Heading out to sea, even into the deep blue, isn’t simple; the tide demands offerings of gear and grit before it lets you pass.

That isn’t a place you visit on a whim; the abyss waits like a cold-eyed judge, not a playground.

Once they decided to make trouble together, Silver Luan and Aileaf started their prep, lists spread like nets and tools stacked like scales.

On the morning after the Night of Deep Winter, Spring Tide summoned Cerqin to her office; the chill of discipline bit hard, yet she didn’t stop their reckless expedition.

The three stood at Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Rank; if they solved breathing under water, they could guard their lives like lanterns in a gale.

They’d explore the sea near Eastern Sea City; even in deep water, they wouldn’t drift to far-ocean distances where true leviathans stir like mountains.

And still, Spring Tide set terms like iron bars; for the whole month, every spare hour of Cerqin belonged to Spring Tide, daylight included.

Each time, Spring Tide unleashed the Phantom God, and darkness fell over Cerqin’s eyes like a velvet curtain.

On the final morning before departure, Cerqin staggered out of Spring Tide’s temporary rest room, legs trembling like reeds; she braced against the wall just as Qianli and Baili rounded the corridor.

“Qianli, give me a hand—my legs are gone,” she called, half-laughing, half-crying, like rain caught in sunlight.

“Yikes, that’s rough… Her Highness Spring Tide did a number on you,” Qianli chirped, bouncing over like a sparrow to steady Cerqin.

Baili sighed, wind through pines, then spoke steady as stone. “We said today was important. You can’t run this late.”

“Tell that to Spring Tide, sister Baili…” Cerqin muttered, a bitter smile like cold tea.

Baili’s eyes slid sideways, a blade sheathing itself; in the three months since Ming Xi left, Spring Tide’s workload swelled like a spring flood, and with Cerqin’s intake running low, her temper sometimes flashed like summer lightning.

Nuns and knights alike kept their distance unless necessary; no one poked the tiger when the stripes glowed.

Cerqin vented, then steadied her breath. “Are we set?”

“Leaf City’s team is already in place,” Qianli replied, crisp as a bell.

“Good. Let’s move,” Cerqin said, heart lifting like a sail catching wind.

Before any adventure, she had a vital task: the first long-distance comm network had to light up, a web strung like stars across cities.

At the new Comm Plaza, the crowd packed in, a tide of faces; knights held order like anchors in the swell.

Factions gathered around a semi-circular building at the center, a modest shell—no need for a giant shell when the pearl inside has limits.

A comm core can only bind so many nodes; a hundred outgoing nodes is small, but this was a city-scale trial, a spark before the blaze.

More comm plazas would rise across the city, lanterns in a chain lighting one by one.

On the plaza’s ring, the standout was the market run by the Sanctuary, Eastern Sea City’s biggest power, a bazaar where receiver gear gleamed like fish-scales.

Receivers tied to the network would be sold there, little stones waiting to drink voices like rain.

The whole build was simple in spirit; to reach someone in another city, you entered the central hall and used a fixed node to call that city’s comm core.

The core relayed the message to the receiver stone in the person’s hand, a whisper traveling like a current through rock.

Calls went out from fixed nodes linked to the plaza’s comm stone, and personal receiver stones—like pocket comm-hubs—took the call clean as a bell.

Personal stones stayed passive by design; once linked, you could talk back and forth, but you couldn’t start the ripple without the plaza’s node.

A little clunky, sure, but it stitched city to city like a loom drawing bright threads.

This link-up wasn’t just a single bridge; it started at the imperial capital, then to Leaf City, then to Eastern Sea City—three cities interwoven like braids.

Cerqin believed time would carry it across the Holy Dragon Empire, a constellation of voices lighting the map.

“Real lively,” Qianli murmured, eyes shining like fish at dawn.

“If that little black slab could make calls on its own, it’d be perfect,” she added, hope fluttering like a kite.

“Not that easy… the core can’t handle too many links at once; materials choke the flow,” Cerqin said, a crease of regret like a shadow on water.

City-to-city exchange would reshape the land, but she wasn’t satisfied; next she wanted field teams to touch a city in real time, a drumbeat through the wild.

Materials stood in the way like cliffs; that deep-sea trip aimed straight at them.

Sea-source crystals were among the best and the hardest, stones that sang like whales and burned like frost.

If they could haul them in steady bulk, clogged problems would melt like ice in spring.

“By the way, the slimes you had us catch have bred a lot; is the new site ready?” Qianli asked, voice light as a lark.

Baili and Qianli had come along on leave; idle hands found this work, and both signed up, two shadows slipping into the same stream.

They wore nun outfits today, soft cloth flowing like water; less steel, more silk, less horse and helm, more warmth and heat.

With Qianli so lively, you’d never guess she was a Sixth Rank knight, a blade tucked in ribbon.

Baili remembered the trouble dogging the knight camp; she hesitated like a step on thin ice. “A yard for large slimes shouldn’t be that hard. We ended up keeping them at the camp, feeding them daily is killing us.”

“Big sites aren’t easy to find in Eastern Sea City, where every inch costs a fortune,” Cerqin said, a rueful smile like a bent reed.

She regretted pushing the hunt; for experiments, she’d asked Qianli and Baili to bring back large slimes for material, jars for a craft.

They caught one near the imperial capital, and the test worked—clean as clear water.

Back in Eastern Sea City, more tests called for more hunts; materials ran short, so Cerqin looked to breeding, a pond instead of a bucket.

Slimes are easy tenants: they eat anything, breed fast, grow like bamboo after rain; give them mana-rich stuff, and they swell like storm clouds.

Cerqin found that slime corpses, especially large ones, after simple processing, could serve many uses, clay for gears and glue for dreams.

“Once the An Sisters arrive, we’ll fence a plot and spin up a slime ranch. Speaking of—how many have the camp slimes bred?”

“Dozens,” Baili said, weary as dusk, “and that’s after we keep hauling some off for tests…”

“So many…” Cerqin murmured, embarrassment flushing like dawn.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I filed a report half a month ago; you said you were hunting land for pens,” Baili replied, steady as a ledger.

“Uh…” Cerqin winced; this past month, aside from eating, reading, and charting new directions, Spring Tide had claimed all her spare hours like a queen claiming tribute.

“I’ll ask Spring Tide when we get back; have her help,” she said, resolve settling like a stone.

They chatted as they walked, a stream babbling toward the plaza; the others had arrived already.

The Comm Plaza stood fully open; after demos and introductions from every faction, the link-up ceremony ended clean and bright, a knot tied perfect.