Time with Yin Chen Yue was a handful of sand slipping through an hourglass, and one day couldn’t sate Yin Tiancheng’s greedy love as a father. Duty pressed on his shoulders like a mountain peak, telling him not to linger. Yet he held to a north-star certainty that reunion lay just ahead.
Yin Chen Yue clung to his arm like an autumn leaf to a branch, reluctant and soft-eyed. It was always like this, a tide that came warm and went cold, and he had to leave again.
“Next month, Dad shouldn’t be going anywhere,” he said, voice steady as a lantern in wind.
He seemed to remember something, and his hand went to his chest like a fisherman finding a hidden hook. He drew out a small, finely wrapped gift he’d prepared for Yin Chen Yue, humble as a river stone.
She opened the box, and inside lay an orange-red hairpin, simple as a dawn tangerine without gold or gloss. It was an ordinary pin, bare and clear as spring water.
It wasn’t that Yin Tiancheng wouldn’t buy a gem-bright piece; he’d stood before the glass counter like a traveler before crossroads, picking and putting down for a long while. In the corner, he chose this one, remembering her love for that color like a robin recalling last spring, though children her age were weather-quick and fickle.
“Chen Yue really likes it,” she said, smiling like sunlight through paper windows. She had lived here since birth like a sapling potted indoors; once she’d walked with her parents, but after she fell ill, she could only stay.
For a long stretch she sat alone like a quiet pond, knowing her parents rushed for her sake like oars beating water. With parents who loved her like a full moon, what more could she ask?
So she made up her mind like a blade set to whetstone, not wanting her parents to worry. She looked for tasks like gleaning grain and asked the people around her for knowledge like drawing water from a well, and two or three years slipped by.
During that time, her father came back like a migrating bird and sometimes brought gifts like scattered stars. But one thing never changed—the bottle of sweet sugar-coated pills, and Yin Tiancheng told her, when it hurts, take one, and the pain will ebb like a tide.
One day, she saw a neighbor take a white tablet for pain, flat and chalky as a pebble. Curious as a sparrow, she asked the taste, and everyone said it was bitter and astringent, hard to swallow like raw tea leaves.
Then she knew hers were different, crafted with care like honey warmed on low flame. Only her parents would think so closely of her, and the pills were from her father’s hand like dew from the first light.
Pride rose in her like a small fire, for she’d found her father’s quiet intention. She didn’t trumpet it like a drum in the market; instead, she nestled the bottle into the drawer like a pearl into a shell, and buried that tenderness in her heart like a seed in spring.
She knew if she spoke, ripples might trouble her father like wind on a still lake. Though she believed her parents would always shield her like pines in snow, being obedient felt wiser like a path kept clean.
“Wait here for Dad and wait well,” he said, voice warm as a hand over coals. “I’ll be back soon, like rain after heat.”
She pressed the hairpin atop her head like a badge of dawn and nodded hard as a grain pounding stone. Seeing her so obedient, Yin Tiancheng smiled like a crescent moon, yet bitterness rose in him like old tea, and he thought to hasten every plan.
Yin Tiancheng left, and the room held only Yin Chen Yue like a bell left quiet. A small emptiness opened in her chest like a birdless sky.
Her chest grew heavy as storm clouds, and pain surged like a river in flood. Cracks veined her skin like dry earth, and Mana with Abyssal Aura bucked inside her body like wolves straining at a leash.
Panic pricked first like cold needles, then habit took her hand like an old friend. Her heart hammered like a drum, and, trained by countless episodes, she ran for the bedroom and pulled the sugar pills from the drawer like a diver grasping a rope, and she slipped one past her lips.
The syrup-sweet taste melted like spun sugar on the tongue, and a faint bitterness hid beneath like a shadow behind silk. Under the pill’s effect, the two forces settled like wind falling off a cliff.
She lay back on the bed like a leaf on water, and the cracks folded inward like closing ice, yet the boring ache refused to leave like a thorn under skin. Too much had happened, and she’d forgotten her regular medicine like a clock left unwound, and without that pressure the pain bit harder like winter air.
As the pain slowly scattered like mist, she closed her eyes, limp as a strand of seaweed. Fatigue surged like a tide, and her hopes for tomorrow wove themselves into a net of dreams like a spider spinning silver.
Night Frost sank with the dream like a stone into deep water. How long had it been since she’d dreamed? Endless black stretched like a moonless field, and silver light rose beneath her like frost on a river, while the Black Dragon’s eyes burned with unwillingness like coals under ash.
Spirit Threads fell like rain from a gray sky, and the awakened Night Frost braided her own threads into a net like a fisher at dawn. The moment it touched the falling strands, the world snapped away like a candle pinched between fingers.
A wide street teemed like a tide of people, but it felt thin as a paper screen. Night Frost followed three familiar figures like a shadow and stepped down a long narrow stair like a well shaft, walking into an underground filled with light like a flooded sunroom.
At a lake deep in that glow, her reflection rippled like a pale moon. In the water, she saw herself with hair unbound like a black waterfall and eyes Crimson as a rising sun, veiled in black-gold haze like smoke over embers, and that didn’t seem like her.
“Who are you?” Her voice rang like a pebble dropped in a pond.
The lake shattered like glass and reformed as a clear mirror like winter ice. Dressed in pure white, she rose from the water bathed in sunlight like a lily, and a pale, wet hand settled on Night Frost’s shoulders like a snowflake. Those eyes, full of scorn and unwilling laughter, stared straight into Night Frost’s Crimson gaze like an arrow to a target.
“I am you…” she began, voice smooth as silk.
Before the words finished, Night Frost slapped her back into a splash like a palm scattering rain, but she crawled from the mirror again like a snake from a crack. This time she slid behind Night Frost and locked her arms like iron vines, pinning Night Frost’s hands.
“No, more precisely, I’m the real you,” she breathed like wind at the nape. “You’re the counterfeit, and we’ll meet again… soon, like thunder after lightning.”
Her body floated up light as a cloud and waved a hand like a fan, and the world sank back to its primal darkness like dusk falling. In that dark, the Black Dragon pushed out its head like a mountain cresting a sea.
The Black Dragon looked at Night Frost with endless sneer like a razor-thin smile. As it ripped open her mental world like claws through silk, it saw the picture behind the blank wall in her mind like a mural hidden by lime.
“After I granted my spirit to the blank wall of your memory,” it rumbled like distant thunder, “the Abyssal Aura pulled from behind your inner wall your reflection… no, the one who knows your past better, the real you.”
The Black Dragon snorted, breath steaming like winter from a cave, and knowledge coiled in its eyes like a serpent. A feigned pity flickered there like oil on water, and that look made Night Frost want to kick its jaw like a mule, but she held her reason like a tight rein.
Though Night Frost had learned her past, the white wall left her uneasy like grit in the eye. What was behind it, a locked room in a burning house, and maybe she had once known, but the wall sealed it like clay over a jar.
“This is the white wall inside you, and it stands in your memory as well,” the Black Dragon said, waving a claw that stirred darkness like a stirred ink pool.
The dark writhed like living tar, and a pure white wall rose before Night Frost like a sheer cliff. The Black Dragon stood behind her like a cold shadow, its eyes dripping pity and sorrow like rancid honey.
Night Frost pushed, but the wall held like iron bedrock no matter her strength, and its surface bore intricate Array Pattern like frost flowers—likely left by her father like a seal.
“What’s behind it?” she asked, words dropping like stones.
No answer came, for the Black Dragon had vanished like smoke, and the white beneath her feet sank deeper like silt, as if it had its own will like a sleeping beast turning.
Night Frost jolted awake like a fish breaking water. A nurse stood before her, recording Night Frost’s data like tally marks, and seeing her stir, the nurse pressed the papers to her chest and asked about her condition like rain pattering on a roof.
Night Frost’s eyelids hung heavy like wet leaves, and her body felt stiff like chilled bamboo. She rose slowly, sensing Mana swim inside her like shoals of light, and it seemed she could draw more again like a tide returning. At this pace, she might brute-force shatter the bracelet that sealed her Mana without even cracking the Array Pattern like a stone snapping a thin shell.
But that dreamlike scene hadn’t come in a long time, and its sinking pull brought back everything like silt stirred from a riverbed. As for the white wall and what lay behind it, she knew nothing, like a door with no keyhole.
The Black Dragon had said there was a white wall in her body too, set by a human hand like a nail hammered in. No one had ever set anything on her—or so she thought—and only by breaking the wall in her memory could she know its source like a spring found by digging.
She climbed out of bed and stretched like a cat at dawn, and the nurse hurried away like a leaf in a gust. Lin walked in from the door like a breeze and tossed her a greeting.
“Yo, still alive?” he said, grin crooked as a fishhook.
Night Frost had been thinking, her head throbbing like a tight drum, but at Lin’s words the ache shattered like brittle sugar. Fatigue fell away like dust, and she almost leaped to give him two punches like falling hammers.
“See? You’re bouncing,” Lin said, smug as a tomcat.
He really did light her temper like dry tinder; if her heart weren’t hard as a rock, he’d have pushed her to the ICU like a tumble off a ledge.
Even so, Lin let out a breath like steam, relieved. The Doctor had been holed up in the lab like a hermit and didn’t know Night Frost’s state, and thank the stars she wasn’t hurt, or the Doctor’s storm would be a mess like a lab fire.
“Yeah, sure—when you’re the one lying here, I’ll drop those lines on you,” Night Frost shot back, words sharp as sleet.
She got up and threw on the clothes at hand like a cloak, because she had to go. Yin Chen Yue wanted to see her father like a sunflower seeking the sun, and Night Frost still wanted to ask about a way out like a fox searching a gap; judging by the hour, Yin Tiancheng was about to leave like a train whistling off.
“I’m fine anyway, not you; I’m sturdy,” she tossed over her shoulder, voice brisk as a broom.
She burst out the door like an arrow, ignoring Lin’s call like wind past a bell. Lin had orders to watch her like a hawk, so he followed with a helpless shrug, trailing her shadow like a kite string.
To anyone who didn’t know, she looked like some pampered miss, skirts swirling like waves, though in truth she was little different from a prisoner like a bird in a gilded cage.
Night Frost felt lighter than before, wind underfoot like feathers. In seconds she reached the elevator and jabbed the down button like a flare.
The elevator crawled like a lazy beetle, and her impatience beat like wings.
When the doors opened into the underground district like a cave mouth, she shot out like a released spring. Not watching the way, she collided with a man waiting for the lift like a post in mist.
She grabbed him up quickly, apologies spilling like beads, then ran toward Yin Chen Yue’s home like a river finding its bend.
Lin dropped from above like a falling leaf, landing light as a cat. Seeing the middle-aged man behind them like a mountain in plain sight, he skidded to a stop like heels on gravel.
“B-boss,” he stammered, face blanching like paper.
He couldn’t, in good conscience, bolt after Night Frost after bumping the boss like a rookie thief. So he steadied Yin Tiancheng into the elevator like a careful porter and escorted him back to his office like a guard leading a lantern through night.
