Zzzzt... sssst... zzzzt...

The thunder cracked like a thousand hawks crying, a sky-ripping chorus that pinned the clouds and made hearts shrink.

"Hah!"

Bei Yuan’s hands stalled. The blue‑white lightning that had been dancing there lunged toward Nana Toki and her group.

"Boom!"

Almost the instant that towering bolt met them, thunder bellowed, a drum that deafened the street.

As if heaven’s thunder gods took offense, the ground under every pair of feet shuddered.

The blast wind came like whirring blades, buzzing as it flayed skin raw.

"..."

"A‑Yuan..."

After the storm.

Jiang Xinli, who had held against the thunder gale, walked over step by step, like a reed bending after the wave.

"Are they dead?"

She glanced at the dust geyser rising dozens of meters high, caution washing her voice.

"..."

Bei Yuan steadied his breath. He stood at the mouth of the street, eyes on the smoke curling up like an incense coil, and kept silent.

Jiang Xinli could see his mood had darkened, like a sky before rain.

"A‑Yuan, where are you going? Wait for me!"

She saw him drift toward the blast haze, one slow step after another, like a tide pulling him.

"To see if they died."

Bei Yuan kept his gaze pinned on Nana Toki’s direction and didn’t turn his head.

"Huh? They won’t die?"

Jiang Xinli followed, surprise fluttering like a sparrow.

"I hate to say it, but that woman can take heavenly thunder. With my level of power, it’s hard to say."

He spoke, then halted. His face soured, like ink spilling in water.

"They ran."

He stared at a house smashed to pieces, a nest torn open.

"Ran?"

Jiang Xinli froze mid‑stride, her movement clipped like a snapped string.

"I sealed every room here. How did they get out?"

"No idea."

He hurried to the spot where Nana Toki and the others had been. His lightning storm had gouged a deep pit, earth charred and crackling with stray zzzzt.

But not a shadow of Nana Toki’s group showed.

Bei Yuan didn’t buy that his strike could vaporize bodies; he had held back. At most, heavy wounds—not a reaped life.

"This is..."

He swept the pit and saw scorched yellow paper scraps clinging like autumn leaves.

"What is it, A‑Yuan?"

Jiang Xinli watched him squat and lift a fragment of that yellow paper, her doubt clouding like mist.

"This paper... carries the breath of our world."

Bei Yuan studied the scrap, gravity settling in his tone like frost.

"Huh? The breath of your world?"

Jiang Xinli stared at his hand, disbelief prickling. "Isn’t that a xuanhuan world? Why would they have something like this on them?"

"I don’t know. But this paper truly holds our world’s scent."

His brows knotted, a rope pulled tight. Nana Toki’s identity felt more and more like a fog‑wrapped riddle.

By Jiang Xinli’s telling, the girl called Yu Xi was timid and inward. After a great fog, her nature flipped, and she gained a baffling, brutal power.

Now this scrap spoke its own secret under the ash.

Could Yu Xi be like him—a soul crossing into another world, then seizing a body?

The thought rose, wild as lightning off a storm ridge.

But that shouldn’t be. His soul crossing had Heaven’s Dao opening the gate; without that, rebirth shouldn’t be possible.

Yet Heaven’s Dao had tried to erase her earlier…

Did Heaven hunt her because she holds a way to stride between worlds?

Bei Yuan’s heart kicked fast, a drum under his ribs. The more he thought, the stranger the path felt.

"A‑Yuan..."

Jiang Xinli saw his face sink heavier, worry pooling.

"It’s fine."

He kneaded his aching temples, like grinding grit from gears. This felt like a knot with more strands.

If she really came without Heaven’s Dao, she should know the path back.

Next time they meet, he must ask—clear as steel to whetstone.

He looked over the wreck he’d carved into the street and set his jaw, a quiet oath hammered in his chest.

...

Months later.

During the fifth great fog.

"Pfft!"

After watching Misty Tide lop off the nth Corpse Devourer head, Nana Toki hefted her Black Great Axe and hopped down from a little hill built of corpses.

"Nice work."

She handed over a gray‑white, lurid flower, a ghost bloom in the mist, and for once praised Misty Tide.

Since the last escape from the Protagonist Lord’s ultimate, months had flowed by like cold rain.

Two more fog evolutions had rolled through.

At first, Nana Toki thought each fog was random. Later she found the fog tracked like a shadow to wherever Misty Tide stood.

Where Misty Tide was, the great fog appeared.

This was the fifth. Yet this fog stretched strange and long.

Usually a fog lasted three or four days. This one had swelled toward a full week, and still it refused to thin.

The mist felt denser than a week before, like milk poured into air.

Corpse Devourers kept spawning, more and more, like maggots in rot.

No one knew when this fog would lift.

Not just longer, this fog wore a different shape.

Before, Fog City would drown in thick haze; sight sank to a handful of steps.

This time, the fog arched like a bowl and covered all of Fog City.

Visibility inside had cleared somewhat, like glass wiped once, but most else stayed the same, a city under a cloche.

"Xixi~"

Luo Shanshan hurried out from a shop, water and a clean towel in her hands, like offerings in a shrine, once Misty Tide had culled the last Corpse Devourer.

After two or three fogs with Nana Toki, Luo Shanshan had been trained seven or eight parts; not a main blade, but she could guard her own skin.

Host.

What is it?

Nana Toki drank the water Luo Shanshan handed over and answered the System in her mind, her thoughts rippling like a quiet pond.

Can I ask you one question?

The System sounded grave, a bell struck once. Nana Toki had never heard it this serious.

"... Sure."

She agreed, calm as a stone in rain.

Host, you have an independent hidden space of your own, don’t you?

The System’s voice held careful weight.

It had guessed most of it. From the first little knife, to the Black Great Axe, and the red brick, the pattern sketched a pocket world.

But without Nana Toki saying it out loud, the System had stayed uneasy, like a wire humming.

"Yeah."

Nana Toki admitted it with clean frankness, a blade laid on a table.

The System fell silent.

What’s wrong?

She felt its quiet like a pause in wind.

This time you didn’t try to deny it?

After a while, the System spoke, small as a whisper.

"Deny my ass."

Since slipping from the Protagonist Lord’s hands, Nana Toki knew the hidden space couldn’t stay hidden.

Teleporting three people isn’t a small trick; unless the System were truly brain‑dead, you can’t wave it off as, You mis‑saw it.

Then how did you take them out of the heroine’s spatial seal?

The System didn’t buy the story she told Luo Shanshan—that Misty Tide led them out.

It had watched Nana Toki pull an Amber Talisman before the lightning pillar hit; the instant talisman met bolt, they were gone.

"I can’t tell you."

Nana Toki wiped her Black Great Axe with the clean towel, slow as winter light. "I promised one answer. That’s question number two."

The System went quiet again.

Host isn’t an ordinary person, right.

It asked in a softer tone, like testing ice.

Its owner had warned it not to press the host’s identity.

The owner had said “web novelist,” which smelled like a joke.

A Spartan, a dragon‑slayer, an Ultraman from another world—the System could accept those masks.

But “web novelist”? Four words. Truly absurd.

You want to know?

Nana Toki arched a brow, a falcon’s tilt.

"..."

The System said nothing.

"Heh. Whatever you think I am, I am."

She cut the link and moved on, leading Misty Tide and Luo Shanshan deeper into Fog City, like wading into a sea of milk.

"Xixi, where are we going?"

Luo Shanshan trotted beside her, curiosity like a cat’s tail.

"To find where we’ll sleep tonight."

Since no end to this fog showed on the horizon, they had to prepare for living inside it.

In Fog City, the three of them were islanded, no kin, no tether.

Bei Yuan and Jiang Xinli, those heartless mutts, had spread word to choke Nana Toki’s life in Fog City.

They tied her name to the Fog City butcher, and after she slipped their last trap, the rumor set like concrete.

The government prized new humans. If Nana Toki colluded with the city’s killer, she’d be handled like a rot in the root.

Outside Fog City, the government had pushed out bounty after bounty, like posters in a storm.

They even blacklisted Nana Toki, Luo Shanshan, and Misty Tide among new humans.

Now Nana Toki couldn’t claim any new‑human stipend and had a crowd of new humans hunting her, a pack with blood in the nose.

She had become a sewer rat—scurrying in the gutters, stinking to those who only lived in light.