Among the soul-marked individuals labeled Ming Duo, Spring Tide wasn’t chosen by chance.

Once Ninexiao plotted every mark, Spring Tide saw one crooked star on the city map at a glance.

It was a little grove on the imperial city’s outer ring, beside a Sanctuary outpost, a pocket of trees owned by the Sanctuary.

That outer-district branch served pilgrims, set like a stitched seam where two commoner quarters met.

The grove had been slated for Sanctuary buildings, then plans shifted for special reasons.

Some structures moved into the inner city, and this plot slept unused.

The outer Sanctuary handled worship only. Nuns on duty and Divine Officers rotated through like tides.

Spring Tide chose this place on one heavy pull—intuition, a fishline tug in the chest.

Ming Duo had struck Sanctuary knights several times, as if courting capture. Under the lamp’s blind shadow, secrets like to grow.

It might even be where the true body rested.

She thought so—until she arrived and saw a short-haired woman in a black robe, perched on a branch, calmly staring. Spring Tide’s brows drew tight.

“Looks like I drew the best luck,” said the short-haired woman wearing Ming Duo’s face, voice flat as still water.

Her chest tightened first; then words came. “Senior sister... no, Ming Duo.”

The person on the branch felt wrong, yet the face and its leaking magic said it clearly—her former senior sister.

One thing split from memory: Ming Duo’s smile was gone; a blank mask sat where warmth had been.

A strange, familiar chill rose from the heart. Spring Tide knew the shape of numbness.

Ming Duo looked like the old her—feelings cut away, winter under skin.

“You’ve grown, Spring Tide. I heard you’re the Eastern Sanctuary’s Holy Maiden. Congratulations?”

Ming Duo tilted her head. The empty face felt eerie, like moonlight on a blade.

Spring Tide’s silence wavered. Words stalled. Her gaze hardened. She breathed out. The Phantom God stirred awake.

She blurred forward in a blink, fist winds roaring like an incoming storm. Ming Duo didn’t budge from the branch.

Her punch met a clear ripple. It stopped a meter short, as if caught by invisible water.

Spring Tide twisted past a wind blade that birthed from thin air. She clenched again. Pale-green mana skinned her like a translucent suit.

Compressed to the edge, it made the air shiver and hum.

One punch. Two—

Within a breath, hundreds hammered the shield. Ripples shuddered. The bubble tore.

Aileaf’s counterattack followed hard. Several attack spells flared together, hemming her mid-air with no blind angles.

High-tier spells whipped a terrifying mana storm. Under that barrage, a small hill would crumble.

Yet stray shock and energy bled off beyond a set range, then fell quiet, sparing the outskirts.

Credit went to Ninexiao. His soul power blanketed the city, borrowing nature’s flow to raise arrays.

Ambient mana steadied, and spell damage damped like rain on sand.

Even so, the soul formations couldn’t touch the core engines of spellwork. The wide damage dipped, but the ground lay ravaged.

Trees within ten meters took direct mana hits and powdered. A round clearing gaped like a coin.

The tree Ming Duo sat upon stayed intact. She hadn’t moved an inch.

“Triggering several attack spells while re-casting a shield... what a monster.” Spring Tide’s voice came calm from the dust.

Ming Duo showed neither joy nor sorrow. Her eyes pinned the shadow in the smoke.

“Right back at you. Taking direct hits from multiple spells and staying intact—few of the Seventh Rank can do that.”

“Then let’s stop testing...” She exhaled. Warm-ups were done. Without full power, Ming Duo wouldn’t fall.

She drove the sigils at full burn, pushed her reinforcement to the limit. The Phantom God rose again.

Compressed green mana wrapped her whole form; her jade-green hair swayed without wind, like kelp in a tide.

In the next instant, a harsh shatter rang over the treetops. Faced with a full-force strike, Ming Duo turned serious.

Exchange for exchange, their techniques converged, blades of skill meeting clean.

Close-quarters brawling was Spring Tide’s forte. Her speed edged higher, but her raw strength was pressed down.

Being pressed inside her own specialty didn’t surprise her; it felt like fighting uphill in snow.

As blows traded, a discord crept in. Ming Duo’s bodywork was weaker than memory.

Her movements showed tiny gaps—harmless, but wrong, like off-beat drums.

Time stretched the mismatch thicker with every pass.

Ming Duo dropped the idea of grappling. She shed reinforcement, shifted to ranged harassment.

She even ate a punch to break free of the clinch.

Spring Tide surged to pursue.

Heat roared up underfoot. Ming Duo triggered a formation seeded long ago.

A colossal pillar of fire tore skyward, swallowing half the grove like a hungry dragon.

Violet flames raged for dozens of seconds, then shrank and died. At the rim, Ming Duo loosed several more potent spells.

Spring Tide blinked behind her in a green flash.

Expecting it, Ming Duo snapped on multiple protective spells, wards layering like glass.

Spring Tide pushed her power to the edge, funneling all her time into this strike.

At contact, several shield layers shattered at once like thin ice.

Ming Duo replenished the broken wards in an instant, magic threading back into place.

That blink of contact was exactly the window Spring Tide waited for.

The shattering outpaced the replenishing, yet the strike’s fuel was burning out—defense looked ahead.

But the shield’s breaking speed matched her forecast; the rhythm fell where she wanted.

The Phantom God had seemed to speed her. In truth, it slowed the world’s flow.

She moved normal in a slowed world, reaping time like harvested grain.

Now, the conditions for true time-acceleration finally aligned.

As the Phantom God shifted phases, acceleration latched onto Ming Duo—whose wards were already breaking fast.

In a single instant, every ward on her body shattered. Even the blessed black robe ripped apart like wet paper.

Spring Tide didn’t waste the chance she’d forged. She pooled her last mana to a point and struck.

The arm that took the hit burst apart, scattering a spray of metal parts. Spring Tide’s pupils tightened; surprise flashed like a struck gong.

To finish fast and move to support, Ninexiao chose a spot roughly equidistant from the other targets.

At the boundary of outer and inner districts, Ninexiao looked at the girl before him and spoke, puzzled.

“It’s Ming Duo’s scent. Her soul ripple, too. But... odd. Incomplete?”

“As expected of Uncle Ninexiao. You can see my prior state at a glance.”

“Hmph...” Ninexiao fixed the blank-faced Ming Duo and let out a cold snort.

“You know this, right? You can’t beat me.”

With soul power covering the city, he stood stronger than usual here. Besides, an Eighth Rank against a Seventh is a crush.

“I just need a few minutes of stall.”

“Confident, aren’t you...” Ninexiao spoke lightly, but his stance settled into war.

The fight would be one-sided, yet this little monster could still delay him for a while.