Yan Xiao read the storm the moment Trollop showed himself and hissed a threat, sketching the roots and branches of Chronos City’s upheaval in a breath.

Those remnants from the last age—Nana Shi warmed them like a thin winter sun, and they still reach up to drag her from her seat.

Ungrateful wolves.

“Lord Yan, your face looks a bit off.” The words fell like a pebble into a cold pond.

“I’m fine, just moved too much too fast, blood running low like an ebbing tide.” Yan Xiao kneaded her sore temples, yet the paper-pale color wouldn’t lift.

The field is fog-thick, and since they dared to stroll in front of me like crows at noon, they must still have a card tucked under the sleeve.

Trollop didn’t get the prize he came for; that bone will stick in his throat till he claws back.

I’m a stamina cripple, a lone skiff in headwind—how do I hold the line, cut off and alone, till Nana returns?

“Tsk… and the hidden-space is wrecked to mud.” Yan Xiao eyed the torn gear, wires like snapped vines, and clicked her tongue, sour as biting green plums.

Do I use that move?

But if something else befalls Nesting Phoenix, what then when the sky falls twice in a night?

Yan Xiao doubted Nana Shi would spare her for neglecting Nesting Phoenix, no matter what ties braided their past like old red strings.

She knew Nana too well—the Seven who led her out of the fog like a lantern in childhood, and the Nesting Phoenix who kept her company a thousand winters in a fantasy realm.

Her own place in that heart wasn’t even a dust mote compared to those two bright stars.

“What a mess.” Yan Xiao cursed herself under her breath, a thorn under the robe pricking with every step.

Nana’s oversoft care for Nesting Phoenix made her chest itch like ants under snow.

I was the first to draw close; why won’t that girl ever unlatch the door and show me a corner of her true heart?

Heavy with gloom, Yan Xiao stood with Thousandwise inside the isolated space; after a short battle in her head like clouds butting horns, she chose to use that thing.

“You… you’re called Thousandwise, right?” She pressed a button in one corner, then stole a glance back. “Do you want to know why my liege made a deal with your Northland?”

“…” The air stilled like a lake before dawn. Thousandwise suddenly felt this frail woman was mist over deep water.

“Thousandwise doesn’t quite get Lord Yan’s meaning.”

“Haha, relax. We’re allies now, aren’t we?” Yan Xiao’s smile arced like a new moon over dark tiles.

Before Thousandwise could answer, a slab of floor cracked open like frost splitting bark, and up rose a giant tank of transparent glass.

A person floated within.

More precisely, a young woman—no thread on her body, only electronic circuitry like silver creepers running across her skin.

Thousandwise froze, as if a hooked line had lifted her soul; her awareness and her eyes were dragged to the girl resting in nutrient fluid like a pearl in clear spring.

So beautiful.

As if the light of heaven and earth had been poured out of the room, Thousandwise felt herself pulled into a dark well, no walls, no floor, only night thick enough to hide her fingers, and this girl in a glass womb.

The girl’s face was white as paper, a hint of illness like frost on buds; her skin was snow without blood, yet at first sight Thousandwise could only think: as fair as a living immortal.

New moon clarity, flower boughs heaped with snow.

Suspended quiet in the tank, the girl’s grace was a still pond and drifting willow, a beauty to steal the world’s breath.

Even the fairies in old tales wouldn’t surpass this.

“What does Lord Yan mean by this?” Thousandwise breathed deep, anchoring herself like a stake in wind, then lifted her gaze, voice carrying a tiny tremor like a plucked string.

This wasn’t shown for nothing; her gut said the woman in the tank wasn’t a simple petal in a stream.

“Hehe, take it easy. Didn’t you and my liege strike a deal?” Yan’s tone was tea-warm, eyes blade-sharp.

“What’s before you is the deal itself.”

“…”

“You mean City Lord Shi made that deal because of the woman in this tank.” Thousandwise felt the broken shards of intel snap together like a mosaic under rain.

All the doubts around why Nana Shi would join the United Nations summit, and agree to roll out the sigil across the continent, slowly turned clear as a washed sky.

A name leaped up like a fish.

“Could she… be Seven?”

With a tremor of disbelief, Thousandwise stared again at the girl in the glass, shock blooming like a red flower under snow.

If she was the Seven from Northland’s net, then Nana Shi attending the UN and stamping the sigil for free passage made perfect sense.

This woman—

“She wants to use the sigil’s power to bring Seven back?!”

“Who knows?” Yan Xiao’s smile tilted fox-like. “You guessed that yourself. I didn’t say a word.”

“…”

Silence pooled for a dozen heartbeats, heavy as rainwater in a gutter.

Thousandwise wanted to press for Nana’s plans, but the wind in Yan’s eyes said the gate wouldn’t open.

“What do you want me to do?”

News of Seven should be a top secret of Chronos City; for Yan to leak it now meant a storm was leaning on Seven’s door.

As Seven’s direct overseer, Yan was knocking for help.

“Hehe, worthy of Northland’s number two. I’d bet you’ve already netted seven-tenths of Chronos City’s threads.”

Yan Xiao stepped to a control console, fingers poised like birds on reeds, while Thousandwise stood still, waiting to see which trick would hatch.

“Take her out of the city. Just you and her.”

“Huh?”

It was like pitching a bomb into a calm pond; Thousandwise went blank as ripples slammed the banks.

Take Seven out of the city?

Did she mishear? Or did Yan misspeak, drunk on smoke and urgency?

Even aside from everything else—if Nana Shi in Northland heard, she might fly back and kill me where I stand.

And the city has cocooned this girl for years; carry her out now and the streets will sing by noon.

Chronos City swarms with spies like rats in granaries; in just a few days I’ve counted dozens.

Right when the city itself is shifting plates—toss Seven into that stew, and every ambitious knife will turn on Chronos City and Nana.

Is Yan Xiao tossing this by design, or cornered enough to burn her own sleeves?

“What? Lord Thousandwise, are you unwilling?” That calm mask on Yan’s face was a lake hiding deep current; Thousandwise still couldn’t read the undertow.

Her gut said there was only one answer.

“But… this tank is huge. How do we move it?” I can’t walk out wearing a fishbowl; it’s a beacon and a burden both.

I’d rather carry a living body than tote girl and bottle together.

“Haha, that’s small stuff.” At the console, Yan’s look turned more unreadable, like ink soaked into silk.

“But once we start, Lord Thousandwise, you can’t drag your feet.”

“Eh?”

…

At the same moment, back on the continent, Nana Shi’s heart lurched; a familiar yet strange tide surged up from the deep, and dizziness brushed her skull like cold wind.

“What is it, Host?” The System felt her pulse flutter, then smooth like a drumskin.

“Nothing… just a bit lightheaded.” Nana rubbed her swollen temples like kneading knots from wood. “Check our current position. Map the straight-line route to Chronos City. Time’s tight. We need speed.”

Since the System dropped her inland, a thin irritability had buzzed around her like gnats, and a nameless chill shadowed her steps like a trailing cloak.

“Eh? Straight line?!” The System popped open the map, blinking like a startled owl. “Host, we’re on the far left of the continent, in the Pan Mountain Empire. A straight path means dozens of mountains and cliffs ahead.”

Boom—

Shrrash-shrrash—

A heavy impact cracked the ground like thunder splitting stone, gravel spraying like rain, cutting off the System mid-sentence.

On a cliff edge, Nana Shi stood wrapped in a thin film of Spirit Energy, a sheen like frost over steel.

She gripped the haft of Heavens Sunder; in her dark eyes, a thread of black coiled like smoke.

“No matter. Just a few little hills. I’ll smash them open.”

No one would slow her charge to Nesting Phoenix, even if the way was a spine of mountains and a mouthful of ravines.