One of the leaders of the Association of Beauty Worshipers, according to our intel, looked like a painfully ordinary girl, plain as unpainted clay.

Her name was Lan Zi, thirty-six, talent sprouting like spring bamboo; she hit Fifth Rank young, from a common home, and once crossed a noble.

She led the association and helped build it, a hand setting the first brick.

Two years ago, protests in the imperial capital flared like dry reeds; clashes sparked, and she slipped behind the curtain, a shadow seldom seen.

A year ago, she surfaced in the outer trade quarter like a fish breaking water, meeting several ghosts whose tracks we couldn’t trace.

Not long after, she rose to Sixth Rank, her aura climbing like a kite on a strong wind.

Our inquiry found that in that year in the dark, she brushed cultists again and again, like moths circling a lamp.

That was the dossier the Sanctuary scraped together, cold as frost on stone.

“Miss Lan Zi, tell us what you know, and let the knot in your chest loosen like thawing ice.”

Spring Tide smiled like a spring sun and looked at Lan Zi, who woke with terror glazing her eyes.

“What are you to Ming Duo? Friends or knives?”

Lan Zi had just woken; her mind wobbled like a loose wheel, and the fear rolling off her made Cerqin narrow her eyes.

Aileaf, at the right beat, drew out a vial of calming draught, the glass cool as moonlight.

At Spring Tide’s glance, Baili and Qianli pinned Lan Zi to the table like stakes, and poured the draught between her lips.

She bucked once, but the reinforced medicine hit like rain on fire; in Cerqin’s sight, her fear shrank like a shadow at noon.

When the fear settled like dust, Spring Tide spoke again, voice soft as wind through bamboo. “Talk.”

Lan Zi hesitated; panic flickered across her face like a startled bird, then she scanned the room, each face holding her for a few breaths, and finally she spoke.

From the faint fear still clinging to her, Cerqin caught a whiff of jealousy, green as bramble.

When that jealousy pricked up, the drug-pressed fear thinned further, like mist under sun.

“I don’t really know that demon… About a year ago we clashed. That day I’d just hit Sixth Rank, and I ran into her by chance, like two boats rubbing in fog.”

“That mess was born from jealousy; for reasons I can’t bury, beauties—women or men—draw out my envy and spite like salt draws water.”

“Because of it, I attacked Ming Duo and used my gift to torment her, forging a grudge deep as a canyon.”

“After that, my new Sixth Rank wobbled like a newborn foal, so I hid away to steady it.”

“Only lately did the other association heads summon me back, so I returned to the capital like a moth to its old lamp.”

“One question,” Spring Tide said, voice sharp as a needle; across from her, Ninexiao frowned, doubt sitting on his face like cloud-shadow.

“You said it was about a year ago—you’d just hit Sixth Rank—you attacked her, and you tortured her with your ability?”

She nodded, a dry reed in the wind.

Spring Tide looked to Silver Luan; catching the gaze, Silver Luan spoke, voice cool as a bell at dusk. “She isn’t lying,” the words landing like pebbles in a still pond.

Spring Tide’s disbelief cracked like thin ice. “How’s that possible? A year ago, by Sanctuary intel, Ming Duo should already have been Seventh Rank, a star above the clouds.”

Seventh and Sixth are worlds apart, cloud and mud; since breaking through, Spring Tide had learned that gap in her bones.

When she first met Silver Luan at Sixth Rank, their clash at full tilt barely drew level, like two blades ringing.

Now, if she faced Silver Luan again, it’d be a one-sided execution; even an unguarded moment plus a joint ambush from Baili and Qianli couldn’t scratch her, like rain on a stone drum.

The gap from Sixth to Seventh—from middle tier to high—is a chasm, cliff to sea.

“Seventh Rank…” Lan Zi’s mind rippled again, a pond pelted by sudden rain.

“Back then she wasn’t Seventh Rank—she wasn’t even Sixth—she was Fifth Rank, a candle against a storm.”

“Impossible.” Ninexiao’s protest leapt out like a spark.

Years before her defection, Ming Duo had already been a Sixth-Rank captain of the Knights and had joined multiple Sanctuary expeditions, her record hammered in iron.

“What on earth is this? The thread’s twisting like a snake.”

“What if the Ming Duo she met a year ago wasn’t the main body?” Cerqin said, the thought a paper-lantern echo.

At that, Cerqin’s idea drew their eyes like iron to a magnet.

“Like that black-robed figure we met before—there should be a similar art, a shadow walking in daylight.”

“That black robe, per Master, was a bloodline gift; as for a spell that makes a duplicate… it’s a door that might exist.”

That felt possible, the idea hovering like a moth near flame.

Jealous of beauty, Lan Zi attacked Ming Duo’s avatar; then the real Ming Duo came for blood and repaid torment with torment, a debt carved on bone.

Think that way and much clicks into place, but riddles still hang like fog.

“Then why did Ming Duo linger in the capital after revenge? Why delay the strike, and wait until Sanctuary Knights caught her, only to snatch her back?”

“She didn’t kill her, but tossed her like garbage—maybe purely to torment.”

“Did Ming Duo say anything to you, any words like ashes on the wind?”

Feeling the knot was bigger than it looked, Spring Tide faced the trembling Lan Zi again; under the circle of stares, Lan Zi shook hard, like a leaf.

She stammered. “From start to finish I didn’t trade a word with her; once I woke, I was simply… cut, like meat on a cold board.”

“…”

“Oh, right. Before I blacked out, I smelled a stink of metal—iron like wet pennies and blood.”

“A metallic stink?” The phrase clanged like a small gong.

Lan Zi was only a target of revenge; her crumbs of clues were few, so many knots stayed tied like nets in dusk water.

Even so, from the ability traces left on her, Ninexiao tightened the search grid like drawing a net.

If Ming Duo still hid in some alley of the capital, a few days would drag her shadow into light.

After the questioning, Cerqin’s team returned to their room and, after a long while apart, slept together for a night, four pillows in one moonlit boat.

They burned two-thirds of the night and called it a brief taste, no more than a fingertip sip.

At dawn, the four split and moved like geese to their tasks.

Cerqin went out to mail a letter to the An Sisters, then swung by the palace to join a talk on long-distance links, words stretching like silk threads.

Spring Tide kept muttering about that metallic scent, then dived into the archives like a fish into deep water.

Silver Luan kept training for her next rise, her breath steady as a mountain pine.

Aileaf, newly stocked with different ability-laced bloods, opened a fresh round of potion trials, flames licking like foxes.

Lan Zi, healed in flesh but brittle in spirit, got sent to the Sanctuary’s underground rest wing to mend, a seed in shade.

Once she fully recovered, they’d ship her to a designated place for punishment; tragedy or not, she’d colluded with cults and attacked prettier people again and again, the tally inked like cuts on bark.

What waited for her was years of work without day or night, a millstone grinding on.

Her face was plain clay, but her figure was lush; many Nuns would like that blossom.

After her term, she’d likely become the property of some Sanctuary member, a bird in a gilded cage.

After the palace discussion on far-distance comms, Cerqin took a carriage back to the Sanctuary, wheels humming like bees.

Without Spring Tide, the ride, at that pace, would take barely over ten minutes, a cup of tea long.

A few minutes in, Cerqin planned to rest her eyes, weighing whether to go train or to tinker in the lab, two roads like forked streams.

Just then, Spring Tide, elsewhere, felt a wave of dizziness roll in like a dark tide.

Her vision went black, like a lamp pinched out.