It’s reported that Luzhixing has raised an automatic defense around the Moon called the Great Wall of Sword‑qi, a ring like cold steel wind. Any unknown craft that drifts close will be chased by nearly a thousand flying swords, each sharpened by Mind Energy. The move makes clear Crimson of Resistance’s resolve for a long war, a banner planted like a scarlet flame against the dark.

“That’s your sister,” Ling Yi said, her finger tapping the TV like a sparrow’s beak on glass.

Lu Yao stayed silent, her mood like a still pond under cloud.

They were in the living room of the Ambition Divine Ship, savoring a rare soft afternoon, sunlight pooling like warm tea. Besides the two of them sat Liu RuoYuan and… Jiang Bailu, who had casually taken over Yekase’s room, settling in like fog that didn’t ask permission.

Lu Yao kept her guard up, her look cool as winter water; she wouldn’t speak to Jiang alone.

But with four people here, her caution shifted like a kite testing wind, and she fixed her eyes on Jiang Bailu. “What’s your real reason for staying here?” Her words cut clean, like a blade wrapped in silk.

Jiang Bailu had braced for this tide, her reply rising easy as a willow branch. “Because Yekase would want me here.”

“For her alone?” The question was a pebble dropped into quiet.

“For her alone. Is that not allowed?” Her gaze held steady, like a lantern under rain.

Lu Yao shook her head lightly, the motion small as a drifting leaf. “I just need to convince myself to accept you.”

She paused; every gaze fell on her like snow on a single pine, and she realized Jiang’s “romantic choice” had hit their sweet spot. Now the weight was on her—the grumpy tenant with the guest room key and stormcloud face.

…Fine. If it’s these people, I can say it. Not counting Jiang Bailu. Her resolve settled like a stone.

“When my sister and I were young, we were bullied until dusk felt endless, and no hero ever came.” Her voice moved like a low tide. “So I thought, if I become the hero, one life set against another, then someday every poor child will have someone to pull them from the rain. That simple plus‑minus is what carried me to now.”

Lu Yao met Jiang Bailu’s eyes, steady as two stars through mist. “That person wants to save everyone. You choose kindness for her alone, and it still reaches everyone—if you keep that promise.” Each word landed like a bead on a string.

She didn’t wait for an answer. She slipped out fast, like a swallow leaving eaves, into the wind.

…She’s flustered, Ling Yi thought, grin curling like a crescent moon.

…She’s shy, Liu RuoYuan thought, amusement warm as embers.

The three left in the living room traded looks and nearly laughed, like reeds tickled by a passing breeze. Then Ling Yi blurted, her voice a bold splash, “Bailu, you like the Doctor, right?”

……

“Uh, about that—” Jiang Bailu scratched her head, cheeks warm as peach skin. “Well… I did confess, but she said she didn’t accept. So for a while I clung to her like ivy, did things over the line… and she never got angry.”

“Then you realized the Doctor doesn’t like one person,” Ling Yi said, chest puffed like a proud sparrow. “She treats everyone around her the same, kind as spring rain. I’ve done that whole stage!”

“You confessed?”

“I skipped it.”

“You skipped it!” Jiang Bailu blinked, baffled, her thoughts scattering like startled fish.

“But she dated someone—some Iva‑something…” Ling Yi’s words trailed like smoke.

And that woman said if Yekase dared to date, she’d haunt her to the ends of the earth, a threat as crisp as winter steel. As the ace Magical Girl back then, her warning felt solid, like a wall you could press your palm against.

Yekase also said her bond with Ivaris was battle‑forged, blood and fire on humanity’s last battlefield, a feeling like twin currents braided together—similar yet never the same. Their farewell came like a snapped string, nine years of wind and rain later, and no one could tell the strands apart. Now Ling Yi and Jiang Bailu were clearly walking that same path, steady as footfalls on an old bridge.

Jiang Bailu felt unwilling, a knot tight as a fist; and she feared that knot itself, a shadow she didn’t want to feed.

Many husbands wouldn’t give so much to their wives; what could she fault Yekase for? Just because the giving didn’t end at her? Who was she to bar Yekase from treating everyone fairly, like sunlight shared on a field?

“If you really love her, tell her again,” Liu RuoYuan said, her smile light as wind through bamboo. “She’ll accept, then change nothing at all.”

“No change… no change is fine, but…” Jiang Bailu tugged at the thought, tangled like thread. “Wait, when a woman shows up to steal a sister, isn’t a younger sister usually unhappy? Why are you giving me tips?”

Liu RuoYuan rolled her eyes, the motion quick as a flicked fan. “You’ve read too many siscon novels. Even if she dates a hundred times, I’m her only unchanging little sister. I’ve got a seat in her heart like a reserved plaque. If I ask, she acts. You two want to compete with that?”

—Right!

Is that a birthright you can’t beat—!

For most people, a sister might never cross the last threshold. But in Yekase’s thinking, that threshold doesn’t exist. She naturally does old‑married‑couple things for everyone around her, yet no one reaches that one place in her heart. That infuriating woman!

“…But now there’s no chance.” Jiang Bailu’s sigh spread like cool mist.

“The situation is so chaotic, and she’s the storm eye,” she said, worry like rain on stone. “Her mind’s set on the hero’s work. No more strolling a street together… right?”

“There will be!” Ling Yi leaned over the coffee table and clasped her hand, their grip warm as shared tea. “We’ll make that new world ourselves! Even if it takes ten years— ow ow ow!”

Liu RuoYuan pinched her ear, fingers neat as chopsticks. “Ten years? You giving up school? Two months to gaokao. Someone’s real confident, graduate.”

“I placed third in the class on the second mock! Teacher! Third!”

Only then did Liu RuoYuan let go, the ear glowing red like a cherry.

“Not bad. Got a university and major in mind?” Her tone was mild, like a cloud asking rain for news.

“Ivalice National University. Infinite Power Development,” Ling Yi answered smoothly, words swift as a river.

“Huh?…” Liu RuoYuan had only asked in passing; she hadn’t expected such a clear path, laid like stones across a stream.

“Because the Doctor said she’ll be a professor there,” Ling Yi continued, bright as a lantern. “She’ll teach an elective on Flash Energy.”

“So that’s your angle!” Liu RuoYuan twisted the other ear this time, fair as a judge weighing two scales. “She’s wanted, and you think she’ll teach in Europe?”

“She will.” Ling Yi’s voice was iron under silk.

Liu RuoYuan figured Yekase had spoiled her own escape route in advance. Even she, the sister, didn’t know it. “Did she tell you how she’ll get to Europe?”

“She promised me,” Ling Yi said, proud as a rooster at dawn.

……

Liu RuoYuan and Ling Yi held each other’s gaze for a few beats, the air still as pond water. Then they turned to Jiang Bailu, who only shrugged, helpless as a leaf in wind.

She’s always like this, her face seemed to say, the words floating faint as pollen.

……

……

On the way back from the karst cave, Yekase got bored and picked up a branch. She swung it through the air—whoosh—and smacked shrub and trunk—crack‑crack—like summer rain on bamboo.

Sandryon snatched the branch and snapped it in two with a crisp pop, clean as breaking icicles.

“My invincible fire‑stoking stick!” Yekase wailed, her voice like a cat denied fish.

“If you want to play, play with Southern Sky Cross,” Sandryon said, tone sharp as a comet tail. “Why that plain stick? Is your balance off, or does it feel wrong?” Her challenge flared like a spark on dry grass.

Don’t start a rivalry here! Yekase thought, exasperation steaming like tea left too long.

But she remembered Sandryon burns hot in any game with winners. Lose one, switch the next, and in a single night she’d lose 144 games until there were none left—terrifying, like a wildfire chewing up a hillside.

Yekase unshouldered her pack and pulled out Southern Sky Cross. Such a fine staff; she couldn’t bear to whack with it. What if she chipped it? She hugged it to her chest instead, holding it like a child cradling a warm loaf.

She suspected that was Sandryon’s true aim: stop the noise, cool the air like a night breeze.

Holding Southern Sky Cross nourished Flash Energy, gentle as palms over embers. Sit and level up; don’t hold, don’t gain.

Back at camp, the four split like swallows at dusk. Sandryon went to lay healing magic on the day’s injured, light soft as rain on new shoots. Aurora headed to command to hear today’s development progress, voice steady as a captain over tides. Xiaoyuan perched atop the big tent, “on guard,” actually loafing like a cat in sun. Yekase helped check the engineering mechs, her hands moving like clean tools under a lamp.

After two machines, a thought hit her like a forgotten tune. They’d gone to the cave to capture the mechanical dinosaur pack. Then the path veered into a hidden paradise. Where had the dinosaurs gone?

Xiaoyuan saw her fussing with a mech and hopped down from the tent, boots thumping like drumbeats. Yekase asked, “What about the mechanical dinosaurs in the cave?”

“Aurora froze a few and had them hauled back,” Xiaoyuan said, casual as a breeze. “The rest got wiped clean.”

Oh. Boring, Yekase thought, her interest folding like a closing fan.

She finished the remaining checks fast, then stretched out with Xiaoyuan atop the tent.

The tent was canvas, soft yet springy, cradling them like a hammock. Far better than the hard tile roofs of childhood. As for the soft beds, some folks just like the ground now and then, like a wanderer kissing earth.

“Cosmic Bubbles are dead domains,” Yekase said, eyes on the darkening sky, the horizon a bruise fading into blue.

“They’re born on the edge of sight, grow with wave functions like tides under moon, spend eons with no observers, wild and silent as winter deserts. Then, by a rare spark, a trace of life sprouts like moss in stone. After quantum suicide culling, any species and civilization that forms is pure miracle of the stars. The Milky Way is like that. The galaxies we see, a million years away, are like that.”

“You study astronomy too?” Xiaoyuan asked, her voice lazy as a cat on a wall.

“It’s just a feeling,” Yekase said, the thought low as thunder behind cloud. “Look: in star‑born miracles, even a rest‑stop robot can pass the Turing test by level‑three standards. They struggle and search for thousands of years. In the end they thin into a fading shadow in a foreign sky, turn into profit tools for us ground‑bound locals in the Earth‑Moon well.”

Such cruelty, mainly the vanishing part, she thought, eyes narrowed like slits of crescent.

“They called themselves ‘human’ too. Did they have class oppression? Body differences? What customs? We’ll never know. We only know they died without unifying Infinite Power. Honestly, that dents the faith a bit.”

Other galaxies, other universes, also hold Infinite Power, she thought, the idea glinting like a distant lighthouse.

Maybe that’s a fine backup vow. If it ever comes to it, we’ll go see with our own eyes, she told herself, resolve smoothing like iron under a whetstone.

“On the micro scale, particles can’t have position and momentum pinned together,” she said, words as crisp as frost. “Entangled photons stay in step across the world, like twin bells ringing one note. The world keeps a thin veil of mystery for us. Maybe these riddles won’t be solved until humanity ends and we’re no longer us. But that’s not to make us turn back. It’s a drum urging us forward.”

“Now I get what Crystalline meant by ‘born strong,’” Xiaoyuan said, arms for a pillow, a lazy smile like sun breaking a cloud.

“Being alive is good, isn’t it?”

Yekase smiled too, warmth rising like steam from a night bowl. “Yeah. Being alive is good.”