Layered white clouds rolled and stacked like slow surf, and the ancient cold wind sang beside them, a long hymn across the vault of heaven.

At that far edge of sky, a ship came gliding out of the haze. Its hull was colossal and silver-white, a moving island that shed glints like fish scales in sunlight.

Its name was the Sky Voyager, a giant cruise liner. As the largest ship of Dragon Heaven, it packed a floating city’s heart: gym, library, theater, mall, park, apartments, even a broad, man-made beach.

No exaggeration: the Sky Voyager was the pride of human magitech, the crest of every cutting-edge craft. With supplies steady, a passenger could live aboard a lifetime, doors shut, and never taste boredom.

This behemoth soared through a sea of cloud, on its first run along the New Land route. The whole voyage would take three weeks. From its departure at Jiangwang, a week had already slipped by like wind over water.

The din today rose from the wine bar, a hall on the upper deck with a view that scooped the cloud-sea into its windows like a luminous tide.

Guests came to drink and sing, to play and laze; the bar top and tables breathed a warm, bustling heat, and that heat hadn’t cooled even after the maiden-day spark.

It was a fresh continent ahead, stuffed with unknown chances. People traveled with dreams like lanterns cupped to the chest, hoping to make their mark in the New Land. Heat and hope, wine and song—what could be more intoxicating? No wonder the bar had become a happy whirl, glasses meeting, strangers laughing into a single, noisy tribe.

But in a shadowed corner, a black-haired boy sat at odds with the revelry. He had lit a magelight candle and bent over a book spread flat before him, a still pool apart from the waves.

Open the title page and you’d read the name: Gervin Gazetteer.

Gervin—destination city of this voyage, the first city the inner-ring civilization had planted in the New Land. The boy seemed to be thinking ahead to the journey’s end, eyes fixed as if measuring distant mountains.

“Excuse me, um… sir, would you like anything?”

The waitress wore a neat black-and-white uniform. She had never seen anyone read so earnestly in this bar. The tip of her black, plush tail twitched in surprise—she was catfolk, and her tail betrayed her weather of mind.

“A bottle of cola. With ice and lemon.”

“Right away~”

She was curious about the boy, but work tugged first. The catfolk girl slipped back behind the counter to make his drink.

“Ugh.” Dongfang Chen sighed, dropping his gaze to the price sheet on the table—15 yuan.

A cola that cost 3 yuan in the inner-ring cities rose to that price aboard the Sky Voyager, the silver island whose air itself felt dear.

He had no choice. He couldn’t hog a table and order nothing. And the bar was already the cheapest place compared to the library.

He wasn’t here to be eccentric or to wait for someone. He was here because he was broke.

The Sky Voyager promised luxury, and it delivered. It also charged like thunder. The magelight candle required to read magitech tomes cost 20 yuan an hour to rent—more than five times the inner-ring price. Dongfang Chen had packed many magical books, and the math made his head ache. Thank the heavens, the bar provided magelight for free. That doused the nearest fire.

Unlike ordinary books, a magitech tome had no ink on its pages. Yet it did what paper never could: it stored text, images, audio, video, projections, even small-scale spells. Convenience wrapped in leather and glyphs.

The magelight candle turned a tome’s storage into visible interface, like decoding a silent language into light. The bar’s candles were free, so they were shoddy. Dongfang Chen opened a crisp new page of the Gervin Gazetteer and waited. Only after a long breath did letters and images about the city float up like late fish—lag and stutter, the price of cheap light.

His right hand glided over the page. A three-dimensional projection rose, an architectural model built of laser color, every section tagged with a different hue. He slid his left hand; the model rotated a clean 360 degrees, unfolding its secrets like a fan.

“Your cola… Whoa. What is that? It looks amazing!”

The catfolk waitress set down the iced glass. She’d never seen anyone do something so “high-end” in this bar. Curiosity pricked her ears into sharp leaves.

“Mixed reality. A module that pulls data into the room… Sorry, I’m throwing jargon. Think of it as a life-like game, if that helps.”

“Just a game? It looks more complicated…”

Her tail curved into a question mark, her doubt shaped in fur and air.

“That’s all it is… that’s all~”

He laughed it off, trying to fog her curiosity. If an expert saw it, they’d gasp. This projection wasn’t just anything—it was the Rainbow Fortress, the hottest battlefield in the New Land.

Since explorers found the New Land, peace had been a thin ice. Many reasons cracked it: clashing powers, old grudges, natural ruin, cultural rifts. But one cause weighed like a mountain: the Rainbow Fortress.

Because the Rainbow Valley that cradled it was too rich for calm.

That blessed valley held a flood of mana. With it came a trove of magical crystal: rainbowstone. Even on the outskirts, the preliminary survey of rainbowstone could feed Dragon Heaven’s needs for decades. Never mind the core, the Rainbow Sanctuary.

Few had set foot there. Fewer returned. Everyone who came back spoke in stunned whispers. They said the riverbank was paved with gemstones. The fruit ripened into gold. The leaves were cut from jade. The branches were cast in glassy liuli. Pick up any stone, they said, and you could trade it for its weight in gold. No wonder the Rainbow Valley was every adventurer’s second choice in the New Land.

Why not the first?

The answer was as blunt as a blade. The valley was deadly. No law. No mercy. Fugitives and drifters poured in like floodwater. Green turned crimson. Robbery, theft, murder—the list ran like bad weather unchecked. Every day, bodies drifted into the lower Rainbow River, as regular as driftwood.

And the Rainbow Sanctuary wasn’t somewhere you simply walked into. Which made the Fortress schema in Dongfang Chen’s hands worth a small city.

He wasn’t being coy with the catfolk girl because the data was priceless. If that were the case, he wouldn’t be studying it in a public bar. He simply didn’t want attention. Among New Land explorers, Rainbow Valley adventurers drew the hungriest eyes. The place’s fatality rate was brutal. Announce your intent in public, and inheritance firms would circle like crows, selling services as if you’d already died.

If not for the nuisance, he wouldn’t mind publishing the plan. He needed to recruit teammates anyway.

“Mm… but I’m still curious.”

Unfed curiosity drooped her ears. She had other guests to tend, yet her eyes kept sliding back to the glowing page, like a cat tracking a firefly.

Afternoon settled in. The bar’s noise thinned like foam. Drinkers dozed over their tables, and a lazy mood spread in the barley-sweet air.

The TV in the center droned the news. The pianist had left his bench. The bartender, crisp in his suit, arranged spare glasses. Rainbow glints leapt in his hands like a fountain of light.

“So that’s it? The New Land has a breed of flying sheep…”

Dongfang Chen stayed sunk in the book’s painted world, blind to the small weather around him.

Crack!

Glass exploded somewhere close, a sharp note that stung his ear.

“Eek!”

His eyes tore from the page. A girl screamed, high and thin.

A man lay collapsed on the floor by a table, ringed by shattered glass like a crown of ice.

The catfolk girl stood beside him, shivering so hard she couldn’t form words. That scream had been hers.

“What happened?”

“What happened??”

The bartender came from the back, face set, with the bar owner trailing in a panic. They reached the catfolk girl together.

“It’s just a broken glass. Nothing to make a fuss about. Zaocun, grab another from the restaurant.”

A patron passing out drunk was as common as spilled foam. The owner patted the girl’s shoulder, a clumsy comfort.

“N-no, it’s… it’s…”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I won’t dock your pay. Don’t just stand there, help the guest up.”

He spoke as he stooped to lift the man sprawled on the floor—

“Wait!”

The bartender’s voice cut clean. He crouched, face hard as slate, and set his index finger by the guest’s nose.

The instant he touched skin, a flinch lit his eyes, like a jolt bit his spine.

Time held its breath. Everyone stared.

“He isn’t breathing.”

The words were soft, but they blew cold through every chest.

“N-not breathing?”

“Dead!?”

“Waaahhh!”

Silence broke like champagne—sudden and everywhere. The owner crumpled to the floor. Some customers rushed to the scene. Some fainted. Some ran in all directions. Only the bartender kept his jaw locked, his face cold as ice and snow.

Dongfang Chen sucked a breath and looked hard at the fallen man. The man’s face had gone cyan, the skin the color of a loaf gone bad, tinged a sickly bronze. It looked like poison had done the killing.

The tavern drowned in chaos, as if overturned wine flooded the floor; the sudden news of death struck like cold iron against bare skin. If a killer had done this, the uproar was the perfect fog to slip away.

“Nobody move. Back to your seats!”

Miraculously, the bartender’s bark rang like a bronze bell, and the dust of panic settled.

His words carried a calm spell; hearts steadied, patrons sank back to their chairs, and even the owner gathered himself and rose from the floor.

Battle shout? Illusion magic? Dongfang Chen’s gut tightened; in the bartender’s voice he felt a tiny ripple of power.

“I’ve called the police and an ambulance. This is serious—please wait and let the officers handle it.”

The bartender’s gaze swept the room like a blade tip, trying to catch a flicker of hidden glee beneath the mask of panic.

Nothing. Every reaction was clean as rain; if the killer sat among them, he wore his calm like a second skin.

“Chulei… this is…”

“Boss, don’t worry. Leave this to me.”

The bartender called Chulei nodded to the owner, then walked to the trembling catfolk girl and asked in a low, steady voice.

“Zaocun, before the police arrive, I need to ask you something.”

“Mhm… okay!”

“I don’t recognize this guest. He’s new here, right?”

“Yes, about twenty minutes ago—at 2:30 p.m…”

“The menu? What did he order?”

“He seemed to be waiting for someone, so he only ordered a cola.”

“Cola?”

“Mm… yes. With ice and lemon… and it matched what a previous guest ordered…”

“Cola with ice and lemon?”

Dongfang Chen’s surprise broke the hush, and the catfolk girl’s ears flicked toward him.

“Huh? It was the same as that other guest’s order…”

Zaocun peeked at Dongfang Chen, timid as a sparrow; shock still clung to her like frost.

Chulei didn’t linger on it. He turned to the bar and fixed on the wooden cola keg like a hunting hawk.

“That drink didn’t come from my hand. In fact—”

A heavy door groaned and cut him off; the sound landed like a stone.

“Police!”

Cold wind rode in with a squad of middle-aged men in uniform; night’s edge followed them across the threshold.

The police took the scene, and the rest slipped beyond Dongfang Chen’s sight like mist past lantern light.

He did only what any patron did: registered at Security, answered a few brisk questions, and was released to go.

By the time he stepped out of the ship’s superstructure, dusk had pooled; the world wore twilight like a shawl.

The setting sun stretched his shadow long across the grass; thin threads of cool wind slid into his sleeves, matching the ache in his chest.

The tavern had closed; the investigation and case belonged solely to Sky Voyager’s onboard police. Aside from those involved and a few reporters, no one could pry past the cordon.

Dongfang Chen sighed, drew out the Gelven Gazetteer, and held it to his chest like a talisman.

Good fortune doesn’t drop from the sky; this journey to the New Land might be far more dangerous than he’d hoped.

Worse, because of him, a bystander had lost a life; that thorn was the one that lodged deepest.

“Looks like I need to get serious… should I use that?”

He murmured to himself, and his figure thinned into the glow of evening, like ink fading in the last light.