lighting like sunrise.

“Our Liu family’s daughter doesn’t lose fights to anyone.”