Under Yue Liuyi’s counsel, the tide turned; Dixue’s movement checked for a beat, clearly she wasn’t going to target Dawn Goose.

“Tch, so dull…” Xiang Xiaoyan shook her head and pivoted away. “Can’t stand you lot. I’m moving on my own. Try hard, yeah—aim not to die here.”

“…”

Helpless, Dixue and Yue watched that pitch-black silhouette walk farther, swallowed by the dark.

“Aren’t we chasing?”

“The Dawn Goose right now is strong. So we don’t need to fret,” the silver-haired girl let out a soft sigh, letting the pursuit go. “Say more to her now and it only gets worse. Let her go alone.”

“Mm!”

Yue Liuyi nodded. As for Xiang Xiaoyan’s venomous tongue, she didn’t take it to heart—truth hits like winter air; she had to push harder.

(So Dawn Goose has this face too. No wonder folks once called her and Dixue the Black-and-White Rose.)

“Thank you for saving me!”

A brown-haired girl strode up, her voice hearty as a bell, saluting Dixue. “You and your pet are crazy strong—must be famous adventurers!!”

“Not adventurers. Special Envoy Ranger. And correction: this blue-haired girl isn’t my pet or a doll—she’s my body pillow.”

Dixue answered the brown-haired girl with a straight face, like a blade laid flat.

(Is that even better? And calling me a body pillow is worse!!)

“So you’re from the Rangers Lodge! That’s great—everyone’s saved.” The brown-haired girl set her maul down with a thud on the floor, heat in her eyes. “I’m Mino. Please, Ranger and your body pillow, help my companions! They—”

“Where?”

“Follow me!”

Watching their easy back-and-forth, Yue Liuyi finally gave up correcting the title, letting the joke drift like smoke.

…

Following the brown-haired girl, the three moved through the pitch-dark cabins of the Sky Voyager, footsteps tapping like rain. Soon they reached a deeper room.

No door. Just a hanging curtain like a night veil.

Inside lay the Skyship’s infirmary. Most medicines had turned to stone, like frost bitten mid-breath; only a few cabinets remained, precious embers in a black world.

Stone slab beds, where medical cots should’ve been, held many adventurers. They looked unhurt, as if asleep. Yet a thick black miasma shrouded them, boiling and roiling like storm-clouds, unsettling to the bone.

On the floor around them, many exhausted travelers sat slumped. Blood-stained bandages wrapped them like winter vines. Lacking proper gear made them ragged. But their eyes burned bright, no despair even under a closing night.

A woman in a lab coat saw Mino step in. She rose from a stone chair, worry flaring like a match. “Mino, did you find food and medicine? Several wounded are critical.”

“No—but I found help!”

“Help?”

Dixue stepped in from the doorway; her snow-pale silhouette brought a ribbon of light into the room.

“Adventurers, greetings. I’m the Branch Chair of the Rangers Lodge, Yedie Snow. I’m here to aid you.”

Dixue spoke with steady gravity; her green eyes held a calm that felt like an anchor. If the other end of Yue’s collar weren’t still gripped in LittleSnow’s hand, Yue Liuyi might’ve believed she was meeting a stern, by-the-book chair for real.

“Huh? The Rangers Lodge?”

“It’s Chairwoman Dixue!”

“Thank the heavens—we’re saved!”

At the name of the Lodge and Yedie Snow, adventurers rose like grass to the sun; even those who couldn’t stand nodded in salute. In their eyes, Dixue was a savior, her whole figure lit like a beacon.

She handed out the travel medicines she’d brought. Then Dixue treated the heavier injuries—less meticulous than with Yue Liuyi. A wash of life-energy steadied them, color returning like dawn.

The woman in the lab coat exhaled long, gratitude warm as tea. “Thank you so much! I’m Wu Qianying, one of Sky Voyager’s ship doctors. Do you need us to watch the Murder Fiend you captured?”

“Murder Fiend?”

The silver-haired girl blinked, startled, the word hanging like a cold bell.

“That is…”

The bespectacled woman looked toward Yue Liuyi, eyes through the lenses fixed on the collar at Yue’s neck.

“Oh, that’s not a Murder Fiend, that’s my body—”

“Introduction time! I’m Yue Liuyi, Chairwoman Ye’s collaborator. The collar has reasons—lots of reasons—but it’s definitely not some weird kink!”

Before Dixue could speak, Yue snatched the line like a kite string. She refused to let that body pillow label spread; being called that in front of strangers would be mortifying.

“So you’re a collaborator. My apologies for mistaking you for a Murder Fiend.”

“No worries…”

Time pressed like a tide, and Dixue cut to the point. “We came to get you out, and to probe what happened aboard the Sky Voyager. Why did everything turn to stone?”

“Here’s how it went…”

With Wu Qianying’s brief, clear rundown, the two girls finally learned what had happened on the Sky Voyager.

…

The disaster struck without warning, a lightning crack across clear sky.

When the portal mutated, Wu had just sent off a patient. The floor tilted like a ship in squall, and the medicine kit slid toward the ground.

Shouts rose, wave after wave, replacing the quiet. In the corridors of the Sky Voyager, people ran everywhere, chaos like wind-blown leaves.

Fortunately, the storm calmed quickly.

Under the old captain Duanmu Liang’s swift, decisive hand, the ship’s gravity system steadied. A rogue black hole captured them and dragged them off course. Even so, the hull took little harm from the temporal riptide. Passengers hurt in the mishap got timely care.

But the unexpected only began there.

Yellow haze lifted into the shapes of ruined towers. As the Sky Voyager sailed on, deck and cabins darkened, turning to stone. Then soft things—stall canopies, tablecloths—followed, stiff as rock.

Under the passengers’ horrified eyes, familiar rooms drowned in black. Power died; signals went silent. Many hatches petrified with the bulkheads, trapping people like flies in amber.

And the strangeness kept deepening.

A black, dense fog seeped through the ship. Those with only average gifts took a breath and fell unconscious. The same fearsome monsters Dixue had met began hunting the survivors, shadows with teeth.

“What about the other wounded? And most passengers?”

“Those still in fair shape are here. Captain Duanmu has some, too. But the rest—the majority…”

Wu Qianying spoke, then fell quiet, the words heavy as stone.

“Everyone turned to stone,” Mino added, voice low.

“Stone?”

“You’ll know when you see.”

…

“This place is…”

A glow of magic lit in Dixue’s hand, a small moon in the dark. What it revealed—hundreds, maybe thousands of human statues.

Each figure had a different pose: asleep, running, fighting. The carving was lifelike, down to each strand of hair; faces froze the instant like trapped ripples.

Meet their eyes and you felt the thoughts trying to speak.

Shock. Confusion. Defiance. Anger. Fear.

If a sculptor could chisel stone to this level, you’d call it transcendence. But the Sky Voyager would never carry so many statues.

“So many passengers turned to stone…”

A chill crawled over Yue Liuyi’s skin. She stared at each cold face, hard to believe they had laughed and joked minutes before.

“Mm.” Wu Qianying nodded, heavy as a drumbeat. “When a monster gets close, the passenger becomes like this. And those who fell asleep—if the black fog isn’t halted—they end up like this too.”

“…”

Dixue stopped before one statue, green eyes meeting stone, fingers brushing the surface like a feather over ice.

“They’re all still alive. It’s petrification magic. Honestly, that’s not all bad.”

“Eh!?”

The claim rang like a pebble against glass, startling Yue and the doctor.

“Once they turn to stone, those monsters stop attacking statues, right?”

“Mm… seems that way.”

Mino nodded, thinking back, memory rising like smoke.

“Then we won’t fret. We’ll move the surviving adventurers to the Skyship, and get them formal treatment.”

“Can we? Thank you—truly!”