Crimson and Night Frost reached the third-floor office, the room smelling like cold antiseptic rain; the Doctor was dressing Yin Tiancheng and Yin Chen Yue’s wounds under harsh white light.
Yin Tiancheng’s condition had steadied like a boat in a quiet cove, but Yin Chen Yue’s illness only eased like smoke thinning; without a fitting drug or a heart transplant, her hourglass ran fast.
They were still trapped in the Abyss, a black sea with no shore; Crimson’s blasted tunnel had been a good escape route, until a girl identical to Night Frost burst in like a thrown dagger and ruined Ms Feng’s plan.
Lin might’ve been pinned by that “Night Frost” and left in the narrowing passage like prey in a snake’s throat; if so, his chances were a candle in the wind, unless Crimson pulled him out.
“How is she?”
Crimson’s silhouette rose from the shadow like ink in water; as she stepped out, Night Frost’s heart sank, then she asked Ms Feng about Yin Chen Yue. Ms Feng only shook her head, the motion small as falling ash.
Yin Chen Yue’s skin looked like cracked porcelain, her vessels exposed like red threads; the Abyssal Aura in her body, slowed by Ms Feng’s makeshift medicine, still gnawed at her organs like moths in silk.
A weight pressed Night Frost’s chest; she stroked Yin Chen Yue’s brow, her touch as light as dew. She wanted her to outlast this storm, and she vowed to tear a path through this Abyss and lead everyone out.
Crimson stepped aside to restore her Mana with a Magic Stone, its facets glowing like banked embers. Her presence here was a red banner; because Crimson stood with Night Frost, everyone found the courage to push through the dark.
“You saw someone who looked like me? And she’s the one holding Lin?”
Confusion spiked through Night Frost like cold needles, then steadied. When Ms Feng told her about a second Night Frost, Night Frost’s mind stalled for a heartbeat like a gear that slipped.
According to Ms Feng, that girl wielded Black Flame, and she carved arrays like Night Frost did; she was a mirror copy, pressed from the same mold.
Without Magic Armor, no one could tell the difference between Night Frost and that other Night Frost, not even with a knife’s edge.
“Another me…”
She thought of the dream of flowers in a mirror and a moon on the water, a beauty you can see but never touch. She closed her eyes, sat cross-legged, and let the fire inside her tug her spirit downward like a hidden current.
A fissure loomed ahead, tall as several men, and beyond it a pair of dark-gold eyes weighed on her like a mountain. She kept silent a breath, then asked:
“The one outside who looks exactly like me—did you make her?”
The Black Dragon didn’t answer; its silence was a stone idol’s silence, but that was answer enough. Night Frost read cause and effect in that hush.
“She said she’s the real me. Why?”
This time the Black Dragon moved. He touched the dark with one claw-tip; the dark folded and condensed into a pure white cube, stark as snow on coal.
“Do you know what this is?”
Night Frost didn’t. She’d heard of it once in a dream, but its nature was mist.
“But she knows. She knows everything about you, and you don’t know yourself. She is you, and you are not her.”
The Black Dragon slapped the white cube to powder like chalk dust, then slit his eyes and peered through Night Frost’s, hungry for the scene to come.
Night Frost had had enough of riddles that coiled like smoke; if he’d just speak straight, this story would be a third shorter. Realizing she’d get nothing more, she withdrew.
Still, it wasn’t for nothing. She’d learned that the “Night Frost” outside was knotted to the Black Dragon.
“Do we have any food left?”
She asked Ms Feng, because at this point Ms Feng had the only real storage space worth mentioning. Night Frost had some food, but it was crumbs on a plate; she had clothes, but cloth couldn’t fill a stomach.
Ms Feng didn’t pause her work. She glanced into her inner space and shook her head, grim as winter. She had little left; one meal a day could stretch it a while.
If it came to it, Ms Feng could fabricate octopus-like tentacles; with proper processing, they were edible, a rough harvest from an iron sea. Night Frost and Crimson could eat them, and they could feed Yin Tiancheng too, if no one’s mind balked.
But not Yin Chen Yue. With that Abyssal Aura in her, Ms Feng didn’t dare feed her any altered tentacle-flesh, for fear of setting a chain reaction ablaze.
“Eat… your tentacles?”
Night Frost flinched like at cold spray. Tentacles or not, it felt too much like eating a person. It was fine. She could hold out a while longer, and Crimson didn’t need to eat.
“Don’t come begging me then.”
Ms Feng stitched Yin Tiancheng’s last wound and splashed potion across it like rain on hot stone. He was stable for now, his life-line tied tight.
Yin Chen Yue only needed timely sedatives to slow her blood like a lazy river; that could buy them hours.
A heavier question fell: what about Lin?
The space outside hadn’t fully healed, but the gap had narrowed like a tightening throat. No sounds of fighting came through; that “Night Frost” had likely left.
If that “Night Frost” truly mirrored Night Frost down to the mold, then walking away was probably theater; she was likely crouched in some dark eave, waiting to pounce like a cat.
Lin was squeezed by the Abyss; if the healing dark crushed him, it would be a suffocating, nameless end. Only Crimson had the strength to tear the crack back, like ripping a book’s spine.
Without Crimson, nothing moved; every plan turned to straw.
Many here were Cantata Two, but there were gaps like steps in a stair. Lin and that “Night Frost” were close, likely the same rung. Chu Qing was different; with many talents, she could stand against a Cantata Three.
Ms Feng counted as Cantata Two, but her raw combat strength wasn’t high; in a drawn-out fight, her regeneration could carry her against a Cantata Two without sinking.
Across this sealed space, more than thirty Earth Dragons crawled like armored centipedes. Alone, each was weak; in packs of three to five, they could dog Night Frost.
The rest only needed to harry, to nip and pull like wolves, making openings in same-tier duels. Those openings killed.
They couldn’t lose a single fighter. Lose one, and someone would have to face an extra Cantata Two; the scale would tip hard to Chu Qing’s side.
How to save Lin then? If Crimson tore the Abyss again, she’d have to face Chu Qing head-on; when Crimson showed, Chu Qing would bloom like a thorn.
“I can strike anytime,” Crimson said, voice calm as a blade. “I can even carry people out. But the crack won’t be big. Two, three at most.”
“This Abyss is special. Getting in is like stepping downhill. Getting out is brambles and thorns.”
She brushed Magic Stone grit from her clothes like dust and eyed the Array Pattern on the floor, the plate Night Frost had set to boost her absorption.
“Give me your hand.”
A tremor ran through Night Frost, then steadied; she nodded. Under Crimson’s Mana pressure, the bracelet on her wrist creaked like thin ice and shattered into dozens of shards.
Clarity rushed in like mountain air. Her Mana and spirit snapped back to her body; her red-gold pupils cleared to a bright edge.
She opened her palm. A crimson-gold flame hopped there like a joyous sparrow, eager to bite and singe, begging to burn fools who didn’t know better.
“It’s fine. We’ll let them see what we can do soon… but tell me, did you get stronger again?”
Night Frost hadn’t used Mana for over half a month; it felt strange on her skin, like putting on a forgotten coat. Now that Mana had returned, and the Spatial Box brimmed with materials, she planned to carve augmentation Array Patterns on herself.
Weeks of practice bore fruit. She learned how to carve on her Magic Layer without scalding flesh—carve on the layer, and the pattern holds until that layer breaks.
Some say the Magic Layer rises from Mana like mist off a river. Mana mixes and clashes easily, like several Magic Maidens trying a joint Magic Cannon that kicks back if the load’s uneven.
Only heart-resonance lets several Magic Maidens share weight and braid their Mana into one beam.
Carving a complete pattern on the Magic Layer was a knot she had to untie. So she chose to solidify the layer; it cost more, but it held steady like packed snow.
Her control had grown fine as needlework. Being sealed had forced thrift; frugality turned habit. In truth, her Mana burn wasn’t much different than before.
She didn’t plan to carve every array now. After finishing one arm, she sat with Crimson and mapped the rescue for Lin.
If Chu Qing and the other “Night Frost” showed, then Crimson and Night Frost would pin them down like nails. Ms Feng would carry Yin Tiancheng and Yin Chen Yue out.
“That’s the plan,” Crimson said. “But while I’m out, you’ll face Chu Qing and yourself alone.”
Night Frost’s gut tightened, then steadied like a drawn bow; she nodded. Crimson nodded too, a red flare in the dark. The gap wasn’t big. If either got one-shot in seconds, it’d be a joke, the kind where someone mutters, sorry, she didn’t even use her full power.
They laid a simple formation, chalk lines before a duel. Crimson moved first. Night Frost asked for a stealth spell; with it, she slipped behind Crimson like a shadow on her heels.
She was green at it, but hiding was enough.
Crimson reached the crack’s mouth. The fissure was only wide enough for a large dog; Lin’s state inside was anyone’s guess.
She raised her hand. Scarlet Mana pooled in her palm like molten lacquer. She hooked both sides of the seam and pried the healing crack open, inch by stubborn inch.
Lin was covered in blood, his bones warped by pressure like bent steel. He saw light, pale as dawn through fog. He had no strength left. He dug in two fingers and clawed forward, dragging himself to the mouth, driven by nothing but the raw thirst to live.
