“Master Feng… look… who’s that?”

Far off, a handful of big shots in Chronos City peered through farsight crystals, their stares like cold blades at the woman who’d appeared like a red comet.

She wore a vivid ancient robe, all blazing crimson, her figure and face like sculpted jade—hard to ignore, a walking flame in a tinderbox.

In a city boiling with chaos, someone strolling this calm is either empty-headed or monstrously strong; in a storm, either a leaf or the thunderhead.

“Have any of you seen her inside Chronos City?”

“No…”

“Me neither…” The Lord of the Sacred Sun Kingdom and the head of Xuan Yang Ancient Pool both shook their heads, eyes like shuttered lanterns.

Their agents in Chronos City had sent no whisper of this woman; the net was cast, but no fish like her.

This feels like seeing a ghost; that woman keeps stashing oddities in her own house, like a magpie’s nest in a palace.

And if she’s from Chronos City, why walk for the outer gates instead of the core battlefield—why drift out like smoke instead of diving in?

Unless…

Just as the thought tightened, the red-robed woman in the crystal lifted her eyes—cool as moonlight. Before anyone reacted, the farsight crystal before the Sun Lord boomed, and a tide of fire, heavy with crushing Spirit Energy, erupted from the crystal like a volcano through glass.

“So terrifying—her Spirit Energy…” The gathered big shots stumbled back. The wreckage around them hissed, and a breath of cold ran through their spines; her methods weren’t softer than those in Northland or the two monsters in Chronos City.

“Report! Master… b-bad news, urgent from the front—one woman broke our defense alone and she’s heading straight—”

“Whoosh!”

The soldier hadn’t finished when a seductive scarlet bloom appeared from thin air and wrapped him whole, like a foxglove closing on a moth.

“Watch—” Heart. Master Feng tried to warn him, but there wasn’t time; the crimson blaze bit like a man-eating beast. Even his final scream never formed. Before the continent’s big shots, the red flame turned him to ash in a heartbeat.

“Damn it!” To do this in front of all three of them so brazenly—she didn’t put them in her eyes at all. A slap across a warlord’s face, right in his hall.

The Xuan Pool Lord struck first, Spirit Energy flaring. He launched a blast like a giant hammer in a storm, wind howling like wolves—yet before it flew a hundred meters, it slammed an unseen barrier and dissolved to nothing, water in a desert.

“Xuan Pool Lord!” Feng Zhen signaled him not to rush. The next breath, a woman cloaked in dreadful Spirit Pressure walked from afar—slow, like a tide rising to drown a pier.

Zzzzz—

Hiss… hiss…

The air warmed step by step. Branches and grass around them failed the trial by heat and chose self-immolation, candles in a furnace.

“This pressure…”

Who on earth is she?

They still had patches of blue sky, yet with each of her steps the firmament flushed with a sultry red glow, as if sunset bled early.

Spirit Energy deep as an abyss. Fire bright as polished gold. The aura tasted of sun and kiln.

It pulled to mind a woman of ice—her opposite—the Northland Ice Emperor, Bi Yanhan, a frost crown on a white steppe.

But as far as Feng Zhen knew, Bi Yanhan had no kin like this flame.

Forget it… watch and wait.

Resolved, Feng Zhen endured the heat like standing before a forge. He clasped his fists, lowering his stance. “Honored one, who are you? Why break our line and wound my people without cause?”

…

Nesting Phoenix said nothing.

Her jade foot touched earth, leaving a tiny, undying flame—an ember that refused winter.

Familiar. That scent of closeness like warm wine in winter drew near. If she cleared these obstacles, the face in her coming-back-to-life memory—blurred like rain on glass—would surely sharpen.

Joy first. A skip in her heart. Nesting Phoenix felt newly awakened, a sparrow leaping in her chest.

She ignored the question. She lifted the Spirit Energy coiling around her, and in an instant her pressure and heat surged, domineering, like a king’s seal pressed to wax.

“Not good!”

The continent’s big shots felt her sudden move. They poured all their Spirit Energy into shields, domes shimmering like soap bubbles under a bonfire.

Where that terror swept, all things died. Nearby soldiers who couldn’t stand the heat dropped and rolled, trying to cool their bodies like fish on hot stones—but…

From the first step Nesting Phoenix took, the temperature here had climbed to horror; the ground itself was a brazier.

The instant those men touched the earth, fire swallowed them. There weren’t even seconds; not even ash remained, like paper kissed by a sunflare.

Eighty thousand soldiers came with those three lords; in a breath, Nesting Phoenix erased seven in ten. An army became smoke.

“She opened with a finisher. She’s probably insane.”

Master Feng barely held his shield, sweat sliding at his temple like dew—yet the drops vanished mid-fall, vaporized in the blaze.

“Sun Lord! Xuan Pool Lord! Her power’s likely just this. If the three of us join, we can take her down in a few moments!”

Ring—

A clear wind-chime note kissed his ear. The head of Azure Wind Sanctum felt his pupils tighten; the woman calmly slid her arm into his shield like water passing a reed—ghostly, daylight turned unreal.

His all-in technique, Return-Heaven Wind Escape, cracked like thin ice under a hoof?

The Spirit Wind vortex around him—razors meant to cut anything—had failed to slice her hand. The blade met silk and fell dull.

Ring… ring… The small bell on Nesting Phoenix’s arm—white as lotus—sang in the gust like a lark.

Boom!

With a single gentle finger-flick, Feng Zhen felt a colossal force thump his forehead. The two rulers closest to him saw him shoot away like a cannonball, blasted not hundreds but more than that in a blink—man turned meteor.

M-monster…

The masters of Xuan Yang Ancient Pool and the Sacred Sun Kingdom watched her casually batter Feng Zhen half to death; their faces went green, bile rising. This woman was a variable outside every plan, a thundercloud they hadn’t read.

If only that kid from the Pan Mountain Empire were here—his sealing arts might have tethered her a little. Without him, the two of them blocking her was a fool’s dream, sand against a storm.

…

“Is this the power of a man-made high-tier imprint…” On the palace rooftop of Chronos City, a youth stared at Nesting Phoenix’s strength outside the walls; his face twisted tighter, a mask warping in heat.

Trollop said she wasn’t at full strength. If she fully recovered… wouldn’t she become a second Ice Emperor of Northland?

No. A thing like that can’t be left alive.

He’d clawed his way here. Kill the last troops the woman left outside the palace, and he’d sit that throne he’s wanted like a starving man wants bread. He couldn’t lose.

“Kill her. You have to kill her.”

For the throne. For everything he is. Kill her.

He gripped the yellow Talisman Trollop had given him. Black lines unfurled up his arm, like thorny vines. They crawled to his neck, drowned half his face. A Spirit Energy that made Yan Xiao’s gut turn rose from those black marks—pressure with a taste of iron filings.

Not normal Spirit Energy. It had black body to it—pure darkness like ink, thick enough to touch.

Or… Lawforce, the power behind rules.

Bound and watching, Yan Xiao saw it clear. The man’s black Spirit-lines were a genuine high-tier imprint. Not only that—inside it she spotted a few familiar Spirit patterns, threads she knew like old roads.

Bad. Is that imprint on him the mother-pattern?

Her heart jolted. The next thoughts didn’t land. The youth, half-veined in black, had already ordered the airborne fortress, speaking to the imprint-holder above it like a conductor to a drum.

“Airborne Fortress, eliminate that woman!”

Bzz bzz bzz—

Bzz bzz bzz—

Sensing the Spirit Energy pouring from him, the airborne fortress above the palace thrummed alive. Using its thrusters, it drifted toward Nesting Phoenix outside the city, a monstrous black hull eclipsing the sky. It moved like a waking whale, roaring like a beast. Hundreds of black gun barrels along its body tilted as one, sights fixed on the red figure.

“Fire!”

Boom boom boom—

Boom boom boom!

At his shout, hundreds of turrets roared together. Shells and missiles of all kinds, each packed with Spirit Energy and cutting wind, poured toward Nesting Phoenix like a storm of iron, no expense spared, no mercy.

“O-over…”

Inside the city, Thousandwise hauled herself off the ground, having stolen life from the Piercer Duke’s blood pool. She looked up. Countless missiles streaked over her head, arrows raining toward the outer fields, and her heart plunged like a stone.

Chronos City’s tech isn’t like those bumpkins’ on the continent. These shells can punch through a Spirit shield, easy. Nesting Phoenix just woke. Even if she blocked them all, she’d get hurt, a tiger caught in thorns.

…

A swarm of missiles, dense as locusts, fell like arrows from the sky. Nesting Phoenix was about to lift a hand, burn them all to ash—when a memory flashed. A woman stood in front of her with a Colossal Axe, taking a rain of arrows for her. Faces flickered, strobe-like, and the face refused to clarify.

She’s about to be hit.

Black shells ballooned in her pupils, rush visible to the naked eye. If she wanted to dodge, none of them could touch her, not even a hair.

Yet deep inside, a strange safety told her that even if she did nothing, she’d be fine—like a hand on her back in the dark.

What was that?

The nearest shell had less than a few meters to go. Suddenly, standing in place facing a thousand bullets, Nesting Phoenix felt her body lighten, like a feather caught.

Her vision blurred. Behind her, explosions rolled, deafening, a drumline of thunder.

She wasn’t hit? What happened?

The scene had shifted—a few details off. Chronos City’s surroundings looked different. As she wondered, a familiar voice, laced with helplessness and a wicked grin, brushed her ear.

“Damn it. Wake up and you set my Chronos City on fire. If I’d come a bit later, were you planning to steal my throne too?”

The one holding her was a woman.

Too good-looking. Her lips quirked with a feral arrogance, a devil-may-care slant that said the world was a chessboard and she moved first.

Nesting Phoenix blinked, stunned. In her memory, the women weren’t quite like this. She hadn’t imagined the first meeting would be a princess-carry, like a bridal lift in a battlefield.

Even so, this woman’s temper held shadows of those in her memories, traits like familiar constellations.

Joy swelled—pure, fizzy, satisfying.

She wanted her. To push her down. To claim her.

To know her deeper, bone to marrow.

Once a phantom in memory, now she was within reach, fingers from the flame.