“Date me?” Ouyang stared at Saya, baffled, like a man peering into morning fog. She offered no explanation, a still pond refusing to ripple.

“Little sister, give it a few years and grow up first, alright? Puppy love’s bad news,” he said with a sunny smile, a paper lantern hiding the wick. Augustine, Caro, Jade Rabbit, and Collin all watched, and none of them could see through that bright glaze.

“Little?” Saya touched her chest, then sighed, like a wilted blossom after rain.

“Saya, do you long for a romance that makes the stars ring?” Ouyang’s mouth curled, white teeth flashing like knives in moonlight. Jade Rabbit shivered from ears to tail, a field hare sensing the hunter; it knew that smile like old frost.

Saya lifted her head and dragged her gaze from her disappointing chest, like a bird leaving an empty nest. “A romantic love? Mm.” She nodded, and Ouyang’s grin bloomed wider, a sunflower turning to sun.

“Saya, let me tell you, there’s a vile group in this world, a wind that snuffs candles. They specialize in wrecking lovers. No matter how searing the bond, if they catch it, they drag the pair to a stake and burn them like dry pine.

“There are still men who’d shoulder responsibility for the women they love, mountains standing against storm. But thanks to the Light Church getting in the way, those men die, hearts turned to ash. So many cases, so many lovers burned, that’s why this world teems with fickle men, leaves torn by the gale. Truth is, from what I know, most of those ‘heartless’ ones were puppets, strings pulled by the Light Church.

“Tell me, aren’t they hateful—like thorns underfoot?”

Saya stood silent, chewing on his words like a deer with bitter herbs. Around them, the team gaped, faces like cracked clay; so all this was Ouyang stoking hate against the Light Church. Caro wasn’t a believer, yet she held a soft image of the fabled Goddess of Light, a dawn glinting on calm water. Hearing Ouyang smear the church, her temper flared like sparks in dry grass.

Thankfully Augustine read Caro’s face like a sky map and tugged her aside, a steady hand on a skittish colt, keeping her from breaking the hate-casting ritual.

“Light… Church…” Understanding spread across Saya’s face like sunrise. “Because the Light Church threatens you, you won’t date me… I get it!” She combed pale-green hair with her fingers, the motion a breeze through reeds, and reached a conclusion even Ouyang couldn’t pin down.

Get it? What exactly did you get? Her self-spun logic struck everyone dumb, like thunder with no rain. Augustine had always cast Saya as the final boss, a shadow at the end of the road—his fated enemy. Beat Saya, turn Alice human again, bring his hometown back on track like a river returning to its bed…

That was his first vow, a sword stuck in stone. Now, Saya’s string of reactions filled him with a hollow weakness, winter in the bones. This girl, who turned a whole town into insects, this supposed evil—she looked like a pure child chasing a stray kite. He wanted to ask why she’d done that to his home, why she’d stained the clouds.

But Augustine swallowed the question like a hot coal. Teacher Ouyang was shifting aggro, moving storm clouds to another peak, and they had a sliver of blue sky left. If he reminded Saya he was the one who fled that city, everyone here might die like candles in a gust. So no matter how the questions itched like nettles, he held back for their lives.

Ouyang and White Cat could read Augustine’s restraint on his face, lines like brushstrokes on rice paper, and both man and cat were pleased, like chessplayers seeing a good move.

“Light Church? Meow-dammit, now I remember,” White Cat said, fur fluffed like dandelion, voice a bell under a blanket. “Back then I was in purrfect love with a black cat. I thought we’d curl up till our whiskers went white.

“Who knew, who knew that lot from the Light Church—those anti-hetero fanatics—would stick their paws even in cat romance, like crows pecking at spring shoots.

“Mraow~ My poor black cat. To keep me alive, she let those damned zealots burn her on a stake, a coal in a kiln. Mraow~ I still remember her last words: ‘You must live well,’ nine lives wrapped in one sigh.”

The team had just swallowed Ouyang’s gut-punch tale, and then White Cat dealt another, like back-to-back waves in a narrow gorge. If not for Ouyang’s story first, maybe they’d buy it; after it, they felt the world was a basket of tragedies, pears bruised to the core.

Believe it or not, White Cat only had to glance at Saya’s face, a blank page inked with pity, to know she believed, heart open like a window.

Augustine saw it too and went fuzzy, like pages whipped by wind. No, Saya, you wield a Twelve Divine Demon Artifact, you’re an evil shadow, you’re my life’s enemy, the mountain I must split—how can you believe that cat so easily? Never mind the cat—Augustine even started doubting Ouyang’s tale. Ouyang’s tied to the Demon King of the City of the Dead, a thunderhead on the horizon; would the Light Church really bully him into a corner?

The more he thought, the more the threads knotted, a fisherman’s net full of stones. Also, that cat always looked like an old soul to him, ancient eyes under heavy lids. Why did it act so meek before Ouyang, like a cub before a lion?

Something felt off, grit between teeth.

“Wipe out the Light Church, and you’ll date me.” Saya’s tone wasn’t a question; it was iron on an anvil.

Ouyang wanted to ask why she sounded so certain, a bell already rung. Before he could speak, Saya fanned jade-green wings and rose into the sky, a leaf caught by a spring updraft.

“Little cat, to a good partnership.” Ouyang held out his right hand, a bridge over a narrow stream. White Cat was still bound by an emerald hoop and couldn’t move, a fish caught in glass.

“To a good partnership.” White Cat stretched a paw, a soft star, but needed Augustine to lift him closer. Man and cat shook in midair, a pact etched in sand. “Since we’re such great partners, you should take off this weird ring for me, right?” He pointed to the hoop around him, a snake biting its tail. Saya had left but forgotten the cat, leaving White Cat cuffed like a cloud tied to a post.

“The ring? Oh… Lord Meow, that’s the kind of small thing you can undo yourself,” Ouyang said, words like leaves floating downstream, and turned toward Collin.

“Wait… human, you jerk!” White Cat yowled, claws kneading air like dough. He could get free, but it would take time, a lock rusted shut. Who wants to sit in a shackle when one breath sooner could be a breeze?

Augustine hugged the squirming White Cat, arms a cradle and a cage. He became sure Ouyang and this cat shared some unspeakable secret, a river running under ice.

Ouyang ignored the racket, a wind passing reeds. He reached Collin, set a hand on his shoulder, and sighed, a reed flute note over dusk water.

“Kid, what did you learn? You’re a missionary, a bishop who’ll spread the Void Church creed to every corner of the continent, like seeds on the wind. What did today teach you?”

What did he learn? At first Collin was foggy, a lantern with low oil. Wasn’t it just how to spin a lie, straw into rope? Others might not know, but he and Jade Rabbit did—Ouyang’s a Void Messenger, a shadow under starlight; the Light Church persecution line was made up, smoke in a bottle.

Then he tied it to preaching, and clarity clicked like flint. This was diverting disaster, turning the flood east; a few words could bring trouble down on a rival like hail. As Void Church leadership, he didn’t need to bleed on battlefields; the fight was on stages and in streets. Acting and mouth-fire—that’s how you tell a strong bishop, a drum that can raise an army. He was going to battle the biggest church on the continent for souls; without craft and teeth, he’d be a lamb among wolves.

Honestly, Collin learned a lot from Ouyang’s “flood turned east.” At least he learned how to smear the Light Church, ink on a white robe. In Ouyang’s mouth, a church devoted to the Goddess of Light became what? An anti-hetero outfit, a group that burns lovers at the stake, smoke twisting into the sky. He thought a moment, and the phrase “anti-hetero, stake the lovers” rang a bell like wind chimes.

It sounded like a certain group in the City of the Dead, a shadow in a crypt. Either way, he’d taken notes; as a preacher of faith, his road would be long, a path through pines.

With Saya gone, Caro finally let the bottled fire out, a kettle lifting its lid. “Mr. White Cat, please stop slandering the Light Church. Churches follow the Goddess’s rules like rivers follow their beds. There’s no such thing as opposing heterosexuality. You need to apologize to the Goddess of Light!”

“Mraow,” White Cat crooned once, then sprawled in Augustine’s arms and closed his eyes, lids like fans, retreating into sleep and ignoring Caro like a rock ignores rain. About Ouyang’s tale—Bai’s a dragonkin, half human and half dragon, a monster to some, a cliff against the wind—so being hunted by the Light Church felt more plausible, a cloud with a shape. But White Cat’s story was too much; never mind ‘opposing heterosexuality,’ who’d be bored enough to police cat romance, chasing tails in alleys?

“Mr. White Cat, aren’t you an ancient being, one who can stand against the Twelve Divine Demon Artifacts, a mountain against an avalanche? Would the Light Church really pick a fight with you? Please don’t smear them again.”

Caro saw the cat ignore her and could only soften, anger cooling like tea in the cup. Her life belonged to White Cat’s timely rescue, a debt like a knot; she had no right to demand an apology. Her words were just steam vented to the sky.

“Mraow~ The Light Church is nothing but a candle in the wind. Back then, I escaped the hunt of the First Cult, a net of knives. What’s the Light Church to me… mraow~” White Cat draped his tail over his eyes like a silk ribbon, as if the sun was too bright for sleep.