"It's open! The door's open!"
Inside the storehouse, already in chaos from the sudden flood of new treasures, a girl's delighted cry rang out from somewhere beyond the walls. The disciples who had been working so diligently, Su Lin and Mu Xia among them, rushed to seal the warehouse doors. Then the whole group of girls took off running at full speed toward the area that had once been the Forbidden Palace.
"...Confirmed. Not a single person left."
What none of them knew was that dozens of meters above the rooftops, a cloaked figure stood hidden in perfect silence. He flashed a sly smile as he watched the last of the girls disappear from view, then turned his gleaming gaze back toward the sealed warehouse.
.
.
.
"Hah... hah... Senior, has the door opened?"
Mu Xia had run so fast that even her qi couldn't keep up. She arrived first, panting hard. She asked Grandmaster Lu Qing, who stood composed and unhurried before the script border as it dissolved. The old man studied the girl's undignified state with a curious eye.
"...That Alchemy Empress. Is she important to you?"
Even his manner of speaking had shifted. What had happened before left him well practiced in the art of disguise.
"...Yes!"
The girl paused for just a moment before nodding with total certainty. One look at Mu Xia's shining eyes was all Grandmaster Lu Qing needed to know she wasn't lying.
"For orphans like us, the Alchemy Empress is more than a benefactor."
"...Orphans like you?"
"Yes... every disciple in this Goddess Alchemy Palace has known hardship. We were taken in and raised by the Alchemy Empress herself. She taught us both alchemy and how to cultivate — everything we needed to survive in this cruel world. So she's the most important person in all of our hearts."
The more Mu Xia spoke, the more serious her expression became. Grandmaster Lu Qing could feel the weight in her voice. This was a girl who should have been out playing and enjoying her youth, but hadn't been.
"She's out... she's out!"
One of her junior sisters jumped with joy and pointed toward the door. Measured footsteps announced someone coming up from below, and it was Bai Fanxian who stepped through first.
But there was no sign of Luo Qingyan — no sign of the Alchemy Empress at all. The disciples of the Goddess Alchemy Palace looked at one another, confused and anxious.
"Um... Lady Heroine, what about the Empress?"
Mu Xia stepped forward as their representative. She craned her neck, trying to peer past Bai Fanxian in case a middle-aged woman might follow behind.
"...She's dealing with something important. Don't worry."
Bai Fanxian met the worry on their faces with quiet ease. She hadn't finished exploring what lay below. Fearing these girls might work themselves into a panic and cause trouble if left alone too long, Bai Fanxian had come back up first. A faint smile touched her lips as she looked over the disciples of the Goddess Alchemy Palace, who had all gathered here without anyone telling them to.
"Are these all the disciples?"
The question didn't strike Mu Xia as strange. She glanced at her junior sisters and bowed her head slightly.
"Yes... sixty-three in total, at the moment."
"But from what I can see right now, there are only..."
BOOM!
"!?"
Bai Fanxian hadn't finished her sentence when an explosion thundered from the building the disciples had just left. White smoke billowed into the sky, and tongues of red flame were visible from a distance.
"That's the direction of the warehouse!"
One of the smaller disciples cried out in alarm. Su Lin's face drained of color as she stared at the burning building. Hadn't they just stored all the treasures they received in that very warehouse?
"No...!"
If all those treasures were destroyed, their hope of rebuilding the Goddess Alchemy Palace would go up in smoke with them!
They all knew it. The disciples bolted back the way they came, faster than before. Some broke off to haul buckets, scooping water from a nearby pond and throwing it onto the blaze, but no matter how much water they used, the flames showed no sign of dying down.
"Move back!"
The shout came from overhead. Tang Yeye was standing firm on the air itself. No one could say where she had produced the white sniper rifle from, but the moment she finished assembling it she leveled the barrel downward, taking aim at the burning building.
Rumble...
Waves of freezing cold burst outward from Tang Yeye's body. White mist condensed behind her, forming into a massive pair of blue wings. Mu Xia and Su Lin felt the chill pierce through them, their eyes fixed on the little girl in disbelief. The qi flooding the air around her was many times greater than anything they themselves could manage.
How could a child her age possibly...
BANG!
Tang Yeye didn't bother with a warning — she knew time was critical. She pulled the trigger without hesitation. The blue wings at her back spread wide one final time before every last drop of her power flooded into the barrel and shot down through the sky toward the ground below!
CRACK!
The entire burning building was encased in freezing yin qi in an instant. Even the roaring flames were swallowed whole by white ice and snuffed out completely. In a fraction of a second, the building before them had transformed into a sculpture of ice.
"Phew... just barely made it."
Drained, the little girl simply let herself fall. It was Hui'er who dove in to catch her younger sister just before Tang Yeye hit the ground.
"Are you all right!?"
Mu Xia rushed over in alarm. She no longer saw the two of them as innocent little children who liked sweets. In her eyes, they had become Grandmasters deserving of genuine respect.
"Thank you so much! If you hadn't helped, even those treasures would've..."
Su Lin's face was full of guilt and shame. Not only had they received all these treasures for free, they now had to have someone else save them too. As someone who bore responsibility here, she couldn't bring herself to treat this as a small matter.
"Don't worry about it. Ordinary water can't put out qi fire anyway."
No one had noticed Bai Fanxian approach. She ruffled Tang Yeye's hair in quiet approval, then touched the frozen building lightly with one finger and flicked — the ice shattered all at once into a fine mist, revealing the warehouse beneath, which had sustained only minor damage.
"Qi... fire?"
"Yes. Which means it wasn't an accident. Someone set it deliberately."
Bai Fanxian answered with perfect calm. That alone was enough to make all the disciples turn to one another in confusion.
"Who... who would dare do something like this!?"
"Don't worry. It wasn't any of you."
The moment her voice fell, Bai Fanxian stamped her foot into the ground. A surge of qi powerful enough to level an entire mountain was driven deep into the earth below — yet rather than destruction, dazzling golden light broke through and rose upward, hundreds of ancient characters arranging themselves into a great wheel that turned without end!
Before any of this had started, Bai Fanxian had already watched every one of the disciples present — their expressions, their eyes, the faint tremors in their internal qi — and concluded with certainty that none of these girls were responsible.
Which left only someone else.
"Um... what is this?"
Mu Xia's eyes went wide as she watched the characters drift in circles. She had seen something like this once before, back when the door behind the portrait had appeared. These were ancient borders of power that no one in this era understood!
"This is why you should take good care of the herb garden in the back."
A faint smile crossed Bai Fanxian's lips. All at once, every character flowed toward the herb garden at the back, and the girl standing nearest cried out in surprise.
"The herb beds..."
"...are becoming a border."
As she finished speaking, everyone saw it for themselves. The strange planting patterns that had puzzled them for so long were serving as the core of a golden border now forming and expanding in every direction. The herbs acted as a medium to bring the border to life, and the moment it fully enclosed the walls of the Goddess Alchemy Palace, they dissolved into the air. Every girl who breathed them in felt herself flooded with qi to the very brim. Even the most slight-framed and weakest among them found herself jumping and bounding about with inexhaustible energy.
"The qi had simply run dry..."
Bai Fanxian murmured. From the first moment she had set foot here, she knew something was off. The border that should have protected and strengthened the palace disciples wasn't working at all. At first she had thought it might have been broken when the palace was relocated, but she changed her mind the moment she saw the herb garden.
Ten thousand years, it seemed, was long enough for even the knowledge of how to replenish a border's power to be lost to time.
Without that knowledge, even in her absence, the Goddess Alchemy Palace should never have been so easy to push around.
"Well then..."
SNAP!
The moment Bai Fanxian snapped her fingers, a violent crashing sound rang out from somewhere behind the palace. When she flicked her hand, something came hurtling from that direction at tremendous speed and smashed into the ground before the assembled disciples, carving a deep pit into the earth.
"...A person?"
What had come crashing down was the body of a powerful-looking man in a black cloak. He was dazed — he had just completed his mission and was pulling back when, out of nowhere, an invisible wall appeared and blocked him entirely. Some force then seized and hurled him here without any ability to resist.
"What's happening?"
While he was still confused, Bai Fanxian was already walking toward him. She narrowed her eyes and looked straight into his, and he flinched before he could stop himself.
"You're the one who set that building on fire..."
"No... I was just passing through..."
"I wasn't asking you..."
CRACK!
Before the man could get another word out, the pit plunged abruptly deeper as an unseen force hammered down from above. Blood coughed out of his mouth and down his cloak, staining it a vivid red.
"I was only talking to myself..."
Bai Fanxian's expression didn't change. Her Heaven Sense could detect the aggressive yang qi radiating from his cloak — the unmistakable trace of qi fire. She stepped to the edge of the pit, looked down into eyes that had begun to tremble with fear, and asked again.
"You're the one who set that building on fire..."
"N-no..."
CRACK!
The same scene played out a second time. The formless force came crashing down from above once more, and the man's eyes went wide. He strained with everything he had to summon his qi — tiny sparks of red fire flickering to life around his body — but something was suppressing it entirely. He couldn't move so much as a fingertip.
"You're the one who set that building on fire..."
"No..."
CRACK!
A third time. The force this round was nearly enough to knock him unconscious. Blood pooled at the bottom of the pit like a small red lake. He tried to raise his head — but the moment he met Bai Fanxian's gaze, cold as ice and cutting straight to the soul, he could no longer hold back his fear.
"You're the one who set that building on fire..."
"I — I did! It was me!"
He finally confessed. His eyes were filled with pure terror. In all his life he had never felt this powerless before another person. Not even his sect master, not even a high-level demonic beast, had ever radiated such crushing pressure.
Telling the truth was his last option.
"..."
CRACK!
...It seemed his answer didn't matter either way. His body was hurled out of the pit with such force that it bounced across the ground, consciousness gone, foam at the mouth.
Bai Fanxian paid him no further attention. She turned instead toward the still, quiet forest at the side and spoke softly.
"...You're all lucky."
"...That none of you have stepped in here yet."
The words drifted away on the breeze, but coming from Bai Fanxian's lips, they felt as though she had leaned in and whispered them directly into each ear. The people hiding scattered throughout the forest all felt a chill run through them and could bear it no longer. A rustling sound rose and fell in the trees, then was gone. Every last one of those who had been eyeing the treasures had fled.
Bai Fanxian sighed. In this era, there was no one left who still remembered her. The power and reputation she had accumulated — her shield against being disturbed by nuisances — had gone with those memories. It seemed she would have to "kill the chicken to warn the monkey" many more times like this before things settled back to how they should be.
Bai Fanxian turned back to the disciples of the Goddess Alchemy Palace. She had braced herself for fearful stares.
Instead, what she found was a row of eyes shining so brightly they nearly glittered.