The voice burst by her ear like a pebble breaking still water, and Silver Luan jolted. Then joy rose on her face like dawn over snow.

That voice was soft as warm mochi and sweet as honey. It had to be a god, like incense curling toward the rafters.

The thought surfaced unbidden, a bubble from the deep. Her bloodline shivered like a plucked string, and her power throbbed like a held breath.

Panic pricked like thorns. She looked around in a rush, eyes skimming the room like swallows.

No trace. So she called out, voice tossed like a stone into a well. “Dragon Deity?”

Her words had barely faded when a point of light bloomed twenty centimeters above her cheek, like a star coming through fog.

A little white hand slipped out like a lily from ice, and it caught the dragon horn that had sprouted on her head like midnight antlers.

Power clenched down like an iron tide. She had no room to fight it, and in a blink she was yanked into that pinpoint star.

The world flipped like a painted fan. The shift her spirit-body felt was fiercer than the scene, a riptide under a glittering surface.

She hung in a boundless white void, blank as untouched silk. There was no grain of matter, and pressure crushed like a mountain.

[How did a spirit this frail cross Heaven’s Barrier…] The soft voice above her held disbelief, like frost on a petal.

A god with so much feeling. The thought startled her like thunder behind the hills.

[Don’t be surprised. Without enough feeling, a god’s mantle tips like an unbalanced scale, and the fallout is a mess of broken glass.]

She looked up. In the white, a tiny god sat cross‑legged, floating like a lotus on a pond. Her gold hair was simply gathered, and two small dragon horns made her even cuter, like budding moon crescents.

She looked nothing like the clan’s icon. Worlds apart, like river and sky.

[How rude…] The petite blonde puffed her cheeks, silent, yet her voice fell into Silver Luan’s ear like rain.

“Dragon Deity…” The title left her like a prayer lantern on dark water.

[You still haven’t answered me, Chosen. How does a spirit this feeble punch through Heaven’s Barrier…] The words tapped like a finger on glass.

Even a Chosen had to reach demigod and pay a price to pierce that sky‑thin wall, like a fish leaping a gate. This was a first in ages.

Silver Luan explained in quick strokes, like charcoal on paper. When she mentioned the enhanced Divine Dragon Elixir, she heard a sharp inhale, a hiss like cold air on iron.

She didn’t forget why she’d come. She set her breath like an anchor and asked, “Dragon Deity, what are the Four Pole Stars and the False World?”

[I don’t know.] The answer was light as a feather, and it fell like a stone.

“Huh?” The sound slipped out, small as a sparrow.

She steadied herself in the white, then met the tilted gaze above, the tiny Dragon Deity like a moon hanging askew. Silence settled like snow.

[Not sure. Maybe the other brats cooked it up. I don’t like meddling in mortal dust, so I’m not clear.] Her tone was breezy as willow leaves.

Life and fertility was her domain, the god most entangled with mortals, vines and roots everywhere. Yet she said she didn’t meddle. If the Great Elder heard, his faith would crack like ice.

Silver Luan suddenly thought of her mother, the Silver Dragon clan’s chief, her face stern as a blade.

[I don’t know what the Four Pole Stars really are. But your role is likely the world’s anchor, a nail in the seabed. In that False World, if I’m right, the other three Chosen can’t reach their patron gods.]

“Eh?” Her surprise fluttered like a startled finch.

Back at the imperial city, Spring Tide hadn’t heard her deity. Silver Luan knew that, a pebble long buried in sand.

[I still don’t really know. But “False World” likely means exactly what it says, a painted sky on silk. Ah, time’s up? What a shame. I hope next time we meet in the true divine realm, under a real sky.]

Silver Luan tried to answer, but her voice drowned like a reed in wind. Her outline blurred like mist, and the scales on her body receded first, like tide peeling off rock.

The last thing she heard in that white was her petite Dragon Deity’s aggrieved mutter, a grumble like a cat. [This generation’s Chosen has such a figure. Unfair!]

Silver Luan snapped back as if doused in cold water. The meeting room returned like a familiar shore.

Comfort washed through her like warm tea. Power in her body surged, solid as stone in the palm.

She drew a sharp breath, chest heaving like bellows. The pressure on her spirit had been heavy as storm clouds.

While she was still dazed, a little hand tugged the hand that still clutched the vial, a tug like a child on a sleeve.

Her drained spirit power refilled fast, like a spring through sand. She looked at Cerqin, whose face held a thread of worry like a crease in silk, and spoke.

“Don’t worry. I’m fine,” she said, steady as a stone. “Just burned more spirit than I thought…”

It had taken only a heartbeat, a spark on dry grass, so neither watcher expected such a drain.

Confirming she was fine, and that the elixir’s base effects had settled like dye in cloth, Aileaf asked, voice crisp as a bell, “Well? Did you meet the deity? Learn anything?”

[I’m not very sure…] Gold flickered in Silver Luan’s eyes like sunlight on a river. Her voice went soft and sticky, like rice syrup. She blinked, then waved it off like smoke.

“Uh… that’s about it. The Dragon Deity doesn’t seem to know,” she said, then added, “but…”

She relayed every word the tiny Dragon Deity had said, bead by bead on a string. On the light screen, Spring Tide finally spoke, her tone cool as moonlight.

“Literal, then… If so, the Radiant Deity might know something.” Her words fell like measured drops.

As the god closest to mortal shorelines, that deity might hold a map or two. Since they could link to the Dragon Deity, special channels might still be opened, like hidden gates in a wall.

“In that case, I’ll prepare early,” Spring Tide said, firm as a drawn bow.

“No problem,” Aileaf replied, her voice like a well‑set nail.

All three knew what she meant. They’d head to the Radiant Sanctuary’s headquarters, a lighthouse on the horizon.

“How’s the Archbishop?” Cerqin scratched her head like a puzzled cat and asked the key question. Spring Tide’s small face darkened like a cloudbank.

“No word yet,” she said, voice flat as slate. “If he doesn’t return soon, I’ll ask White Thought to scry it.”

“Uh… okay…” The answer fluttered like a loose leaf.

“Anyway, finish the offshore platform,” she said, tone taut as a bowstring, “then get back fast.”

The link to Eastern Sea City cut like a severed thread, and the three wore different faces, masks in a play.

Aileaf let out a breath, relief spilling like warm rain. If the Dragon Deity was right and the False World was literal, then their bridge to a god meant more than one thing, veins in a leaf.

Silver Luan still hadn’t climbed out of her surprise, a well with no rope. The Dragon Deity’s look and feel were nothing like her mind’s shrine, a shut‑in’s tone in a petite body like a doll.

The letdown was a cold wave. Even the Divine Dragon Elixir’s boost to flesh and bloodline felt faded, like colors in old silk.

Cerqin was the calmest, a stone in a stream. After the call, her mind kept replaying Spring Tide’s look, hungry as a fox, impatient as drought.

She had been holding back for months, a tide behind a dam. The thought of returning to Eastern Sea City sent sparks along her nerves like fireflies.

With Spring Tide preparing for the Radiant Sanctuary’s headquarters, Cerqin figured a few magitech devices from her designs could speed the road, gears oiled and wheels true.

They’d optimize travel, the ongoing magitech car project rolling like a cart on packed earth.

Materials were no longer the problem, a warehouse of steel. Over the next ten days, Cerqin tried many paths, threads through a loom, while the offshore platform’s mining settled into rhythm, a drumbeat at sea.

A flood of high‑grade ore of many kinds rose from the deep like whales and went back to Eastern Sea City like caravans on water.

The sea‑borne city neared completion, scaffolds dropping like husks. With seabed materials backing it, construction quickened like bamboo after rain.

To keep the offshore platform safe, Eastern Sea City sent more mid‑tier warships like sharks and one high‑tier warship like a whale.

They also dispatched a fresh prototype from the magitech warship plan, a blade yet unblooded, to test sailing and combat bite.

By then, the platform’s defense was that of a mid‑sized city, walls like teeth. Ordinary high‑tier sea beasts posed no threat, waves breaking on stone.