Chapter 7: Mars

Passing through that ancient heavy door, there was a lone little house to the right. Standing there, Ye Jingqiu had a direct view of the base Shi Zui had mentioned.

She turned, unconsciously drawing in a deep breath.

A tangible mist of air slowly filled her lungs, sending an exquisite wave of comfort rippling through her—like boiling water melting away deep snowdrifts, utterly unobstructed.

For some reason, Ye Jingqiu felt a quiet sense of reassurance.

The base’s environment looked no different from the outside world. The sun hung low in the west, layered clouds drifted lazily, and the sky was that perfect shade of sky blue. Yet it sprawled across an immense area; Ye Jingqiu couldn’t even glimpse the far edge of this bizarre complex.

The architecture felt eclectic at first glance—Gothic cathedrals rubbing shoulders with traditional Chinese courtyards and pavilions, romantic flourishes blending with sleek modernism.

The buildings stood far apart, though—likely due to strict density limits, no more than 1.5 floor area ratio—which made everything harmonize nicely on closer inspection.

Aether’s chime rang out again, brighter and more lively than it had been in that featureless gray void. “Welcome back, Captain Shi, meow!”

Xie Pingzhi jangled the Will Ring on her left wrist—the source of the voice. “I’ve always wondered why you never welcome me.”

She was only joking, but Aether guiltily vanished. Not one to belabor the point, Xie Pingzhi jumped in before Ye Jingqiu could ask. “This is Aether, the base’s administrative assistant. Her personality—or rather, her cat-ified persona—is a golden British Shorthair. Our Little Cat’s pretty reliable, you know. The captain will take you to the Instinct Department later to pick one up.”

Ye Jingqiu had been stunned by this organization’s quirks more than once already, but even she couldn’t hold back her confusion. “Little Cat?”

What kind of AI assistant came as a cat?

“I showed up late, so I don’t know the full story,” Xie Pingzhi said. “But from what I hear, making Little Cat Aether’s official form was a popular vote. The base ran a poll once—someone must’ve snuck in a bunch of animal options as a prank, and everyone piled on for the fun of it. Little Cat ended up winning by a landslide.”

Xie Pingzhi blinked, her gray-blue eyes twinkling with mischief. “The Technology Department’s been itching to tweak Aether’s personality, but I like her just fine. Who besides the captain doesn’t love our kitty?”

Shi Zui paused mid-motion at the offhand mention.

She hadn’t expected Xie Pingzhi to drag her into this. Normally, she’d stay silent, maybe shoot a glance—that was it.

But with a new recruit right there, a teenager who didn’t fully trust them yet, clamming up entirely felt off.

For once, Shi Zui hesitated.

Just then, Ye Jingqiu looked up at her with open curiosity. “Does the captain not like cats?”

So the aloof captain was aloof through and through. No secret soft spot lurking beneath.

Novels and anime were all fake, after all.

Ye Jingqiu shook her head with quiet regret.

“…It’s not that,” Shi Zui said. Her gaze flickered as she smoothed her sleeve, denying it outright—though her right fingertip darted to a button on her Wrist Ring under cover of the motion.

“Indifferent at best,” Xie Pingzhi shot back, missing the gesture entirely. She tsked. “Does she look like a cat person to you? Far as I know, she’s the only one who swapped Aether’s voice to that robotic drone.”

Shi Zui fell silent, withdrawing her hand with natural poise, her expression unchanged.

She had a full onboarding schedule for the newbie today, after all. Time was short, duties pressing.

With a nod to the pair, she shifted back to business. “Let’s—”

“Boom!”

An explosion cut her off.

Ye Jingqiu whipped toward the sound. Hundreds of meters away, a pitch-black orb rocketed into the clear blue sky, trailing a blazing comet of vivid red smoke that cavorted wildly in the air.

White clouds of billowing smoke roiled in the distance, shadowy figures darting through them.

The other two barely reacted.

Xie Pingzhi cracked one eye open for a lazy glance, then grinned at Ye Jingqiu. “Alchemy and Dao Talisman Department testing Elemental Weapons. Can’t fight Exotic Beasts on Instinct alone, after all—we need some tech backup.”

Instinct was what civilians called superpowers: the ability for humans or Exotic Beasts to wield elements in impossible ways. Alchemy devices and Daoist arts could mimic it too.

Ye Jingqiu recalled the flames in Shi Zui’s hand during the Afanc slaughter. She had her suspicions.

Eyeing the black orb—which bounced around like an eight-year-old on a sugar rush—she asked, “How powerful are these weapons?”

“Hard to say for sure. No theoretical cap, from what I hear. Last year they detonated a ten-thousand-ton-class Thunderstorm Bomb out at Wine Spring.” Xie Pingzhi clapped Ye Jingqiu on the shoulder. “Don’t sweat it, though. The test crew times and places everything perfectly—no risk to bystanders.”

“Really?”

Xie Pingzhi arched a brow. “What, you think I’d lie?”

Ye Jingqiu wavered. “It’s just… something feels off about that one.”

Xie Pingzhi blinked. “?”

Looking up again, Ye Jingqiu watched the black orb hang motionless for a beat—then lurch off course, thrashing like a cornered wolf.

Aether materialized right on cue, a sizzle of static crackling for a second before a young woman’s voice emerged, edged with urgency.

“Hey, are you guys at the entrance? Aether just pinged me. The Talisman Bomb’s gone haywire—it’s locked onto you!”

Xie Pingzhi shuddered. “You’re kidding.”

Every base test required a full week’s risk assessment and paperwork. Malfunctions like this? Unheard of.

Shi Zui stepped forward without hesitation. “Can it be shut down?”

“Totally out of control—no dice. Thanks a lot, Loteria. She just had to pick now.”

A second voice cut in, exaggerated and distant. “Whoa, what a massive black pot to dump on me, Department Head Yan. You’re crushing my bones here.”

Yan Zhao bristled instantly, firing back. The two devolved into bickering.

Tension spiked in a heartbeat. Sudden gusts whipped up, thick with the acrid tang of chemical reagents.

Xie Pingzhi was uncharacteristically serious. With her right hand, she grabbed Ye Jingqiu and yanked her backward, bellowing into her wristwatch at the top of her lungs. “So is there any way out of this? My Rampage Value is tapped out!”

“Loteria’s working hard to control the Talisman Bomb. I’ve called in Aether to send backup,” came the chaotic voices from the other end of the line. Yan Zhao’s tone wavered uncertainly, but even in this dire moment, she didn’t forget to reassure them. “Hang on—no need to panic yet. We might still get it under control!”

“No ‘might’! Give me a straight answer, damn it!”

“Fine,” Yan Zhao shot back crisply, rattling off a rapid calculation that was next to worthless. “Current odds of containment: 3.7 percent.”

Xie Pingzhi bit back a curse. “I—whatever. What’s inside that thing? The captain can hold it off for a bit, right?”

Ye Jingqiu knew some freak accident had gone down. She glanced off into the distance, eyes fixed on the black orb as she pondered whether it was Dao talisman craft or cutting-edge tech—and if her own unreliable Instinct might actually kick in at a time like this.

She had just opened her mouth to test it when the orb shuddered, locking onto them like it had found its mark.

The next instant, it barreled toward the three of them with ferocious momentum!

What the hell kind of welcome gift was this for a newbie?

But it was far too late for second thoughts.

Loteria’s voice still crackled over the comms channel. “Captain Shi’s Rampage Value is already critically low, but what’s inside is a Daoist Five Thunder Formation, and…”

The words cut off. A earsplitting whoosh ripped through the air, the pitch-black orb now right in their faces. Ye Jingqiu could even make out the intricate gold filigree etched across its surface.

“Fall back.”

In that split-second crisis, she heard her new captain issue the command.

Shi Zui, silent up to now, was clearly ready. She ripped the Will Ring off her left wrist and flung it far behind her.

The talisman weapon closed in a flash, but her face showed not a flicker of fear. A lifetime of near-death scraps had honed her poise to steel.

The air inside the space whipped up abruptly, an indescribable blistering heat saturating everything as some eager presence converged on their location.

Shi Zui’s right hand seized the hilt at her waist. She drew—

Instinct: Mars, engaged.

A ball of crimson flame kindled at the blade’s tip, its molten-gold heart throbbing languidly.

In a heartbeat, the 【Yinghuo】 flames multiplied exponentially! Shark-tooth sparks swarmed the edge, unleashing a torrent of heat. The tip rocketed to thirty-two hundred degrees in mere milliseconds.

The discarded Will Ring flashed Aether’s mute alert—

“Rampage Value anomaly! Rampage Value anomaly! Rampage Value anomaly!”

But Ye Jingqiu sensed something was wrong.

The double-edged blade wasn’t melting.

This was modern military tech through and through: the G1 Double-Edged Knife. Nine-centimeter blade, black Teflon coat, VG-10 high-grade steel.

VG-10 hailed from Japan—the pinnacle of Takefu Special Steel, a bladesmith’s darling and the backbone of this masterwork weapon.

Steel was steel, though. How could it hold together at temperatures way past its melting point?

Pale silver runes glowed along the blade’s spine: Dao Array sigils, standing guard.

The heat kept climbing. 【Yinghuo】 had no ceiling at three thousand Celsius. But time had run dry for Shi Zui to summon more fire. The black orb caught the whiff of defiance and zeroed in, slamming headlong into the blazing tip!

Boom—

Another blast. This time, the Talisman Bomb went off! Violet seal script bloomed in the air. “Supreme Jade Pure King, Unifying Heaven Thirty-Six”—a divine incantation carved into the orb’s core.

Loteria hadn’t been exaggerating. The thing packed a full Five Thunder Array. This ancient Chinese Daoist rite for banishing evil spirits, crammed into a sealed shell and turned into a goddamn timer.

Three thousand degrees suddenly seemed tame, because what burst at Shi Zui was electrostatic fury at tens of thousands of volts. Purple-blue arcs hissed and spat, a thunderous hemispherical field charging like a rampaging behemoth.

Shi Zui didn’t budge.

This was her go-to Instinct, bar none.

【Yinghuo】 was fire-element incarnate—the alias for Mars itself. “Flickering firelight, scattered and bewildering.” East or West, it symbolized war and death alike. An Instinct christened for the star of retribution wouldn’t fizzle out here.

Shi Zui’s gaze never wavered, her ink-black eyes mirroring the inferno and storm. She simply twisted the hilt once more.

The flames winked out. In their place flickered a lone tongue at the double-edged tip.

One pure black flame.

And that was plenty.

Elemental domains collided—Aether Domains pulsing and surging, elements in frenzy, the very air holding its breath. Fire and lightning deadlocked at the point, their clash blazing sixty thousand lumens white.

Dense fire essence massed against the thunder’s onslaught. The scarlet reflection in Shi Zui’s eyes ran thick as blood.

No trace of dread. She drew a deep breath and stepped forward.

The thunderhead retreated a pace.

Right hand firm on the blade, Shi Zui advanced steadily, calmly snuffing out the Talisman Bomb step by step.

Dead silence all around, save for the faint sizzle in the air.

Ye Jingqiu stared as Shi Zui pressed on, halted, and sheathed her blade.

Fire and lightning extinguished together. The world fell utterly still.

Xie Pingzhi exhaled sharply, relieved the captain always kept an ace up her sleeve.

She still had Ye Jingqiu pinned behind her, though. With a cold snort, she blasted the comms at max volume. “Yan Zhao, you’re getting slapped with discipline! I almost bought it back there!”

But it wasn’t Yan Zhao who replied—it was Loteria, voice tight with urgency.

“Move! Get to the Teleportation Gate, now!”

Unleashing Instinct exacted a brutal toll. Shi Zui’s Rampage Value hovered near zero. Without tapping Instinct: Tyrfing again, she couldn’t muster a single element in this state.

Xie Pingzhi blinked. “What’re you getting at?”

Yan Zhao: “We laced it with Replication Agent.”

The Replication Agent was the Alchemy Department’s long-term unstable experimental product. Rumor had it that a successful version could rival the game’s damage-reflection armor, absorbing all elemental damage within half a second and unleashing it in a devastating counter. But the implementation was so fiendishly difficult that it had languished in clinical trials for years. Nine out of ten were total duds; the tenth might go off, but it would barely singe a milk candy bar. No wonder the stuff had never seen frontline action.

Xie Pingzhi: ……

“Not passing up any chance to run a test—yeah, that’s just like you all.”

The memory of Shi Zui’s terrifying Yinghuo from moments ago made Xie Pingzhi’s voice quiver. “It shouldn’t… blow up, right?”

Yan Zhao’s tone was grave. “Ning Wan just said it will.”

“What time?”

“Now.”

Xie Pingzhi looked up. Before Shi Zui, the heap of scrapped metal wreckage had begun to burn silently, gathering its power.

This was the most successful Replication Agent trial yet.

A one-in-a-billion shot on the lottery wheel, and today it had landed on them as the lucky winners.

The Pure Black Flame leaped once more into its gleeful dance of doom, a horrific heat beginning to radiate outward.

【Replica: Yinghuo】 activated.