Ouyang and Old Kula were deep in a sparking debate, words striking like flint, when Kula’s son Kado shouldered in like a gust through a reed door.

“Dad, what kind of business is this?” His voice rolled in, rough as gravel in a stream.

Kado was a big thirty-something, a tree trunk of a man. He glanced at his father, then at Ouyang, whose pen raced like a swallow skimming water. “Why does this kid look familiar?” The more he stared, the more that face tugged like a hook in fog, yet the memory wouldn’t surface.

Ouyang lifted his eyes and narrowed them, a fox peeking from brush. “Yo, big brother, long time no see. We worked great together last time…” The words fell like pebbles into a still pond and stirred the silt. Memory rose. Yes—he and Ouyang had once teamed up. Ouyang had been scamming a girl, and Kado had been the planted shill. The victim, of course, had been Xi.

Back when Ouyang had just broken his seal and clawed out of the dark, money was tight as winter bark. With actor‑king finesse, he conned coin from a crowd like wind shaking ripe fruit. His performance carried the con, but Kado’s role mattered too; his small “donation” primed the pump, and the onlookers opened their purses like a tide.

Recognition washed over Kado, and his face shifted like storm clouds over a gray sea. The true culprit, Ouyang, slipped away like a shadow, but Kado got taken by the Rayes family. Among the duped was their second young lady, Kanofia Rayes, a blade hidden in velvet.

Under Duke Rayes’s questioning, cold as iron, Kado spilled everything like a split sack of grain. He’d thought that in the Karosen Kingdom, Duke Rayes could track Ouyang as easily as a wolf follows a blood trail. He figured Ouyang would be caught in no time.

Yet seeing Ouyang today, carefree as a cat in sun, he knew the Rayes family hadn’t nabbed him. It made sense. Only Kanofia had seen Ouyang with her own eyes; everyone else was chasing a sketch in smoke.

When Ouyang and Xi arrived in Terracafe, Kanofia hadn’t returned home, so they passed like ships in a mist.

“Looks like after that score, you’ve been living fat,” Kado muttered, sour as a lemon rind. He’d only been an accomplice and still got thrown into a dungeon dark as a well. Meanwhile Ouyang lounged like a lazy crane. The world felt crooked as a warped plank.

Ouyang waved it off, flicking dust from sunlight. “Don’t sweat the details. Come on, brother, let me show you art that breaks the mold.”

Kado, a man pushing thirty, turned beet red on the spot, like embers under ash. Old Kula coughed, dry leaves in wind, displeased with his son’s bashfulness. What was there to blush about? These were sacred, grand works, as solemn as temple bells.

Under Ouyang and Old Kula’s barrage of words, a drumbeat of persuasion, Kado’s head spun like a top. Barely ten minutes later, he agreed to join the trade, swept along like a twig in current.

“Brother, this one’s on you,” Ouyang said, his thumb rising like a banner. “Whether we crack a market, whether we spark a new era—those are your missions. You’ll be the legend steering the new tide. The world will tilt because of you.”

The pitch hit like wine in the blood, and Kado’s chest burned like a forge. Ouyang’s silver tongue grew sharper with every turn of the moon.

“Old man, the sourcing is yours,” Ouyang added, voice smooth as lacquer. “And I’ve got an artifact for you. With it, you’ll be a great artist.” He drew a deep-blue crystal from his ring, a shard of frozen sea.

“An Image Crystal!” Old Kula recognized it at a glance, pupils bright as stars. An Image Crystal could record everything around it and replay it like rain returning to a pool. In every nation it was lushly expensive, each piece fetching no less than a hundred thousand gold at auction, heavy as a mountain in price.

Old Kula swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing like a float. He knew what it meant: the most detailed, the clearest models under heaven. Set it by the hot spring like an eye, let it drink the scene, then watch and replay until the brush found truth like a hawk finds prey.

“I’ll be staying in the village for a few days,” Ouyang said, satisfaction mellow as late sun. “If you’ve got academic questions, come find me.”

After settling things with Old Kula and Kado, Ouyang stepped out of the house, light as a leaf. His mood was bright; even the caterpillar wriggling on a leaf looked cute as a pea-green bead.

The village sat on the border of the Karosen Kingdom and the Vaan Empire, a seam stitched by wind. Traders once passed like migrating birds, but lately they’d vanished, a riverbed gone dry. Ouyang didn’t care to dig into it; even if he did, Xi wouldn’t let him meddle.

“I’ll handle this alone. You’re not allowed to interfere.” Those were Xi’s exact words, cold as etched jade. So Ouyang, hands tied, went to make his “art,” grinding ink like rain.

Xi was a mage, and villagers treated her like a lit brazier, careful and distant. She and Ouyang lodged at the village head’s house, a stone under old eaves. As Ouyang walked back, Xi stepped out from behind a tree, shadow peeling from bark.

“Great artist, done discussing your art?” Sarcasm hung on her lips like frost, and her gaze cut like a thin knife. Ouyang blinked, mind blank as white paper. What was this?

He was sure she hadn’t been anywhere nearby when he’d talked with Old Kula and Kado. But her eyes said otherwise, like a net that had caught every word.

Her index finger curled a strand of smooth orange hair, and thought swam in her violet eyes like fish under ice. “That guy Kado—back then, you two were the ones who conned me…”

All right. Hearing that, Ouyang knew she’d heard their talk from start to finish, thread to needle.

“Uh… don’t fuss over the details,” he tried, a smile stiff as dried lacquer. Her next line froze it to stone.

“Looks like you’re about to collect yuanli—the power of wishes.”

In a blink, Ouyang’s pupils shrank like pierced ink. In that moment, he no longer saw her as a pliant girl on his chessboard. Yuanli… few even knew the word, a lantern in deep fog.

His smile hardened into ice. He’d underestimated Xi. He knew her identity was a secret veiled in taboo, but her knowing yuanli alone made him lift her weight in his mind like adding stones to a scale.

“Who are you?” The question left him like a thrown knife.

Facing it, Xi stayed calm as a winter pond. She clearly had no urge to explain.

“Even in the Other Shore, only twenty or thirty people know the concept of ‘yuanli.’” Because of that, Ouyang’s gaze turned grave as a cliff. Yuanli… some once claimed, “All longing in all things is yuanli,” a wind that moves the world. But it touched on Original Sin, and talk of it was banned like a flame under a bell.

Back then, almost no one knew the word, and those who knew how to collect it could be counted on one hand, fingers cold as iron.

For someone as mysterious as Xi to know of it—how could Ouyang not be shaken, a bell struck at midnight?

“Since the Emerald Hill affair, you’ve been off,” he said, voice steady as a drawn bow. “Here in this village, you know the trouble ties to creatures from the Demon World. With only a mage’s strength, you can’t face that thing. Yet you told me not to intervene. That alone is a red flag snapping in wind.”

Unlike Ouyang’s weight, Xi’s face showed no fluster at being unmasked, only that same mild sky. “So what? I haven’t hurt you.”

He had no rebuttal. Suspicion is smoke; harm is fire. As long as she didn’t burn him, he’d let the smoke drift.

“You…” Xi parted her lips, then a breeze lifted her hair like flame, and a few leaves landed on Ouyang’s head, soft as moth wings. She stepped close, pale hand like porcelain, and plucked the leaves free.

“Let’s make a pact.”

A pact? Ouyang frowned, lines like ripples. Xi’s change baffled him. She didn’t feel like Lian. When Lian seized the body, her whole aura shifted, torch to moon, easy to tell. But now Xi felt hard to pin down. Say she wasn’t Xi, yet her scent, her cadence, her quiet blade were all Xi’s. Say she was Xi, yet her manner had moved, a familiar path under new snow.

Familiar yet strange, like a dream half-remembered.

“Before the world gate opens again, if you gather more yuanli than I do, I’ll grant one of your requests—at my discretion. If I gather more, you’ll obey my orders unconditionally.”

Hearing that, Ouyang wanted to turn on his heel and leave, boots on gravel. What was this? If he won, she could choose to grant it, which meant she could refuse. If he lost, unconditional obedience. A crooked scale from the start.

He wasn’t signing that.

He snorted, a cold puff in air, and decided to walk. But her look—everything-in-my-palm, a cat with a mouse—made his heart skip like a pebble on water.

“Ouyang, let me tell you a secret. Okay?”

A secret? He ignored the odd smile curling her lips like a question mark. He took a few steps back, putting space between them like a fence.

“Sure.”

The word left his mouth, and at once runes bloomed in the air like fireflies, dense as a swarm. He remembered Xi’s power, and his face darkened like a storm. “Hey, that’s cheating!” His palm itched to draw steel and cut the knot.

When she stated her terms, she’d already, without a ripple, used the power that makes oaths real, nails in wood. Ouyang hadn’t agreed, but it wasn’t over. The instant he said “sure,” Xi triggered it, stringing his words like beads.

“That’s against the rules!” he protested, heat flaring like sparks. He’d refused her condition when she posed it. He’d only agreed to the “secret.” He never thought she’d twist context and lash two different answers together with one rope.

Unfair. He wanted to complain to the heavens, but her smiling eyes were crescent moons, and a deep helplessness rose in him like a tide.