For the first time, Spring Tide drifted this long inside the seam of time, like a reed caught between two slow-moving currents.
The feeling was eerie—she was here, yet her hands passed through the world like moonlight through water, unseen, unable to move a single grain of dust.
Outside of combat, a cold loneliness pressed in, like the world itself had tossed her aside like a shed skin.
She couldn’t touch reality, but she could still sense it, like a blindfolded palm reading ripples on a pond.
The palace’s magic felt steady, calm as a sealed lake; yet the reversed tide of emotion hadn’t waned at all, and the air still swam with that force.
That was bad—maybe the emperor and his attendant were already drowned in it too.
The root of it all was the black-robed man.
Clinging to that hope of an answer, Spring Tide slid to a familiar door.
She passed through the warded wood with ease, a shadow through silk; the room beyond wore its known furniture and scent, yet the emperor who should have worked here was gone like a candle snuffed.
No one sat behind the desk, only neat stacks of documents wrapped in a window’s pale beam like books sleeping in snowlight.
By her memory’s clock, she would die in this room in about twenty minutes; fear pricked first, and she touched her chest, then her gaze dropped to the center of the floor.
In that memory, the emperor had been signing papers and receiving a guest, choosing this study over any formal hall like a hawk meeting at its own perch.
Thinking on it now, everything felt off, like a painting hung crooked.
She stepped to the desk and glanced at the report’s cover; the words Top Secret struck like a seal cut in iron.
Left out in the open like this, it only proved how uncommon this room was.
It was very likely the place His Majesty worked most, the heart of the hive.
She weighed whether to cancel her ability and read the file when the door eased open with a soft creak, and a middle-aged man in regal brocade strode in—His Majesty, Emperor of the Holy Dragon Empire.
The person who followed him made Spring Tide’s pupils tighten like a bowstring.
A black-robed figure with a masked face; the faint scent he bled was one pillar of the Ultimate Evil, like frost smoke leaking from a crack.
He froze just past the threshold; his robe stirred, a slow eddy, as if his gaze swept the room like a knife.
“What is it?”
The emperor noticed and frowned, a ripple across stone.
“Something’s off...”
Spring Tide’s heart lurched, then eased, like a wave breaking and smoothing; if he’d found her, he would not be this unsure.
Besides, even her master, Archbishop Mingxi of the Sanctuary, couldn’t catch the true body of this Phantom God ability.
“The scent of Negative Energy got disturbed... someone’s been here.”
“That’s impossible. This study’s wards are ironclad; even a top expert couldn’t slip in without a whisper.”
“Maybe a special ability... some tricks can manage it.”
The emperor’s brow knit tighter; he walked to the desk and checked the papers, found no sign of tampering, then spoke again, voice like a blade kept sheathed.
“Did the plan change?”
“Mm... odds are the Holy Maiden poked the hive.”
Standing a few paces away, Spring Tide blinked; shock splashed first, then a thin clarity. She didn’t know why the Holy Dragon Empire’s emperor had joined hands with the Ultimate Evil, but a plot against her was now beyond doubt.
That memory might have been a true past, not a nightmare.
“With her current strength, she shouldn’t be able to.”
“They’re a superpower too. The Sanctuary keeps drugs that can spike someone for a short while.”
Spring Tide nodded to herself; her own belt held vials that could force a rise in rank, but the backlash bit deep like ice in bone.
If not for Eastwind City, she’d never carry them—Archbishop Mingxi had made her take them, and usually no one was foolish enough to poke the Sanctuary’s Holy Maiden.
The higher you stand, the less people throw stones.
“What now? She clearly sensed something.”
“Now it’s troublesome...”
“Can’t we use someone else?”
“The God of Time is special. He’s the firmest proof.”
“Can’t someone else prove it the same?”
“As far as I know, only the God of Time can answer a hundred percent. Or say it this way—only the God of Time is always there.”
“...”
Their talk flashed with heavy truths, yet Spring Tide, missing the keystone, couldn’t lock the arch.
From what she had, she guessed the target on her back came from her bloodline—Phantom God.
The Phantom God was the God of Time, the keeper of the first dawn and the last dusk—most spoken of, most veiled, a lantern you see and never grasp.
Her mind brushed the riddles the black robe had spoken in the memory, and confusion knotted tighter.
Then the emperor spoke again, and his words struck her like cold water.
“If everything truly is false, the Sanctuary would help too, right?”
“...”
The black-robed man paused, then his tone turned light, like a knife wrapped in silk.
“Do you think those people really care about that?”
“If it’s true, it would break anyone’s mind.”
“You don’t understand the Sanctuary.”
He shook his head, bitterness like old wine staining his voice.
“In the Radiant Sanctuary, anyone who makes Archbishop—every one of them is a lunatic.”
“Coming from you, isn’t that a bit laughable?”
At last, a shade passed the emperor’s stern face; after the words fell, a hint of helplessness showed, like dew on steel.
“No... you’re right. Then what now?”
“Since the plan failed, we start the backup.”
“I’ll send people at once.”
“No. I’ll handle it. Your Majesty, keep the city’s Negative Energy at flood level. Hold down the strong ones.”
“Good.”
For the emperor to sound this deferential—if the people saw, jaws would crash like dropped porcelain.
The black robe’s figure thinned and bled away, leaving threads of mana like spider silk in the air; the emperor’s face settled back to normal, and he flicked a hand to scatter the strands like ash.
Another man pushed in then—the emperor’s personal guard. Spring Tide looked at that familiar face, and a dull ache lit her chest like an ember.
“Your Majesty.”
“Mm... well?”
“The artifact has activated.”
The guard spoke as he drew a short blade, longer than a dagger; its edge was black as a starless night, its bite clearly no mortal steel.
The aura tugged at Spring Tide’s memory; she looked closer, and recognition cut—this was the blade that had pierced her chest in the remembered scene.
Only now, beyond that familiar mana thrum, a seep of time’s power leaked from the metal, a flavor she knew like her own breath.
“I see.”
The emperor didn’t step closer; instead he sighed with a trace of wonder, like hearing thunder over a mountain.
“Heaven and earth quake and split. The Four Pole Stars flare. The only truth in a false world... I didn’t expect that legend to be real.”
“Your Majesty, what about the Ultimate Evil?”
“We can’t face those people with the empire alone. But fate is not a lever mortals can pry.”
“Then...”
“No need. The Radiant Sanctuary—I know them no less than those men do.”
He gave the guard a long, deep look, then said no more. He sat behind the desk and began to sign again, pen whispering like rain.
The guard backed out at once; the room sank into quiet, broken only by the soft rustle of pages under his hand.
As Spring Tide weighed her next move, the emperor suddenly spoke to himself, voice calm as a well.
“The God of Time holds time-force from the core law. Its nature is the cycle of the start and the end... So if you cross time, maybe you can reach the truth...”
Spring Tide stared, stunned. His eyes never left the file, his face didn’t shift a flicker; she almost thought her ears had lied.
If not for how familiar those words were.
After the Eastwind City incident, when she prepared to rush the next realm, Archbishop Mingxi had told her the very same thing.
