With Nesting Phoenix in tow, Nana Toki slipped back into the mortal heartlands like a swallow returning to the eaves, and angled to fly straight for Stream Peak—only to be snagged mid-sky like a kite caught on a wire.

“Bold! No flight over Cloudpeak Sect!” Their shout cracked like a whip in cold air, and a few disciples rode in on gleaming artifacts like carp riding a current—then saw the rider on the beast and blanched. “S–Senior Sister Feng?”

“What, a few days gone and I’m a stranger already?” Nana Toki touched her pretty face like a blade glancing off water, her look going odd as ripples; from their fluster, the heroine had likely come back early and pinned the ‘colluding with demons’ brand on her like pitch on a tree.

She dared guess another crime hung there like stormclouds—maybe “attacking fellow disciples,” thunder on the way.

Sigh—being the cannon-fodder girl is like walking in headwind; it stings the eyes.

“Senior Sister Feng, no flight above the sect. Please dismount and take the front gate,” the disciples said, bowing like reeds in rain and holding their tongues like sheathed knives.

Nana Toki swallowed her annoyance like bitter tea, handed the flying beast mount to two outer disciples like passing off a restless hawk, and walked toward Stream Peak with Nesting Phoenix at her side like twin shadows.

All along the path, pointing fingers pricked like thorns, and whispers buzzed like gnats around a lantern.

They said she was cruel as frost, colluded with demons, attacked her own—sins worthy of lightning. They called her a spy from another sect, suggested killing her on the spot, words tossed like stones into a pond.

Watching male and female disciples whisper to each other like sparrows on a branch, Nana Toki felt her heart sag like a wet cloak.

Sure enough, the heroine’s high-reputation aura was a drumbeat; it could sour someone’s name like vinegar spilled on rice, all in a breath.

If it were only slander about temper, she’d let wind blow it off the ridge.

After all, rumor dies before the wise like a fire dying on wet wood.

If they were fools, she wouldn’t waste breath—dust to the dust.

But—someone spread that Nana Toki had a “mirror-grinding” kink, words tossed like oil on embers.

Her temper flared; on the spot she wanted to pull a hundred-meter cleaver from her hidden space like a thunderblade and go all out—this wasn’t mere stupidity, this was tinder to burn a forest.

Even if Heaven’s Emperor came down on a cloud today, this mess wouldn’t end with a bow.

Who the hell started that rumor? Come out like a rat from a granary—I swear I’ll chop you into gourd slices!

And sure, rumors come and go like wind through bamboo—but the worst was how many believed, faces solemn as winter sky.

Now the male disciples looked at Nana Toki with eyes like cracked clay—heartbroken, world upended.

A chorus beat their chests like drums before a storm, not a few at that.

Damn it, our sect barely has any senior sisters as it is; now the villain camp eats its own like wolves—how are us single mutts supposed to live?

Bitter, bitter—like chewing raw bark.

The girls, meanwhile, stared at Nana Toki like she was a rare spirit deer in morning mist, little stars popping in their eyes like fireflies.

Wow—Senior Sister Feng is bold, she likes girls—sparkles on a spring stream.

One bolder than the rest stepped up like a cat to cream and asked the most private thing with a straight face. “Senior Sister Feng, do you like being on top or on bottom?”

She was promptly lifted by the scruff like a chick by a hawk—expression flat as stone—by Nesting Phoenix, and carried off like a breeze taking a leaf.

By the time they reached Stream Peak, Nana Toki’s face had gone dark as a raincloud.

Those rumor-mongers—no brag—if she caught one, she’d smash their heads like overripe melons.

Mother of—do you even know how words can hit a girl’s heart like hail and leave craters?

System: “...” Enough with the ‘fragile heart.’ Must your drama be as bottomless as your karma?

Nana Toki: “...”

Damn it.

This junk System’s a cracked bell—I’m tossing it after this world ends.

“Senior Sister!”

Just as they crested Stream Peak like stepping onto a jade terrace, a voice rang like a silver bell—Shuiqin Lin sprinted from beneath an eave in a teal robe, joy pouring like sunlight, clearly aiming for a long-missed bear hug.

“Senior Sister! I missed you so much!”

She bounded over bushes like a deer, arms wide like sails, and was about to land on Nana Toki—

The world flipped like a page; a heartbeat later, Shuiqin Lin found herself behind Nana Toki, executing a model-perfect face-plant, dust puffing up like mushroom spores.

Nana Toki: “...”

Silence settled like snow. Brains shorted like lamps in rain.

“This is my junior you met last time.” Nana Toki gave Nesting Phoenix a helpless look, like a river hitting a rock. “You even stop that?”

“I don’t allow others to touch you.” Nesting Phoenix stood at her side like an iceblade driven into earth, voice calm as a cold well.

Shuiqin Lin: “...” What kind of weird sister blew in like a north wind?

“Ugh… We finally reunite, and you didn’t catch me. I’m heartbroken, sob-sob, QAQ.” She patted dust off like shaking snow, rose with wounded eyes big as pools. “Senior Sister, you don’t love me anymore.”

Nana Toki: “...”

Don’t say stuff that twists like vines—it kills people.

Sure enough.

Her words had barely fallen when a terrifying pressure of Spirit Energy burst from Nesting Phoenix like a volcano belching fire, and poor Shuiqin Lin dropped right back down on her butt like a stone into mud.

Tears welled in her eyes like dew on morning grass, helpless and round.

QAQ Master, Senior Sister let someone bully me.

“What’s all this noise, Shuiqin? Why so loud today?”

Shrine Water, resting in the inner room, felt that crushing aura like thunder shaking beams and stepped out to look—meeting Nana Toki’s dead-fish eyes, flat and deep like a still pond under cloud.

“Oh, Master—hi. I’m back,” Nana Toki said, casual as wind through bamboo.

“Luo’er…”

Shrine Water said her name in a trembling voice like an old zither string, hurried over on light steps, tears hanging on her lashes like crystal beads.

A thousand words clogged her throat like a river jammed with lotus, and none crossed her lips.

Whoosh.

Her hand just lifted to touch Nana Toki’s cheek when a wall of scarlet flame erupted at her feet like a fire dragon rearing—dozens of meters high, heat warping the air like summer mirage.

If she hadn’t moved fast as a swallow darting, that wall would have left her dead or broken.

“Are you trying to kill me? That’s my Master!” Nana Toki’s scalp prickled like pine under sleet at Nesting Phoenix’s suffocating protectiveness. “You don’t blast her!”

“...Nesting Phoenix?”

Shrine Water slid to a safer distance like a boat pushing off rocks, face tightening like frost. She hadn’t looked closely before; now she saw the one beside her disciple was the very monster who’d once tried to burn Cloudpeak Sect to ash centuries ago.

The face was familiar as a portrait in an ancestral hall, but the breath was different, like a temple bell struck by a new hand—mind changed, soul replaced.

In her memory, Nesting Phoenix always wore a warm smile like spring sunlight, not this cold that keeps people a thousand miles away, like winter wind off glaciers.

Possessed?

Puppeteered?

Shrine Water dared not assume, but one thing was clear as moonlight—this was not the old Nesting Phoenix.

Not just her cultivation; those eyes were predatory cold, the look of a great beast guarding its territory—aloof, merciless.

After tossing up the fire wall, Nesting Phoenix gave no follow-up; she merely stood by Nana Toki like a sword planted in snow.

Nana Toki hadn’t expected two people flinging blows a breath ago to stand still like paired statues—then stare at each other, depth for depth, like rivers meeting.

Only after she and Shuiqin Lin waited off to the side for a few minutes, like sparrows on a fence, did Shrine Water finally pull her gaze away and set it back on Nana Toki like a lantern finding the path.

“Luo’er, how did you release Nesting Phoenix?”

Before Nana Toki returned, Shrine Water hadn’t believed she could break the seal on the forbidden grounds behind Moonview Peak; now it seemed as clear as starlight—the one who freed Nesting Phoenix was her own disciple.

“I walked into a cave, and she came out,” Nana Toki said with a shrug like shaking off drizzle. “I didn’t do anything.”

Aside from feeding a thread of Spirit Energy like water into parched soil.

“Absurd.”

Shrine Water’s disbelief hit like a door shut against wind. “The barrier on the back of Moonview Peak was set by the Great Elder himself, and disciples guarded it like torches. How did you pass?”

“I literally walked in,” Nana Toki said, palms up like empty plates. “If I could break the Great Elder’s barrier, would I still be a disciple hanging around the sect?”

Shrine Water: “...”

Fair point, sensible as stone.

“So you mean, before you arrived, the barrier was already gone?”

“Yep,” Nana Toki said, frowning like a cloud snagged on a peak. “It should’ve been there—but it was undone.”

“That is truly odd…” Shrine Water’s brows knit like willow leaves crossing. “In all Cloudpeak Sect, few could break the Great Elder’s barrier. Without special means, who else could it be?”

“Master, could it be the Great Elder committing an inside job?” Nana Toki’s thought flickered like lightning behind cloud. “You said few can do it, and only the Great Elder could remove it quietly without stirring the sect.”

“Impossible. The Great Elder was in seclusion,” Shrine Water said, shaking her head like a bell. “When Nesting Phoenix broke free, the Sect Master went to Heavenly Mountain for aid and confirmed the Great Elder hadn’t left.”

“What if the one in seclusion wasn’t the Great Elder?” Nana Toki’s words cracked like ice. “I’ve heard he has half a foot in the Grand Ascension stage. Voice across distance should be trivial.”

“!”

Shrine Water hadn’t stepped into that thought; now that Nana Toki voiced it, it rang true like steel.

“But why would the Great Elder do that?” The knot held like dead vine on a gate. “Releasing Nesting Phoenix is a hot coal in anyone’s hands—no reason to stage such a farce.”

While they wrestled with the riddle like fishermen with a net, an uninvited guest came to Stream Peak like a gust at dusk.

“Reporting to Second Elder,” the messenger bowed like grass before wind, “the Sect Master summons your disciple, Feng Luo Luo. Senior Sister Feng is requested to depart for Moonview Peak at once.”