“For the past hundred years, every five years, our world brushes against several tracts of the Abyss, like tides kissing a jagged reef.”

“They had no names at first, but by the breeds they spawned, we named them 【Insect】, 【Beast】, 【Human】, 【Myth】, and so on, like labels pinned to storms. Right now, our world’s orbit is linked with 【Beast】 and 【Insect】, like twin rails crossing in fog. Watch their moves at all hours, to stave off the next flood of invasion…”

【Order Keeper】 Headquarters. Twenty-two girls’ projections ringed a diamond obelisk, like moons circling a pale spear of stone. Milky halos lapped outward from their feet like tidewater.

They stared at the obelisk, where motes like colored stars drifted, a small sky trapped in glass. The brightest blue spark was their world, a lantern in night.

Around that blue burned gray and a glaring red, the marks of 【Beast】 and 【Insect】, like ash and fresh blood staining a map. When the tracks overlapped, space thinned like worn silk, and monsters could claw through the veil from that side to this.

Humans could cross too, but human strength was a candle in the wind.

“Report. Ninth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Districts have large numbers of 【Insects】, black and liquid like tar. They can parasitize and devour humans, like rot under skin. Below 【Cantata Two】 can’t handle them alone… it’s a new unit we’ve never seen!”

A bell of danger rang, cold as iron on stone.

“【Insect】 has never fielded units with high personal power, a swarm without a tiger. But they win by numbers, and their tricks are strange as a swamp. Most are small and hard to catch, like gnats in rain. This is a knot. Any methods, without invoking the power of 【Order】?”

“Our existing formations can’t seal on all fronts, like nets full of holes. For these things, I see only dispersing the crowd…”

The plan left her mouth and hit a wall. A robed girl cut in, steady as a mountain shadow. She was the Twelfth District’s Warden, a 【Cantata Three】.

“No. The Twelfth took heavy damage before, our living space already a shrinking island. Drive people out and the Twelfth has nowhere left to stand, like crabs on a hot rock. And you took profit from the Twelfth, yet the Twelfth got only crumbs for compensation…”

“Sorry. I can’t comply,” she said, voice flat as a shut gate.

The proposer fell silent, her words like leaves blown back. The Warden spoke truth. The Twelfth’s space was small, and much of it hilly and stubborn, like ribs under skin. Dispersal was a fantasy; better to abandon the Twelfth outright, a knife instead of balm.

That road was blocked, a river choked with silt.

Some among them had reaped great gains from Twelfth District lands, fat harvests from thin earth. They had paid some after, but it was a drop on a desert stone. And they had nothing else to repay with, only empty hands.

So they retreated a step. In session, they granted the Twelfth broader rights, and promised more annual funds, like a thin blanket in winter.

“I, a 【Seeker】, have recently cracked a new formation, a spark caught from flint. It might ease your urgent fire. It’s a Lockdown Formation, unlike our old seals, a true all-around seal like a jar with no seam. It blocks air, blocks mana, blocks Abyssal Aura, layer nesting within layer like shells. But the core needs at least two 【Cantata Two】 to maintain…”

She lifted her hand, and bands of light braided together like woven reeds on water.

“Two 【Cantata Two】… that could work, a bridge of two pillars. But the materials cost is heavy as lead. Who knows how long to earn it back, counting every grain? The treasury’s already in the red, and this piles snow on frost…”

The Ninth District’s Magic Maiden spoke in a seasoned tone, eyes ticking like an abacus. She was weighing how to shave the materials bill, like a butcher trimming fat.

In recent years, space felt thinner and thinner, like ice in spring. Even distant worlds could tear an 【Abyssal Rift】 with a tug, and disasters came year on year like monsoon. Spending swelled like a flood, and in a few years the treasury might run dry.

Silence pooled. Then the girl at the highest seat spoke, her voice drifting like a feather and striking like a hammer.

“Here, we end,” she said, a curtain falling on wind.

Talking more was night with no dawn. They took the formation plans and quit the hall, like birds breaking from a wire.

“Ah—these people chant that formations bring disaster, yet they study harder than anyone, like cats hoarding fish. All to keep it clutched in their fists…”

The Twelfth’s Warden sprawled on her bed, a scroll tossed aside like a fallen leaf. She lifted a hand and pushed the scroll’s data to the mature woman in the Information Office, like sending a spark down a fuse.

The woman was neck-deep in the black-bug crisis, drowning in pitch. A scroll etched with formations flared in her mind like dawn, and the fog parted.

“Xiao!”

【Moon Owl】 tore space like fabric and stepped through, a night bird with a silver beak.

“What is it?” Her voice was cool water.

“I just received the Warden’s revelation. We’ve got a way to seal these annoying bugs, like bottling smoke!”

She passed the formation data from the scroll, and the woman’s tight face eased, a storm breaking into light. The weight in her chest lifted, like a stone slid from a pack. With a way, the path ahead grew straight.

“We can do this. First, seal all river mouths, like corking every throat to the sea. Then spread mana crystal salt citywide like frost, easy to make and not too hungry on resources, just a bit wasteful. Drive the bugs to the central clearing and wipe them out like herding fire into a pit!”

She paused, a finger tapping like rain.

“But the formation says we need at least two 【Cantata Two】, and by the look of it we can only seal about one third of the Twelfth at a time, like a quilt that won’t cover the feet. So we need eight or more 【Cantata Two】… Our district has eight at most, counting the 【Warden】…”

“Then no one’s left to sweep the bugs, a blade with no hand,” Moon Owl said, brows knitted like crossed twigs.

“Can a 【First Symphony】 do it?” she asked, a pebble tossed into a pond.

“You need fifty 【First Symphony】 to match one 【Cantata Two】, and it’s unstable, like a bridge of reeds,” the woman said.

That path carried risk. If anything failed, they’d lose a hundred 【First Symphony】, like stars snuffed at once. They couldn’t pay that price. Among them were bright talents fated to step into 【Cantata Two】, the future pillars of the Twelfth, like young trees in a windbreak.

“I recall a wanted man skilled in formations in our district, a fox in the hills. We might use his hand to alter the formation, so the terms won’t be so harsh.”

She pulled up the file, windows opening like petals. If 【Lingchen Yao】 had been there, he’d have recognized the old man at a glance as her so‑called master, a name tied with twine.

“Mm. I agree,” Moon Owl said, decision clean as a cut.

With no better way, Moon Owl went to find the elder, wings into night. The woman, meanwhile, moved the resource departments by the formation’s current needs, gears turning like a mill.

“A great war… is it about to begin?” she murmured, staring into the screen like a dark lake.

She sat at her desk and sipped black coffee, bitter as burnt bark. “Overtime again. Only dogs do overtime. I’m the dog. Woof, sob.”

She pulled up the map and began dropping pins, stars pricking a paper sky.

…

Back in the dorm, 【Lingchen Yao】 knew none of this, a boat on a calm reach while storms brewed upstream.

After battle upon battle, he felt his weakness like cold in the bones. He needed a new realm urgently, a step like a cliff ledge, but there was no progress.

Formations could boost him a bit, a brace on a bent bow. But he couldn’t lay them mid‑fight; before he finished, he’d likely be dead, a candle pinched by wind.

For him now, the fastest way to grow was to advance to 【Cantata Two】, a door only heart could open.

“A Magic Maiden’s strength lies in the heart, like fire in a lantern. In plain words, idealism. If your emotion isn’t fierce enough, you can’t step into 【Cantata Two】. Say you want to be strong—why do you want strength? Or, why did you become what you are?” the 【Eye Orb】 said, a pupil reflecting storms.

It was only guidance, a path pointed with a twig.

“What for? I’ve always known…” he said, voice low as dusk.

He looked at two wooden human figurines by his hand, eyes dropping like heavy lids. Two blurred silhouettes slid through his mind like shadows behind gauze.

“No, you don’t. Or rather, you aren’t clear, and you aren’t detailed enough,” the Eye Orb replied, a bell with a muffled tongue.

The Eye Orb fell silent. From here on, he had to walk alone, a traveler under thin moon. More reminders would be cages; knowing too much would make the breakthrough harder than iron.

The Eye Orb glanced at the wooden carvings. The one gifted by that 【Cantata Three】 lay there, quiet as a stone. A faint blue halo bled from it like mist, so weak it barely touched the air. Array Patterns spread from that carving, thin vines creeping, and latched onto the 【Dreadwolf】 carving.

The Dreadwolf seemed to wake, and it gave a tiny paw-swipe like a pup in sleep. Soon it stiffened back into wood, but its posture changed, from standing to crouching, like breath settling.

“Not enough energy? I think I know what this formation inside is for, a loom weaving marrow,” the Eye Orb mused.

It nodded, then fished a 【Magic Stone】 from its own space, a pearl from a dark pond, and pressed it into the socket. The stone powdered in a blink like crushed chalk, and the carving stayed mute, a fish with closed gills.

The Eye Orb turned away, helpless as a cloud. Only then did the carving begin slowly converting the Dreadwolf beside it, like frost creeping across glass.

“A wooden block, what are you shy about?” it grumbled, a laugh under breath.

Nearly three hours later, the Dreadwolf finished changing and hopped out of the drawer, a shadow made nimble.

The Eye Orb watched it closely, gaze a knife on silk. Aside from fine blue lines on its surface, thin as capillaries, there was nothing else to speak of.

“Move once,” it said, tone light as a flick.

The Dreadwolf obeyed, flipping in the air like a tossed coin. Its claws were sharp as awls, and they gouged three proud scratches in the laptop’s metal shell, a rooster’s tracks on frost.

【Lingchen Yao】 would kill it when he woke, a thunderclap in a calm room.

“What else can you do? I don’t think this is all,” the Eye Orb pressed, curiosity a cat’s paw.

The Dreadwolf’s eyes went round, twin beads of ink. Black mane sprouted, and it swelled with presence, like a real 【Dreadwolf】 shrunk for a child’s palm. Its size was small, and there was no 【Abyssal Aura】, a wolf without shadow.

“Fear? It even carries the ability, and no Abyssal Aura!” the Eye Orb said, shock bright as lightning.

Too heaven-defying. The Eye Orb’s mind raced on replication and mass production, a factory of wood and light. If energy held, it could birth an army of carved beasts, a forest on the march. But the cost was steep as a cliff; one 【Magic Stone】 of 【First Symphony】 seemed to last only an hour or so, a candle stub.

“This formation still has flaws, holes like moth-bites. But it’s a fine direction for research, a road along a ridge. No Abyssal Aura and a small body… perfect for infiltration, a knife in the sleeve. It even has the Dreadwolf’s ability, and its strength ranks within 【First Symphony】—though near the bottom rung. And the cost is heavy,” it muttered, counting shadows.

“You… go back to what you were,” it warned, a finger to lips.

Rustling came from the hall, dry leaves on tile. Wang Qipeng lugged a package through the door, his face calm as still water.

He drew a rectangular body pillow from the box, white as a cloud slab, and stuffed random things inside, like a kid hiding treasures in straw.