“What… what on earth is that?”

Yue Liuyi never imagined she’d lay eyes on something like this.

At the end of the corridor yawned a vertical shaft, an ancient well cut into the earth. Not a cramped well—its mouth spanned a kilometer, a wound that looked like it tunneled to the planet’s heart.

Around the “well” walls wound spiral walkways, ring after ring, hundreds of loops visible like a coiled serpent.

Standing on the upper spiral, the two girls were ants on the well’s stone skin, tiny and easy to miss before that vastness.

But it wasn’t the pit’s scale that froze them—it was what stood in the pit’s heart.

Thin sheets of metal formed leaves. Rebar bones formed branches. Dim status lights, blinking in and out, formed fruit.

World Tree…? Not quite.

In the center rose a tree of steel, a colossal Mechanical Tree carved from iron and cold intent.

Its metal leaflets didn’t dance in wind; they flashed with that chill the forge remembers, a blade’s gleam under a dead moon.

The gray trunk carried no plant-softness, only hard, sharp angles—hang a life on it, and it’d be skewered in a heartbeat.

Chains like iron vines ran from the tree’s core to the surrounding walls, thick as ancient roots. Junk dangled from them—dead displays, broken panels—each link five, six meters thick.

“What—what is that!”

Bernadette stood dumbstruck. She’d never seen machinery this huge, let alone a tree of it.

“Ugh.”

Staring at the Mechanical Tree, Yue Liuyi felt a pressure crawl through her chest—same sick tide as when she met Dawn Sky. Her mind fogged, her stomach rolled, like ink poured into clear water.

Her instincts shouted—don’t stay here.

She slapped her cheeks, ready to move, when a cry ripped through the air beside her.

“Help—help!”

“Bernadette…?”

Yue Liuyi turned. Bernadette was cornered by a monstrous mantis—no common insect, but a Mechanical Mantis forged from steel like the tree itself.

Its body was the size of a small truck, its presence heavy as a loaded freight train. The scythe forearms weren’t chitin; they were blades of real steel, cold enough to bite the bones.

“Mon—monster!”

Bernadette swung a wrench at it. The blow bounced uselessly, and the strike only seemed to anger the machine.

The mantis locked its hind legs, muscles coiled like springs; both scythes lifted high, catching a breath of dead light.

“Danger!”

It moved fast—its cut came down toward Bernadette like a falling guillotine.

Yue Liuyi moved faster.

In the blink before the blade fell, she shoved the brown-haired girl clear of the beheading arc.

And took the strike herself.

Rip!

Cold flooded from her heart. A ripping, lung-splitting pain rode the mantis’s blades, tearing through her body like a meat grinder’s maw, then a nail gun pinning her in place.

The world dimmed and sank; her limbs felt weightless and dropped like stones toward the dark.

Before she fell, arms wrapped her.

Bernadette held her—eyes blown wide, shock and confusion shaking like leaves in a storm.

“You—you did that for me…”

The mantis’s strike was lethal. The scythe had pierced her heart; blood poured out, splashing crimson across the stone wall like an opened vein in the rock.

Red spread from the wound, soaking Yue Liuyi’s dress with a swift, merciless stain.

Bernadette knelt and cradled her, knees to stone, breath taut with panic.

“I—I’m sorry… I’m sorry! I don’t deserve to be Sis Kiki’s sister…”

The gore was too raw for a girl like Yue, too brutal for the moment’s thin air.

But—

“Save that for later. Move—its next strike is coming.”

“Huh?”

“I’m not dead yet.”

She grit her teeth and pressed a hand to her heart.

Yes, the Mechanical Mantis had pierced her heart.

If she were anyone else, she’d be beyond saving. But Yue Liuyi—Dreamwood Star’s World Tree Maiden—won’t be felled by a mere grunt.

Life surged through her like spring thaw flooding a frozen river. Vitality washed her veins, and the mantis’s wound sealed in a heartbeat.

“Miss Yue… you…”

“Bernadette, go. I can handle it.”

Her steps shook, her face pale as winter light, yet Yue Liuyi rose and squared her shoulders to face the giant Mechanical Mantis.

It had only caught her from behind. Head-on, she trusted she could break this beast.

The Stellar Moon Compass could seal it, and her water and ice magic could smother metal’s rage—freeze and bind, until the machine couldn’t twitch.

“Stellar Moon—”

“Xiao Dong, don’t!”

“Huh?”

“I’ll handle it.”

A familiar voice carried from afar like a cool stream in stone.

A blue-haired figure rushed the mantis from behind, blades singing in the cold air.

(Sis… Sis Kiki?)