Last time, the duchess bolted from her wedding like a sparrow fleeing a snare. But Lingcai and her crew didn’t know the truth: Lady Aniel and her husband had plotted to sell arms to the rebels.

So Aniel mistook Lingcai for Princess Korol, a hawk sent to seize her. In truth, the pursuer was a hapless Alchemist, dragged along to play a game with his fiancée, Scarlet Leaf.

The motives clashed, yet fate stitched a neat cat-and-mouse chase, like shadows cast by different lamps.

Aniel ran for her life, a deer in thorns whose legs had no wind. Lingcai’s trio tailed her, stubborn as noon shadows that won’t shake loose.

After a stretch, Aniel’s pace sagged like wet silk, and Scarlet Leaf’s stamina guttered like a spent lamp.

Scarlet Leaf shouted ahead between ragged breaths, her voice a frayed ribbon in the wind. “Haa… haa… don’t rush off… we can talk this out…”

Aniel didn’t look back. She pushed forward and yelled to the road ahead, as if the stones were witnesses. “Talk about what! If I stop, it’s a cliff edge and a blade for me!”

Lingcai had ridden the whole way cradled in Scarlet Leaf’s arms, burning no fuel and doing nothing. She drifted like a leaf on a lazy stream.

She slouched soft as cotton, lifted her chin, and drawled to Scarlet Leaf. “Their quarrel runs deep as winter frost. Maybe we stay out of their storm…”

Scarlet Leaf wouldn’t have it; her breath came like a taut bowstring. “Haa… haa… We came all this way, and you want to turn back at the gate?”

They’d run this far; tossing it away felt like pouring tea into sand.

She wasn’t letting go. She tapped LilyBell’s shoulder, a battle drumbeat on lacquer. “Move. Your master’s wife has a job for you. Stop her. Now.”

“W-wait for me… almost there…”

LilyBell snapped awake like a bell struck at dawn. She traced a blood sigil and slammed both palms to the earth. “Familiar Summoning! Unstoppable! Full Firepower! Go!”

Two pitch-black paper figures burst from the soil, their twisted arms like dead branches reaching. They lunged for Aniel with creaking, hungry grace.

“I’m Unstoppable!”

“I’m Full Firepower!”

They had barely finished bragging when Aniel turned, panic flashing like a fish’s belly. A wand had appeared in her hand, tipped with a blue-green gem that glowed like glacier ice.

Blue light blinked. The paper familiars exploded into soggy black scraps, melting into a puddle of pulp like rain-rotted leaves.

High-power water magic was LilyBell’s bane; paper hard as steel became tissue under a storm. Even iron pages dissolve when the river rises.

That’s why LilyBell, mountain-strong as she was, never caught Xueyu. Water answers water, and the river chooses its own path.

LilyBell stared, stunned by the sudden counter. “S-so fast… I couldn’t even see the seals…” Her voice was a reed in a squall.

Most magic needs blood-seals to cast; every strike carries an inescapable wind-up like drawing a bow. Among equals, victory rides on whose hands weave faster.

Lingcai, despite loafing like driftwood, spotted what was wrong at a glance. She lifted a finger and pointed at the wand breathing blue light. “She never sealed at all. That’s a magic conduit, made from black crystal and Grace Stone. It uses a pre-etched spell circuit to replace seals, so it only burns the user’s mental stamina. The flaw’s obvious. The circuit’s fixed, so it can only cast one spell.”

LilyBell gaped, like a bolt-action lifer meeting an enemy with an automatic rifle. “N-never heard of anything like that…”

“You’ve heard of magitek cannons, right? Same principle. Those eat power cells; this drinks your spirit.”

Lingcai hopped down from Scarlet Leaf’s arms, dusted her hands like a swallow flicking rain, and kept talking. “Both materials are cannon-grade stock. State-controlled. Money won’t pry them loose.”

“Sharp eyes, Your Highness.” Aniel raised the wand, its tip a cold star aimed at them. “But you don’t seem armed. If you insist on chasing, one of us dies here.” Her words fell like sleet.

Sparks jumped in dry grass; Lingcai felt a headache bloom like a bruise. “Is it that serious? Your husband already confessed. We can talk, you know.”

Aniel kept the wand up, her tone sharpening like frost on a blade. “His confession is his. Arrest him if you want. He took the arms job himself. I’m not involved!”

“Huh? Arms trafficking?” Lingcai blinked, her mind a blank scroll.

“Don’t play dumb! You finished the investigation! The cannons bound for North Town!”

Aniel’s calm cracked; the gentle smile was gone. Her eyes flashed like knife backs, and the hand holding the wand trembled like a taut string.

Uh?

…Oh.

Huh?!

Realization hit; Lingcai smacked her forehead like swatting a mosquito. They’d been talking across servers this whole time.

She waved in a hurry, words tumbling like stones down a slope. “You’ve got it wrong. We’re not here to arrest you. We thought you were ditching your wedding…”

“A’Cai, we should still bring her in.” Scarlet Leaf cut in, pupils gleaming like coins in lantern light.

What’s she plotting?

Lingcai shot her a puzzled look. “She’s smuggling, so what? Not our lane. We’re common folk. Why haul her in? You hate selling your life to others.”

“You dense? For money.” Scarlet Leaf’s grin flashed like a knife edge. “Two gold just for cannon intel. We nab the culprit and deliver her, that’s gotta be ten gold at least. She’s a national-level wanted criminal.”

Hard to argue with coin; reason rings like a bell when it’s gold.

Lingcai spun like a weather vane in a fresh wind and barked at Aniel. “Drop the weapon! Hands up! You’re surrounded by the three of us! Or we get rough!”

Aniel sucked a sharp breath, winter air through teeth. Three against one was bad odds. But when she realized Lingcai wasn’t actually the princess, her voice hardened like kiln-fired clay. “Who are you trying to scare? You’re no princess. With this wand, I can rapid-cast high-tier water magic without seals. What can you do to me, three on one?”

She wasn’t wrong. The situation was thorny as a briar patch. Even three mages of her level might not walk away from a magic conduit’s barrage.

Worse, one of the three had floated through the fight like a stray gourd—Lingcai.

Aniel’s read of the field was sharp as a falcon’s. Lingcai screamed zero battle aura. LilyBell’s paper arts were hard-countered. Scarlet Leaf wore the Crimson Cherry Blossom Blade at her hip, but her stance didn’t sing of sword training; at best, she was a high-tier mage.

By that math, there was no path to defeat.

Confidence returned like tide to a moonlit shore. Aniel lifted the conduit and traced a circle. Transparent bubbles bloomed around her, clear as glass eggs.

Those bubbles were the spell etched into the conduit. One look at the paper familiars’ fate said their bite would be vicious.

To prove it, Aniel deliberately tapped a few. They popped, and blue arcs hissed out, serpent-tongued and sibilant, like vipers tasting the air.

Wrapped in foam, Aniel danced in place, a courtesan swirling in stormlight. The bubbles whirled with her, petals of water sharpening into killing frost.

A wicked dance, blossoms of foam.

It wasn’t the kind of might that splits the sky. It was a trap under dark water, a net you feel only when it closes.

Looks like she means it.

“Come on, then,” she said, voice a cold river. “If you think you can win.”