Previously, Lingcai brought Xueyu to LilyBell—then flipped like a windvane in a storm, planning to trade Xueyu to get her fiancée, Scarlet Leaf, back.

Chaos bloomed like weeds after rain.

But chance sat right there like a ripe persimmon. LilyBell wouldn’t let it drop. She flicked up a hand and ordered her two shikigami:

“Unstoppable! Full fire! Go now!”

Two paper shikigami weren’t a match for Xueyu. Yet Lingcai had her pinned at the elbow, and this ruin was a dead zone, no eyes around. The shikigami rushed her like moths.

Xueyu didn’t even hold a blade. LilyBell was sure the net had closed. She cupped her face like a girl before a shrine and sighed:

“Lady Xueyu… I’m coming to you now…”

As the paper puppets edged in, Xueyu plucked a bottle from her belt and lobbed it like a pebble into a pond.

The puppets moved quick, snapped it midair. Liquid fanned out with the shards like rain off a leaf, then soaked into paper skin.

It wasn’t water. It clung and gleamed like night oil.

The oil seeped deep like ink in rice paper. In that breath, Lingcai let go of Xueyu. A hose with a nozzle flashed in her hands like a steel vine.

The hose ran to a pack on her back. A small trigger perched on the nozzle like a fang.

Lingcai leveled it at the two soaked puppets and pulled the trigger.

“Times have changed! High-pressure flamethrower! Flames to the heavens!”

Fire spat ten meters long, a comet ripping the dark. It kissed the puppets, and they went up like dry autumn leaves.

The oil loved the flame. Both puppets became roaring bonfires, spinning like headless flies.

“I’m burning! I’m burning! Help!”

“Help!”

Step one landed like a blade finding the seam.

Everything so far sat within Lingcai and Xueyu’s weave. LilyBell’s paper shikigami couldn’t be dispersed by brute force. Break them, and they stitched themselves whole.

But Xueyu’s magic ran pure water, a river without a spark. To blunt LilyBell first, the two decided to numb her, draw her puppets in, then roast them with flame.

Now came the part where they took Scarlet Leaf back.

Before LilyBell grasped the turn of the tide, Lingcai drew a flash orb and tossed it skyward like a thrown moon.

“Leaf! Shut your eyes and sprint to me! Move!”

This wasn’t the tiny tooth-hidden kind Xueyu once used. It was billiard-ball big, a sun in the fist. Stare into its heart, and your retina would cook like paper under a lens.

Lingcai ducked, arms over her head, like grass before a gale. The blast sparked white like summer lightning. She surged through the smoke to grab Scarlet Leaf—only to crash chest-first into a figure bursting out of the haze.

She couldn’t see the face. She hugged tight on instinct, voice tumbling like stones in a stream.

“Leaf! You okay? Any wounds?”

Wait.

In her arms, something felt off, small as a fox in winter.

Her hands traced a neck and soft lines like willow branches. Then she found two furry ears.

…Huh?

She also felt a fluffy thing, tail-like, swishing side to side and patting her thigh like a metronome.

Lingcai froze for two beats. Realization hit like cold water. Too late.

The flash and dust fell away like a curtain. Sight returned, sharp as glass.

She looked back. There stood Scarlet Leaf, free, with Xueyu braced beside her, long sword ready like a silver river.

If Scarlet Leaf was over there… then…

Lingcai turned back, inch by inch, like a rusty hinge.

…Whose arms am I holding?

“Are. You. Looking. To. Die?”

LilyBell glared up at her, voice clipped like knife-edges.

Crap.

Lingcai let go of those ears at once, awkward smile stiff as dried mud. She ruffled LilyBell’s hair, forced her voice mild as tea.

“Haha… hey… be good… don’t move…”

Then she spun to run. But LilyBell wasn’t some docile kitten. Childish or not, she was one of the Garden Witches’ Four.

She bit her own palm with sharp little teeth, pressed it to the ground, and cast a spell.

“Art of Thousandfold Paper! Scatter Blossoms!”

Black strips of paper tore from the earth like reeds through ice, burst skyward, then broke into blades that plunged around Lingcai and fenced her in.

Those black sheets rooted into the soil like iron stakes. They didn’t budge. They had flex like bowsteel. A paper cage, but hard as plates of spring steel.

Soft as paper when shaped, hard as steel when striking. A perfect material, a smith’s dream.

On any other day, Lingcai would’ve ogled the craft like a magpie at gold. Not now. A hair of misalignment, and one sheet would’ve split her like a melon.

Cold sweat beaded like dew. Her foot slipped. She dropped with a clatter, tailbone first.

Something slid from her pocket and tapped the dirt. Lingcai didn’t notice.

It was the gift from the Little Moon Sage, the emblem that declares the Great Sage of Seven Colors and Luminaries.

LilyBell’s shikigami were ash on the wind thanks to the flamethrower. LilyBell strode up like a storm front, voice all accusation and thunder.

“Who are you! Who gave you the guts! You meddle with me and Lady Xueyu, and you burn my shikigami! Today you’ll learn what happens when you cross the Garden Witches! I’ll—uh—ah—well—wipe, wipe you out… oh…”

Mid-threat, her tone thinned like paper in rain. The back half came out on stiff legs.

Not for nothing. She’d seen the emblem that fell from Lingcai’s pocket—the seven-pointed star, gold bright as noon. There isn’t a second one in this world. You can’t even fake it.

At that mark, LilyBell’s breath hitched. She’d never met the Great Sage in person, but that sign lived in her nightmares. Back then, a half-squad of mages from his banner, carrying that seven-pointed flag, stormed the Garden Witches’ stronghold and turned their home inside out.

By all logic, seeing that sigil again should make old hate flare like dry pine.

LilyBell didn’t see it that way.

Who else could carry that sign on their person, if not the Great Sage himself?

Among the Garden Witches, only one had crossed blades with the Great Sage: BloodRose, second among the Four.

LilyBell would never forget that meeting. BloodRose rolled in, wrapped in bandages and plaster, wheeled like a ghost into council.

She said nothing through the whole war council. At the end, she spoke, voice thin as a reed.

“If you meet him, run.”

LilyBell wasn’t fool enough to think she outmatched BloodRose.

Now the seven-pointed crest stared up from the dirt. She couldn’t pretend not to see. Cold sweat sprang on her brow like rain on slate.

Lingcai missed all of it. She pressed her face to the paper bars and shouted to Scarlet Leaf, voice bright as a bell.

“Don’t worry about me! Leaf! Run! I’ve still got a way out!”