Lingchen Yao slipped from the library’s lamplight into the black market’s smoke, hunting a way to purge spatial Mana clinging like frost to a wound.

The Eye Orb and Qianchun had offered methods all week, a handful of lanterns in fog, yet most sat beyond her reach.

Let her retract it herself? Please—before the Moon Owl, Lingchen was a hatchling chick, all fluff and no talons, even at full tilt she left no scratch.

Use equal or greater force to cancel it? Her gut tightened like a knotted reed mat; marks could brand her bones, and Order Keepers prowl these alleys like winter wolves.

Also, her purse was a hollow gourd—no coin, no courage that money buys.

She’d harvested a few Magic Stones last time, cold stars cupped in her palm; a third paid to the Eye Orb, one crushed to tear a rift.

Most went to Qianchun; the healing and Mana boosters burned away like paper talismans in wind—she stood now with pockets like bare branches.

She ghosted past two doorkeepers, reeds bending around stone, and reached the counter where the attendant wore a lacquered smile while new guests scowled like storm clouds.

When that knot of patrons drifted off, the attendant exhaled, a leaf settling; stubborn clients were thorns she wasn’t good at plucking.

“Hello. What do you need—post a job, or ask for information?” Her tone was warm tea, steady despite the chill.

She studied Lingchen and remembered the newcomer from weeks back, a small spender with potential like a seed under snow.

“I’m asking if there’s a way to purge Mana that’s attached to a wound.” Her words were a wrapped blade—truth, without the edge.

She held back the type; the Eye Orb had warned, “Don’t swallow everything the market whispers. A crumb of detail can brand you.”

“Also, I don’t want anyone else doing the purging. My trust is a locked box.”

The attendant’s hand rested on the ledger, eyes flicking like sparrows over lines.

“Lucky timing. Someone’s selling a Purge Disk today. It’s old, etched thin—limited uses. The seller’s temper’s… sandpaper.”

“That’s for my eyes to judge. Temper doesn’t scare me.” Lingchen tilted her chin like a cat; “Anything else?”

The attendant leafed the ledger, shook her head, then pointed down a corridor to a door at the end, a cave mouth in dim light.

“Thanks.” The word slipped out like a drop from a bamboo spout.

“What an interesting kid—clearly polite,” she murmured, noting a line under Lingchen’s number with a quiet scratch like a cricket.

A thought flitted through her mind, a moth wing on flame: Was she saving kin who escaped that one, or the earlier few?

She closed the notebook softly, drew back her gaze like a curtain, and faced new customers with azure eyes wrapped in velvet black.

Lingchen knocked, a gentle tap, and a voice answered from within, sharp as a eunuch’s reed pipe, raising goosebumps like ants under skin.

“Who is it?”

“I heard you’re selling a Purge Disk. I’d like to ask the price.” She kept her tone steady, a candle in draft.

“Come in.”

She pushed the door; a fish-stink rolled out like low tide. The man inside wore rags with torn leaves, a bin-crawler dressed in rot.

“I don’t need money,” he rasped, words flaking like dry paint. “The Purge Disk sits here. Take it, promise me one thing, it’s yours.”

“But with your current strength, you can’t lift it. You’re too weak. You also don’t… cough…” His breath rattled like old bamboo.

No money? Her heart sprang like a trapped sparrow; she forced it down, a student’s will tightening like silk thread.

The disk was night-black, rimmed with cramped silver-white sigils, worn thin like river stones from too many hands.

Can this relic still sing?

She tried to lift it, but it lay inert, a sleeping tortoise refusing the sun.

“The method’s simple,” he said, finger tracing air like chalk. “You need talent and enough Mana. Both matter. Mana can be drawn from Magic Stones.”

Magic Stones were the one thing she lacked—empty palms, empty sky.

She felt she could lift it with a stance that gathered Mana like a net around a school of fish.

But if she stirred hard now, the Moon Owl would tear space like silk and step in. Safer path, or gamble on thunder?

She recalled the car crash near Jiuqiong this morning, omens like broken glass; she’d need power soon, and the spatial Mana would tick like a bomb.

“These walls are Obsidian Stone, but thin,” she thought, finger tapping like rain. “Do they block the spread? If not, it’s GG.”

If the Moon Owl wanted her dead, it would be a pluck of a feather.

The ragged elder didn’t drive her out; he saw her hesitation like ripples in a tea cup, then tapped the wall, knuckles ring like stone bells.

“Rest easy. These Obsidian Stone walls stop most Cantata Two scrying. Even a Cantata Three hunter must weigh the cost.”

“Otherwise, the Order Keepers would’ve cleaned this place like a pot long ago.”

“Then please keep what follows sealed,” Lingchen said, a lid on boiling.

“Are you sure about this?” The question hung like a blade, and the Eye Orb’s pulse quickened, a drum in a storm.

The old man glanced at the Eye Orb, a mote disguised on Lingchen’s bracelet.

“I can stake my life as guarantee. Or we use other means. For example… this. Little one, come out. No outsiders here.”

The Eye Orb flicked free, a silver pupil cutting light.

“How did you see me? My traits don’t show easily.” Its voice was polished obsidian, curious and hard.

“My eyes are special,” the elder sighed, a wind through pine. “I see the flow of Mana and Abyssal Aura from birth.”

“You’re a braid of many auras and Mana—hard to miss. But I don’t see color. All creatures look warped in my sight.”

He pointed to his pale eyes, milky moons under cloud.

“The little friend beside you, I can’t read. Dense Mana, dense Abyssal Aura, yet not an augment, not a Magic Maiden, not Abyss-born…”

“Since you don’t trust me—” He lifted a yellowed sheet from his bag and slid it over; the Eye Orb’s pupil contracted like a snapped bowstring.

“A paper inscribed with a Contract Array?!”

“What is it?” Lingchen asked, curiosity rising like steam.

“A small measure,” he said, voice soft as ash. The Eye Orb nodded, “I’ve seen one, once, in another storm.”

The elder looked from Eye Orb to Lingchen, words stacking like tiles.

“By simulating Magic Maiden spells and studying ancient arrays, another and I replicated a Contract Array.”

“It binds two parties like mirrored vows. Write the terms; trigger with a Magic Stone; it takes hold.”

Lingchen nodded; she’d studied Contract Magic, a forest of branches, with the Equal Contract most common—two sides keep the same rule.

A third party judges; if breached, punishment falls like hail. The judge is usually the Magic Maiden codenamed Order.

But Contract Magic is high mountain terrain, offered as an elective.

“Unlike Contract Magic, the Contract Array needs no third party,” he said. “It adds two arrays. Breach them, and the array strangles.”

“So its difficulty climbs like sheer cliffs.”

“Then it’s priceless?” Lingchen’s eyes brightened, coins ringing in her mind like chimes.

“It’s fine—just one sheet. If lost, I could make more, though I won’t live to see it…” His smile was a cracked mask.

The Eye Orb pondered, a still pond holding stars, then agreed. The paper was clean—no false door, no trick hinge, matching memory’s grain.

They signed; two arrays flew left and right like swallows, sinking into their brows with cool needles of light.

“The terms: ‘No one may disclose today’s deal.’ Break it, and your spirit is shredded like soaked pulp.” The weight settled like stone.

The elder nodded. Lingchen’s silver-gray bracelet flickered, a moon under frost, and Mana filled the obsidian room like rising tide.

Spatial Mana at her neck detonated like glass; wounds bloomed at wrist and throat, and Blood slid down her red-black dress like winter wine.

Far off, the Moon Owl felt the spatial scent, reached out and tore space as if it were silk, then told Yun Mengmeng beside her, still listing examples:

“There’s prey. I’m stepping out. You can rest a while.”

“Mm? What was I doing? Forgot again…” Yun Mengmeng frowned at her doll, nails scratching like tiny combs through wool.

The elder felt the sudden surge of Mana and Abyssal Aura, and his body shivered like old bamboo; in his sight stood not a Magic Maiden but a dragon with iron breath.

Lingchen gathered Mana, a storm coiling in a tea bowl, and lifted the Purge Disk as if it weighed no more than a mooncake.

“This should do, right?” Her voice was sand-dry, but the plate sat in her hands like a quiet moon.

“Amazing,” the elder whispered, smile sharp as a thin knife. “Someone fused those two forces. That’s your work, isn’t it?”

The Eye Orb gave a small nod, a ripple across ink.

“If only I’d met you earlier… Never mind. Business first. You’ve lifted the Purge Disk. Will you be my disciple and carry this array onward?”

“Hold that,” Lingchen said, breath thready like a cracked flute. “Can we purge the spatial Mana from my wounds first? I’m about to drop…” She shot the Eye Orb and the elder a weary look, half blame, half plea.