After several cups, Tangxue still felt clear as spring water—this was straight-up juice.

She glanced at the tipsy elves nearby, sweat beading like dew and sliding down her temple.

She ordered a few more bottles to quench the thirst, then decided to try another stall; during Harvest Festival most shops spill into the open air like a lantern river, and aside from drinks, barbecue smokes as the crowd favorite.

But the Elf Clan doesn’t care for meat—their stomachs sing a different tune, like leaves sipping sun.

Yikes—tragic, like a hunter with no bow.

If meat were off-limits, a foodie like Tangxue would go feral like a caged wolf.

Only meat would drive her crazy too, a desert with nothing but sand.

Elves do like heat, though—chilies and pepper dust their plates; after ordering a few skewers, Tangxue found the chilies glowing like ember-blooms, the best she’d ever tasted—without patient cultivation, you can’t coax out this kind of fire.

Gotta say, their grilled chives sang like green strings; the salt-and-pepper eggplant was steady as a hearth; and the sweet fried bananas—golden moon-slices of bliss.

Time slipped like water; she’d been eating for almost an hour, skewers stacking like kindling on the table; if it weren’t free, even pawning herself wouldn’t cover the bill.

Honestly, it wasn’t that much—just a few dozen sticks; she couldn’t be that cheap, right?

Still, she’d eaten a touch too much; embarrassment pricked like a nettle. The proprietress beside her just smiled and shook her head, easy as a summer breeze: it’s Harvest Festival—the Tree of Nature grants food to be eaten; if we don’t, it goes to waste. The festival exists to share the surplus, and she was happy someone loved her barbecue like a warm song.

Tangxue still felt a pebble of guilt; she stayed to help clear the stall’s trash under drifting moon-dust, then left.

On to the next stall, to keep the feast rolling like a migrating sparrow.

She was nowhere near full; no way she’d head back already. In the Duskmoon Empire she’d starved like winter bark; now that she could eat, she’d fill her bowl to harvest’s brim.

By deep night, the Harvest Festival wound down; stalls folded like falling leaves, and folks headed home in gentle streams. Tangxue was nodding off, eyelids fluttering like moth wings; trusting hazy memory, she wove her way back to the inn for a heavy sleep.

Meanwhile, outside the inn, a male Beastkin yanked a half-beastkin by the collar and growled low, voice like gravel: “The Oracle sent us to gather intel! Why the hell are you eating?!”

“Sorry, Arul… I was just starving,” came the meek reply, thin as a reed.

“Sorry doesn’t cut it! Can you shoulder it if you fail the Oracle’s expectations?!” His anger snapped like a trap.

The half-beastkin chuckled sheepishly, tail-tucked silence, too cowed to talk back.

In the Beastkin lands dwell two kinds of folk: half-beastkin and beastkin. The halves lean closer to humans in shape and taste, like meadow to city; the full beastkin are larger and more fearsome, movements closer to beasts, like mountains that walk.

Their dominion worships raw strength—aside from the Oracle caste, might rules like iron set in stone, and the strong draw more of the river’s resources.

On that front, beastkin outclass halves by nature—five mountains to one hill.

So male half-beastkin rank low in the Beastkin dominion; females differ, serving as mage-shamans, a path spared from scorn yet held in a twilight tier, neither high nor low.

Except the Oracle, who stands like a moon above.

The male Beastkin in the Elven Dominion was Arul; the male half-beastkin was Trenel. They’d come to spy—by the Oracle’s divinations, a girl of immense weight for the Beastkin future was resting somewhere within the Elven Dominion. If they found her trail, they had to hook her and reel her toward the Beastkin tribes, no matter the cost.

It touched the seed of their race’s spring.

While they bickered like restless dogs, Tangxue had already crawled into her room and slipped into sleep, curled like a cat in a warm hollow.

By morning, Tangxue stretched like a waking vine and opened the tree-hollow window; warm sunlight poured in like honey.

After a splash-and-dash in front of the mirror, she packed her things to leave, heart steady like a compass.

She had roads ahead—another destination to reach; before setting off, she’d buy some food, a pocket of sunrise for the journey.

The Harvest Festival feeds you free on the spot, but takeout costs like rain counted by the drop; luckily, money wasn’t her worry—she’d just buy.

Done with all that, Tangxue reached the transit node; the best way to the next city was by coach. For convenience, the coaches jumped through fixed spatial points, silver doors in the air; Tangxue had used similar magic, but each node was a different key—no way to copy it.

After about half an hour, the coach finally rolled in like a slow whale; ticket bought, Tangxue found her seat and settled. There was time before departure; bored, she probed her power again. Her mana tide swelled at least double what it was before the Duskmoon Empire—near, maybe beyond, her old peak, a moon rising over a higher sea.

If she met that Red Oriole now, she’d drop her within ten moves, a falcon stooping from clear sky.

A chill pricked—was she walking the road to becoming a boss? Not a good omen. Tangxue slumped back, pinched her brow, and sighed, a shadow crossing noon.

“By the way, isn’t the air getting colder? I can feel it sliding down. Outside must be at least ten degrees lower than ten years ago,” she murmured, breath fogging like thin frost.

In truth it was worse: the outside had fallen more than twenty degrees, and the mana in the air was thinning like smoke. The world’s total mana stays constant, but as strong ones multiply, less goes to sustaining the plane; if the god at the peak still does nothing, the habitat will grow harsher, ice in the bone. The leaders of the top races saw this early. And the current chill has another root: the ice sealing this plane is thickening, a glass lid pressing down; soon it may reach absolute zero, and when it does, everything here will die like flame snuffed in a vacuum.

With no fresh mana to feed it, the plane’s working stock will dwindle to dust; the current order will collapse—an hourglass emptying grain by grain.

The fall of the Merfolk is the clearest tide-mark; they were richest in mana, and the Sea God Trident brought them glory like a cresting wave—and indirectly, ruin like an undertow.

Perhaps the plane sensed their drowning fate, yet stayed its hand for this very reason, a silent sky over a storming sea.

The coach hummed to life; the air around them warped like heat over stone. Belt buckled, Tangxue felt something off, a ripple too wide in the glass.

“Is this turbulence… a bit too big?!”

By the time she noticed, it was too late; the jump circle had fired, arrow loosed, and no one could stop it.

Silver light flashed, and the coach vanished; en route to the endpoint, space buckled and cracked like thin ice—mid-teleport, the coach was forced down and dumped halfway.