Back from Senior Wang’s room, Night Frost carried a map of the levels below Nine, like bones sketched under a mountain. Senior Wang wanted her as a gun, a blade wielded at arm’s length; beyond Level Thirteen lay a cliff Wang had never crossed.
Night Frost agreed, a cold ember settling in her chest. Her true aim was to sniff out ties between the Seeker and the Modification Center, to slip into the Seeker along that thread like a fish following a river’s current. In Wang’s intel, the Modification Center touched almost every group in District Twenty One, roots sunk deep into black earth.
But Night Frost wouldn’t swing for free. Feeling herself on a slight knife-edge, she bargained like frost biting a leaf. To turn Night Frost into her gun, Senior Wang paid in materials; like two hawks sharing the wind, they both came away ahead.
She’d hauled in a good harvest today, a basket full of cold iron and rare dust. The next few simple array plates finally had a landing, and she returned to Zhou Jiaxin’s room with a small warmth, like tea steaming in winter.
The girl wasn’t streaming shows tonight; she sat quiet, a book cupped like a hearth. Night Frost traded a couple light words, then drifted to the bathroom, a pebble dropping into still water.
She came out wrapped in a towel, skin pale as porcelain, shoulders breathing steam into the cool air. Her wet black hair clung like dark vines; droplets slid along her white skin like clear beads on jade. Compared to her first messy night, she could now survive alone, a tiny joy worth a toast.
Zhou Jiaxin’s soft complaints brushed Night Frost’s ear, like wind slipping through bamboo. The grumbling drifted in and out; clearly Zhou was too idle. At this hour, it should’ve been her—off work, fresh from a shower—moving with a day’s rhythm.
Idle days make you miss the drumbeat of busy ones, like a lake wanting rain. Night Frost had felt that too; when work thins, you watch what you should, then stare at a wall once everything’s done.
“If you want to do something, I’ve got wood carving,” she said, tossing out a hook like a line into a quiet pond.
Maybe boredom had gnawed her to the bone. Hearing Night Frost had good stuff, Zhou Jiaxin sprang up, a sparrow startled from a branch. The dullness washed from her eyes; Night Frost had dangled a decent idea.
Night Frost grabbed her Spatial Box and pulled out wood, like warm logs from a stash. From a silver cube she fetched the carving tools, laying them in neat rows on the wooden table like soldiers before a campaign.
Zhou Jiaxin dragged a chair close, the legs scraping like a cricket’s call. She’d hardly seen this in real life; woodcarvers are rare birds. If Night Frost could do it, curiosity would tug her like moonlight on tide.
Night Frost sat straight, spine like a pine. She pinched a kernel-carving knife, the blade she often used for array plates, but the raw, untouched wood drank her gaze like a blank sky. That fine knife felt too delicate, a firefly facing a storm.
She changed blades and began. Tonight she wanted to carve the black fox—the one with a human tongue like a cold ember, the one who knew of the Dragon’s heart. It had come from beyond the border of the Twelfth District; it said humans had given it power, and it turned that power back in revenge like a winter gale.
Thinking now, only human modification could grant that strength—gene edits or flesh grafts—wet steel and dark wires from unknown labs. That lab might well tie to the Black Dragon coiled within Night Frost, a shadow tethered to her bones.
Maybe all those Array Patterns had sharpened her hands. The fox’s face grew clearer under her blade, like mist thinning to reveal a ridge. After one or two hours, the shape stood whole; no tail snapped off this time, no splintered misstep.
The issues from her Dreadwolf carving were gone, as if a thorn pulled free. Night Frost’s craft felt keener; before she carved broad strokes, but now she cut fine, frost etching steel.
Zhou Jiaxin was nodding off at the side, sleep like snow settling on lashes. She’d pulled an all-nighter, and this kind of work looked dull as overcast sky. With a soft goodbye to Night Frost’s carving battlefield, she fled to the bed, leaving Night Frost in her quiet war.
Night Frost knew carving looked boring to watchers, a lantern with no flame. They don’t use their hands; they can’t stand inside the work. They only look, not knowing the principle, pouring time like sand with no coin return; the first spark fades like smoke.
Another hour slid by like a shadow across the floor. Night Frost finished the form and planned to sand away burrs, to smooth the grain like water on stone. Zhou Jiaxin had fallen asleep; that part could wait for dawn.
On the table, the fox lifted its chin, eyes narrowed in disdain, a tiny idol sneering at the world. A faint rancor seeped from the wood, a bitter scent Night Frost planted there—because that fox had once tipped her into danger like loose gravel underfoot.
She set the fox aside, and her body asked for rest like soil asking for rain. But Zhou Jiaxin had claimed the whole bed, a cat sprawled across sun. Night Frost couldn’t squeeze in; she pulled bedding, made a carpet on the floor, and lay down like a traveler under stars. Sleep still wouldn’t come. Without recent battles, her Mana swelled like a full tide.
So she pulled out the defense layouts for Levels Ten to Thirteen, diagrams like spiderwebs glistening in frost. She also drew out the half book her father left, the one the Old Woman had snatched from the tech building at risk of life, a coal taken from a furnace.
The Formations on the pages had gone silent, all but one mental Formation humming like a faint bee. That mental net couldn’t stop her flame or her mind; she slipped through it easily, a blade of fire cutting silk.
There was no latter half; she could only start from what remained, a torn winter map. She raised the book to her eyes; the first line came in heavy strokes like carved stone: “Today, the neighbor surnamed Li owes me money…”
Night Frost’s mouth twitched, a ripple in calm water. Was this thing everyone fought over just a diary? It must hide something sharper under its leaves, a knife under straw. Not convinced, she read on.
“My child is two months old now. I hope he grows well.” The line brushed her nose with sour warmth, like smoke from old wood. But the feeling vanished as quickly, a firefly in wind.
“Better if he grows sturdy, a man who stands tall; otherwise I’ll never collect my debts.” Night Frost blinked, a moth hitting glass. What kind of father writes that? Return my sentiment, please—your diary just tackled a girl under twenty, a wave knocking down a sand tower.
He’d be disappointed anyway. Night Frost didn’t become a man; she became a girl, a twist like a river bending around rock. Children rarely fit the script; the sky seldom keeps to one weather.
“Recently I’m working on a study…” She read on, but the research was smeared or torn, pages missing like teeth. Lines wouldn’t link; words ended in sheer cliffs. Easy to guess—the useful pieces now sat in the hands of the District Twenty One crowd, a flock feeding on scraps of thunder.
They had carried off what mattered, and left a useless diary as bait, a hook baited with dry bread. Even if they failed to net Night Frost’s group and even if someone stole the bait, they’d lose nothing but smoke.
If someone in her team didn’t know Formations, that mental Formation and the kill Formation would pour them a bitter brew, like cold rain under a broken roof. Luckily Night Frost knew some craft, and she had a makeshift mentor well-versed in Formations, a reed flute guiding her steps.
“Research on chained Formations shows nesting…” Night Frost grew anxious, a hawk beating wings against bars. Crucial parts broke off midstream; things she craved had no answer, like wells covered with stone.
She flipped to the last page, searching for a torch. There was nothing—no vital findings, no cure, only a long rant, wind talking to itself.
She meant to close the book, a lid on an old jar. To others, it held no use; to her, it meant blood and bone.
Just as she moved to shut it, a thought struck like frost cracking. She looked at the thick cover, sensed it wasn’t simple, like bark hiding a knot.
Her fingers traced the edge, skin catching on irregular lines like pebbles under stream. Her eyes lit. The cover had been stitched by hand, with almost invisible fishing line; a machine wouldn’t be so rough, a seam like crooked lightning.
She dared a judgment—the cover hid something, a seed tucked in burl. No one had found it; it could matter as much as the pages, a second heart.
Though it held memory, Night Frost had dismantled sentimental things before, like the two woodcarvings she’d cut open for secrets, love traded for truth. One more cover wouldn’t break her oath to herself.
She found a blade and slit the cover, a clean cut through bark. Photos slid out, thin ghosts between leaves. As she spread them, the room raised a chill wind, an eerie breath warning with hiss and shiver—this path fell into an Abyss of no return.
But Night Frost had walked through worse storms, boots wet from deeper rivers. If she feared wind, she would’ve turned back long ago. She refused to retreat; she would learn what shadow threatened her quiet life, what fang hid under her pillow.
She gripped the photo tight, knuckles pale as salt. On the back, scrawled letters read: “Key No. x.” On the front, a pitch-black Abyss stretched, ink pooling like a night lake. It pointed at a buried person, entombed at the Abyss’s bottom, a secret like iron under ice.
Looking close, the prints weren’t all the same—some showed organs, some showed body parts, a butchered constellation. Only two photos lay here; the other numbers hid like wolves in fog.
Even so, the proof was decisive, a bell struck at midnight. Night Frost could guess boldly: the Abyss suppressed a person so strong they’d had to disassemble him into countless pieces to seal him, bones scattered like stars. However many parts there were, only Keys could release them, teeth fitting teeth.
The ones scrambling for the book, the ones who knew what lay sealed, seemed to be working a way to free that horror buried in the deepest Abyss, a tide rising under black rock.
A single organ had pressed on Night Frost harder than Cantata Two, a mountain on her chest. If every piece came together to make a whole human again, how terrible would that storm be?
The air turned colder, the AC’s chill slapping her skin like winter rain. Already caught in a whirlpool, she sensed herself stepping into a larger vortex, a sea pulling at the moon.
Night Frost steadied her pounding heart, a hand on a drum. She told herself it wouldn’t go that far; one Key sat in her palm like a seed sealed in wax, and that humanoid wouldn’t be freed yet.
They still had room to struggle, branches with spring to grow. Their strength still had space to climb. Most of all, they still had time, a few more dawns tucked under the horizon.
