While Ye Weibai spoke with the gray cat, Stardust kept her mouth shut like a closed bud, as if she knew his words weren’t meant for her.

When he finished and looked back at the little girl, she was still fiddling with the iron lock, quiet as dew on iron.

Her face stayed calm and her movements were small as drifting ash, yet through those ash-gray eyes he saw a faint ripple—she was vexed.

With [Misfortune] so dense it felt like stormclouds, the girl should have the body to match, able to tear the iron cage like wet paper—one hand or two.

Yet this small lock snagged her like a thorn in silk.

Ye Weibai tried to sense her body; his mental probe sank like a stone into the sea, no echo at all—swallowed in one bite by the gray cat.

This was [Divine Concealment]—the gift her [Misfortune] had set like frost upon her.

People would slowly forget she existed; not only the person, but her tracks as well—the plucked flower, the nudged pebble, the bell she brushed—softly wiped away, or returned to before like water smoothing sand.

Even [Time] could leave no mark on her; the instant [Misfortune] favored her and she learned [Divine Concealment], everything on her froze like amber.

She kept that age and face, eight or nine at a glance, yet in truth… a hundred or a thousand years felt within the shadow of the candle.

Thinking so, Ye Weibai asked, “Stardust.”

“Mm?” She stopped, eyes still as a lake before dawn.

“How old are you?”

“Nine and a half.”

“No, I mean your real age.”

“Mm—” Her hand trembled like a leaf. Stardust didn’t answer. She looked at him once; the dead-ash pupils rippled and went still. She bowed her head toward the lock and whispered, “Can’t open it.”

The little girl slipped the topic away like a fish under reeds.

Ye Weibai’s mouth curved with a thin smile; he had seen it—she’d been angry, a spark in a cold brazier.

It lasted only a heartbeat, but his question had roused her ire.

Age is a taboo bell for any girl, sealed or not; more so for a lady who might have counted centuries like rings in a tree.

He got no answer, yet he had what he wanted; the thought pleased his ill-tempered heart like a hidden ember.

Best to stop; the cat on her head was already showing its fangs like a tiny storm.

“So, how did you get in there?” He shifted the wind of the talk.

“Sleepy.” Her words were pebbles.

Good thing that as the [Demon King], Ye Weibai spoke many tongues—trade speech, elven, demonic… and the laconic “three‑no” speech.

“Mm. Sleepy, so you found a place to nap and crawled inside?” Ye Weibai said, voice light as tea steam.

“Then.” She nodded, and murmured, “Got forgotten.”

Forgotten—the [Divine Concealment] had bloomed; those slavers forgot the iron cage holding the girl. The cage sat on the wagon like a shadow at noon, sensed by none; and she stayed trapped within, or so Ye guessed.

How long had Stardust been confined? A week? A month? A year? A winter without end?

If he hadn’t met her, would she have stayed there as if pinned under ice?

Ye Weibai couldn’t be sure.

“Stardust.” He looked at the girl. “I can help you out. But you need to promise me one thing. With the girl by my side…”

“Mm?”

“Be her friend.”

…

…

Clack—

The base of a teacup kissed the table, crisp as a bell on porcelain.

But louder came—

Smack.

The black ruler struck the blonde girl’s head without mercy, a thunderbolt in a clear sky.

“Ow—!” The girl clutched her brow, then a blank mist drifted through her eyes.

“Is someone… here?”

“You tell me.” The black‑haired boy’s cool voice slid in like a shadow.

Startled, Aerin looked up. On the white table and chairs that had seemed empty as snow, a black‑haired boy’s outline surfaced like ink in water, hazy and hard to see.

Confusion shone in her eyes—Who? Did I invite a guest? Why can’t I see his face? It feels… familiar, and strange, like a half‑remembered dream.

She drew breath to ask, but a black stroke flashed before her and fell on her brow like lightning. She tried to dodge, but it was rain meeting stone.

Smack—!

This blow hurt more than any before; she hugged her head, aggrieved, like a cat in a downpour.

—Wait… before?

—When did I… Bai…

Bai—

“Master Bai!!”

Pain, mixed with that figure carved into her heart, pierced the fog like a spear of light.

Like waking from a dream, she jolted and looked across the table.

As she spoke his name, Ye Weibai’s shape snapped into focus in her sight, like a lens cleared of frost.

The black‑haired boy lazily drew back the ruler; wind played with his hair, and his eyes were night‑deep under lowered lashes. “Mm? What is it?”

“I—”

She parted her lips and closed them again, words slipping like fish.

She realized she wasn’t in the roaring slave market, but somehow home in her courtyard, by the tea table beneath the towering tree—her memory had a missing plank.

She had… forgotten.

Her mind still stood at the moment she went with Master Bai to the wagon in the women’s row. Master Bai stared at something; she got a little miffed like a sparrow, turned her head and ignored him. That turn felt… long… very long.

So long it stretched like a century.

And through that century, she remembered nothing—snow piling on a silent step.

Not what Master Bai did or said, not how they came home. She did not even remember—

Who Master Bai was.

Everything felt devoured by a maw from the abyss.

At that thought, Aerin’s face went pale, chill washing over her like winter water.

How—how could I forget—how could I forget Master Bai?!

What—what happened?!

How could I be that stupid?!

She had a hunch: if Master Bai hadn’t smacked her awake, she would have forgotten him completely—and more, she could “see” it, that once she did, everything they had shared would dissolve like mist in sun.

And those dreams of the [Hero King]—would shatter like glass.

That dream had finally shown a single thread of hope, thin as silk.

No—absolutely—not!

Fear flashed, then panic. Under the table, her fists clenched on her knees; her nails bit flesh like thorns.

It hurt, but the pain steadied her, a pin through silk.

“Master Bai!”

She couldn’t help calling his name, soft as a candle flame, to anchor him in the room.

“Mm?”

“Master Bai!”

“What?”

“Master Bai—!” The third call trembled, a plucked string.

“Is that fun—”

He had meant to draw the ruler again, but he caught the panic and urgency in her eyes, waves under glass. Paired with her dream‑walking daze from before, he understood.

He breathed out, lashes lowering like dusk.

The force of [Divine Concealment]—it was far beyond his reckoning.

This was their first brush with Stardust, and even as the [Demon King], he had his [existence] quietly erased by [Misfortune], no ripple on the pond.

Stardust… a girl who looked eight or nine—what kind of [Misfortune] had she walked through to forge something so vast and terrifying, a storm in a teacup that drowned cities?

Ye Weibai looked at the small girl beside him. She cradled the cup in both hands and sipped the black tea. No—she licked. It was hot. Like a kitten, she stuck out a small tongue and lapped, one touch at a time.

Noticing his gaze, the girl turned. She met his eyes and blinked, a quiet bell—got something to say?

When Ye Weibai smiled and shook his head, she turned back and devoted herself to the tea again, priest‑serious before a humble shrine.

Her focus was almost “devout”—all that for a cup of tea, a tiny ceremony in steam.

Ye Weibai looked back to Aerin.

Fear lay plain on the blonde girl’s face, frost on glass at dawn.

He sighed, and he knew what she feared—not only that he would vanish from her mind, but that the far‑off dream of the [Hero King] would collapse like a bridge of ice.

His arrival had saved Aerin, who was about to shatter; if he vanished on a whim, she would break for real, shards on stone.

Honestly—Ye Weibai hated that feeling.

Long ago, when handling Xiaotong’s matter, he had said, “I loathe being someone’s stopgap,” a wedge in a leaking dam.

That time, he broke the middle‑school girl’s fixed, perfect image of him by “making mistakes” on purpose—so he could escape the role of a stopgap, a prop, a crutch.

This time, with Aerin, heir to the [Hero King], things were more tangled, more fluid, and more… fragile, like porcelain in a storm.

Ye Weibai would try another way—finer, subtler, overturning. He would direct a play and weave a [scheme] like a net of moonlight, to settle it all.

From the moment he descended into this [World], everything he did—teaching Aerin the [Hero King]’s laws, provoking Yin, freeing Stardust—was preparation for that [scheme].

Finishing that [scheme] wouldn’t be easy; even for Ye Weibai, it was a cliff in rain.

He didn’t have a hundred percent certainty.

But he wasn’t afraid. If he pulled it off, if he completed the [scheme]—it would be very, very—fun.

And it would be full of—surprises.