Beneath Lixing Palace, within a hidden facility, the roar of steel and machinery reverberated, a ceaseless hum. Countless cores of mindless demons and the precious Soul Gems of a few Magical Girls were ceaselessly ferried in from the outside, in addition to vast quantities of fuel and minerals.
The opulent depths beneath Lixing Palace had long been supplanted by a sprawling network of steel, a metallic labyrinth that nourished a colossal, slumbering monster.
This entity, devouring immense resources, lay dormant in silence, patiently awaiting an awakening that was destined to arrive.
At the heart of this vast subterranean expanse, suspended within magical energy so dense it threatened to condense into liquid, hovered a single feather, imbued with an aura of deathly stillness.
A demon, his face obscured and his attire sharp, strode into the facility.
He traversed a corridor, arriving at an office door, and, after a crisp knock, entered.
“Doctor, the core holy relic and the power supply units are both provisionally ready, and experiments can commence at any time.”
His gaze fell upon the man in the white lab coat, who had been engrossed in observing data.
Upon hearing the report, the man slowly turned to face him.
“This day was bound to come, after all…”
“Ensure all procedures are properly deployed, and be ready for the operation the day after tomorrow.”
The demon, known as the Doctor, sighed with a hint of fatalistic lament.
However, the very next moment, his eyes, having briefly flickered to the surveillance monitors, sharpened abruptly.
“Speaking of which… the image on this screen…”
Just then, another subordinate entered.
“Report, Doctor: we received word today that Her Highness, the Provisional Princess Consort, will be arriving for an inspection tonight.”
“Oh?”
A flicker of surprise crossed his face upon hearing this news.
“Your subordinate believes, at this critical juncture…”
A flicker of doubt also crossed the soldier’s face, yet he was swiftly cut off by the man in the white lab coat.
“Her Highness’s loyalty to the Demon King is beyond question, or rather… whether she is loyal or not is irrelevant.”
His gaze swept over the two subordinates before him, then to the roaring metallic behemoth visible beyond.
“Prepare to receive her.
Her Highness is a crucial part of the plan; there must be no mishaps.”
“However… all great endeavors are inevitably hindered by fools, and a few rats have infiltrated the base.
Find them.”
“The blueprint for a new world… Lixing Palace will have the final say, and the secret of the ‘Black Sun’ device must not be prematurely revealed.”
****
Concurrently, a young woman, her hair streaked gray and red, materialized abruptly from the seemingly empty void.
She bore a colossal anti-material sniper rifle, was clad in a leather bustier and shorts, and draped in a red jacket trimmed with sable fur.
Her gaze swept over her companions, who had similarly materialized from the void beside her.
Among them, besides two familiar faces, stood a girl with pronounced dark circles under her eyes, appearing as if she hadn’t even changed out of her pajamas.
“Vic, this is such a hassle… can’t we just go back…?”
She yawned, the act pulling her from her cloaked state, yet Vic herself displayed not the slightest hint of fatigue.
“The Night Watchmen’s rewards are rare indeed, and they’ve permitted us to take ‘souvenirs’.”
A wild smile played on Vic’s lips, her gray and red streaked hair swaying subtly in the dim light.
“More importantly, I want to personally gauge whether Lixing Palace’s ‘Greed’ and ‘Pride’ are truly as formidable as the rumors claim.”
Her gaze swept over the colossal, heart-stopping core of the ‘Black Sun’ device below, and the ‘Feather of Death’ suspended in the dense magical energy, radiating an ominous aura.
“Let’s hurry and find the energy core’s transmission logs and the holy relic’s associated data.
I have a premonition that the secrets hidden here are even more astonishing than the Night Watchmen imagine.”
Like phantoms, they glided through the steel corridors, progressively penetrating deeper into the core areas of this subterranean fortress.
They utilized the Sleepwalker’s incredible hacking abilities in tandem with Vic’s keen intuition for traps.
Patrol demons encountered along their path often found their cores precisely shattered by Vic’s specialized silenced pistol before they could even react, or their senses temporarily ‘shielded’ by a certain drowsiness-inducing domain ability.
Their infiltration was silent and efficient, piercing with surgical precision towards Lixing Palace’s most hidden nerve center.
****
Meanwhile, above them, in the once magnificent courtyard, now reduced to ruins, another battle was hurtling towards its frenzied finale.
Qi Yue’an—or rather, the fused entity where the consciousnesses of ‘Qi Yue’ and ‘Qi Yue’an intertwined, their boundaries blurred—spoke no more.
Her attacks were like a tempestuous downpour, yet imbued with the cold, lethal essence of moonlight.
Her twin swords, wreathed in violet Jealousy Flames and crimson Prison Suppression Flames, danced in her hands, carving trajectories of destruction.
Ling Ru, having just expended her full strength, retreated, pale-faced, behind the broken walls and rubble, gasping fiercely.
She desperately emulated Xiyin’s characteristics, attempting to wring out the last vestiges of magical energy from her nearly depleted Soul Gem for recovery.
However, though Qi Yue’an did not directly pursue, the flying debris and scorching embers stirred up by the battle’s aftershocks left her scrambling to evade, like a small boat caught in a storm.
“An’an, wake up!
Let’s go home together, alright?”
Xiyin’s voice carried an unprecedented plea and urgency.
She deftly evaded the attacks; azure musical notes and starlight enveloped her like a shield, yet they were constantly annihilated under the combined assault of the Jealousy Flames and Prison Suppression Flames.
She keenly perceived that her opponent now seemed no longer the purely playful ‘Qi Yue’; the occasional glimpses of Qi Yue’an’s stubbornness and silence ignited a faint spark of hope within her.
However, this flicker of hope was instantly extinguished by an even fiercer onslaught.
‘Home’…?
Qi Yue’an’s figure abruptly accelerated, her twin swords carving chilling arcs of light, cleaving through all obstructing musical notes and arrows, while behind her, countless spheres of Jealousy Flames and searing crimson infernos ploughed the ground, clearing her path.
“I can’t go back now.”
Her voice held a heartbreaking resolve, and her charging speed was so great that it left afterimages.
“His plan… I don’t fully understand it either…”
Before the words had fully left her lips, she had already shattered through layers of obstruction, closing in on Xiyin to less than a meter away.
With her twin swords crossed, a formidable aura descended like a towering mountain, making Xiyin feel the air around her solidify and gravity multiply.
“But I believe in him!”
Qi Yue’an lifted her face, her silver eyes reflecting Xiyin’s astonished countenance, her cheeks flushed with an unnatural blush, yet her lips curved into a serene, almost pathological, smile.
“Though something may be sacrificed, and the path might be winding… he will surely save everything.
Therefore…”
Her voice suddenly rose, imbued with an undeniable possessiveness:
“You must all stay! By my side! Until everything ends—whether it’s him, or you, you will all be with me… forever!”
This almost fanatical declaration finally revealed her true purpose in luring them here: not for a reunion, but for imprisonment, to ensnare them within this isolated courtyard, cut off from the momentous events unfolding outside.
“Stop, An’an!
Don’t let that man deceive you any longer!
He is nothing but an utterly ambitious demon lord!”
Xiyin used the momentum to leap back, while a cascade of starlight, like falling tears, furiously collided with the surging violet flames, erupting in a blinding flash.
Faced with Xiyin’s rebuke, Qi Yue’an seemed to sink into an even deeper state of mental disarray.
“Xixi~”
The voice suddenly turned seductive and playful, Qi Yue’s tone interjecting without warning.
“You’re my absolute favorite among all of you, you know~ Even though you can be as stubborn as a little donkey sometimes, that’s precisely what I adore about you~”
These sudden, almost confessional words sent a tremor through Xiyin’s heart, causing her movements to falter involuntarily.
And in that very instant, the voice reverted to Qi Yue’an’s true tone, imbued with both gravity and shyness:
“Later… I’ll definitely marry Lin Xiao, won’t I…? I believe I’ll love him, and he’ll love me too.”
The blush on her face deepened, her eyes glazed over, as if lost in a blissful fantasy.
“But… Qi Yue is right,”
Her voice began to waver again, tinged with Qi Yue’s seductive allure:
“I’m so reluctant to part with you too~ I don’t want to leave you; I want to wake up every morning and see your face…”
Effortlessly deflecting Bai Jin’s full-force greatsword cleave, she simultaneously, with two distinctly different vocal tones, articulated the deepest, most chaotic desires of her heart.
“So~ Xixi, why don’t you live in Lixing Palace too?”
Qi Yue’s voice was full of temptation:
“We can arrange a position for you to be with me… Being a maid would be too demeaning for you.
How about I ask Lin Xiao to give you an Executive position?
Or… become an Executive’s wife?
Perhaps… we could even pretend to be co-Princess Consorts~”
Her words were astonishingly bold.
Immediately, the voice switched back to Qi Yue’an, filled with genuine shyness and internal conflict:
“…Although Qi Yue says that… if I marry Lin Xiao, I’ll definitely have to bear him a child, won’t I…?
If we all shared a room… it would surely be too noisy, and he can only belong to me, so I definitely can’t let you join…
Therefore, I can only let you live next door, which is a pity.”
“However, if he’s very busy,”
Qi Yue’s voice once again seamlessly interjected, with a mischievous glee,
“I’ll come visit you~ I remember, Xixi’s past situation~ But it’s alright~”
This interwoven, chaotic monologue, as if two souls forcibly melded together were vying for dominance, or two facets of the same consciousness, laid bare her inner possessiveness, dependence, and pathological obsession with love before them all.
“And little Jin~”
She suddenly turned to Bai Jin, who was struggling to maintain her shield, her voice light.
“You’re right~ I might really be a seductress~ I really want to hold you tightly and cherish you~”
Then her gaze swept towards Bai Zhi, who was continuously firing arrows from a distance.
“And Zhi~ With two sister flowers together, it would surely be wonderful~”
Finally, she looked at Ling Ru, who was just struggling to rise from the ruins, her voice carrying a peculiar pity.
“Little Ru, don’t be jealous either~ You’re very cute too… and in some ways, we are very similar…”
Her attacks grew wilder and fiercer with her words, at times like a jealous wife defending her ownership, at others like a greedy child wanting to seize every toy.
Jealousy Flames and Prison Suppression Flames boiled around her, weaving into a destructive and imprisoning net.
“So,”
Finally, the two vocal tones seemed to reach a consensus, overlapping into a single, ethereal yet undeniable declaration,
“Including ‘An’, I want everything… that is yours.”
“Boom—!”
The twin swords merged, Jealousy Flames and Prison Suppression Flames fusing in an unprecedented manner, transforming into a chaotic torrent that surged forth.
Bai Jin’s defensive shield shattered instantly, her petite form violently hurled into a wall, where she collapsed, unconscious.
Bai Zhi’s arrows were like fireflies before this power; she was knocked back by the scorching heatwave, her magical energy depleted, and she fell to the ground.
“The same tricks are useless now.”
Without even looking back, Qi Yue’an precisely seized Ling Ru’s newly re-condensed magical dagger, embodying her last hope.
The jet-black blade wailed under the strain in Qi Yue’an’s palm, then *crack*, it was brutally crushed!
Ling Ru watched the fragments of magical energy mix with the blood in Qi Yue’an’s palm, her eyes wide with disbelief, before a searing pain erupted in her abdomen, struck by a punch that rendered her completely unconscious.
Finally, she slowly approached Xiyin, who was tightly bound to the broken wall by fiery shackles.
Her footsteps were light, yet they sounded like a death knell.
She tilted her head slightly, her face displaying an utterly discordant smile, a mix of Qi Yue’s seductive charm and Qi Yue’an’s shyness.
Deep within her silver pupils, two consciousnesses still flickered, yet both converged on the same greedy endpoint.
She extended a hand, her fingertips gently caressing Xiyin’s blood-stained cheek, her movements possessing an unnervingly tender quality.
Her voice was as soft as a whisper, yet carried an irresistible, pathological certainty,
“Do you accept?”
Xiyin was pinned to the wall, her silver-blue hair stained with dust and blood.
She watched the incredibly familiar face before her, now heartbreakingly strange, draw slowly closer, feeling the chaotic and powerful aura completely envelop her.
Despair, like cold vines, coiled around her heart.
‘Why did she… become like this?’
Xiyin thought, yet found no answer.
The girl before her had a sweet gentleness in her eyes, but more so, chaos, madness, and a trace of… fear, like a chaotic amalgam forcibly fused together, exposing its ugliest, most insane facets without reservation.
“…What did he do to you? Why did you turn out like this!”
She questioned with all her might, yet the other party neither grew angry nor wary, but instead displayed a blissful smile.
“I already… lack nothing, you know.
The me now is the most complete, the truest me~”
Qi Yue’an cradled her own cheek, but upon hearing these words, Xiyin lowered her head.
Flashes of the past danced before her eyes: the slightly shy girl who had spoken such heartwarming words, who had said Xiyin rescued her from an unending rain, and who, in turn, had rescued Xiyin from her solitary defiance, a struggle no one else heard.
But now, once again, she watched the other fall, powerless.
Her magical characteristics allowed her to persist to the end, but they could not grant her overwhelming strength; she could only watch helplessly as the wheels of fate rolled over them.
“An’an, do you know?
Some birds are not meant to be caged.”
She lifted her head, with the resolve of a hero,
“Because every feather on their wings carries the radiance of freedom, whether it’s you, or me.”
“So, I’m sorry, but I refuse.
We will uncover the truth, and we will save you.”
As she spoke, a brilliant light suddenly erupted from her, her second characteristic beginning to awaken.
Magical energy condensed towards her Soul Gem; the azure color gradually underwent a transformation, becoming smoother and swifter with her will, and her injuries began to recover.
‘Qi Yue’an’ had to retreat half a step; she watched the other’s power surge, her face filled with astonishment, yet within her, a cheer erupted.
‘Rejoice, An’an, witness the birth of a hero here!
Thanks to our performance just now, our objective has been achieved.
Next, let her defeat us, and then, with Ling Ru, who can perfectly disguise herself, and the others, we will unearth the secrets of Lixing Palace and push this entire drama to its climax!’
The merged consciousness of Qi Yue’an and Qi Yue cheered.
She faced the incoming sword strike directly, and the two fused consciousnesses once again split in two.