This is a tale of sorcery, written in ink and mist.

In Year 627 of the Era, Earth got dragged beneath a crisis called the Great Fog, a clammy shroud thrown over a sleeping city. At first, people took it for a freak storm, a wayward tide that would ebb on its own. Then Corpse Devourers crawled out of the haze like teeth from a cloud, and the message was carved in frost. This fog was wrong.

Inside the fog, humans hit a one-way net with inward barbs; outside the fog, anyone could step through as if into a mirror pond. No one knew how the Great Fog was born, whether from abyssal trenches or skyborne scars. They only knew to clutch any driftwood of a plan and survive within that rolling sea. In zones smothered by it, Corpse Devourers would spawn out of thin air, like mushrooms after rain erupting from black soil. They hunted without distinction, wolves moving silent across snow.

If you endured until the sun burned the fog thin, ordinary people would kindle with a special power, a spark catching on dry tinder. The world noticed at once, as if red pins lit up maps like warning beacons. Biologists called it the Great Fog Evolution; the evolved ordinary were labeled New Humans; and the regions under that pall were named Mist Cities. Every time the Great Fog rose, it lured thousands into a Mist City, moths drifting toward a lantern’s warm trap.

The male lead, Bei Yuan, a name deep as a cold lake. He had been a monarch in another world; on his ladder to immortality, enemies loosed arrows like a rainstorm. He fled in tatters and tore open a rift, a cracked mirror slashing down to the real world. To find a path back, he had to live here, wearing a mortal shell like borrowed skin.

Plot-wise, it was by the book, yet Nana Toki liked the author’s twisty clockwork mind, gears ticking behind silk. But the later worldbuilding vanished into fog, like a bridge that ends in cloud—maybe the book got abandoned midstream. And the story carried a touch of melodrama, sugar lacquer over a hidden knife.

After the first wave of Great Fog Evolution, the male lead discovered the heroine Jiang Xinli had awakened exactly the power he needed—Door, a hinge in space like a thin blade. But her Door wasn’t strong enough to send him home, so he forced her into Mist Cities again and again, to forge her power in storm and flame.

“So that’s why the Protagonist Lord just tried to kill me?” The thought was a stone skipping her ribs before it hit water and sank. After claiming the pre-quest reward, Nana Toki stretched long, her spine creaking like a bow; she had sprinted too hard, lungs pumping like bellows set over coals.

“Host, as the saying goes, cut a man’s livelihood and it’s like killing his parents,” the System intoned, an old proverb dropped like a brick in a well. “And, Host, your provocation was basically painted across your face in three big characters: Come hit me.”

“Bull. You just want me dead.” Her words snapped like sparks off a flint.

“If you’d told me the plot earlier, the heroine would’ve died early. We wouldn’t be slogging through this mud,” she added, irritation sloshing like stormwater.

The System went quiet, a screen dimmed to black.

“We’re here to do quests and farm virtue points, not to swing scythes,” it said at last, voice thin as mist.

“Then the quest?” Nana Toki’s brow twitched like a plucked string. “You still haven’t given me this body’s memories.”

“Don’t rush, Host. Sending now.” The System wiped electronic sweat, pixel droplets that weren’t there. This host was quick-tempered as summer lightning.

Memory transfer in progress...

The original Yu Xi was timid and shy, a reed girl bent by wind, an inward-looking student who should’ve stayed a nameless face in a school corridor. But the sudden first wave of the Great Fog Evolution shoved her toward the abyss; the heroine pushed her straight into the haze, and she became the first cannon fodder under Corpse Devourers, teeth closing in a night forest. So she hated. She hated her own smallness, a field mouse cornered by boots, unable to shield herself when crisis cracked like thunder.

She wished Nana Toki would live again in her stead, climb to the very peak like a mountain touching stars, and never be bullied again.

Ding! Main Quest triggered: To the Very Summit.

Quest description: Literal meaning. You know it.

“...” Nana Toki’s sigh coiled like smoke. Since when did her System start playing word games?

“So let’s do the quest properly, Host. Stop thinking about messing with the male and female leads,” the System urged, nudging like a shepherd’s stick.

“I’m not the one poking them. They come to me,” Nana Toki wanted to cry injustice, a drumbeat under her ribs. Every time I do nothing, the leads pop out of nowhere like gnats to a candle. To save my tiny life, I can only cut back when the knife’s at my throat.

“...Please act human,” the System begged, palms pressed to an invisible shrine.

“Back to the point. Everyone who went through that Great Fog should awaken a power, right?” Nana Toki opened her palm under the light, expression skewed like a warped mirror. “Why don’t I feel that primal surge, that old-flood roar?”

“Uh… this System doesn’t know.” It paused, static snow crackling in the air. “Maybe we hit a bug?”

“...” So what use are you, junk System? Her patience rattled like a tin can on a string.

“Yu Xi!”

The call cut the air like a bird’s cry, sudden and sharp. Nana Toki looked up on reflex, heart skipping like a sparrow. A short-haired girl sprinted over, worry written across her face like rain streaks on glass. Before Nana Toki could speak, the girl’s words were already firing in a storm.

“Yu Xi, are you okay? Did it scare you?” “That stinking woman Jiang Xinli pushed you into that kind of fog—she clearly meant harm.” “Are you hurt? Do we need a hospital?”

She went on and on, words tumbling like beads off a broken string, a torrent that made Nana Toki’s skull throb like a drum.

“Stop, stop. Can you slow down? Your mouth is almost a Gatling spitting blue flame.” Nana Toki rubbed her temples, sore as bruised fruit.

From the body’s memory, this girl was Luo Shanshan, one of Yu Xi’s few close friends, a lantern in a narrow alley. In the original plot, after Yu Xi died, Luo Shanshan kept making trouble for the heroine to avenge her. But cannon fodder is cannon fodder; a cannon fodder’s friend is also cannon fodder. Challenge the Protagonist Lord’s halo, and there’s only one ending—moths flying into a furnace. Death.

In the original, during a later Great Fog crisis, Luo Shanshan was cut down by the male lead with one sword, a cold moon falling, all to settle Yu Xi’s debt.

“What’s wrong, Yu Xi? Do I have flowers on my face? Why are you staring?” Luo Shanshan caught Nana Toki’s daze on her cheek; a sly glint flashed on that lovely face like sunlight on water. “What? Did you fall for this lady’s beauty?”

“...” What kind of goblin are you? Nana Toki was speechless, her thoughts fluttering like torn paper. Yes, Luo Shanshan had a pretty face. But Nana Toki wasn’t that thirsty, no desert in her throat. She wouldn’t just fall for someone at random. Besides, the other party was a girl—so it was even less likely.

“Come on, stop spacing out. Let’s eat something.” Luo Shanshan smiled, eyes curving like new moons. She drew a golden card from her handbag and waved it under Nana Toki’s nose, the plastic flashing like a coin in sun. “Today’s on this lady.”

“Whoa, we love to see it.” Nana Toki grinned and whistled at Luo Shanshan, and a blush rose over the latter’s face like a dawn cloud. Yu Xi’s looks were good—delicate, cute features and a shapely figure, a willow with spring lines. Maybe Luo Shanshan was used to Yu Xi’s quiet poise; that one whistle tilted the smile with a roguish swagger, a street breeze kicking up dust.

“Th-then let’s go now. Or it’ll get crowded later.” The blush deepened, and Luo Shanshan fanned herself with her hand, steps quickening like a sparrow’s hop.

“Let’s walk the square first,” she said, the open sky above them a pale bowl of light.