Senior Wang pressed like a blade at the throat, all edge, no slack. Her prep was watertight, like a drum sealed against rain. Night Frost couldn’t handle her head‑on. At best, they’d blow together, then point fingers and scream spy. That storm would drench them both. Night Frost wasn’t the sort to charge blind like a bull.

“The benefits you promised?”

Hearing Night Frost agree, Senior Wang stopped hiding cards, like a dealer laying down a hand under a lamp. She traced a shape in the air, then fished a half‑map from her heavy white isolation suit. She tilted it, a crescent of paper under sterile light, and hinted Night Frost could come to her room at midnight to “talk.”

“This is the map I’ve built over years,” she said, voice flat as glass on winter water. “Check the blank zones or the marked ones. I won’t stop you. In exchange, I’ll do your work today and I won’t out you.”

Night Frost nodded. She took the half‑map, half doubt and half trust like twin shadows at dusk, and left. She’d wanted to spend one of her rare contracts on Senior Wang. She held back. The woman was an Order Keeper.

How did Night Frost know? Only the Order Keeper would dispatch Cantata Two here to guard the Modification Center, like iron rings around a kiln. Senior Wang had full instruments and Magic Tools, a steel orchard of proof that she was one of them.

Even if the other side couldn’t break a contract, the moment word reached their higher‑ups, the Twelfth District couldn’t keep this technique, like sand cupped in a leaking palm. The odds of them finding out were sky‑high.

A new mole in the Modification Center must already be known to District Twenty One’s top brass, like ripples spread the instant a stone sinks. Night Frost knew she was a clumsy spy. Senior Wang would be asked about her. Bound by contract, Wang could only shut her mouth and stare at the floor. Only the most trusted hands get sent out to infiltrate elsewhere, or you leave weeds to seed trouble.

Night Frost’s credentials were easy to check. Peek hard at recent registration entries and the seam shows between her and Kaneko, a loose thread that leads right to the Twelfth District. Then everyone would know the Twelfth held a way to gag people.

Zhou Jiaxin, who had nothing to do with the Order Keeper, made a better target for a contract, like clean parchment waiting for ink.

Night Frost held the map, scanned it like a hawk over fields, then slipped it into her Spatial Box. She shed the bulky protective suit. She masked up and walked toward the elevator, quiet as frost over tiles.

The doors opened with a hush. A dozen employees stepped out like fish from a net. Night Frost ducked her head, a bag over her thoughts, and drifted in.

She glanced up left. The camera she’d wrecked still hung dead, like a blind eye in the ceiling. She seized the gap, pulled out her phone, and asked Blade if District Twenty One had any Magic Maidens named Wang, from Cantata Two.

Blade delivered hard and fast, like knives in a rack. He sent every Wang registered as a Magic Maiden in District Twenty One. None were tagged Cantata Two. Digging deeper would take time, like prying stones from permafrost.

The third floor chimed. Night Frost tucked the phone away, annoyance flicking like a gnat at her ear. She looked around. White coats clustered like gulls at a pier. Thanks to the Mud King, positions had doubled. Rotating shifts rolled like tides. Other departments stared on in envy.

This block focused on mechanical tech. The parts assembly zone had a mechanical research corner, two streams braided by overlapping techniques. They’d been merged for now, like two tributaries forced through one gate.

They still glared at each other like grinding gears. Maybe they thought the other side was stealing their bread.

A parts tech spotted Night Frost. He waved with the boldness of a midday rooster and asked what she needed.

“I’m getting to know the Divine Cult Modification Center,” Night Frost said, clouds over water hiding the moon. She brushed him off and told them to focus. Then she walked straight into the depths.

“Feels like a looker,” the bold one muttered, crouching with his parts, the smell of disinfectant like winter on her coat. “Probably from the upper floors. New?”

He thought his eye was sharp, a falcon under noon sun, and tried chatting up the nearest. The others clearly didn’t care to feed his talk.

A small sideline, nothing more. Night Frost soon saw a bright sign: no entry for idlers. Two guards stood like pine poles beneath it. Heavy body armor draped their frames, guns rode their hips, riot shields gripped in white‑knuckled hands.

Their eyes fixed forward like nails in wood. Only when Night Frost stepped into their shade did both gazes stick to her like thorns. She offered a thin smile and slid out of their line, a fish slipping reeds.

She hadn’t planned to go in. She only wanted to test the map’s truth. The label said Biological Research. The walls and smell agreed, like text and echo. Pity she couldn’t pass.

She checked a few more spots, needle to thread. The map held up, seams tight. By noon, she turned back to the pharmaceutical section. She walked past the supervisor and into the lab, a knife cutting silk. The supervisor said nothing. Fear fluttered behind his eyes like moths at a lamp.

Night Frost donned a white coat. The protective suit was a cocoon, too slow to shed and grow. She passed the disinfection room, mist cold as dawn, and returned to her bench. Half a man‑high stack of documents had already been halved by Senior Wang, a paper mountain shaved by a winter wind. Bottles and jars stood ready, a glass forest waiting for rain.

Senior Wang earned her title. Her undercover craft burned like a kiln at full heat. In a few hours she finished enough to drown Night Frost’s two or three days. From her posture, she meant to push through every reagent, one breath to the horizon.

The pharmaceutical section ran hot, work like a hammer on anvil. For Senior Wang, only speed carved time for undercover work. She’d considered changing posts. She found no other beat matched this one.

First, she’d graduated from a military medical school, blade meeting whetstone. Becoming a Magic Maiden was an accident on the road. Second, the pharma section was busy; busy hands don’t raise suspicion, like a bee no one questions at a hive. Third, its reports climbed two rungs, while other departments started at three. Fewer steps meant it brushed closer to Cantata Two.

Yet the manager from Cantata Two over pharma hardly asked about work, a quiet sky that never opened. That was fine, but if you never met the manager, you never reached the core. For a mole, that was a fatal frost.

At midnight, Night Frost nodded to Zhou Jiaxin, a shadow greeting a shadow. She knocked on Senior Wang’s door. No answer. She waited in the corridor like a cat in a draft, until Senior Wang returned from the pharmaceutical section, the scent of reagents clinging like cold fog.

Senior Wang was sullen, a storm with no rain. She yawned, a crack in ice, and shot Night Frost a sour glance.

Night Frost had done nothing all afternoon but scroll news on her phone, a river of words flowing nowhere. Senior Wang had chewed data for hours. Useless materials piled like a small hill.

Night Frost clocked out on time, a bird at dusk. Senior Wang had skipped two meals and worked until this hour, pushing the experiment forward like a millstone inching grain.

Night Frost felt no shame under that look, her heart a still pond. A deal was a deal. Senior Wang should finish all the work. Night Frost hadn’t expected it to run this late, the night stretched like taut silk.

She hadn’t spent it all slacking. With time to breathe, she matched the face and manner of Senior Wang in her mind to pages and ink. In dozens of files, she found a few that might be hers, like shells that might hide a pearl. She couldn’t be sure.

Guard up, Night Frost followed her inside, a second shadow trailing the first.

On the monitoring side, the analysis neared its end, a candle stub guttering. The man stared at his screen in boredom, like a fisherman at a still lake. He wanted to finish and chat again with the girl from yesterday’s elevator, a daydream like steam on tea.

This camera was third‑generation, near‑new, with the sharpest eyes and dual backups. A Magic Stone rode inside, feeding emergency power like a heartseed. The Modification Center loved it. But repairs and exports ran slower than old models, like honey leaving the spoon.

He’d been bone‑tired last night. Mid‑parse, sleep surged like a black tide. He forgot to hit confirm. The analysis stalled. Results due in the morning crawled out at noon.

At dawn he swapped in a spare camera, neat as a new bandage, then returned to his desk and started parsing the footage.

What he saw jolted him, a thunderclap over flat water. The masked girl from yesterday walked into the elevator with Pharmaceutical Sector One’s supervisor. For some reason, the supervisor stumbled and blocked half the lens, like a coat thrown over a lantern.

Then the feed blurred, a haze like heat over stone. That meant Mana ran thin. Someone had drained the Magic Stone. Luckily, the camera kept a reserve. It turned stored Mana into power and kept recording, an ember nursing flame.

Night Frost stepped out from the corner, a shadow sliding from shade. She drove the supervisor back into a corner. He didn’t hear the words, only saw begging lips. Night Frost held a vial of almost transparent liquid, a shard of winter water. She forced it down his throat. Then they left the elevator.

He swallowed, throat dry as old parchment. He had chatted with Night Frost yesterday, side by side in the elevator. He hadn’t expected a pretty face to hide that kind of rot, sugar over poison.

From her method, she knew this camera’s tricks. A street cam would’ve died the moment the stone was drained. This new model dodged that net.

If it weren’t new, she would’ve fooled him clean!

She’d slipped into Pharmaceutical Sector One. Whatever her goal, it wasn’t good. Absolutely not.

He hurried to call the higher‑ups and uploaded the footage to the manager, fingers ticking like rain on tin. District managers were swamped with the Mud King, so replies would come slow, like mail over mountains. All he had to do now was sit, wait for the manager’s reply, the praise, the raise, like fruit ripening on the branch.

Still, just waiting felt like wasting moonlight. From her eyes and brow, she was a rare beauty, a plum blossom in snow. If he let the district manager handle her outright, what a pity that would be…

The evidence lay in his hands like a leash. Before the district manager dealt with her, a little “deep talk” wouldn’t be too much. After all, she was the one who’d sinned.