Fujiwara Ningning held Yekase’s gaze, nerves tight like strings in mist.

“D-did it work?”

Don’t ask me!

Yekase’s laugh pressed at her lips like bubbles under ice. In the end, she did what Sandryon said Mind Body Manipulation would do, and forced herself into a “common-sense rewriting” role she’d imagined.

“What do you need from me, manager?”

“Come to my shop tonight. A friend wants to meet you.”

“Sure thing.” Yekase agreed with a sunny smile, like a lantern lit without a flicker.

“You don’t wonder who it is?”

“Why should I?”

Fujiwara lowered her head, the shadow of her lashes like rain on a pond.

“So this is the effect...” she murmured.

“If there’s nothing else, I’d like to check my classroom, get ready for future lectures.”

“Ah, oh...”

“Then I’ll go. I won’t intrude.”

So—Yekase just walked away.

In front of an enemy who’d tried to carve a permanent brainwash into her, she left without a word or hand to stop her, like a breeze slipping past a half-open door.

So dumb it made her want to roll her eyes to the ceiling.

Anyway, she still finished what she’d come to campus for yesterday: finding her Flash Energy elective classroom.

The small room that could seat twenty was empty as a dawn quay. The tip of her witch hat bobbed like a black fin as she peeked around the doorframe.

She saw a clean lectern, neat rows of desks, a quiet holo-projector like a sleeping star, and the opaque walls she’d requested—everything new, sharp, and ready like tools laid on silk.

Warmth rose in her chest like steam. She stepped in, braced her hands, and sat on the lectern, staring at the desks as if they were seedlings about to sprout.

Soon, a few people would sit here and listen to the tale of how she found and studied Flash Energy, like travelers around a fire.

Then they’d set off on their own paths, pass the torch, and stand on their forerunners’ shoulders to look toward the horizon—just as she had, and would.

Her ambition ran high like a kite in clear wind, but not so high she’d think she alone could spin an entire tech tree from nothing, like those brainless transmigrator tales that build from primordial ooze to the galactic sea.

Personal heroism lives in stories; she was just one star in the human constellation.

“What are you doing here?”

A bright, surprised voice tugged her back like a bell in spring fog. She knew that sound, and turned.

“Didn’t expect to find you here.”

Fa’ai Greenfield stood at the door, smiling with the joy of reunion like sunlight after rain.

“My hero, the Demon King of the Red Domain, Big Sis Yekase!”

The smile on Yekase’s lips froze mid-curve.

“Uh, wait—since when do I have that nickname?”

After Crimson Magus, Crimson Devil, Herder of Beasts, and Witch of Vermilion, she’d earned yet another half-true title?

Honestly, whatever. Fame always drags such barnacles. Collecting “Devil,” “Witch,” and “Demon King” as a set didn’t redeem prizes.

Picture it: the head devil—Satan, right?—offering her a crown, bowing low like a storm-bent tree: Your triple-demon form is more hell than mine. I concede.

Dumb, really.

“So you joined Ivalice?”

“Yes. Mr. Burns adopted me.”

The principal has that kind of hobby? No—he’d helped Yekase a lot too. Slandering him in the dark felt wrong. As a city-state leader, he might know some inside story about the Half-Epoch Reincarnators.

“By the way, the name Yekase’s wanted in Huaxia. Not convenient. I go by Luciferin now.”

Fa’ai gave a thumbs-up, cheeky as a fox cub. “Using a fallen angel’s name beats any wanted poster.”

“I’ll take it as praise, but luciferin means a fluorescent compound.”

“I know, I know.”

What was this vibe—crafty and younger?

Yekase thought of little Liu RuoYuan, and Jiang Bailu before she ripped off the mask and showed her sadist core. But Fa’ai, going by the Greenfield School’s founding, had looped over twenty cycles; “younger” didn’t stick to her at all.

This run started last December; four months wasn’t enough to grow a full personality from seed. It had to be the preset temperament the body spun up during reincarnation.

Reset memory and body again and again, cultivating by a pure idealist’s method—could anything really accumulate in the “depths of the soul”? And would that soul still be her? Maybe only the original Fa’ai could answer.

“When term starts, I want to sit in,” Fa’ai said.

“What’s your education?”

“Illiterate!”

“Can you read?”

“Reading’s fine. I think I knew that before the amnesia.”

So old Fa’ai wasn’t that strict with herself; at least some basics stayed like knots in wood.

“Reading’s enough. If I dare to teach, what’s there you don’t dare to learn?”

“Thank you, Teacher Luciferin!”

Fa’ai gave a shy smile and ran off like a breeze with bells.

Yekase looked at the doorway’s silence, then back at the empty room. In her eyes, the brand-new desks already had owners; every seeking gaze shot through her toward a better future like arrows toward dawn.

A teacher... huh.

I’ll ask my little sis how to lecture... Yekase swung her legs like a metronome and hummed under her breath:

“I’m going to bomb the school, the teacher doesn’t know—”

...

...

That night, Yekase went to the South City Teahouse to meet Fujiwara Ningning and her “friend.”

To her, Fujiwara’s low-IQ moves didn’t look like an act. She was a sheltered girl who studied onmyodo till she muddled her wits, then got tricked into being a brainwashing tool by a so-called friend.

You only see those clans that train child-killers from birth in novels—yet Japan’s old houses really do that? Or is she a straight-A prodigy? Or stole a forbidden art and got cast out...

Whatever. Spend time; truth surfaces like oil on water.

The teahouse door looked shut and the rooms dark, but it wasn’t locked. A light push, and it opened with a dry sigh.

“In here, in here.”

Yekase didn’t mask her footsteps. Fujiwara’s call came from the back like a thread tugging her forward.

She flattened her mood like paper and stepped into the inner room.

Someone sat on the workbench.

Petite build, gold hair still bright under the desk lamp, a doll-carved face that caught the light like glass.

Alice Alice.

Her? It was her?

This Ancient Alchemist on par with Sandryon—what would she need from Yekase? And if she knew money couldn’t buy agreement, was that why she’d used brainwashing?

But before that—

“Get down.”

So much for suppression; a ripple of anger colored Yekase’s voice like ink in water.

“A mechanist’s workbench is not a place for you to sit!”

“You...”

Alice and Fujiwara traded a look, eyes asking the same thing: wasn’t the brainwash a success? Why is she scolding me at hello—

Yekase slid her hands into Alice’s armpits, lifted her like a child, and set her on the floor with the finality of a stamp.

“What if you warp the surface? Knock the rails out of true?”

“No, you—”

“I know you. You’re the Crescent Puppeteer. I thought you and Chubu Risa were the alchemists closest to craftsmen, yet you defile a bench!”

“Um, Miss Luciferin?” Fujiwara piped in, trembling like a reed. “We have serious business...”

“Then talk after that.”

Fujiwara had barely finished when Yekase cut herself off.

So extra emotion wipes clean on command. That’s Mind Body Manipulation, huh... Fujiwara thought, a bead of cold clarity in her mind.

“Miss Luciferin, Alice is my friend. I hope you’ll follow her orders too.”

“Got it.”

“Don’t you want to question that?”

“You said it. What’s to question?”

“Mm...”

Alice watched the smooth reply and rightful face, then nodded, her tight brow easing like clay warmed by hands.

She looked Yekase over, voice softening like velvet. “Compared to last time, you’ve stepped forward again. If the old hag hadn’t gotten to you first, I’d have taken you under my banner.”

“If you want, I’ll cut ties with her now. That old crone taught me nothing anyway.”

The second half was true, so the disdain on Yekase’s face was pure—so pure even she believed it.

“Heh... she would. Fine. If you’re obedient, raising a subordinate isn’t bad.”

“Not a student?”

Ice flashed in Alice’s eyes like a blade. “The sorrows of the short-lived kind pass me like dust motes. Not romantic, not meaningful.”

But I’m a Longlifer now, Yekase thought. Classic villain line, tedious as stale incense... She put on a perfect smile.

“Sure, sure. Then please guide me, boss. What do you want me to do?”

Alice flicked a glance at Fujiwara. The latter wore the look of an abandoned puppy, but still backed out like a shadow leaving a candle.

“The World Tree is about to bear fruit.”

“...The one in France? Doesn’t that take five hundred years—”

“Modern sorcery skims so little. It took five centuries to pool enough Sorcery. Soon, it fruits.”

That was a thing?

And this Alice—claimed she took no students—why explain so much to a “brainwashed thug”?

Hold it. Don’t laugh yet... To keep her mouth from twitching, Yekase fired a question like an arrow. “You want a Golden Apple? Mysidia sits in the branches, France’s court at the roots. How do we take it?”

“Mysidia and France signed terms. In exchange for building a city on the national emblem, it cannot claim one twig or leaf of the World Tree. Fruit wasn’t named, but it’s included. The foolish French court has yearned five centuries for a new Golden Apple to make the nation soar again.”

“Then what use is their city up there?”

“What use is Labyrinth City in the Vatican?”

“To needle Christians.”

“Wrong—”

Alice flicked her small hand, and an equilateral triangle of bright white lines bloomed in the air like a glyph of frost.

Yekase had seen it.

“The Radiant Triangle...”

“The reason and the arcanum lie within.”