“Done!”

“Hidden!”

After Yue Liuyi stunned the black‑clad watcher from behind, the little witch dragged him into the shrubs, the leaves swallowing him like a green mouth.

The whole move was soundless; the smoke spreading slow as low tide unfurled a gray curtain, a perfect veil for two girls slipping through reeds.

“Mhm, LittleSnow was right.”

The man in black was here to poison. Yue Liuyi could taste it in the air, a faint bite like nettles; let it spread, and it would swell into a man‑made plague.

“He’s got a gun and a toxin vial. This was premeditated. Angel Sister, you don’t mind if I kill him, do you?”

Rummaging the body, the little witch lifted the pistol from his belt, cold metal like a sleeping snake in her palm.

“Mmm… do it.”

A prickle of guilt flickered, thin as winter rain. Was Dreamwood Star truly a civilized world? Maybe a court should hear this. But here, there was no chapel for remorse, only the wind and the smoke.

Yue Liuyi stripped the thug’s gas mask and helped Little Rose fit it on, the rubber sealing like a second skin against a storm.

If the man choked on his own poison fog, it would be a pit he dug for himself.

“All set—gear on.”

Little Rose gave a small nod. She had some resistance to toxins, but long exposure gnaws like rust on iron.

“Alright, let’s go in.”

Together they slipped through the side door of the chemical plant that once birthed a disaster, two shadows threading a dead hive.

Dim sunlight fell through glassless frames, pale spears cutting the haze; dust and venom wove a Tyndall shimmer, and the world ahead bled down to black and white.

Abandoned for years, the plant breathed rot and ruin; paint sloughed off like old bark, baring raw concrete, while mold freckled the walls like sickly stars.

Underfoot, beyond rubble and ash, lay broken gas masks, leather cracked like old hide and lenses spidered to frost—relics not from today’s men in black, but from the night the gas first spilled and people ran like startled deer.

These leftovers whispered the old calamity to Yue Liuyi, a broken reel looping the same nightmare.

“Ugh… what a desolate place. Angel Sister, our enemies should be in the big warehouse up left.”

“Mmm… we cut through here.”

Once inside, Yue Liuyi and Little Rose stopped bothering to hide. No need. Few enemies, and speed was a blade that had to flash.

“Wh—who are you—”

Bang!

The black‑clad goon at the warehouse door hadn’t even raised his gun before Little Rose dropped him, the echo cracking like dry wood.

Killing is a terrible deed, but one was a traveler of the New Land, and one a little witch who once robbed a bank; when the knife must fall, mercy is a luxury.

“Gunshots?”

“Fatty, go check!”

He came out hefting a machine gun, a hulk with two goons in tow, like a boar stomping from brush.

He stood around six‑foot‑three and well over two‑seventy, a gas mask and black coat turning him into a squat mountain planted in their path.

Power should’ve rolled off him like thunder, yet the moment he saw the girls, he froze, stone in winter water.

Not just because Yue Liuyi wore no mask, but because from those blue eyes, he felt a chill like night wind off a glacier.

How? He couldn’t place the terror. Her body was small enough to crush in one hand, a flower stem between fingers, and yet fear rose in him like floodwater.

“Angel, I’ll handle this one. No need to blow our cover.”

“Can you… alone, Rose?”

“Mhm. Leave it to me.”

The red‑haired girl nodded and leveled a finger at him, slim as a lightning rod.

“Y‑You—what are you doing!”

He stiffened, breath snagging like cloth on a nail.

“Sinai!”

Little Rose unleashed an attack like lightning, a white lash splitting the murk.