Ariex’s most talented alchemist, the legendary Exalted Moon Grand Sage of Seven Hues and Seven Luminaries—now just the Little Moon Sage—stood before Lingcai, wrapped like a white rice dumpling, still in a girl’s shape.

As for why she looked like a girl—no need to ask. That mess was on Lingcai, a jinx of a disciple who’d once dragged her master’s name through the mud.

She should’ve been in the royal capital. Yet she’d surfaced in Sata City, like a wandering moon that slipped its orbit.

“You’re—! Grandmaster—!” Shock burst from Lingcai like a snapped bowstring. The Little Moon Sage lifted a gloved finger to her mask, a hush like wind in reeds.

“No need to blow my cover. Call me Little Moon from now on.”

Lingcai swallowed the word Grandmaster, yet questions still beat in her chest like drumfire.

“Little Moon, why are you here? What’s really happening?”

A sigh fogged the face shield, a cloud trapped behind glass.

“I wanted a trip, a far horizon. I passed Sata City by chance. Then I found a flare of unknown plague. I haven’t found the cause. There’s no specific cure. I’m buying time while I hunt a solution.”

She looked around. Blue tarps sagged like low skies, a patchwork field hospital she’d paid to raise overnight. Too many patients, too few hands. Healthy relatives in the same white suits stood like paper lanterns in rain, keeping lives flickering under her shouted guidance.

But it was a stopgap, a finger in a bursting dam. Little Moon kept to the real hunt: find the culprit, brew the antidote.

“Since you’re here, help.” No ceremony. She nudged a crate with her boot—goggles sloshing in disinfectant—and motioned for Lingcai to gear up.

Then she barked at Kelor, her voice a whip in the drizzle. “You there! Don’t just stand! Masks and gowns in the back tent! Suit up and wheel the patient in! Move!”

Healing magic in this world was a bright knife that cut the wrong way for infections. It sped cell growth like spring grass, but made bacteria bloom like algae in summer. Use it on the infected and you drove germs into the blood, let them race like wildfire, turning fever into sepsis.

So the hunt for cause fell to her alone: find the pathogen, then forge the drug that fit it like a key.

“Let me see her.” The Little Moon Sage stepped to the three-wheeled cart where a sick girl lay like a pale leaf. She touched the girl’s forehead. The fever’s blaze had ebbed, yet her mind still drifted like mist. At that touch, the girl trembled head to toe, a leaf in a sudden gust.

A frown tightened like a drawn bowstring. “Exactly the same presentation.”

“What do you mean, exactly the same?” Worry hit Kelor first, words tumbling after.

“The temperature looks down, but it’s a mirage.” Little Moon stripped off rubber gloves and tossed them into a bin, like shedding a snakeskin. “This disease strikes in a 24-hour cycle. Headache, chills—wave after wave. If I’m right, she’ll spike another fever at this time tomorrow. It’s never appeared before. I don’t even know how it spreads.”

Even the well-traveled Little Moon Sage was stymied. Lingcai felt the weight settle like cold rain.

Only Kelor’s eyes flew wide, a spark catching. She breathed two syllables like naming a shadow.

“Malaria…”

Hope flared in Lingcai, words chasing after. “You know this disease? What’s malaria?”

Kelor blinked out of her daze, shook herself like a bird shedding rain, and answered.

“Malaria’s an infectious disease I heard of in my previous life. It spreads through mosquitoes and blood. There’s something in the blood called Plasmodium. It hides, multiplies, and cycles, so the attacks come back.”

“…”

“…”

Little Moon stared, stunned enough to forget to breathe. “Pre… previous life… where is that, exactly?”

Lingcai leaned in, voice a soft bridge. “Previous life means the life before this one. She says she remembers it. You follow?”

Little Moon sucked in a cold breath, mind skidding like a hoof on stone. For a heartbeat, she wanted to quarantine Kelor too, just to see if fever had melted her brains.

Kelor saw their doubt and anger flared like struck flint. She practically hopped. “It’s true! Why won’t you believe me?”

Little Moon recovered and waved a hand, a fan smoothing summer heat. “No, no, it’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just… a bit mind-bending.”

Which still sounded like not believing.

“How about this. To make sure you’re lucid, I’ll ask a few questions.” She held up one finger, simple as a candle flame. “How many?”

Kelor nearly rolled up her sleeves. “You obviously don’t believe me! I’m not joking. I’m perfectly lucid!”

Both hands up, Little Moon soothed like smoothing rumpled silk. “I know you’re lucid. Breathe. Humor me. How many?”

“…One.” Kelor swallowed the snarl and forced the word out, glare locked on that finger.

A second finger rose, a twin moon beside the first. “And now?”

“…Two!” She ground it out like cracking a walnut.

Next would be three fingers, then some dumb 1+1 trap. Most people blurted three. Classic con.

Please. You think I didn’t see that in a past life?

Sure enough, a third finger lifted. Then Little Moon asked, mild as tea.

“Then what’s ten factorial?”

“…”

Kelor’s mouth opened. No sound came. She stared like a fish tossed ashore.

“You’ve gotta be— who the hell can—!”

Before she exploded, Lingcai answered without blinking, the number dropping like a pebble in a pond.

“Three million six hundred twenty-eight thousand eight hundred.”

Little Moon flashed Lingcai a thumbs-up, cheerful as a sunbeam. “Cor-rect!”

Kelor’s pent-up fury blew like a summer squall. “Correct my ass! Who even tests like that? If you can snap-answer that, you two are the weird ones! If I’m lying, test it yourself!”

Little Moon and Lingcai traded a look, a quiet shrug in the eyes. She was out of options anyway. Might as well hear Kelor out.

So Little Moon asked what mattered most, clearing her throat like dusting a shelf. “Then… ahem… in that previous life of yours… do you know any specific cure for this?”

Kelor didn’t even think. The words leaped like sparks. “Qinghao! Artemisinin! It’s extracted from qinghao—Artemisia annua! It even won a Nobel Prize!”

Afraid they wouldn’t know qinghao, she sketched in the air, hands fluttering like leaves. “About this tall! Green! Pointy leaves with little toothed edges! It blooms! Yellow flowers—”

Little Moon watched Kelor’s urgent pantomime, eyelid twitching like a drumbeat. She cocked her head toward Lingcai and murmured, deadpan. “…Which one is Nobel?”

“How would I know? Ask her…” Lingcai passed the question back, palms up.

Kelor heard and swallowed her temper again, words smoothed like river stones. “It’s not a person you know. Nobel was a famous inventor. He set up a fund to reward people who made great contributions to humanity. Got it?”

Little Moon met Lingcai’s eyes, both blank as fresh paper. She waved Kelor on. “Got it. Keep spinning—no, keep going.”

“I’m not spinning tales! It’s real! The first Chinese laureate for physiology or medicine—she discovered it. Her name is Tu—”

“Pfft.” Little Moon snorted a laugh, turning away.

Kelor’s eyes went wide. She threw up her hands. “What are you laughing at?”

Little Moon turned back with a straight face, stone calm. “I thought of something happy.”

“What happy thing?” Kelor glared, words like darts. “Your wife having a baby or something?”

“Yes, yes—wait, no, no…” Little Moon pointed at Lingcai like tossing a pebble. “No. My wife didn’t give birth. Her wife did. I’m happy for her.”

Lingcai blinked, baffled, a question mark hanging like a paper kite. “My wife didn’t give birth either. And even if she did, why would you be happy?”

Little Moon clutched her stomach from holding back laughter too long, words tumbling like marbles. “Actually, we share a wife… wait, that’s wrong. Actually, she is my wife… that’s wrong too… I—pffthahaha—I can’t hold it—hahaha— I swear I’m not laughing at you! Absolutely not!”

Kelor roared and lunged, fury blazing like a bonfire. “You’ve been laughing at me the whole time! You never stopped!”