“Holy crap?!”

On their Arctic trek, Yekase and Dorothy yelled in perfect sync, like two bells struck together under polar night.

“Peace Walker—Part 2!”

The Peace Walker’s giant hand slid out of the silver screen, like a glacier’s palm raking a hill of stone-hut ruins.

A cave-in from age and frost? And at this exact moment, like fate tipping its cup?

Yet neither the roaring collapse nor that hand the size of a truck startled the Arcadia locals; they moved like wind in old wheat, heads down in routines long ended.

“…Something’s off. I just saw the flash of a blast,” Lu Yao said, brows knit like storm-swept reeds. “Only for a heartbeat, but it was there.”

“Explosives?” Yekase’s voice was tight, like a drawn bow.

“Yeah. Industrial charges. Look at those fragments—clean and even, like machine-cut gravel.”

A chill slid down Yekase’s spine like black ice. The rubble lay too fine, too neat, a kind of mechanical beauty—if only their guide wasn’t buried beneath that cruel order.

Ordinary chemical charges without Infinite Power weren’t her field, but she knew enough; to pulverize like this, it wasn’t weathering, it wasn’t a small load—it was deliberate, like a hunter laying snares in snow.

Someone foresaw Harrison’s visit and packed his home with charges, like anthracite under floorboards.

“Giant Slayer…”

It had that person’s touch—yet hadn’t Shen Shanshan already finished her off? Set all this before leaving to bomb Soville City?

Shadow Realm War—how did they know Harrison would come here, like ravens who never miss a carcass?

A cold sharper than the air bit Yekase, like iron teeth.

This secret, deranged group wasn’t like any Sinister Organization she’d fought; their threat ran second only to Shadow Curtain International, like a second tide behind the first.

Their aim was eerie yet precise; even with two conspiracies crushed, they kept needling her path, like burrs that cling no matter the brush.

And the part that chilled her most—

“Their eyes and ears blanket Europe like morning frost. Even Harrison being Arcadian, coming here to find his roots, they knew it cold…”

“Not quite,” Lu Yao cut in, his voice snapping like a twig, pulling her out of the thought trap.

“Where’s your reverse-thinking when we need it?”

“Huh?”

“After Soville City’s mists cleared, Harrison started digging into Arcadia. Then smack at the time the Arctic got weird, someone told him Arcadia’s ruins were in the Arctic. That level of coincidence? Like two meteors hitting the same lake?”

“…Ah!”

Understanding sparked in Yekase, like a struck match in wind.

She hadn’t been a director for years; she’d gone too deep into solving the incident, not laying the board, like a chess player who only plays defense.

Shadow Realm War had roamed Europe for decades like ghosts, yet in the Arctic they get “found” by a young dragon flock that barely fights? They applied pressure on purpose, pushing Aurora to send an investigator—someone likely to hinder them in the Golden Apple scramble, like luring a lone wolf into a choke point.

Meanwhile, a famous explorer aims at a “no one’s heard of it” old city. He can’t fight, but he’s a buzzing fly. So they drip hazy intel there as well; the two threads braid together, and the targets walk into the net, like salmon to a weir.

As for Harrison’s bloodline…

Yekase stepped to the next house and knocked, knuckles tapping like rain on a tin roof.

A slightly paunchy man opened the door, solidly built, eyes narrowing at her offbeat gear like a cat peering from a window.

“Can I help you?”

“Hi. Do you know your neighbors?”

“Neighbors?”

He craned out, looking at the ruin like it was a shed after a windstorm.

“The Joneses next door? They already moved.”

“Did they have a child?”

“Yeah, Harrison. I even held him,” he said, nostalgia drifting off him like warm smoke.

Yekase nodded. For them, a collapsed house meant “moved,” like chalk wiped off a slate.

They were slices cut from the river of time, like insects in amber—an open holographic database pinned to the year 1450, before any exogenous invasion, never to update again.

Until Arcadia fell to dust and everyone “moved,” like candles going out one by one.

Even if a bug appears, it self-corrects in ways they can’t notice, like a dream stitching its tear.

From a database like this, asking a name and its tie to Arcadia is easy, like scooping water from a clear spring.

“Harrison! You’re alive!”

“Do you want me dead?!”

Lu Yao finally tunneled through the rubble and hauled Harrison out, battered from head to toe, like a ship dragged off reefs.

Dorothy winced at the blood and grime; modern magic had no healing branch. At best, a flow-water spell to rinse wounds, like rain over stone.

“Teacher! Can you heal?” Duty lit her voice like a lamp; she was a good student reaching for a hand.

“Do you know how many catamites those red cardinals kept—” Yekase was still chatting with the neighbor, fishing for five centuries of lost secrets like pearls in silt. She turned at Dorothy’s call and saw Harrison fading fast, like a candle in a draft.

She jolted. “Holy—you’re not dead?!”

“You two really can’t spare one kind word, can you?!”

“Easy. I know you’re panicking, but breathe. Don’t panic,” Yekase said, tone as calm as snow settling.

She waved goodbye to the neighbor and knelt by Harrison, eyeing him with a “professional” gaze—she had no such thing. She yanked out a printer and started sketching runes, like ink rivers on a white field.

Milkweed. Blood’s Exultation. Flowing Water.

The runes arranged in a circle, then sank into his chest like dew into bark. Before their eyes, blood washed clean like tide on shale; the cut-laced skin sealed over like ice refreezing.

“Picked this up from Sandryon. The old master’s still got it,” she said, a grin flickering like foxfire.

“Who?”

“The Crystal Witch.”

“Sandryon the archmage?! No wonder you’re a teacher—your lineage’s a mountain,” Dorothy said, flattery humming like bees far away in Huaxia.

Lu Yao, seeing Yekase heal for the first time, kept a straight face; inside, surprise rippled like wind across a lake.

Why had he never seen her use this? Had she just never been hurt? It felt true, like a blade that never chips.

Yekase gave Dorothy a quick lore drop, words bead-like on a string. “Alicia Alicia excels at Runic Words, said to be Newton’s heir. Sandryon learned some runes from her, but favors array construction.”

“What about you, Teacher Yekase?”

“I dabble in everything,” she said, casual as a hand in water.

“No wonder—grasping complex knowledge so easily, it’s inspiring,” Dorothy breathed, admiration rising like steam.

Lu Yao pressed Yekase’s head down, ending the empty banter like a lid on a pot, and steered them back to Harrison’s trek. Harrison confessed he’d been pining for home since the Soville City affair, but he wasn’t deaf to reason; he knew he couldn’t fight and had to rely on the three, so he wouldn’t act blind.

“Just now… I don’t know why. My body just moved on its own, like strings pulled from somewhere,” he said, cheeks hot with embarrassment like dusk on brick.

“That’s homesickness,” Yekase said, summing it up like a stamp on wax.

Dorothy asked, “Did you see your family? What did you talk about?”

Harrison’s face dimmed, gray as a rain-soaked alley, like a stray old dog curled and whimpering.

“I saw them… but we didn’t talk. They kept circling the room, muttering that the child’s missing. No matter what I said, they wouldn’t look straight at me,” he said, then forced a smile like a crack in dry clay. “My old man’s pretty handsome. No wonder he made me.”

“…”

“The collapse was Shadow Realm War’s doing. They know we’re in,” Yekase cut the string of sorrow clean, like a knife on rope. “To stop some red-robed woman lurking in the dark and eavesdropping, I’ll write the plan as a memo and push it to your phones. Cover the screen with a hand when you read.”

She pulled on Mechbreaker’s old jacket but kept her arms out of the sleeves, like a kid imitating a cripple’s droop.

Then the jacket’s belly began to twitch fast, like a rabbit under a blanket.

Dorothy and Harrison stared, baffled, as if she were doing performance art under auroras. Lu Yao got it: she’d hidden the phone inside and was blind-typing, like a thief’s fingers in velvet.

Moments later, Dorothy and Lu Yao both got the tiny, quiet document, words tucked like folded knives.

“Harrison doesn’t need one. You’re their prime target—focus on staying alive, like a flame in wind.”

“Eh?!”

Smiling, Yekase moved to execute the plan, her confidence steady as iron.

She sent the less combat-ready Dorothy—dragging a trembling Harrison—to keep chatting with residents, to fish for any scrap of intel; even distorted truth beats a void, like a warped map better than none.

She and Lu Yao lifted on wing rigs and skimmed low over the city, a swift shadow like swallows over ruins.

Most buildings were damaged, like teeth in a broken comb, yet in almost every intact house people moved. Talking, working, playing—life pulsed like sap—Yekase even spotted two locals fighting in a narrow alley, fists like stones.

Her plan was simple.

Residents ignored anomalies; flying overhead meant they were invisible, like owls at noon. So if someone in the crowd instinctively looks up, what does that mean?

Simple, effective bait, like a hook over clear water.

There was another vital step—boarding the exogenous landing ship, like stepping onto a sleeping whale.

“Lu Yao, just in case that thing still has power, I’ll teach you a practical trick against Reverse Memes. It’s good against Shadow Realm War and Arcadia’s weirdness,” Yekase said, voice low, like a flute in fog.

“Hm?”

“Don’t think. Feel.”

Yekase bent her legs and pushed off; Flash Energy rippled through her like quicksilver. She shot toward the black iron sphere on the palace like an arrow loosed, a streak in winter sky.