Yekase and Sandryon swallowed Elunis’s trash talk like gnats in a humid dusk, and pushed deeper. A tunnel opened into a limestone chamber, where they finally found the long-silent Aurora and Xiaoyuan.

Both were bare as moonlit stones, soaking in a small pool that shone like glass laid in rock.

“…”

“You’re here. Wanna soak?” Xiaoyuan raised a hand; ripples fanned out like silk.

Aurora had generous curves, not quite Labyrinth City-large. Xiaoyuan was more like open horizons. She could sculpt her own look, and today she wore a power-saving calm. After stealing a glance, Yekase let her gaze roam the cave like a lantern.

It was a natural grotto, maybe a few dozen square meters, with stalactites like frozen fangs marking its old bones. The pool sat in one corner, and even that “corner” stretched near ten square meters of mirror-dark water.

If it were only that, it would be just another Earth cave, rainwater seeping through rock like silver threads. The well-traveled Aurora and Xiaoyuan wouldn’t linger in a regular puddle.

“What’s… that?”

Yekase’s breath snagged like cloth on a thorn.

The ceiling—the slick rock not crusted with stalactites—

Was a sky, a shawl of starlight, stitched to stone.

Her eyes had night vision baked in, so she missed it at first. But the whole grotto was lit by that starry wall, points flowing like Infinite Power dust, weaving like midsummer fireflies. Quieter than bugs, softer than lanterns, the light pooled in the upper half of the chamber.

Mysterious, and lavish as brocade.

Sandryon’s shock veered elsewhere, like a kite blown sideways. She was stunned by the two soaking naked without a care, and she steadied herself with a prim cough. “There’s a magnetic field node inside a Cosmic Bubble. Our luck’s pretty good.”

“…A node?”

“Huaxia legends speak of cave-heavens—hidden grottoes where immortals dwell and world-energies gather.”

“Ah… oh.”

Yekase had been under Miaoao’s shadow lately, a star-sky kind of PTSD, and she drifted into the ceiling like a boat into fog. Clothes or no clothes, she wasn’t the fresh-turned girl she’d once been; now she watched openly, the way you admire a painting.

“Look at this kid,” Elunis sneered, voice buzzing like a bluefly. “A single cave-heaven, and he’s struck mute—”

They had confirmed the pair were fine; that chatterbox amplifier wasn’t needed. Sandryon tugged it free with a soft pop, and Elunis’s voice cut off like a snipped string.

“Hold up. This sci-fi world also has cave-heavens and blessed lands?”

“Call it a magnetic field node.” Sandryon’s tone was cool as jade. “Sorcery is born from star-core magnetism. As long as the star-core hasn’t collapsed, it persists. You’re a minor celebrity in Ancient Alchemy. Do I really need to remind you of basics?”

“My bad.”

Yekase always filed magic under the Super school, a stubborn habit like an old knot. Maybe too many fantasy novels had carved that groove.

“Super-school Infinite Power, once you study it closely, ain’t that transcendent,” she murmured, a wind through wheat kind of sigh. “In the end, the world isn’t changed by idealist energy, or Infinite Power, but by people walking through their era…”

“Why the sudden sermon?” Sandryon frowned, as if a tea leaf touched her lip. She couldn’t follow how Sorcery led to slogans.

Yekase smiled, the smile of starlight on steel. “Nothing big. I went from the stars to robots, then to mecha. Super isn’t that super when you stand under it.”

A steel titan that smashes rotten ceilings and builds a new sky—what tool in the world is that convenient? Forget it. Thinking changes nothing.

She peeled off her clothes, folding them like calm paper, and eyed the pool’s distance like a runner marking a line.

Ten meters, give or take. Alright—run-up.

One step, two, and—

“Levitation Spell.”

Aurora’s spell flashed like a moth-wing. Yekase didn’t land; she hung in the air like a leaf caught mid-fall.

“No bombing the water,” Aurora said, voice cool as spring.

Yekase was lowered gently into the pool, a feather into ink.

The water bit cold, with a marrow-deep chill like a bucket of well water under a noon sun. The instant she sank, her whole body felt cooled, a kiln opened to night.

“Wuu-woo—”

“Jumping straight in cramps you,” Xiaoyuan said, leaning like an old grandpa, elbows on the rim, half-floating, half-seated. “I know you’ll evolve the cramp pain away in a minute. But pain’s still pain.”

“Fair point…”

Yekase did a brief, deep reflection, the way a pebble thinks in a stream. She’d seen the pool and wanted to leap, same as when you see a spotless hotel bed and you belly-flop. Instinct had tugged her like a tide.

Lately, instinct kept covering reason like fog on rice fields. She refused to admit she was getting dumber; she called it the Longlifer’s easy, unbridled style, proof her thinking was evolving toward a Longlifer’s sky.

Sandryon undressed like a lady untying ribbon, walked like a lady crossing dew, and slid in like a lady entering a hot spring.

Without realizing, she’d added three more to the list of people she’d bathed with. I’m a sinner, she thought, amused and abashed, like a fox caught stealing grapes.

“On Earth, cave-heavens like this genuinely boost the body,” Sandryon said, dipping a toe like a testing bird, then sinking in until only shoulders showed. “There were cases where someone with zero Mind Energy aptitude soaked once, and—click—a thought cleared, and aptitude bloomed.”

“Hold on, what’s a magnetic field node got to do with Mind Energy?” Yekase snorted, the sound like a pebble on steel. “Tell me mages manipulate magnetic fields, I’ll buy it. But aptitude isn’t a wish you make.”

“That person’s heart probably wanted a bath,” Xiaoyuan said, lazy as drifting algae. “He soaked, so he ‘followed his heart.’ The system judged him qualified. Maybe a shower victim.”

Yekase found that version more plausible than cave-heaven miracles, and nodded, deeply convinced, like a rooster agreeing at dawn.

“If it truly improves aptitude, it’s worth developing as a training facility,” Aurora said, her voice as level as a ledger.

Sandryon decided these three had zero romance, like rocks too clean for moss. She huffed, airy as steam.

Still, you soak the bath you find.

Ten square meters held two quite spaciously; four turned it snug. They each occupied a corner like four quiet kingdoms. After a minute of solemn soaking, Yekase raised her head and declared:

“My aptitude didn’t go up.”

“You’re still hung up on that?!”

“A problem begs testing.” Her tone picked up like a drum. “My Mind Energy aptitude is nearly zero. Even with an evolution Gauntlet I go berserk. Any uptick would show. I’m the perfect sample.”

“Fair.” Xiaoyuan respected practice, the way rivers respect gravity.

They tried every method to rouse Mind Energy, from breath like wind through pines to focus like beads on a string. Nothing.

Yekase set her verdict down like a stamp. “Fake. All fake.”

Xiaoyuan delivered his report in measured lines. “I felt no pull on internal Mind Energy at all. Cave-heaven ‘upgrades’ are placebo. More exactly: in a quiet place, you relax, shed stray thoughts, and that luck lets you pass a qualification check.”

“You two are no fun,” Sandryon muttered, like a flute left unplayed.

“Wow. A self-proclaimed materialist Ancient Alchemist calling experiments ‘no fun.’”

Xiaoyuan shook his head, regretful as a broken chisel. “She’s petty-bourgeois at heart. A magician who can’t quit parchment, carriages, and tiny oil lamps—flashy and useless. She can’t feel the working class lifting mountains.”

“What’s wrong with tiny oil lamps? Huaxia lit tiny oil lamps too!”

“See? She doesn’t deny ‘petty-bourgeois magician.’”

“Shows the reform didn’t finish. A fish slipped through the net.”

Two red-rooted, red-blooded workers sighed, gripping the air like a missed tool, hearts heavy.

Sandryon, fuming at their perfect double act, slid closer to Aurora like a shadow crossing water. The two old hands drifted into talk about Dragonfort, their words like low embers.

With the cave-heaven mystery cracked by calm science, Xiaoyuan and Yekase roamed other fields. They talked city rogues from the chaotic eighties and nineties, then Mind Energy martial arts. From Alchemy sky-islands to cosmic bases. Yekase’s horizons stretched like dawn.

“…Back then, Sanmao’s Wanderings and the foreign Two-Gun Dewott tied for most-loved comics,” Xiaoyuan said, nostalgia rustling like leaves. “Kids everywhere called them ‘Mr. De and Mr. Sai.’ After three reads, that ‘Sai’ came from someone’s accent.”

“I read both. Sanmao’s great. Dewott… not so much.” Yekase sliced the air like a blade. “Fight choreography was stiff as dead wood. Narration piled up like Hong Kong comics. If you want twin pistols, watch Yan Shuangying.”

“Can’t say that,” Xiaoyuan smiled, smoke-calm. “For its time, the setup was cutting-edge.”

“But information was closed then. How’d kids reach consensus?”

“Carts and horses still rolled, even in wartime,” he said, voice like wheels on wet clay. “You underestimate the speed of kid-net. Take that crude rhyme—‘So-and-so’s head is a rubber ball.’ It spread everywhere. Schools and parents didn’t teach that.”

“Oh, right…”

…

…

Four people, naked and pressed together like koi in one pond, yet neatly split into two groups of chatter—an odd little painting.

When they’d soaked enough and skin felt like cooled porcelain, Aurora stood. A Flame Burst Spell blossomed on her palm like a miniature sun and dried her in a hiss of warm light.

Yekase worried for a heartbeat that a burning sphere would gulp the cave’s air like a greedy stove. Then she remembered: this magic fire burns Sorcery, not oxygen; and none of them truly needed to breathe. She laughed, bubbles in a stream.

If she ever did suffocate, her respiratory system would probably sprout a photosynthesis module on the spot, a left-right relay of reuse. Just like when she first met Rice Rice.

Rice Rice was lazy today; Yekase left the single cat to play back at camp, a lone comet with whiskers.

She and Aurora warmed their hands by the phantom heat like moths visiting a lantern. Sandryon didn’t see the charm of fireside comfort; one Cleaning Spell left her neat as lacquer, and she dressed. Xiaoyuan was heavyweight. His skin rippled in ineffable waves, and the water vanished into him like rain into sand.

“The end of Mind Energy is a flesh monster…” Yekase heard Professor F’s words ring like a bell.

Indeed, a flesh monster. Chilling as a winter pond.

“What’s wrong?” Xiaoyuan scratched the tips of his short hair, damp as pine needles.

“Nothing. Won’t you come warm yourself?”

How could a monster be a flat-chested, otaku-styled lady-boss? A monster that pretty isn’t a monster. She’s a siren, singing on black rock in moonlight.