In the Sky Voyager’s cockpit, Lia spoke up, her words like beads rolling off a crystal string, laying out what the crystal sphere had shown her.

“But at one o’clock… Lady Maria and I swept it with radar. It’s a field of floating pumice, like gray islands adrift on wind. No magical trace.”

“A floating-stone skirt? Is it a pretty dress?” Zaocun chimed in, bright as spring sunlight peeking through mist.

“Not a skirt, Zaocun. A floating-stone cluster—rocks hanging in the air like lanterns on a night wind,” Lingwei said, patient as still water. “They’re usually antigrav or wind-lan ore. Refined, they make floating gear. Sky Voyager uses tons of it.”

“Then… why can’t the Sky Voyager be there?” The question hung like a paper kite tugging its string.

“Because Sky Voyager has a lot of magical devices,” Maria said, voice cool as moonlight. “They shed magical flux like ripples on a pond. That bearing shows only a faint ripple. Sky Voyager can’t be there.”

Maria adjusted her glasses, the gesture neat as a stroke of ink. Her detection for magic was a well-tuned zither; it didn’t go off-key.

“B-but… senior Maria, the c-crystal really points there… Did I mess up?” Lia bowed her head, hugging the crystal like a lost lantern, small and alone in a room of brass and glass.

“Don’t put it that way, Maria. We’ve got no leads anyway,” Dixue said, her tone steady as a drawn blade. With Lia beside her, she turned crisp and calm, decisive as a falcon stooping. “We go there. Maybe the flying-stone cluster holds Sky Voyager’s shed scales.”

…

The Skyship rumbled to life, a whale of steel leaving its wake in the yellow fog.

The white whale prow split thick ocher haze like a plow through autumn fields, aimed for Lia’s marked star.

The way was smooth—quiet as a lake at dawn—until Lingwei’s sudden scream cracked the cockpit like lightning.

“Huh? What is that!”

Zero Wei’s eyes went wide, her cat ears pricking like reeds in wind, as something slid out of the black fog like a shadowed reef.

Radar painted a single massive rock ahead—a looming cliff in the sky—but to naked eyes, a skyscraper rose, tall as a bamboo stalk. Its rooftop terrace and elevator crown tilted as if cut free from gravity, drifting out of the yellow like a drowned city lifting its face.

“W-what is that!”

The other girls felt the wrongness, a cold draft through paper screens. In the fog, more shapes drifted in—skyscrapers, a chapel with stone ribs, lone villas, a mall like a beached whale, apartments like stacked shoeboxes. City-core bones, meant for earth and streetlights, now floated like meteorites, sliding backward as the Skyship advanced.

“They’ve… all lost their weight,” someone breathed, as if naming a ghost.

Yue Liuyi saw more. Not just weight—color and texture had bled away. Each building was pure black, like ink blocks. Where glass should glitter, only hollow, hungry holes gaped.

Faces of the “skyscrapers” weren’t concrete but stone—river-stone, cliff-stone—material that couldn’t hold such height. Yet here they drifted like corpses freed from the pull of soil, wandering in yellow fog like unmoored kites.

“Is this… a city built from stone?” Yue Liuyi whispered, a winter draft crawling up her spine. The placid haze now showed human lines—streets, corners, cornices. The feeling of civilization skinned from its body made her stomach sink like a stone in a well.

“Don’t tense up, Little Moon. I’ve topped off my LittleMoon energy,” Dixue said, extending one finger with a playful smile, sunlight on silver. “I’m invincible. See? Sister Dixue is amazing. Come snuggle into my arms and be cute.”

The silver-haired girl’s hug was soft as fresh snow, and Yue Liuyi did like LittleSnow. But lately, Dixue’s care had wrapped her like a warm quilt, and Yue felt herself softening, sugar melting in tea.

That won’t do. She shook her head, steadying like a pine in wind. “These might be relics. We may’ve reached a world already destroyed, a planet without pulse.”

Seeing Yue not come into her arms, Dixue pouted like a raincloud. “My hugging pillow’s ignoring me. My hugging pillow’s being tsundere.”

“I am not tsundere!”

“Little Moon, you admitted you’re my hugging pillow.”

“T-that’s… not what I meant!”

“B-Butterfly Snow President…?” Lia stood stunned, a gull caught midflight. In her eyes, the Butterfly Snow President was a leader like a drawn spear—now suddenly a girl with cheeks like peaches.

(Could this be what senior Dixue meant with that line?)

Lia nodded to herself, like a boat finding the current. Her unease eased, a knotted cord loosening.

“Mm. Lia, this is the Butterfly Snow President’s real face,” Xiang Xiaoyan said deadpan, as dry as driftwood. “Don’t let her pretty shell trick you.”

“Xiaoyan, shut it!”

“…”

While the others made waves of laughter in the cramped cabin—

“I’m sorry…”

Maria, who had been staring out the window in silence like a statue on a temple gate, turned and spoke. Her voice fell like ash.

“Dixue, Dawn Goose… this time, we might all die.”

Despair sat on her face like frost, and even her forced smile trembled like a candle in wind.

…

“Huh? Lady Maria! What’s going on!” Zero Wei jolted like a cat splashed with water, clutching Maria’s skirt like a lifeline.

“Maria, don’t scare everyone!” Dawn Goose gripped her long sword, knuckles pale as bone.

“Maria…”

“If I’m not mistaken,” Maria said, each word a dropped stone, “this is the Lost City.”

Her voice turned storyteller-slow, incense smoke rising, and she unrolled an old tale.

…

Seven hundred years ago, at Jiangwang Port, dawn broke like a red pearl cracking. Dockworkers faced the sunrise, ready to shoulder a day’s weight.

The sun lifting off the sea was beautiful, a burning gem laying ripples of fire. That morning, a black speck stained it, a growing shadow awkward against the rosy sky like ink spilled on silk.

A pitch-black ship glided in. No flag fluttered. No lantern burned. No signal called to the harbor. It slipped forward, silent as a shark.

That broke every harbor rule. Workers smelled wrong wind and called the garrison, ready to fine and seize the ship like netting a stray beast.

The lead was a man named Han Ming, a squad leader with hands like rope.

He said he was sleepy and sour that morning, temper simmering like a kettle. A ship like this snarls the harbor and delays honest work. He planned to drag the captain out and give him a storm.

That thought vanished the instant he boarded. A killing chill shot up Han Ming’s spine like an iron needle, stabbed his skull, and iced his heart—like tumbling into a polar crevasse. The whole ship felt wrong, a grave under noon sun.

Not just him. The other guards whispered the same shiver. What they found carved their unease into stone: the ship—was stone. Hull, cabins, wheel—stone. Even storage cabinets—stone.

By reason, a ship like that can’t fly the sky or sail the tide. Uneasy, they searched for the captain. They combed every corner. Not one living soul. Not even a corpse. On the mess table, sliced bread, black and furred with mold, sat like funeral offerings. In the kitchen, a stone pot holding rotten sauce stood square on the counter, a dead thing waiting.

“No sign of struggle. The entire crew vanished like steam off a kettle,” read the newspaper front page that day, setting Han Ming’s truest thought in ink, a mirror for the garrison’s bewilderment.

It didn’t end there. What lit the fuse was what Han Ming found in the captain’s cabin—a diary on the desk.

The moment he picked it up, the ship died. It came apart as if someone pulled a pin.

With a roar like mountains breaking, planks, masts, ribs—piece after piece—dropped straight down. The garrison, already spooked, broke and ran like scattered quail. No one thought of anything else—except Captain Han Ming. Instinct carried his hand. He kept the diary.

That diary became the only survivor. Everything else vanished. Deck, keel, cabins—things that should’ve smashed the ground—dissolved like ice chips in dirty water, thinning and fading the instant they left the ship.

If not for hundreds of dockworkers and dozens of guards speaking with one voice, outsiders would call it a fever dream.

…

Later, the diary was made public:

“Why is the fog so thick? Why is there no day or night? Is our clock broken? Why is there nothing outside but this suffocating yellow haze? Where in all seas did we fly?”

“Damn it! Every instrument for fixing our position is dead. Even the advanced nano analyzer is out of its mind. Are we dreaming? How could this happen!”

“Drifting buildings… Are my eyes lying? Why are there structures outside the window?”

“The yellow fog finally thinned, but what is this… so many high-rise ruins floating in the air. Did we reach the underworld?”

“My memory’s fraying. I’m the captain. I remember Oceanic No. 21 had many crew. But why… why am I the only one left aboard? And these stone statues…”

“I understand now… This is their nest. They’re monsters that swallow even the soul. My crew fell in battle. Now, I won’t escape either…”

Inquiries soon confirmed the Oceanic No. 21 in the diary—she’d sailed from Jiangwang Port three months earlier. A brand-new metal model, strong as a whale. She’d vanished mid-journey like a lamp blown out.

What happened? Why did the ship turn to stone? Where did the crew go? What were the monsters the captain named? Why did the ship unravel and leave nothing behind? What kind of world did they touch?

Questions bred questions like rain on river. Artists wrapped it in silk and smoke; the tale of the ghost ship spread like wildfire. The world in the diary drew curious hearts like a lantern on a dark road. Explorers and scientists raised sail, hungry to chase the Oceanic No. 21’s wake.

“But… no matter how legendary those explorers were, no matter how honed their skills, the moment they set off to seek the truth, they all vanished like birds flying into fog.”

No one knew if they were still alive; no one knew if they ever found that place—their traces swallowed by cold sea mist.

Maria spoke softly, her voice calm as winter water.

With time, the route sailed by Oceanic 21 became a stretch people shunned, like a reef no one dared.

The place drawn in the diary earned a name like a shadow—Lost City.

The cockpit felt snared by cold, like frost on glass; the girls stood mute, rooted to the deck.

Except Dixue, the silver-haired girl tilted her head, thoughts glinting like a blade.

Huh? But... it’s been centuries; the years should’ve sanded the edges, right?

Back then the tech was crude, and chance played its hand like a tossed coin.

Maria’s voice drifted like smoke: “I hope so too, but...”

Just as Maria drew breath like a wave to speak, Zaocun, eyes on the window, cried out.

Whoa!

I found the Sky Voyager—like a star pricking the haze!

Right ahead! That—that’s the Celestial Courtyard’s pillar, rising like a spear!

The catfolk girl pointed, excitement rippling like sunlight on water.

In the thick amber fog, the Celestial Courtyard’s pillar slowly surfaced, like a spear lifting from cloud.

But everyone went utterly still, like statues rimed with frost.

Because, to their horror, the pillar was black as obsidian...