The thirteenth floor of the Sky Mall was devoted to women’s lingerie.

Women from every shore drifted through the aisles, eyes bright as tide-lit shells, hunting for the right pieces. In three days, Sky Voyager would reach a tropical planet. The golden beach at the bow would open to the public—no one wanted to miss a chance to shine like sunlight on waves.

Some came on a boyfriend’s arm, some walked like princesses with skirts swaying like petals, some laughed with besties like swallows over water, some strode alone with steady, confident feet. Amid them, one blue-haired girl looked painfully out of place—hesitant hands, helpless gaze, circling like a moth that couldn’t find the flame.

She was Yue Liuyi. To shoot a swimsuit photobook and chase fresh leads, she’d stepped into this rose garden she’d never trod—sampling fruits both innocent and ripe, allure sweet as dew and wine.

“Little sis, what do you think of this? I swear it suits you.”

“Black lace is a hard no! White only. Swimsuit too—just give me something white.”

“Haha, you do look conservative! That won’t draw your beloved prince charming, you know?”

Watching Yue Liuyi fluster, the shop’s auntie-manager smiled, a cat’s grin under warm lights.

(Like hell I’m trying to attract anyone!)

She wanted to snap it out loud—but she couldn’t blow her cover here. Her words softened, ladylike and neat. “White will do. Um… do you have something that doesn’t show too much?”

Her role-soaked eyes skimmed over skirts and one-piece suits, lingering on modest lines. The auntie blinked. “You want those? They’re mostly for younger girls. Your figure’s great—at least a C-cup, right? No need to hide it.”

“C-cup…” Yue Liuyi swallowed, words tumbling and failing to land.

“With a little squeeze, you’ll look like a D.”

She plucked a string triangle bikini off the rack—three tiny scraps of dusk and temptation.

“Whoa, no way! That’s way too lewd. I’ll take that one—the second row…”

In the end, Yue Liuyi chose a white suit with lace, still modest by intent. Not a full one-piece, but the important places stayed veiled, like snow over stone.

“That’ll be 132 credits.”

“Ugh. Just a few scraps of fabric—why so pricey…”

Holding the fresh purchase, her cheeks burned like sunrise behind mist.

“These aren’t for selling flesh. They’re for saving people trafficked and thrown to the wolves! Wait… why does that line sound familiar…”

She forgot: in a lot of lewd games, the heroine says something like that right before she gets pinned and the scene fades to black.

“Let’s pick a few little skirts too…”

After paying a penalty at the rental shop, her wallet felt as thin as winter air. Other girls weighed and reweighed choices like gourmets sipping tea. Yue Liuyi… bought whatever was cheapest, each decision quick as a pebble dropped in a stream.

“Beauty, how about this? It’s perfect for you…”

“No, I—huh?”

She’d meant to refuse, but she halted. It was a tiny accessories store: crystal, silk, luminous stone—colors glittered under the lamps, fireflies caught in glass, every piece a wink.

Girls love shiny things; Dixue wouldn’t be an exception. Yue Liuyi decided to buy a set for Dixue—a thank-you, a bright bow on kindness.

“What to choose… Silver should be right.”

After hunting a while, she settled on a silver-white hairclip shaped like a butterfly. Streamlined carving, fine patterns—delicate and adorable, a breeze’s kiss that belonged on Dixue.

“I’ll take this. Please box it in something pretty.”

“Of course. Thank you for your patronage.”

…

Leaving the mall, Yue Liuyi wandered content through the artificial park on Sky Voyager’s deck.

The sky was black as velvet. She followed a boardwalk of wood and soft shadows. Around her, the cloud-sea rose and fell, soothing as a tide in a lullaby. A rippling breeze came head-on, lifting the hem of her snow-white skirt, setting her blue hair afloat—under starlight it traced free, bright arcs like comets learning to dance.

“So comfy~”

She stretched out a hand, breathed in the scent of flowers and damp soil. Her steps grew light, like a sparrow hopping over stones.

Thanks to the teleport arrays, few people wandered this out-of-the-way park. Even the path lights had gone dark. Only distant lamps murmured—through layered leaves, that glow spilled faintly, enough to point the way.

“A quiet walk now and then is nice…”

Her heart was wide open—then a wrongness slid into her breath, a metallic tang of blood that didn’t belong in night air.

Yue Liuyi stopped. She scanned the shadows. The lively park had fallen into a sealed hush. No insect song. No whispering wind. Even the leaves held still, as if a black curtain had cut the world apart. Pressure thickened from every direction, squeezing her nerves like ice around twigs.

She’d felt this before. Sure enough—at the end of the path, a gray-robed figure bled out of the dark.

“I’ve worked so hard to find you, my fine meal…”

A rasping voice, a face twisted like warped iron. This gray robe was the Murder Fiend—Nightmare Rust, the same who’d attacked the detention center last night.

“You—you died!”

She’d watched Dixue tear the fiend in half. She wouldn’t forget that. So what was this?

“Heh. Murder Fiends don’t die so easily—especially when they’re still hungry.”

Step by step, he came on with crushing force. Filthy hands seemed to burn with black fire, the flame oily as tar and old sorrow.

“What do you want? Why attack Zaocun?”

“Does killing need a reason?”

He laughed. The sound was dry and papery, like rotten leaves breaking in a fist. It hurt the ears.

“So you just enjoy slaughtering the innocent? Then you wouldn’t have bothered with the detention center. You had a goal.”

“Little girl, you talk too much.” The Murder Fiend clenched his fist. A black blade forged from his flame slid into being. “I didn’t come to chat. I came to see your fear!”

He rushed in. His steps snapped like whipcracks, afterimages trailing like shed skins—sleek and venomous as a snake a breath before it strikes. The dagger was the fangs. Those fangs burned with eerie black fire. He swung for her shoulder.

Not the heart. He’d made up his mind to savor this. He’d carve line after line into her bright body, watch the blood spray and soak her white dress, then drink in her fury—kill her at the edge of despair and call it art.

It would be exquisite. As Yue Liuyi rushed closer in his sights, he could almost hear the screams, the hopeless pleas—useless, all of them. In the Rustbound Domain, no sound ever reached the outside world.

And then—

“I said, don’t underestimate me!”

A sudden blaze burst from right before her—an arc of light like a half moon breaking a wave. It flew like an arrow off the string and slammed straight into the serpent’s fangs.

The shockwave popped, rolling the grass. Yue Liuyi took one step back. The Murder Fiend went flying, crashed into a tree, snapped branches like bones under hail.

“Damn!”

Her young face had fooled him. He hadn’t expected such a sharp counter—no hesitation, no panic. She didn’t look like prey; she felt unpleasantly close to those blasted Special Envoy Rangers.

It soured his gut like swallowing filth. A hunt for pleasure had become a fight that demanded his full strength.

“You should be begging! You should be screaming! You should fear me!”

Black flames crawled over him again, veils of ash set alight.

“Sorry. This isn’t the detention center.”

Yue Liuyi stepped forward. Blue light threaded the air around her, faint at first, then brightening like dawn on water. She looked like a spirit’s ward—elegant, solemn, holy as a temple bell.

She kept her face calm, but inside, her chest tightened. This wasn’t a friendly spar. This was a death match without a safety net. She didn’t know his powers or tricks. One slip, and she could vanish without a grave, swallowed by the ship’s metal night.

The Murder Fiend abandoned his play. He went all in.

“Nether Rust Spring!”

The soil loosened and rolled. A stinking, black liquid erupted like a geyser. It wasn’t water. It was rust itself liquefied—poison-metal made to flow. The “spring” spread as fog, clotting to objects as a black scale of corrosion, binding movement and gnawing strength.

Yue Liuyi wasn’t about to let it near.

“Sunken Moon! Sunken Moon! Sunken Moon!”

She chanted. Crescent lights rose around her, three silent blades. They spun out in all directions, clearing the air with a gusting press, like clean wind scouring soot from eaves.

Around her stayed pure. Farther off, the trees weren’t so lucky. Black mist filmed the leaves and branches, turned lush green into a jungle of iron and ache.

“You’re strong… but this is my field.”

He grinned. His edges blurred. In this world built of rust, he seemed to bend light itself, folding and scattering it until his form vanished like a shadow under cinders.

Pressure kept building around her. Above, ahead, behind, left, right—everything drowned in black fog. Sight couldn’t touch him. Eyes were useless in a night that wasn’t night.

“Invisible? Bad…”

A mage fighting an assassin lives by distance. Cast outside the enemy’s reach. Bleed them out with spells. But the Rustbound Domain hadn’t shackled her legs—it had sealed off every lane to dodge.

His attack came sly and abrupt—where evasion had nowhere to go.

The fangs struck from her right—her dislocated arm’s blind side. She twisted, barely slipping past the main thrust—but the blade’s afterflame kissed skin. Black blood spilled like ink.

Her blood wasn’t truly black. The dagger carried a twisted toxin, turning blood into rusted night. It congealed into blood-rust, slowed limbs, stung and dripped, hurt without end.

“Feel it. The pain. Relax… I’ll take my time.”

“Purify!”

An ordinary person might have folded in agony. Yue Liuyi wasn’t ordinary. With a brief whisper of spellwork, the black vanished—the blood ran red again, clean as water after rain.

“You…”

He stared, stunned, as the stain unraveled.

“You’re a real piece of work…”

She finally showed the anger he craved—but pointed elsewhere. Yue Liuyi winced at the plastic bag fallen to the ground. Inside were the clothes she meant to return to Dixue, and the gifts she’d just bought. The elegant gift bag was smeared with blood now, ruined like snow trampled by wheels.

“Every time you break the stuff I bought with my last scraps of savings—I’ll never forgive you!”

It was the wrath of the broke, hot and ridiculous—and powerful. The pain of losing her little skirts filled her heart with iron. The magic around her felt clearer, sharp as frost.

“Moonfall Over Blue Hills!”

Yue Liuyi loosed an extravagant storm, half-moon arcs flaring like a flock of silver scythes sweeping the sky.

The Murder Fiend hid in black fog like a pond of ink, but such a tidal sweep couldn’t be dodged by shadows.

Dazzling crescents hammered him like sunbursts through rain; in a heartbeat, the once-arrogant gray-robed figure was battered and smoking.

His robe charred like burnt bark, and his magic bled away like a punctured waterskin, spent resisting the crescent glare.

Nightmare Rust lost the frenzy of a rabid wolf; even his Rustbound Prison domain tottered like a cracked bell.

The wavering shell leaked hints of a jeweled night sky, starlight threading in like needles through torn silk.

Retreat flickered through the Murder Fiend’s mind like a startled fish; the girl before him was thornier than he’d dreamed, no plaything at all.

Don’t run. Pay up! You’re a Murder Fiend—you’ve got money, right!

Yue Liuyi’s smile turned cold, a cherry blossom frosting into a blade; the prey flipped into the hunter in a blink.

With compensation filling her head like clinking coins, she pulled her ultimate move like drawing a moon from a well.

Stellar Moon Compass!

A star map disk bloomed under her like an unfurled galaxy, dozens of meters wide and bright as frost on jade.

Ten thousand motes of light glimmered like multicolored gems, and like stars bowing to the moon, they orbited the girl.

Starlight swept the fog away like a wind through cobwebs, and it lit the Murder Fiend’s hunched silhouette like a lantern in reeds.

Nowhere to hide, Nightmare Rust stood fully exposed, hemmed in like a moth trapped under a glass bowl.

Each mote of starlight bore a tiny gravity well, a pebble’s pull that bent bullets and spells like reeds in a stream.

Gathered together, those wells braided into a great tidal pull, a field that shackled any intruder to the Compass like iron to a magnet.

She hadn’t used this art in ages, dust on an old blade; to be safe, she made the pull as heavy as mountains.

The Murder Fiend felt his body dragged like a boat in a whirlpool; his four limbs refused him, stiff as nailed boards.

Pay up—now! And tell me why you went after Zaocun! Or I’ll have six horses tear you apart!

He chuckled, dry as flint striking steel. Impressive… but you can’t kill me.

He wasn’t soft fodder; Nightmare Rust carried thorns like a hedgehog. Under her threat, he chose the deadliest counter like a snake biting its own tail.

His right hand tore free of gravity like a claw ripping net, a black dagger in its grip wreathed in fire.

He drove it straight into his heart like a comet knifing night, a line of flame vanishing into ash.

Yes—she hadn’t misseen; his last strike was suicide, a candle snuffing itself to poison the room.

The ugly body rotted like fruit in seconds; the Rust domain shattered like a clay bowl, brittle and done.

All the rust collapsed like sandcastles, and all the black fog thinned away like mist at sunrise.

Where’d he go?

Yue Liuyi looked around, surprised as a sparrow spooked from a branch; only listless trees stood, like tired sentries.

The park breathed back its old calm like a pond smoothing, and the Murder Fiend’s corpse and trail were gone like smoke.

He must have some special way to revive, she thought, the idea coiling like a snake in grass.

At the end, she’d felt a surge of soul-force like a tide rolling, shifting as the fog ebbed.

But she wasn’t a fangshi or a soul mage; without those oars, she couldn’t chase that current.

She dissolved the Stellar Moon Compass, starlight dimming like embers under snow; fatigue pooled in her bones like lead.

She’d won against the Murder Fiend, yet joy wouldn’t rise, flat as a drum with no skin.

The scene lay in ruins like a stormed market; her own clothes were torn again, ragged as wind-torn flags.

Even the outfit she’d just bought for Dixue was soaked in her blood, the red spreading like spilled dye.

She’d burned a sea of mana and netted no fish; her right arm hurt worse, a winter branch ready to snap.

She sighed and glanced at it, heart sinking like a stone in a well; the limb felt numb and distant, not hers at all.

Moving or flexing it was hard as pushing a boulder uphill, every effort grit and sparks.

Looks like I’m not going to Dixue’s today. I should head back.

She tidied the wreckage like raking fallen leaves, then dragged her wounded body along the path she’d taken, a lone shadow under the trees.