"You two should understand, like seeing footprints under fresh snow."

The New Land is a chaotic field of disputes, a continent where dust never settles.

Within zones run by governors, law exists like thin frost.

Beyond civility, especially between natives and colonizers, strength is the only law.

A year ago, I was smuggling in the New Land when enemies tracked me.

I leapt off a cliff to shake the hunter, like a kite cut loose.

I lived, but my limbs snapped like dry twigs.

I lay gasping, waiting for the death written in my stars.

An elf girl saved me.

She was pure as a dawn angel, her smile bright with life like sun on water.

Unlike the masks I knew, hers was unblemished.

With a small body, she hauled me back to her settlement like a fawn dragging a wounded hawk.

She cared for me until I healed, day by day like dew nursing leaves.

Her settlement was small, four or five hundred souls, a dozen guardian spirits, and an Elf Tree still a sapling.

Such a small tribe could be swallowed by this chaos like a reed-bed in flood.

She told me they had lived in a vast forest.

It was a large settlement with mountains, running water, flowers in drift.

And there stood a lush Elf Tree, crown like a green cloud.

Bandits invaded and ruined everything, like locusts stripping fields.

They abandoned home and kept wandering, chasing the mirage of a stable shore.

But where can peace take root?

Even the once-beautiful Rainbow Valley has withered into that state, like a faded painting.

The New Land is vast, yet no garden remains for the elves to call home.

"So I began smuggling contraband to the natives, like slipping medicine through a siege."

At first it was energy rifles, anti-gravity shields.

These weapons were banned, but laxly, and bandits and radicals carried them like thorns.

For elves who wield only nature’s force, they were treasures that lift strength at once, like iron in a bare hand.

The elves traded me sap from their Elf Tree.

That liquid condensed life’s vitality, a spring that beautifies and quickens skin, adored in the Inner Ring.

Elves don’t draw that sap lightly.

Later I learned it nurtures elf infants, a milk of the tree.

Only when a whole settlement faces life and death will they offer this treasure, like breaking the family’s last loaf.

Maybe this is the fate born of unequal contact.

I know nations like Dragon Heaven do well.

They don’t plunder.

In unclaimed lands they raise starports and colonies with cutting-edge tech and magic, like towers sprouting from starlight.

But with them come bandits, Murder Fiends, cults, gangs—

The natives face too many knives.

And soon, the Rainbow Sanctuary opens again, once every four years, like a comet’s return.

It’s the New Land’s most valuable place.

Twelve Rainbow Fortresses stand, each a key to the Sanctuary.

Each “key” opens in a different way, like riddles etched in stone.

The Green Fortress needs vast amounts of Elf Tree sap.

So the sap’s price climbed like a tide.

Bandits and poachers risked it, hitting elf tribes in batches like wolves on a snowfield.

Last time I traded, only eight guardian spirits remained.

With things as they are, ordinary weapons can’t guard them.

So I found a strictly regulated magitech weapon.

The Crimson Rainbow Mag-bullet is best.

It’s easy to use, clean to fire.

Its power crushes the mechanical beasts the bandits build, like thunder splitting a rotten tree.

It fits the elves like rain fits the forest.

"This is why I smuggle Crimson Rainbow Mag-bullets."

"Hmm… smuggling?"

Dixue rubbed her brow, troubled, like smoothing ripples.

The Rangers Lodge rarely polices smuggling, but by law it’s a crime.

"I don’t ask you to understand me."

"I’m already knee-deep in these dealings, like wading a muddy river."

"But Murder Fiends have me marked."

"So here, I formally submit a commission to the Rangers Lodge."

Chulei drew a small box from his coat and handed it to Dixue with ritual gravity, like setting incense before an altar.

"Please store this cargo for a time."

"Payment is one round inside."

"If I die, carry it to the Fawn Settlement in Emerald Valley Forest."

"A tribe’s continuity rides on it, like a seed in winter."

Chulei spoke lightly of death, a breeze over stones, as if he were naming a trivial thing.

"…"

Dixue accepted the box and studied the complex patterns.

She felt the surge of magic like surf under rock.

She already knew what lay within—the Crimson Rainbow Mag-bullet.

"Hmm… Mr. Chulei, why trust us so much?"

"Because my junior was saved by you, pulled off Nightmare Rust."

"And long ago, someone from the Rangers Lodge helped me too."

"Eh? Saved… was it LittleYue?"

"LittleYue is actually Chulei’s junior?"

"No, LittleSnow."

"I mean my friend, Zaocun."

"Oh—the catfolk girl who was kidnapped!"

"I see."

"The Murder Fiend keeps hounding Zaocun and Mr. Chulei."

"Why is that?"

Dixue shifted the topic to cover her awkwardness, like turning a fan.

"Because they know Zaocun is my only soft spot on the Sky Voyager."

"And the Crimson Rainbow Mag-bullet is a prize they must take."

"To get it, Murder Fiends already killed two of my men—Tao Xiong and Xu Ding."

(So that’s it!)

Meeting Chulei, the core figure, Yue Liuyi’s doubts unraveled like knots in wet rope.

If the corpse in the Red Wine Bar was Chulei’s man Tao Xiong, they were likely caught mid-handover.

The Murder Fiend poisoned in secret and pinned the murder on Chulei.

That way Chulei couldn’t carry the Crimson Rainbow Mag-bullet into prison.

With the Thunder smuggling crew left headless, the Murder Fiends could easily find the Mag-bullet.

But the inept police wrongly tagged Zaocun as the suspect at first.

That saved Chulei in a way, like a detour around a cliff.

Soon the Murder Fiend shifted targets.

They planned to grab Zaocun as hostage to force Chulei to hand over the Mag-bullet.

(If so, then in the holo-sim sky world, Black Hawk’s harsh tone was fear that I, an innocent, would be dragged in.)

(And when he told us to leave just now, he feared we’d step right into the Murder Fiend’s trap.)

Yue Liuyi looked at Chulei and suddenly understood why this man had earned Zaocun’s respect, like a banner held in wind.

"Thank you for the trust."

"Now I’m going to rescue Zaocun."

"No need to thank us."

"Thank Mr. Chulei’s candor—so much truth to strangers, like laying cards on a stone table."

"What!"

"Fuzzball has a lie-detect function."

"And LittleYue doesn’t seem to dislike you."

"So, happy cooperation, Mr. Chulei."

Dixue extended her hand to Chulei, a knowing smile blooming like a white flower.