Before anyone noticed, the Tunguska Cosmic Bubble survey had slipped to day seventeen, like sand sliding through a glass throat.

People say routine eats time; turns out chaos does too, like waves grinding a shore. Yekase sat at the camp’s edge, watching the river of bodies eddy and surge.

She cupped a honey tea steaming like morning mist, the one quiet pebble in a rushing stream.

Sandryon touched down beside her, light as a leaf on wind.

“We’ve located the mechanical dinosaurs’ nest,” Sandryon said, her voice crisp as frost. “Aurora went ahead—she asked you to help.”

Yekase blew the rising steam, calm as a winter lake. “Are you sure it’s a ‘nest,’ not a ‘production line’?”

“Her wording is always precise. As a lord, she holds herself to a high bar, like a blade kept honed.”

“Got it.”

She set the cup down, stretched like a cat in sunlight, raised her staff, ready to lift. Sandryon, watching her back like a cloud watching a mountain, asked softly:

“News from home?”

Silence pooled for a few seconds, heavy as rainclouds. Then Yekase said, cool as a steel edge:

“The one pretending to be me is dead.”

“…Is that so.”

“She used to be shy, like a fawn. In the end she smiled at the camera and walked into death, like a lantern into fog.”

“So… are you going to follow her path?”

“Across Huaxia, half the uprisings are ash. Shadow Curtain International’s branches are roots deep in rock. Someone has to throw on more fuel.”

“You’ve decided?”

“Mm.”

If this is how you burn—a comet across night—Sandryon only nodded.

Yekase lifted, arrowing toward the nest like a hawk finding a canyon.

Mechanical dinosaurs.

At first Yekase thought they were Death Civilization defenses, watchtowers of iron wolves. But the data showed them scattered and irregular, flocks of similar shapes hunting together—bad sentries, good pack beasts.

In their death throes they triggered self-destruct, just like Miao’ao—firecrackers in a paper body. Two days ago, four squads wrestled down a live specimen; Aurora handed it to Yekase, who had met “natives,” to study. The result matched her gut, like thunder answering lightning.

Biomimetic circuits and skeletal frames—yet a crude core, too simple for high AI, still mimicking the world with convincing instincts, like reeds bending to wind.

Tell her it evolved on a silicon world as a reptile, and she’d nod, like a traveler accepting a strange sky.

A nature reserve that allows mechanical life? Maybe that civilization’s “Gaia planet” means a forest where copper and flesh nest together, like vines on steel.

Or silicon and carbon walking the same earth is that universe’s “natural ecology,” two rivers braided into one.

Miao’ao’s innards—nine parts laid out like a human—kept gnawing at her mind, like a rat behind walls. Machine made, or—

Yekase dropped to the great rift’s edge, wind curling her coat like a banner.

Days ago, a device had peered from the rock face like a metal bone. Excavators and adult dragons dug until its spine lay bare: a nest of mechanical raptors.

Inside the gorge, they’d thrown up temporary passages like scaffolds of spider silk. Surveyors piloted three‑meter engineering mecha, laying traps in a drumbeat rush, waiting for Aurora and Xiaoyuan to drive the raptors out like sheep toward a pen.

So Yekase waited too, a stone on the bank watching a silent river.

She waited long, long enough for every trap to set like frost. The hole stayed quiet, a mouth holding its breath.

Did something serious happen—a storm behind the mountain?

No. Who could stop a dragon and an undying? Even if they got lost, they’d cut straight lines through the rock like lightning through clouds. Maybe they found something strange inside, a pearl in a dark shell?

Restlessness pricked her, a nettle under skin. She wanted to see.

But a traditional mage, light and brittle as porcelain, shouldn’t spelunk without gear.

Even with magic, the old tales forbid it: a mage pre‑shielding or rigging reactive wards is rude to mundane teammates and ambush monsters—a hunter netting a lake before dawn.

Traditional mages are a hassle, foot‑binding for the mind.

While she fussed over mage doctrine, the surveyors drove the engineering mecha out and parked them in a row, quiet as oxen at dusk.

Right—take a mecha in! A strong traditional mage often has a personal magitech frame—think Labyrinth City’s legends—so the ancestors would nod. No problem at all, like wearing armor to a storm.

Yekase walked up to the engineering mecha. Up close, their exposed mechanisms looked unlike any she knew, bones under skin that didn’t match her books.

For one, they had no mudguards.

An engineering mecha without mudguards is like a bicycle without a fender, like not wiping your mouth after a meal, like the West losing Jerusalem—small in form, fatal in spirit for insiders, a splinter you’d pay to pull.

She circled once and frowned: no mudguards, yet the leg joints were clean as glass. No rust, no grit choking the hinges. How?

“Hey, girl—got a thing for mecha?” A woman in blue coveralls strolled over, hard hat tilting, her hair knotted like a rope.

“I want to take one in and find them.” Company gear, so she spoke straight, like an arrow.

“Hmm…” The pilot weighed it like a coin, then nodded. “Sure. These rigs aren’t worth much. If you actually break it, we’ll talk.”

What do you mean, “if you break it”? Doubt my driving? The prick of pride rose like a cat’s tail—but her even‑handed tone, not knowing her at all, felt refreshing, like clean rain.

“I’ll show you the controls. Watch.”

She climbed up and clanged the hatch shut like a cymbal. The cockpit, like an excavator’s, wore a big hemispherical shield up front, a fishbowl you could see through from outside.

The mecha stood and paced in circles, a bull testing its legs.

You’re walking—I can’t see your hands, Yekase thought. But the answer bloomed anyway: once it started, a thin veil of Soul Power wrapped the frame, a translucent shell like dew on leaves.

So they use an Infinite Power shield to keep off stone and grit—a cloak against dust, like a clear skin over steel.

You rarely see Soul Power at work in daily life; the closest is the Beast King Squadron, a roar under a city’s heartbeat. Yekase knew little about this Infinite Power that feels nine parts like Mind Energy, a mirror river beside a river.

Of the three Super Series, Mind Energy asks you to “follow your heart,” like a compass in your chest. Flash Energy asks “good alignment,” a sun at your back. Only Soul Power’s gate needs you to link minds—hard as weaving bells into silence.

Compared to Mind Energy, it won’t twist your flesh, for better or worse; it barely cares about talent, more about “hearts in tune,” its own gate, pure idealism—Soul Power as will made silk.

Maybe even more idealist than Mind Energy—a nine‑square of belief sketched in air.

The pilot finished her loop, parked, and hopped down, boots thudding like walnuts.

“Got it?”

“Mm.”

Yekase eyed the console; fewer buttons than Luciferin by half. With a hand on the stick, it should go, like steering a boat by stars.

Soul Power questions wouldn’t help; the fact she could use it meant Sidonia Dragon Fortress and its Cosmic Bubble development company were a single flock, wings beating as one. Yekase, though, had gossip on her mind—Aurora beneath the leader’s mask, private weather under public sky. She leaned against the mecha and chatted.

By the time someone came to say Sandryon was urging her to go in, they’d reached New Year’s Mah‑jong night: Aurora pushed with a timid chicken, two tables toppled, both hands turned out to be Thirteen Orphans; she lost socks and shoes, and padded back barefoot, moonlight on tile.

With Sandryon along, all the tunneling could go to her; Yekase lost her original excuse to borrow a mecha. She sighed, said goodbye, and asked one last question:

“How come the pants didn’t go?”

“In cards, the art is leaving on time,” the pilot said, like drawing a curtain before dawn.

Satisfied, Yekase dove into the rift like a swallow into shade.

She found Sandryon at the cave mouth, rolling her shoulders, sparks in her eyes.

Yekase’s first words were, “Master, whose card skill stinks worse—you or Aurora?”

Sandryon’s willow brows shot up like bowstrings. “You dare compare me to her! Her trash technique is conceptual—you could extract runes from it! I only lost you a few rounds in that mini‑game compendium; must you remember?”

If your “few rounds” means you played all 144 and didn’t win once…

Yekase smiled, a fox hiding its teeth. Sandryon saw the look and burned hotter, hefted her crystal staff, and strode into the machine‑hewn dark like a torch into a tunnel. Yekase followed, watching the massive crystal at the tip—facets cut like a sixty‑four‑face diamond—kindle with a soft glow, casting mystery like moonlight on water.

“Is that crystal natural or synthetic? Got papers?” Yekase asked, voice light as snow.

“Truer than your birth certificate,” the crystal said, dry as old stone.

Yekase pointed at the crystal, then at Sandryon. “This…”

Last time she’d seen the staff, it wore no crystal—simple as a spear, akin to the Polaris Staff, only dressed with low‑key luxury engravings like vines on jade.

“It’s an amplifier,” Sandryon said. “I only mount it in low‑magic environments.” Her tone was a blade wrapped in cloth.

Oh—like that Nayuta kind of thing, a lantern in thin air.

“Faithless woman—you only remember me when you need me,” the crystal said, a jilted bell ringing itself.

Yekase and Sandryon stared at each other in wordless accord, silence settling like dust. Now Yekase knew why she didn’t keep it attached. In her shoes, she’d toss it into a lake.

“It’s called Elunis. My staff is named for it,” Sandryon said, face tight as a drum. She clearly didn’t want to talk to Elunis, but need is a rope around the ankle.

“Carve my name into your heart, kid!” Elunis rang, bright and pompous as brass. “When doom swallows the world, speak my name and be saved!”

Yekase blinked, pressed her lips like sealing wax. “It’s kind of like someone I know.”