Senior Wang’s room was neat as a paper fan, clothes and appliances lined up like soldiers on parade, the floor clear as still water. Only her cabinet was odd, a bright scar gouged across it. She told the dorm inspectors it was an accident while moving things.
It was an accident, yet the nail still hit the plank: she had damaged company property. They fined her two hundred, a leaf in the wind to her. She wasn’t here for money, only for work.
She was an Order Keeper from District Twenty One, sent in like a shadow under the lamp. Order Keepers did cooperate with Seekers and the Modification Center, but she saw the Seeker ties knot tighter with the Center, like vines twining in the dark, hiding research that smelled wrong.
The mud monster from days ago—officially dubbed the Mud King—left prints in the clay. Those prints led back to the Divine Cult Modification Center, the very one she was infiltrating.
Cooperation was one thing; trust was another, thin as frost on glass. Undercover agents were a must, or who knew what experiments brewed in the deepest basement? Who knew if a knife would bloom from your back at the worst hour?
Senior Wang wasn’t the strongest blade, which made her the best needle. Two years under, quiet as roots. The supervisor’s temper was sour, the workload heavy, the pay crooked, yet the undercover life moved like a boat in a slow current.
She was confident she had mapped four hundred quick passages above level thirteen, big and small like capillaries. She had the hobbies and habits of two managers pinned like insects. But the true boss was a turtle in the deepest pond, almost never surfacing, living at the lowest level of the Modification Center.
No one could approach, no one could ask, like a taboo name in a temple. That was why two years had yielded so little fruit.
She slid out a corner of the metal window frame with a sound like a knife leaving its sheath. She had turned that hollow into a cache for messages and contraband. After logging Night Frost’s details, she shoved the metal grate back and barricaded it with flanking steel cabinets.
Her phone paired with a registered tablet through a leathered shell app. It sent messages dressed as useless chatter, like chaff in the wind. The Order Keepers could thresh it and find the grain.
Experience whispered like a cold draft: Night Frost’s arrival would push the infiltration forward. A simple, low-tech plant made for selling out or charging first, a straw effigy thrown into the fire. She needed a chance to work with Night Frost.
But Night Frost likely meant outside forces were stepping past District Twenty One’s border, like tide over a seawall. Maybe the Divine Cult’s hand had stretched too far these years and stirred the wrong nests. Good or ill, hard to say.
She couldn’t read Night Frost’s backing. The girl wore a mana suppressor, yet a filament of mana still leaked like incense smoke. Judging by top-tier dampeners, Night Frost felt mid-tier in Cantata Two.
She hoped the girl knew it. Even shielded, you leave footprints on wet clay. Earlier, Night Frost smothered that breath well. With the device, even she had mistaken Night Frost for an ordinary face in the crowd.
By day, Night Frost had only just slipped in. Senior Wang had already bottled that trace of invisible mana. Now she would drip it into a simplified mana assay, see which path of Magic Maiden it pointed to.
Sadly, it was a common tester, a reed pipe not a zither. It only checked elemental lean, and it was slow, like dew forming. She’d get the result after a nap. She sealed it, tossed it into a corner like a pebble, and went to sleep.
Night Frost’s side burned like a small market at dusk. She wanted sleep, but Zhou Jiaxin had no drowsiness, eyes bright as a cat’s. One episode, then another, laughter popping now and then, the lights blazing like noon.
Night Frost finally understood the single-room policy. With habits like Zhou Jiaxin’s—idle hands flipping day and night—sharing a room meant gambling tomorrow’s work on a coin toss.
She gathered a bead of mana and smacked the light switch. The lights died; darkness swallowed the room like ink spreading in water. Only Zhou’s phone glowed like a trapped firefly. How do you kill the urge to binge?
Zhou Jiaxin apologized in words, not in steps. Maybe shipping CP had rattled her brain, or maybe it had always rattled. And how did someone like that land a pharmaceuticals post in the Modification Center?
An invisible ravine opened between Night Frost and the older Zhou Jiaxin, thin as paper, deep as sea.
Bored, Night Frost scrolled her phone, the screen a little river. Kaneko’s message finally chimed. Kaneko had woken after draining her mana dry. She saw the new room, the food, the note Night Frost left, and decided to tell some truths.
First, Kaneko wasn’t from District Twenty One. She wandered to widen her sky. Second, she carried a terminal sickness; it didn’t hobble her days, but her years were few, like candles already short. Third, she loved the mood of Night Frost’s squad—looked after, and worries lifted like mist.
She wanted to stay. She told them not to mind if she lived or died; with so little life left, even dying here would be a good memory, like a last red leaf pressed in a book.
Since Kaneko said that, Night Frost couldn’t sweep her out like dust. She told Kaneko to eat what was on the table. When Zhao Qingsnow’s wounds stabilized, the Old Woman would come for her. Night Frost had duties and likely wouldn’t make it back.
After setting those stones, Night Frost closed her eyes. Zhou’s drama still babbled nearby, but Night Frost was a rock tossed into a deep pond. She sank into sleep.
At dawn, Night Frost woke, warmth drowsy in her chest. She pried herself free from Zhou Jiaxin, who hugged her like a dead pig clutching a bolster, and began the undercover day with washing and makeup.
Her makeup skill had climbed like bamboo these days. In the mirror, her face looked like a mask worn by someone else. Stare long enough, and the mask became skin.
Mask on, Zhou Jiaxin’s coat on her shoulders, she slipped out like a breeze.
Biopharma clocked in at eight. If work piled like bricks, you left late; if it thinned like fog, you left early. Judging by the supervisor’s fuss today, the pile would be real.
Yet little would fall on Night Frost, and none on the supervisor. With only three in the pharma room, who would shoulder the mountain?
The Mud King wasn’t dead. It resisted current anti-cancer drugs like oil shedding water. Overuse grew resistance like barnacles. A new drug was needed, and the task to find a way to root it out fell on them like a boulder.
Night Frost let the supervisor hand out tasks, then waved her off like a fly. The supervisor dropped to her knees and confessed, itching and pain had gnawed her all night. She needed Night Frost’s “antidote.”
Night Frost handed it over, tongue itching to say it was all in her head, but some words are arrows you don’t shoot.
She didn’t really know pharma, and Zhou Jiaxin was still asleep. With last night’s scrap of skill, she was seven orifices open to the world, but none for this craft. In short, clueless.
She couldn’t do it. The stack of documents loomed like a wall. Senior Wang came straight at her, steps soundless as falling ash. Tall, she blocked the lamp behind Night Frost, her long shadow a cloak.
A prickle ran up Night Frost’s spine like cold wind. She turned. Bundled tight, the two of them faced off, eyes like blades. Senior Wang spoke first.
“You can’t do it, can you?”
Night Frost’s tongue tied itself in knots. She was already weighing whether to feed Senior Wang a vial of Magic Maiden trait potion.
“You’re about to poison me, like you did the supervisor, aren’t you?”
Senior Wang cut clean to the bone. Night Frost’s guard flared. Fire threaded through her thick clothes and hovered in her palm, a red snake ready to strike, her stance tight as a bow.
Senior Wang raised both hands and drifted back a step. The heavy shadow peeled off Night Frost like a cloak dropping.
“I don’t want to be your enemy. I want a deal.”
Night Frost didn’t want a deal. If she felled this one here, her cover would stay whole as silk.
“I can see you don’t. I saw it last time. What you fed her was an Order Keeper potion, right? Not poison—healing. That won’t work on me.”
A hint of mana bled off Senior Wang, fine as rain, yet it held a knife-edge. Night Frost felt danger brush her skin.
“And you’re Cantata Two. So am I. You wield fire. I’ve prepared Magic Tools that smother flame like wet earth.”
Last night’s tester had skimmed Night Frost’s mana: 90% mana, 5% Abyssal Aura. Of that 90, fire took 75, a bonfire. The other 25 gave no ripple. So Senior Wang packed tools to fight fire.
“If you start a fight here, it won’t end in your favor. If I just shout, ‘There’s an undercover,’ who gets hauled to interrogation? Me, an old hand, or you, a stranger wearing Zhou Jiaxin’s name?”
She paused, letting the words settle like dust.
“You’re carrying a mana dampener, aren’t you? I’m not. I can gather and release my mana without a trace. You can’t.”
“Besides, I’ll make it worth your while.”
