Dixue left without a backward glance, like a lone swan cutting through mist over a cold lake.

She stepped into the azure portal, a blue river standing upright, and didn’t say another word.

Only Dongfang Chen and Xia Jiajun remained among the lilies, white blooms like little moons watching two boys in silence.

After a wind-still beat, Xia Jiajun spoke first, his voice like a pebble dropped into a quiet pond.

“You… got rejected too, right?”

“Huh?”

“I could tell from your face, like rain on slate. Same here…”

He gave himself a crooked smile, a reed bending to the current, and hefted the ice-crystal coffin.

“Sir… do you like the Third Princess?”

“Heh. What’s my liking worth, a candle in the sun? It’s up to Her Highness… but I do have a piece of advice.”

“Advice?”

To Dongfang Chen’s surprise, the Third Princess’s attendant sounded mild, a spring breeze slipping past stone.

“Yeah. Don’t give up, not ever. The road you insist on, you walk it to the end.”

“The road I insist on?”

“Never betray your own soul, like a tree that won’t twist with the wind… Until we meet again. May we not be enemies next time, Mr. Dongfang Chen.”

Shouldering the ice coffin, Xia Jiajun waved once, a crane lifting off the marsh, and strolled away.

“Wait! How do you know my name? And where did Butterfly Snow President go?!”

“Trees resonate. They sing paths into being… You get what I mean.” His voice faded like footsteps down a green corridor.

His back grew smaller, then vanished at a bend, like mist swallowed by pines.

Now the lily garden held only Dongfang Chen, a single figure in a field of white stars.

“A path… is that teleport tech? But…”

A frown flickered across his brow, a shadow crossing still water, as he sifted Xia Jiajun’s words.

The man had studied him, like a hunter reading tracks. Had his tie to Yue Liuyi slipped into the open?

“But… never betray your soul, huh? What do I truly want…”

Rejection burned, a winter thorn in his chest. Being a boy no girl liked stung like frost on skin.

Yet the core stayed, a pine in snow: whether boy or girl, he wanted everyone to find happiness.

And happiness isn’t alms from the sky; it’s forged by your own hands, sparks in the dark.

“If Dixue doesn’t like the me I am now, then I’ll just…”

Night seeped in, indigo ink spreading across the horizon, and confidence lit his eyes like a lantern.

“It’s time for Yue Liuyi to take the stage.”

…

A massive floating isle hung in saffron fog, a stone whale adrift in a sick sea.

Filthy black sludge smeared its rocks, a tar of rot that breathed a bitter stench.

At the island’s heart, once a sanctum sunlit by vows, the ground still rang with battle’s echo.

Warriors in dragon-etched mail lay fallen, their steel asleep like drowned reeds.

Beside them sprawled many monsters with hooked tails, carcasses like broken scorpions with torn flesh-wings.

A gray-haired man, pallid with sunken eyes, stepped into the center, a vulture gliding toward a lone lamb.

He stared at the girl, whose beauty was cracked like shattered porcelain under moonlight.

No whole skin remained; her white was veined with black fissures, and every gaping wound showed dark, fibrous cambium.

She knelt in the reeking mire, body melded to filth, her dark-green hair stained black like algae choked by oil.

“Now, the life force belongs to me…”

He sneered and wrapped a chain around the girl, iron ivy biting her wrist.

Power surged up the links, a tide without words, while she only stared at the sky like a star-lost statue.

She couldn’t move, not since a thousand years ago, when all things burned to ash and motion left her bones like a stolen wind.

“Put down the World Tree Maiden!”

His act was cut by silver, a moon-spear ripping the dusk as fluttering hair rode the gust—Dixue struck like a storm heron.

“Oh? Thousand Night Snow?”

He raised a hand, and an ebon shield bloomed in the air, a night lily, stopping her arrow three meters out.

“You… are the one they call ‘my lord’?”

“Yes. Names are reeds in a river. Still, Thousand Night Snow—you’ve earned mine. Wan Han.”

He met her sea-green eyes and drew a long blade, black steel etched with red, like frostbitten veins.

“That power doesn’t belong to you.”

“Power belongs to whoever holds it, like fire cupped in steady hands.”

“If you won’t wake, I’ll teach you the pain of it!”

The silver-haired girl drew her bow, string taut as winter air, ready to loose a killing moon.

“I’ve already taken in part of the life force. Let me show you what power means.”

He flicked his blade, and pale skin flushed green, sap rising like spring through bark.

Soft glimmers lifted around him, fireflies of the purest energy—this world’s rawest current, the life force.

Life force is magic’s seed; with it, any spell can bloom like wildflowers on stone.

Dixue loosed an arrow, a silver swallow, but a vine knocked it aside with a thorny hiss.

The ground heaved like a waking leviathan, and a thousand vines writhed from the black mud.

Barbs studded their hide, ugly as curses, and they shook out globs of luminous green venom toward the girl.

“Gross… that’s so gross!”

Something crawled into her mind—every girl’s arch-nemesis, a skittering nightmare like roaches under a lampshade.

The mud on the rocks wriggled, birthing bodies, one grotesque after another, like nightmares knitting flesh from sludge.

Hooked tails. Scarred flesh-wings. The same breed that swarmed Mino—now a dozen strong, maybe more.

“These things…”

Twin storms bore down—vines and beasts—while Wan Han loomed by the World Tree Maiden like a wolf by a cradle.

Any moment, he’d strike, a thunderhead waiting for its flash.

“Cherry Blossom Butterfly Speech!”

Silver-white light unfurled from Dixue’s hands, a blizzard of butterflies beating on the vines.

Their vigor sagged like cut ropes; they drooped and fell, unable to spit again.

The monsters flinched under that fluttering snow, their moves stuttering like clocks missing teeth.

One arrow flew, and two beasts fell, pinned on a single silver thorn.

But as she danced and withdrew, fighting like a swallow in rain, a vine rose under her landing foot.

It snared her ankle, a snake of thorns, and her motion hit a rock in the stream.

In a duel, one heartbeat of stillness is a cliff’s edge.

Wan Han’s strike came then, black blade riding an emerald squall that howled like a forest.

Dixue drew and fired, a comet flaring, but the green gale ate her shot like surf swallowing foam.

The wind slammed her, body ringing like a bell, and flung her back across the slick ground.

“Ugh!!”

She hit hard and spat blood, a red leaf on winter snow.

“Do you see now? This is the power of the World Tree.”

Wan Han laughed low, drunk on it, like a wolf savoring hot breath in cold air.

“You…”

Dixue gritted her teeth and glanced at the girl by the World Tree, a shrine in ruins.

She’d burned her magic to beat and restore Sikong Qinhui, and spent more in that last rush against the beasts.

To put it bluntly, her mana and strength were scraped to the dregs, a well gone to mud.

On a normal day she’d take Wan Han, but with sap in his veins and winter in hers, the scales had tipped.

She hesitated, mind trembling like a leaf—what now?

A wild Little Yue bolted out beside her, a bluebird popping from brush.

This Yue Liuyi had sleek azure hair, eyes like twin lagoons, and a tiny nose and mouth, all too-adorable for war.

Oddly, the blue-haired girl wore no outer clothes; old-fashioned white cotton panties, and her chest bound with strips of cloth, rabbits trapped under snow.

“LittleSnow, are you okay!!”

Yue Liuyi ran toward Dixue, urgency pouring off her like warm rain, and magic light gathered around her palms.

…

Yue Liuyi didn’t want to debut like this; shame pricked like thorns, but necessity was a blade at her back.

She couldn’t rush in wearing Dongfang Chen’s clothes; one glimpse might snap the disguise like brittle ice.

The Sky Voyager was stone and held no dresses, a silent ship turned to cliff.

To reach Dixue fast, she had no choice but to bare skin and cover the key spots, grit in her teeth like sand in wind.

(Dixue’s in trouble, right? I need to help, now!) Her heart pounded like drums, then steadied like a blade in a sheath.

She didn’t know the terrain, but the vines and beasts told the story; wind-edges rose in her hands, ready to cut paths through thorns.

But what greeted her wasn’t Dixue’s thanks, nor crisp orders to move as one.

It was—

“Don’t you dare look at Little Yue’s body!!!!!!!!!!”

A moment ago the silver-haired girl lay sprawled, a swan in mud; the next, she sprang up, ice-bright and furious, drawing her bow like winter drawing night.

“Die!!!”

Silver light flooded the world, a snowfall that swallowed sky and earth.