The Mythic Realm’s greatest, foulest despair-event—dozens of ultra-immortal tier members, each bearing strange authorities, fell like meteors in one short span, and a whole world burned like a funeral pyre.
Is that why Shadow Realm War roamed about, fanning sparks like a stray wind—just to reach that end?
Yekase, when she wasn’t being ordered to charge blind, was cautious by nature. After nearly crashing and burning in Cloudlong City while “seeing what he’d do,” she’d only grown warier.
She had to find the red-robed one.
Even if it meant gambling the black-clad youth’s life.
Oh. He’s already turned into wetware? Then that’s fine.
A normal person might call that a hell joke. Yekase had immunity; her own dad was wetware.
“...Ling Yi, I’m about to do something risky.”
“What?”
Yekase met Ling Yi’s eyes, steady as a drawn bowstring. “It’s urgent. I’ll push Infinite Force Perception to the limit and track the War Sovereigns Curse by its Sorcery residue. With Flash Energy boosting my scan, if she cast any disguise at all, I’ll catch it and lock her down.”
“That sounds great. What’s the risk? She’ll notice and run?”
“The side effects are huge. I’ll widen the range in steps so my body adapts. That should keep my brain from frying—but my senses, no promises.”
“Then we don’t use it. The five of us can split up and—”
Her voice thinned out like mist. After the last mess of wrong turns and missing people, even she didn’t trust that plan.
“Relax. I’m not keeling over.”
Yekase patted Ling Yi’s shoulder, closed her eyes, and let her range spill from the bar like tidewater.
Tourists’ trinkets, the wares on stalls, the machines in shops; the pulsing strip-lights along the street; the fireworks blooming overhead—each fed into her mind like rivers into sea. It wasn’t eyesight, sound, or smell. It was a deeper current.
Like a whirlpool. Like radial spokes. Like a dream. Like a kaleidoscope of strangeness.
The stream came from outside, yet it hit her chest like a tuning fork. For a breath, she wasn’t a girl crouched behind a bar with her eyes shut. She was objects, machinery, light, fireworks.
Cut in a cause, and a fruit will grow.
Pluck a string, and sound will follow.
Between wave and particle, all things took form, and then—
“The Myriad Phenomena, arrive.”
...
Found it.
In a vacuum cleared of any Infinite Power traces, a knot of Sorcery slid sideways like a coiled serpent.
“I’ve got her—out in the wastes!” Yekase shouted, bright as a struck bell.
She couldn’t hear herself.
Not her voice, not the bar’s chatter, not the clink of glass. It all thinned into a lightless hush. Sound was gone, stolen like a purse.
She reached forward, touched Ling Yi right where memory said she’d be, and breathed easier. She opened her eyes—and, as expected, sight had gone to zero.
The Myriad Phenomena vanished. Only a world of no light, no sound, remained.
She closed her eyes again. The starfield returned, cold and near.
If that’s how it is, we’re fine.
Yekase pulled an eyemask from the transfer crate and strapped it on.
Ling Yi called her name a few times and got no answer. Hearing was gone. Touch, though, was still grounded; a pinch to the web of Yekase’s thumb drew a muffled yelp.
In ethics class, Ling Yi had learned this: deafness and muteness often came together. Plenty could hear but not speak. Those who couldn’t hear yet spoke clearly were rare, because without feedback, there’s no way to tune your own voice. To say one sentence others can grasp takes work multiplied by thousands.
Yekase had never trained for that. Her voice fell back to dream-mutter and fog.
Luckily, Ling Yi could still understand.
“Above the Emperor, huh? Old Emperor, today you get yours!”
Ling Yi punched “Emperor” into her map app. Soville City really had a match: Queen’s Avenue. If there’s a Queen, the Emperor can’t be far. She hoisted Yekase and sprinted out of the bar.
“No. Not that...”
Yekase was running on world-map mode in a game: the route arrow was there, the screen itself was dark. She hurried to turn Ling Yi the right way.
“R-right, right—”
“Write? Doc, you wanna write now? Light? The cosmic Lightshift Dragon? You mean our fusion last week?”
Yekase couldn’t hear the riffing. The route didn’t swing right. Orders were breaking somewhere down the chain.
She grabbed Ling Yi’s shoulders with both hands and turned her like a steering wheel. Direction fixed.
“Ch—church...” Yekase drew a breath and chopped each syllable like wood. “Ch. Ur. Ch!”
“Church! Church! I got it, I got it!”
It didn’t stay smooth for long. As they crossed an intersection, a familiar voice snapped nearby. “—You two?! Stop right there! Finally caught you! Refuse to cooperate, and that’s another charge!”
She looked back. Tall-and-short-fat cops, the duo from before.
“They’re still on us?!”
Ling Yi’s gut sank like a stone in a pond. Last time, they’d sprinted together for half a day to shake them. Those two had to be boosted by some spell. Now she had Yekase on her back. Getting caught felt like a clock ticking down.
Out on open ground she could accelerate, but there were people and stalls everywhere.
What do I do? What do I do?
Flash Energy, Mind Energy, Soul Power—if you love humans, if you love your children, lend me the strength to break this net—
Triple Super-System Infinite Power. Triangular Acceleration Sync!
Clarity struck like lightning on a clear night. Ling Yi broke her own ceiling and rose. She stomped down, legs coiling like springs, and vaulted with Yekase onto the roof of a three-story brick-and-tile house.
“Come down from there! That’s dangerous!”
“We’re about to stop a conspiracy. Explanations later, okay?”
“A conspiracy?!”
“One big enough to blow Soville City into the sky!”
Yekase had said nothing like that. Ling Yi was riffing, smooth as a lying river. Near ink, you go black; near cinnabar, you go red. After soaking in Yekase’s company, she’d learned to deadpan nonsense.
“Look, just come with us and you’ll see. And call in units to surround the church!”
She even started giving the cops orders.
“The church...” the tall one echoed.
“You believe them? Two bratty troublemakers,” the fat one scoffed.
“The church sector is Pietro and Cliff’s patrol. Think. How long since we heard them on the radio?”
“...?!”
Because the church was solemn ground, it wasn’t part of the Festival of Arcana, and tourists rarely went. The captain had assigned two rookies there to give them a breather. The fat cop realized their last check-in was over an hour ago.
They’d been slipped past.
“Not good!”
They had to alert the captain—
“That won’t do.”
A distorted voice broke in through both their earpieces.
“Our comm channel’s been hacked!”
“Shadow Realm War, Second Seat—‘Giant Slayer.’”
“Let me give you two a little interlude. Just like your adorable juniors.”
“Wha—”
Both earpieces grew hot and bright. The tall cop moved faster. He tore his earpiece off and flung it skyward. The fat one saw and understood, but the wave of heat at his temple hit first. There wasn’t time to copy the move.
He clamped his whole forearm over the earpiece and dropped, curling tight.
Boom!
Thump.
Two blasts almost overlapped, one sharp, one dull. The tall cop’s earpiece bloomed into a low sky flower. The fat cop’s bulk shuddered once where he lay.
The tall one reached out with shaking hands and rolled him flat.
The side pressed to the ground was gone from the shoulder down. Half his skull had become red-and-white paste.
“Gabe... Gabe, no!”
The fat cop couldn’t answer. His remaining eye slid a half-centimeter, blinked once, and stilled forever.
“Damn it. Damn it... Unforgivable—Shadow Realm War!”
He had no doubt that voice was real. No common criminal dared fake the name Shadow Realm War. That call earned top-level manhunts, and capture meant the darkest interrogations. You’d have to be mindless to paste that trouble on your own head.
The small blast rocked Ling Yi too. She looked back—and saw the fat cop’s ruin.
“They... hit a civilian...”
Her heart sank like a stone into cold water. Her hands tightened around Yekase’s legs. Yekase yelped through clenched teeth.
Ling Yi’s feet flew faster.
Last time they bombed a train. This time a festival. If they didn’t sprint now—
Pop pop pop—!!
She looked up. A volley of fireworks clawed into the sky. They burst into fire-trees and silver blossoms, painting the night like a scroll. Cheers rolled from all corners of Soville City.
And she, with deaf-blind Yekase on her back, ran and leapt like an assassin across sagging roofs toward an unknown battlefield. The cruel mismatch made the world tilt.
Ling Yi snapped herself straight.
She would not be crushed by the load.
Ever since she received that key, everything she’d done—here or in Huaxia—was sacrifice for everyone else.
“Right. Flashblade Red’s been out this long and still no signature line...”
The church garden was close enough to smell the damp earth. One jump from this roof would drop them inside.
“Right... there,” Yekase murmured.
“Mm.”
Moonlight washed the garden. A red-robed figure stood there like a statue, almost blended with leaf and flower.
The hush shattered in the next breath, torn by the roar of a revving Infinite Power engine.
“Flashblade Activation—”
Souls that had fused twice, close as braids, moved without thinking. Two wills reached down into their cores and woke Soul Power, mixing it inseparably with Mind Energy.
“So... that’s it,” Yekase whispered. “Mind Energy and Soul Power... were tangled from the start...”
“HAYATE!”
A green 02 flared on the right.
“ROZES!”
A black 00 burned on the left.
“Cross-Flash!”
...
“How?”
“Why?”
Staring at the descending figure, War Sovereigns Curse finally sounded uncertain.
“A state like ours?”
“A bond like ours?”
“Who are you?”
The hero woven in black and green touched down, light as a leaf.
She—no, they—lifted their heads, a razor-red lightning streak knifing across their goggled visors.
We are the Flash Blade Princess.
Assault on the train. Murder of officers.
Old debts and new—every sin tallied, punishments compounded.
Come—let’s count your sins, one by one, like beads clicking on a cold abacus.
