Whether it was the Eastwind City affair, the Northfort mess, or the turmoil in the Imperial Holy Dragon City, each storm looked spent, yet fog still lay thick over the road.
After the three-city uproar ebbed, clues sank like stones into silt; maybe, right now, a few shells still gleamed on the tide.
As the Holy Maiden, ordering a probe would ring like a bell on a still night; it’d alert others, and the world’s rules would snap like a tripwire.
One workaround lay in a delta of paper—files from the whole Eastern District flowing together like rivers after rain.
The Sanctuary of Eastern Sea City was the Eastern District’s hub, a lighthouse where reports from every city converged, then fanned out like gulls.
Specialized Divine Officers helped read and sort, then carried the bright shards to Archbishop Mingxi like lanterns in dusk.
The Holy Maiden held higher clearance than those officers, and Mingxi hated work like cats hate water, so Spring Tide often took the oar.
But her touch reached only set categories; outside the Sanctuary’s scope, her net missed bigger fish, and many dull pebbles hid pearls.
She stopped at an ordinary door that wore evening like plain cloth; she knocked, and silence spread like still water.
Spring Tide’s brows knit like storm clouds.
It wasn’t yet time for dinner or rest; as Archbishop of the East, he should’ve been here, wading through papers like reeds.
She pushed the door, and emptiness yawned like a cold hall.
Files piled on the desk like small mountains, a day’s work left untouched like snow that never saw footprints.
“This damn slacker,” she muttered, tossing the words like a pebble into a well.
With a helpless sigh like wind through bamboo, Spring Tide sat, and her fingers sifted for Eastwind and Northfort like a comb through silk.
Among the three, the Imperial Holy Dragon City was the oddest star, likely a comet trailing after Eastwind’s blaze.
Maybe the Ultimate Evil had laid tracks early, but the tide of intel here felt thin, like cast nets drawing up weeds.
So she hunted Eastwind first like a hound on a known scent.
Northfort reeked of the Demon Race, a side path in shadow, and it likely touched the Holy Dragon City only by a thin thread.
She stacked Eastwind intel into neat terraces, then checked them one by one, hoping to snag a thread of silk in the thorns.
“Abnormal mana flow observed… that should be the array,” she murmured, like reading ripples; chaos currents make easy camouflage—huh?
She drew a sheet unlike the others, a leaf with different veins, from the Eastwind City bishop’s bundle.
“Study on rejection responses against world rules… what is this thing?” The words glinted like cold iron.
It wasn’t a status report; it was a mission scroll, a secret experiment ordered by Archbishop Mingxi to the Eastwind bishop, sealed like a black jar.
The details inside lit her like lightning behind clouds.
Core world rules of time and space showed weaker rejection than a century ago, by several folds; datasets skewed like bent reeds.
She couldn’t read half the methods, a forest of sigils, but one line struck like a bell in snow.
“Can’t rule out the falsity of the non-core world.” The sentence drifted like a mask in a mirror.
Spring Tide recalled the capital, the words she’d heard before the Needle of Time pricked her, sharp as winter rain.
She recalled what the Emperor handed Ninexiao, those moth-wing secrets pressed between pages.
Another report followed like a second thunderclap.
“Confirmed existence of one of the Four Pole Stars: Aileaf, First Princess of the Littlefolk, Fifth Rank, a Curse Deity awakening… monitoring shows no public discovery; confirmed alongside the Holy Maiden as one of the Four Pole Stars.”
“Well, that’s…” The breath left her like steam on cold glass.
Aileaf’s name smoking on a report stunned her, and the knowledge she herself was one of the four felt like flint to tinder.
If it was true, then four stars hung behind the clouds.
Two familiar faces flickered in her mind like lanterns on a river.
Cerqin, awakened to the Love God like a rose at dawn; Silver Luan, bearing the Dragon Deity like a mountain dragon beneath snow.
By Aileaf’s earlier prophecy, and by the first prophecy when White Thought’s power rampaged like a gale, the Four Pole Stars tied to the coming calamity.
The core of those Four was divine fire itself, god-gifted and sharp as frost.
Maybe when Cerqin’s bloodline woke to the Love God, the wheel of prophecy began to turn like a watermill.
Armed with that future-light, overlooked notes began to glow like fireflies.
In the Eastwind bishop’s report, one line stood like a spear: near the city, a powerful mana surge surfaced, and a cultist was driven off.
The cultist wore a black robe like night, and his faction hid like wolves in scrub.
The Ultimate Evil’s black-robed man was at least Eighth Rank, maybe Ninth, an iron wall under moonlight.
After Eastwind, Spring Tide had asked her master, and Mingxi said the man could split clones like shards of a mirror, the weakest above Seventh Rank.
Kill a clone and its power flowed back to the source like a river to sea; he was a burr on the blade.
Back then, Eastwind was a two-hand loom—two groups weaving one grim cloth.
To forge a god-slaying tool that could wound deities, the Screaming Soul, a rare cult, moved like a shadow and rarely touched common folk.
And the Ultimate Evil acted for reasons veiled like mist on a marsh.
Those two currents mingled felt wrong, like oil and rain on stone.
The Ultimate Evil didn’t thirst for a god-slaying weapon; his hook likely angled toward the world’s falsity she’d heard of in the palace.
So did Eastwind hide something tied to that hollow core?
And there was the Empire’s little princess, taken like a swallow in a gust.
She had a poor name on the streets, yet the Emperor cherished her like a hidden jewel; but in the booklet he gave Ninexiao, not a word stirred.
The Screaming Soul was more likely to have carried her off like a boat snatched by rapids.
But was it truly so, or just smoke over water?
If the black robe and the Screaming Soul worked together by chance, like two storms colliding by wind’s whim…
Spring Tide pulled the report back out like a card from a deck, confirming the exact date the Eastwind bishop drove off the black robe.
Only days ago, like fresh tracks in dew.
The Eastwind plot was woven by the Screaming Soul, likely aimed at her divine spark, a snare laid long before the deer arrived, while the black robe’s help was a stray branch.
So why did the black robe head to Eastwind at the start, like a hawk diving off-course?
For the Four Pole Stars?
Likely not; in that basement, he could’ve taken all four like fruit from a low branch.
“His clone pulled its strikes then; a Seventh Rank shouldn’t feel that thin. Was he confirming something?” Her thought cut like a reed-knife.
If he was confirming, then was the assassination in the palace also just a probe, like a stick in a thicket?
Confirming what, under which sky?
Still no key turned in the lock; Spring Tide rose and left the study, and when she opened the door, Mingxi stood outside with a hand mid-push.
“Hm? Little Spring Tide, weren’t you cuddling in your room? What brings you here?” His tone sprawled like a cat in sunlight.
Mingxi stretched lazily, then drifted in past her like smoke, his gaze flicking to the disturbed stacks like a sparrow to crumbs.
“Why not handle a bit more for me,” he sighed, a wave that wanted to nap.
“You dump this much intel and what if a pearl slips by?” Spring Tide snapped, her words like pebbles striking a drum, feet turning back inside.
“Master, you—” Her face tightened like a bowstring.
“Didn’t find your answer, did you?” He cut in, the edge clean as a chisel.
“There’s a lot I can’t say,” Mingxi murmured, pointing upward like a branch to the moon.
Spring Tide knew he didn’t mean the ceiling; he meant the world, a sky of rules like a net.
She’d crossed time from the future like a salmon up a cataract, and that offense was likely already tallied.
“The Prisoner of Fate doesn’t help in a fight,” Mingxi said, voice like rain on paper. “It’s akin to foresight, and it weighs cause and effect.”
It was the first time he spoke of his power; Spring Tide listened, still as pine under snow.
“As the name says, knowing still cages you like iron bars, much like you now… Cross certain lines, and punishment falls like winter hail.”
