A metal apparatus of exquisite precision, fine as spider‑silk clockwork.

Spring Tide’s pupils pinched tight; her reaction stumbled a beat, like a wave recoiling from a jagged reef.

Ming Duo’s shoulder and part of her torso were blown apart. Her body should’ve been gore, yet faint mana flickered over it as she slid back several yards.

She spoke, a hint of relief threading a winter-cool voice.

“Didn’t expect you to get this strong.”

“Your body… arcanotech mechanisms?”

Puppetcraft exists. People swap limbs for constructed mechanisms or enchanted items, like fitting metal bones under skin.

But puppetcraft can’t mirror flesh perfectly.

To be this precise, and this inconspicuous, cuts against common sense like a knife under silk.

Even so, the sight of such refined Arcanotechnology made Spring Tide’s brow knot deep.

“Impressive, isn’t it.”

Ming Duo tossed out a boast with a face as blank as snow.

“Azuremist Empire’s tech...”

What trickles into the Holy Dragon Empire can’t achieve this. This chassis screams of Arcanotechnology’s birthplace.

“No… even with Arcanotechnology, replacing most of the torso with substitute core components shouldn’t be possible…”

Spring Tide thought of Ming Duo’s power at once.

The Hand of Dominion splits herself into several parts, then uses them as media to control mostly mechanical, puppet-like bodies.

Yet riddles still hung like mist among pines.

Why do those split bodies share her aura, and each sits at the Seventh Rank…

She didn’t know the others. Cerqin, unwilling to accept it, still felt the rest were like this one—self-aware, eyes bright as wet ink.

Perhaps each body could use the bloodline power on its own…

“How did you do this…”

Ming Duo’s torso was damaged, the core untouched. Even so, that earlier ferocity was hard to reach again.

“How?” Ming Duo asked softly, already knowing what tangled Spring Tide’s thoughts.

“I just divided my soul and consciousness into equal shares…”

“That’s impossible…”

Before reaching the Seventh Rank, Spring Tide’s grasp of souls was shallow. After awakening and crossing time, that claim sounded like a tale told by a winter hearth.

Split a soul and keep identical consciousness in each? Even Ninexiao, whose bloodline binds the soul, couldn’t do that.

“Even if the Hand of Dominion could split a soul evenly, no soul could endure that kind of pain…”

“Unless…”

Her mind raced, possibilities whirling like leaves in a storm.

She didn’t rule out a lie, yet it rang true. The deeper she thought, the more impossible it felt, like walking a bridge of mist.

Then it hit. Cerqin’s face flashed in her mind. So did the incident in Eastwind City.

“A soul can’t bear that agony. Unless… it can’t perceive pain.”

She heard her own words as absurd. Ming Duo, a short distance away, nodded without a blink.

“Impressive. You guessed right.”

A nameless feeling crossed Spring Tide’s face like cloud-shadow over water. Ming Duo’s emotionless mask finally felt familiar.

“You erased your emotions?”

“Mm… something like that?”

“…”

“By my estimate, you should be close to my prior state. So I’m curious.”

“Curious what made you return to this ordinary look.”

Ming Duo’s voice stayed flat, like rain on stone.

Spring Tide’s face darkened, clouds piling low over a sea.

“No emotions, yet you still feel curiosity?” She gave a bitter smile.

Was this phantom curiosity truly born from the consciousness in her soul…

She didn’t answer Ming Duo’s question. She steadied her breath. Pale glow ran along her emerald hair like drifting fireflies.

“Why did you split yourself into so many bodies?”

She moved as she spoke, spending the strength and mana her words had bought back. She didn’t wait for an answer.

The familiar ward flared again. It shattered again, quick as glass under hail.

Her casting had slowed, the change stark as dusk falling. A mechanism-forged body can still move if the core is intact and key joints aren’t ruined.

It can still move, yet such widespread damage bites hard, like winter seeping into bone.

The damage throttled mana supply, dulled reaction speed, and sanded down every spell.

Spring Tide, though, was a bow at the last notch.

Her stamina and mana were bled near dry.

Even at the Seventh Rank, she couldn’t hold this pitch for long.

Worse, the Phantom God’s control eats mana and strength at a brutal rate, like fire on dry reeds.

Ming Duo neither waited to die nor tried to flee. She fought with everything left, like a blade that refuses its sheath.

A dozen minutes later, the grove’s heart lay razed, a field of splinters and churned earth.

A blood-streaked gash cut Ming Duo’s face. Her left arm was a blur of torn flesh.

Every other piece had been mechanical. Now those pieces lay in shards like fallen scales.

It meant this avatar held only a head and one arm of true flesh.

The intact head suggested this body was the core one, the lantern around which the moths turned.

Compared to the ruin that was Ming Duo, Spring Tide fared a little better.

Still, she lay scarred on the ground, green hair streaked with blood, clothes torn like wind-torn flags.

Luckily, nothing mortal. She lay there because strength and mana were spent to the dregs.

She tried to curl a finger, to pull a potion from storage. Her arm wouldn’t lift; it felt like stone sunk in mud.

After several tries, she let it go, a sigh fading like smoke.

“So why split into several… If I’m right, you’d be stronger if you didn’t, wouldn’t you?”

She moved her lips with effort. A sigh colored her words like evening light.

If the soul-splitting is real, and each body truly matches in strength…

Then it’s undeniably a cut to combat power, like pouring a river into many cups.

This isn’t a summoner’s many-versus-few tactic.

It’s dividing one’s own strength into pieces, scattering iron into sand.

Physical reserves and mana are one thing. Ming Duo’s edge lies in will and in magic.

This choice is a self-weakening, no doubt.

Silence pooled in the air. Spring Tide waited, calm as a lantern in rain.

At last, Ming Duo spoke in that same flat tone.

“Call it an experiment…”

“An experiment to torment yourself? Why erase and press down your emotions.”

“So Master really never told you?”

“She told me to find my own answer, and wore that ‘secrets of heaven’ face.”

Ming Duo fell silent again.

Spring Tide went on, voice low as a tide at night.

“Why betray the Sanctuary, and our master?”

“The Divine Ruins.”

“?”

“That was my last mission before leaving the Sanctuary. It’s why I lost my emotions… Master stopped my death… I ran…”

Her words came in fragments, yet the reason stitched together like a torn scroll. Spring Tide didn’t care about the precise mechanism.

Accident or hidden cause, it didn’t matter.

She only wanted an answer. Hearing it, her heart unclenched, like frost under sun.

Ming Duo’s voice rose again, thin as a thread.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

Ming Duo had attacked many in the Sanctuary. Some knights survived, and still live in pain, like bones aching in rain.

“Why did you hit Cerqin and Qianli, and pull those prank-like stunts?”

Spring Tide didn’t answer. She shot the question back, sharp as a thrown dart.

To her, the strangest thing was this: after the Divine Ruins took her emotions, Ming Duo still did things that showed hard-edged preferences.

Including the payback against one of the Beauty Association’s leaders.

If emotions were truly erased clean, that behavior was bizarre, like a puppet choosing its own song.

“The body’s instinct.”

Ming Duo kept it simple, words flat as slate.

“I see… You asked why I didn’t kill you? What you did deserves death.” Her tone shifted, complex as twilight. “But you know the Sanctuary’s rules.”

“Experiments to restore your emotions, and atonement. Look forward to it.”

Her voice moved from a sigh, to human warmth, to a brief joy, then settled back to calm, like a lake after rain.

As the words fell, several figures snapped into the clearing like lightning.

Bishop Ninexiao arrived, with several other Divine Officers in tow.

Ninexiao held a severed arm. The others carried a scatter of body parts, metal and meat.

The arcanotech chassis, now a dead husk from the damage, had already been stored away.

On arriving, Ninexiao glanced at Spring Tide on the ground. Seeing no big problem, he started griping, wry as old wine.

“Azuremist Arcanotechnology. Skin-masking art so refined it’s uncanny. Soul-splitting so grotesque it chills… I almost want to applaud.”

“So save the speech, Uncle-Master. Got any meds? At this rate, natural recovery’s too slow.”

“Be content. In light-injury state, you dropped the avatar with the strongest will. As expected of a fellow little monster.”

“The other splits would’ve lost without me…”

Ninexiao grumbled while fishing a vial from storage and sprinkling it over Spring Tide like rain over parch.

The Divine Officers lowered their heads, abashed. Being this battered at the same time felt shameful, like rust on a blade.

Truth is, without Ninexiao’s timely support, more than half here would be gravely wounded, near death.

The rest might not even have managed to stall the tide…

The potion was an Aileaf product.

Its effect outstripped common high-grade brews by far, like spring rain over drought land.

Within seconds, Spring Tide felt mana surge back. The potion’s life-force stitched wounds and poured strength into her limbs.

In a few breaths, she pushed herself up and sat, breath steadying like wind through bamboo.

Her gaze slid to the nearby severed head, quiet as a moonlit stone.