Nana Toki didn’t linger with Lan Duo; she dropped a pebble of facts into his calm and walked away, a brief rundown of Zhang Kou’s murder and then back to her room alone.

It was a warning pinned like a paper charm to a door, thin as smoke but sharp as a knife tip.

If he was the killer, knowing she knew would slow him like frost on grass; if he wasn’t, she’d just aired tomorrow’s news at dusk, no real loss.

By now, only three male actors handpicked by Boss Li Yu sat in her shadowed ledger; three women make a play, goes the saying, and men stir up a stage the same, a pot set to boil. Suspicion brushed everyone like cold rain, and not lightly. She even felt the murder wasn’t aimed at Zhang Kou at all, but at her—someone using the six remaining actors like chess pieces to take her king.

Because he knew he couldn’t meet her frontally; if he could, last night the body cooling in a room wouldn’t have been Zhang Kou—it would’ve been her, a candle snuffed in one breath.

System: “...” Are you paranoid?

Paranoid? Her mood went flinty, then steadied like a lake under wind. This is called caution. You said this plane sprouted a lot of new data, right? Don’t you care where those new streams flow from?

At the whiff of work, the System perked up like a hound catching a trail. Eh? Do you know where those extra data lines come from? Tell me, tell me.

Please. She snorted, a spark under damp wood. You think I’m a god, divining from bare air with no tracks at all?

System: “...” Then why bring it up?

To make you move. She pressed an Amber Talisman to her door; it sat like a square of trapped sunlight. Then she went on, unhurried as a cat stretching. Cross-compare the previous planes’ entire datasets. You’ll probably find threads. Especially those high-tier spiritual planes tied to Nesting Phoenix—you’ll dig up plenty.

Eh?

The System blinked, then the light returned. You mean the new data might be from that mysterious man we met in Ling’er Long’s plane?

You’re not hopeless. Warmth stirred like tea in winter. My System is finally growing up. Took long enough.

“...”

Telorop had cut his throat before her, yes, but she didn’t buy a cheap ending; his “Our game has only just begun” kept her watching shadows like a cat watching grass for a snake.

Use the time we still have. Check for duplicates across old planes; if you find any, once we leave this uninhabited island’s forest, we’ll twist that mutt’s head off like breaking a dry twig. Telorop could claim first place at dancing on her blade; no one else even dared second.

Okay...

It promised, but plucking a twin strand from a tangle wasn’t happening in a snap. She stayed in her room till near midnight, time dripping like wax, before the System finally fished up a repeated line.

You sure that code belongs to Telorop, the idiot? She couldn’t see the code, only the closed door of it, so she asked into the dark.

Mm... not sure. The voice in her head sounded troubled, like a compass spinning. It’s repeated and not—most of the structure looks similar, like two leaves from the same branch.

What does “most of the structure looks similar” mean?

Emmm... hard to explain. Roughly, the line carries both the base source code of its own personality and the new code for whatever role it’s wearing in each plane, like bones plus a mask.

Can you delete it?

No. Permissions are too high. Not even my owner could do anything if they took the wheel. The System’s little voice tapped its control panel like rain on a tin roof. But I can probably keep it from entering a plane to harass you—barely—if my owner helps patch a few firewalls, like shoring up a levee before a flood.

“...” Then what good are you!

There’s also a blunt way. As the host, you could kill him early inside a plane. Though dying in-plane won’t really kill him; he’ll sprout back like a weed after rain.

He won’t really die in-plane? The rules bent like a warped board. That doesn’t match normal plane travel. Is Telorop some kind of superpowered freak?

If I’m right, he’s holding something like a time-crossing ability. Otherwise he wouldn’t track you and Nesting Phoenix again and again, like a hawk circling the same field. Be careful. You aren’t like Telorop. You step into Nesting Phoenix’s spiritual world because my owner uses high-tech means to ferry you through time; if real death comes, it’ll be real for you, like ice breaking underfoot.

“...”

The gap in treatment stung like salt in a cut; words caught like thorns in her throat.

There’s always some idiot trying to harm her; the world felt like a bramble hedge, all barbs and malice.

She meant to press the System for more on Telorop’s data, but a scream ripped the night like cloth, high and sharp. Her face went cold; no time to think why a banshee cry would rise at this hour. She shoved on her shoes and ran, wind in her sleeves, toward the sound.

Two doors down at Room Six, people had already pooled like rain around a gutter.

“What happened now?” She slipped in on a draft and met Chen Ke’s iron-blue face, a stormbank over water.

“Another corpse?”

“See for yourself.”

He stepped aside, and there, slumped against Room Six’s door like a puppet with the strings cut, lay Lan Duo—the man who’d spoken to her hours ago—now drained of life. His face was twisted with fear, a mask frozen mid-scream, as if he’d swallowed fire before the end.

“You kill him?” Nana pointed to the small knife in Lan Duo’s chest, the question a blade sheathed in silk. Chen Ke, standing beside Chi Mu, kept his mouth shut, face like stone. “I didn’t—but...”

“But the murder weapon is one of your knives?” she finished, the words landing before he could. “That’s odd. Everyone’s knives, including the weapon I used when I ‘committed the crime,’ are in your keeping. What, the killer conjured a blade from thin air?”

She leaned on the phrase “the weapon I used when I committed the crime,” dropping it like a pebble into the crowd’s ear. Chen Ke said nothing, a shadow nailed in place, eyes locked on the blade in Lan Duo’s chest, unable to grasp how a locked-away knife had walked here.

Not far from the corpse, Jiang Shi’s face blanched; he shuffled back a few steps, like cold water had climbed his ankles. Chen Ke looked, in his eyes, very much like the man who’d stabbed Lan Duo.

“Impossible! Brother Chen Ke had no reason to kill Lan Duo!” Chi Mu shot up a defense, voice like a shield raised in rain.

Oh?

“When you said I stabbed Zhang Kou, why didn’t you stop to ask what motive I’d have?” Nana’s eyes narrowed; her smile was bright and cutting, sunlight on a blade.

“Who knows if you and Zhang Kou had some real-world grudge? Maybe you used this chance to settle it.” Chi Mu’s words thudded like thrown stones.

“Then maybe your Brother Chen Ke had a real-world grudge with Lan Duo, and used this chance to settle it.” She smiled like a fox at the henhouse.

“This...” Chi Mu choked on air, glare hot as coals, words nowhere to land.

“But there was a loud scream, right?” Qian Duo, who’d been quiet, finally spoke, voice steady as a plumb line. “That means the killer didn’t finish him in one clean cut. Maybe they struggled, and when the blade hit his chest, the pain tore that scream out.”

“So we just check everyone’s injuries,” Chi Mu said, eyes lighting like lanterns at dusk. “We’ll find the killer in one go.”

“Don’t rush.” Nana crouched by the body, eyes scanning like a hawk over stubble fields. Then, before anyone could blink, she yanked the knife free with a wet whisper and smiled. “What if the scream was staged? What if the real Lan Duo died hours ago? The sound could be a mask, and this body’s been cold under moonlight for quite a while.”