Spring Tide knew the borders of her soul like a calligrapher knows his brush, steady as dusk over a still lake.

She even molded a portion of her soul and let it slip free, like clay shaped in moonlight, pouring most awareness in like water to make a thought-form.

She left a thin thread of focus to brace her body like a propped kite, then tasted the wind-thin feel of being a soul.

Cerqin watched her split off that soul-body and screamed, like a sparrow startled by thunder.

“Wait—please spare me! I was wrong, my mouth ran like a wild horse—just spare me, or double the punishment later, on the body…”

Soul can touch soul, but what would a hit feel like here, a stab like ice needles or worse?

Like thirst at a bricked-up well, you can want in soul-form, but you can’t release it.

When soul slaps soul, pain piles like stones on one side of the scale, and joy is only feathers.

Fear crusted like frost as Spring Tide’s soul-body drifted closer.

Dread pooled like cold rain; Cerqin trembled.

“That’s your word then—etched in stone.”

“Huh?”

Spring Tide set a light hand on Cerqin’s soul-body; soul to soul felt unlike flesh to flesh, like winter silk under a moth’s wing.

The sensation was sharp and nameless, a spark on dry tinder; if flesh were here to pair with it, the whole fire would change.

Cerqin felt that hand pressed to her chest; confusion parted like a cloud, and she nodded like a falling leaf.

“Mm…”

She understood now; Spring Tide wasn’t about to bring the storm down yet, only holding thunder behind clouds.

Aileaf’s helplessness sighed like a wind through chimes; she looked at Cerqin and asked, brows lightly knit.

“Something wrong?”

“Mm… nothing. I tried to see if the power of time could help a soul-body recover. The sand won’t climb the glass.”

Even Ninexiao, an Eighth Rank soul adept, couldn’t do it; a Seventh Rank time power won’t force the river uphill.

Soul leaving the body devoured mental strength like surf eating a shore; after the test failed, Spring Tide reeled her soul back like a kite on thread.

“In soul-state, abilities get boxed in, yet in some facets the blade feels sharper…”

“Non-soul abilities act that way. Bloodline power bridges flesh and mind; if it’s not aimed at the soul, the bridge sways in wind.”

Aileaf said it while memory flashed like moonlight in a mirror.

Curse Deity—the Deity of matter and form—lets her pull bodies on frost-bright strings.

In soul-state, she could likely pilot her body and move her soul-body too, like twin oars on two rivers.

A pure soul-body shouldn’t be hit too hard; most gifts cling to flesh, but Curse Deity cleaves to the soul like a vine to a spine of light.

“Yeah, the hit’s big… like wet cloth on the shoulders.”

Cerqin cut in; the Love God was active, yet it couldn’t make soul and flesh act apart.

In soul-form it only works on oneself; even when Spring Tide touched her, candlelight didn’t pass the glass, soul to soul.

Aileaf’s storage gear shivered like a drum under skin; inside, some mana spiked like a storm in a bottle.

Beast parts dim like embers; a surge means a magic tool flaring like a forge.

Aileaf drew the comm stone, and Silver Luan’s voice rang like a bell across mist.

“Forgot to ask—where are you now?”

“Still at the lab… mm.”

Aileaf’s eyes flicked like swallows from Spring Tide to Cerqin; she thought, then spoke.

“Let’s meet in the room where Cerqin’s body is.”

“Her body?”

“Yeah. You cut the call too fast. Cerqin woke by soul leaving the body; her shell can’t wake yet.”

“Uh… got it. I’m in my room. I’ll head over now.”

“Mm, see you in a bit.”

The bedroom lay closer like a nearer thread; after ending the call, Aileaf spoke at once.

“Mm, let’s move…”

When the two and one soul reached the room with Cerqin’s body, Silver Luan was there like a lantern waiting in fog.

“Why’s everyone so rushed, like sparks chasing dry grass…”

She said it, but warmth rose inside like steam from tea; Cerqin was moved.

“Silver Luan~ hehe, did you miss me?”

Cerqin saw Silver Luan focus on her and called out, while the other’s emotions smoothed like a pond at dusk, a long-held breath released.

Cerqin spoke, cheeks warm like first light.

“Sorry. I made you worry…”

“Hmph. As long as you know.”

“Don’t forget the doubled punishment later.”

“Good thing I had the right potion and moved fast, like rain before wildfire. Cerqin, remember to thank me.”

The room, cold and still for half a month, warmed like ice under spring sun; Cerqin wasn’t whole yet, but the worry in the other three finally melted.

Then Spring Tide unrolled the tale of her time-walking, laying out intel and secrets like a star-scribed scroll.

She added guesses and worries, shadows along the margins.

“Never thought it went that deep…”

Except Cerqin, Silver Luan and Aileaf stayed calm, stones unruffled in a stream.

Aileaf had long suspected the Four Pole Stars; her clan’s prophecy, plus White Thought’s, and now Spring Tide’s intel—three stars lining up.

It was almost certain: the four of them were the foretold Four Pole Stars, a constellation snapping into place.

Silver Luan had learned similar secrets at the Half Dragonkin enclave in the imperial capital, a camp coiled like a dragon.

After Spring Tide finished, Silver Luan held a breath like a drawn bow, then spoke what she knew.

“This time at the enclave, I met a Half Dragonkin elder and got similar intel on the Four Pole Stars…”

She had also found threads about the incident in the imperial capital, smoke layering under palace eaves.

For one, the source of the Negative Energy blanketing the capital like night fog over tiles.

In Eastwind City, they’d controlled some high-rankers, and cast a net of fear that cursed the whole city.

Here across the capital, within that Negative Energy…

By Cerqin’s sense, envy and hatred coiled at the core like two black snakes.

Those feelings came from a special group in the capital, between a sect and a street organization, a shadow between temple and market.

The Beauty Worshipers Association.

“That association… if I remember right, they’re the ones who sparked the protests and riots?”

Spring Tide frowned; she’d ridden from Northfort with a whip’s crack on winter roads because they rallied a crowd.

From that, she got intel from the senior sister who betrayed the Sanctuary, a thorned letter tucked in secret.

Then the capital’s factions locked the city down, and the protest fizzled, rain dousing a street fire.

“The Beauty Worshipers Association—sounds off. You said before it’s plain-looking folks throwing stones at mirrors, protesting the beautiful?”

Cerqin always found them baffling, smoke with no fire.

“Mm. At heart it tangles nobles and commoners, a rope knotted between tower and alley.”

“So the leaders tied to them—are they linked to the Ultimate Evil, a black thread through silk?”

“Most likely they’re just being used, pawns on a cold board…”

“Can’t rule out those few leaders being connected to the Ultimate Evil, roots under a dark well.”

Silver Luan’s voice ran steady like an inked line.

“Did that elder sense anything off, ears pricked like a fox in snow?”

The Beauty Worshipers Association came from commoners; not a true power, its frame was loose, a raft of driftwood on the tide.

Its members were mostly ordinary, low in cultivation, candles not torches.

Most factions wouldn’t bother; neither high nor low, they were a pebble stuck in a sandal.

Silver Luan nodded, a reed bowing to wind.

“I heard their core members spiked in power and rank in a short time, weeds shooting up after a storm…”