The blow hit Nana Toki before she could blink; the world snapped to black, like a hundred iron mallets drove through her bones and shook them loose.

The System had blunted most of the Spirit Energy’s pressure, yet the aftershocks rolled back like rogue waves, and Nana took them head-on.

Pain first, action after. Her organs felt like a brazier stoked too hot. She half-knelt, vision a smear. One arm hooked the axe’s haft, sweat beading like rain.

From the onlookers’ view, her whole body trembled, an overtaxed bowstring about to snap.

So this is the true weight of a Great Vehicle Stage cultivator in the Immortal Realm? The thought flickered, then her limits tore. What was left of her mind slipped into a sea of fatigue and sank without a ripple.

...

“Host... Host!”

“Host!... Host!” She didn’t know how long it was. When the System shook her awake, the sky was bruised gold, evening wind combing the hillside.

“Where... am I?” Stars pricked the night like cold salt, and the breeze should’ve cleared her head, but she had no room for it. “What happened here?”

A stale heaviness pressed on her chest, like wet cloth. The air tasted of anxiety, a hanging fog that wouldn’t lift.

“Right—where’s Sister Tun? And Blue Magpie?” The thought flashed, and she jerked upright with a whoosh—then pain lanced her muscles and forced her back down.

“...” The System didn’t answer. It stood there, stiff as a post.

Nana wasn’t stupid. One look at the System’s face, and she knew the story had run off the rails.

“I see... they were taken, weren’t they?” Her voice was oddly calm, like a bystander narrating a storm that wasn’t hers. No fury. No bite.

The System watched her for a long beat, then spoke like it had bitten the wrong topic. “Host, a support item arrived from my master.”

“Oh? A support item? Let me see.” Her brows lifted, bright as sparks—then twitched when the System produced an hourglass heavy with sand. “It’s... an hourglass?”

She even had the same thing tucked in her hidden space. Was she supposed to bash people with it? A brick would’ve done better, at least it fit the hand.

“This isn’t an ordinary hourglass, Host.”

The System seemed to catch her drift. It paused, then continued. “My master called it support, but it’s actually yours. He’s just returning it to its owner.”

“Mine?” Nana turned the hourglass in her palm, eyes narrowed. She didn’t remember owning this. And...

He returned it? So I met your idiot master before? Her gaze thinned, a curve like a blade. “Don’t tell me that idiot sent a random trinket to bait me into dying. Sounds like his bad joke—just like Trollop, that M-leaning gentleman.”

“...” My master isn’t that kind of person!

“Whether my master wants your head can be tabled,” the System said, then its tone shifted as it studied the hourglass. “There’s a serious Law of Time sealed inside.”

“From what I know, only a few recluses in hidden clans can fabricate time laws,” it added. “Outside fantasy-grade planes, most time laws are low-grade fluff. But yours is too pure. It doesn’t feel like something from your original world.”

“Uh, what do you mean ‘not from my world’?” Nana blinked, puzzled. “Is this thing rare?”

“...” If you asked that in my world, you’d make a crowd cough blood.

“Host, do you remember the hourglass you won ages ago from a cleared plane?”

“You mean the Queen of Time’s Sorrow?” Of course she remembered. She’d even tried to trade it to the System for karma points, and got one measly point. “What about it?”

“Legend says the sand in the Queen of Time’s Sorrow is refined from the Queen of Time’s tears. Its Law of Time purity is under twenty percent, yet it can rewind time and alter everyone’s memory. The law in your current hourglass is higher. It might even be something the Queen of Time set in herself.”

“So you’re saying...” Nana’s face sharpened with heat.

“Exactly!” The System thought she finally got it, drew breath to elaborate, and then—

“This could be worth a ton of karma points!”

“.......”

In a certain sense, my Host is terrifying.

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop.” Nana gave a sheepish grin at the System’s “are you kidding me” look. “The scene’s too grim. I was breaking the cloud cover with a joke.”

“...” Who ‘lightens the mood’ like that? Also—

“Host, aren’t you worried about Nesting Phoenix? The Protagonist Lord dragged her off to be his wife. For all we know, the bridal candles are already burning.”

“...” Unexpectedly, Nana didn’t ripple much at all.

“If that’s how the future turns, then the protagonist’s halo is truly blinding.” Her eyes slowly emptied, dark pupils deep as a bottomless well that could pull a soul straight down.

“But after that, I’ll take the price back from them.”

Her gaze dropped, falling to the hourglass in her right hand. A mad idea bloomed like fire on dry grass. “If this holds a fully pure Law of Time, I can target a single unit and accelerate time, right?”

“What are you planning?” The chill in her face made the System shiver without wind.

“I’ll use it while I cultivate.” She raised the hourglass to her chest, each word a stone. “If I’m right, then reaching the Great Vehicle Stage in a blink isn’t impossible.”

“But the risks are huge!” The System still stood on her side, so it laid the cards out. “What if there isn’t enough Spirit Energy nearby mid-cultivation? What if you don’t break through under acceleration and your lifespan ends first? Those are irreversible.”

“Those factors aren’t on my ledger.” Nana lifted her eyes, cold as starlight. “A future without Nesting Phoenix isn’t a future I want.”

“And if I want to take her back, this is the only path across the river, isn’t it?”

“If I die that easily, then my love for her was never enough.”

“Besides, I’ve said it before: no matter how she changes, I’ll run to her. This time, next time, every time, again and again.”

She stopped talking to the System.

She sat cross-legged. She began to mend the broken circuit of Spirit Energy within, like stitching cracked riverbeds back to their course. Most channels had been shattered under that Great Vehicle might, but it didn’t matter.

She could repair while she cultivated, like weaving a net as she cast it.

Everyone else only needed to wait for her triumphant return.

She flexed her wrist. The hourglass of gold-grain sand creaked under her grip—crack—unable to bear the strain.

In the next breath, centered on Nana Toki, a sky-piercing aura erupted like a volcano punching through the clouds.