"The court's response about Lungmen and your situation has come in. We've also confirmed the condition at Mount Huiqi."
As Fangzhou handed the newly reforged Drive Core to Amiya, the office door creaked open. Jingzhe entered, her gaze catching on the cramped room where, unbelievably, two Year Beast proxies were gathered together.
Despite knowing the facts, she couldn't suppress the chill crawling up her spine.
Normally, the presence of just one Year Beast proxy warranted near-constant surveillance. Every fluctuation in their behavior had to be documented and reported to the imperial court. But here—on this small mobile platform drifting within Lungmen's territory—two proxies sat casually. And worse still, a third, the rogue proxy Xi, remained at large within the city.
Jingzhe could already imagine how this incident would send shockwaves through the entire Great Yan. The court would no doubt tighten control over every known proxy. Her thoughts wandered, unbidden, to the northwest—Yumen Pass, not far from Lungmen. Another Year Beast proxy lived there, a reclusive master said to have long since separated the "Year" from himself, condensing it into a blade. He had been preparing to pass that weapon to a worthy heir and live on as a normal human, shedding the burden of the Year Beast once and for all.
His retirement request had already been approved by the Grand Marshal and was sitting on the Emperor's desk when Xi's incident threw everything into chaos.
Jingzhe imagined the court's reaction. The True Dragon's fury. The political aftershocks. That retirement request? Likely torn apart by the Emperor's own hands.
For some reason, the thought didn't just make her nervous. It made her... sympathetic. Not for the state, but for the master whose future had just been derailed by someone else's disaster. It wasn't quite pity, but it felt a lot like being backstabbed by someone you trusted. And that, Jingzhe could relate to.
"How bad is it?" Ling asked, lounging on the sofa with a half-lidded gaze, as if none of it concerned her. Kelsey sat nearby, arms crossed, a faint scowl forming as she glanced toward the drunken dragoness.
The lynx doctor knew better than to advise Ling. Even if she tried, Ling wouldn't listen. After all, she was known as the most... unbothered of the twelve proxies.
Jingzhe continued, voice steady. "Regarding the efforts to assist Lungmen and the Ministry of Justice in suppressing the Year Beast outbreak: the Grand Tutor personally replied. He approved of Rhodes Island's involvement—but with conditions. The damage must be minimized. The Year Beast's harm to civilians must be kept to an absolute minimum. And once the matter is resolved, the Empire will not forget Rhodes Island's contribution."
A very official, very sanitized response.
"What about Huiqi Mountain?" Nian piped up from the side, puffed up in her plush form, eyes wide and anxious.
That was what she cared about most. The mountain had been Xi's home. Maybe there were still answers buried there—about what happened to her, and what the hell Theresa had done to twist her so badly.
Jingzhe nodded solemnly. "From the outside, the mountain appears undisturbed."
"Appears?" Nian's round ears perked.
"Yes. Appears. What the surveillance team at the Ministry of Seasons has been seeing—the jagged cliffs, the withered rivers, the barren slopes—it's all fake. A painting. Xi replaced the entire exterior with a visual illusion, a rough draft of ink and brush to block any true observation."
She paused, then added in a lower voice, "But within the mountain... they say the land looks as if a titanic creature had stormed through. Valleys torn open, rivers scattered, cliffs pulverized. And there were footprints. Giant ones. Something walked through there."
The room fell silent.
Nian, still in plush form, squinted hard. Her brain—admittedly sluggish in this squishy state—struggled to process what that meant. But the pieces clicked together quickly.
A titanic creature. A Year Beast. Or worse.
"A Year Aspect?" she whispered. "Or… her True Self?"
Every proxy harbored a Year Aspect within them. Ling had one. So did Nian, Shuo (aka Zhongyue), and Xi.
Ling didn't fear hers. She'd come to terms with it. Shuo had even gone further—severing his entirely and sealing it within a sword, becoming, for all intents, a normal human.
But Nian and Xi… they had always struggled.
Nian had spent decades wandering the empire, looking for ways to restrain her inner beast. But Xi—she was different. She didn't fight it. She feared it. She was so terrified of what lived inside her that she rarely slept, worried the moment she did, the creature would tear its way out and end her.
And now, with everything that had happened—her monstrous transformation, that grotesque proxy core—it wasn't hard to imagine Xi had finally learned to become the beast itself.
Then there was her "True Self." Da Zizai, as Xi had once called it. A mighty ink-dragon, massive and coiling, the antithesis of Nian's pale, celestial white.
The last time Nian had seen it, the dragon had been maybe ten meters tall. But the damage described by the surveillance team? That had to be something hundreds of meters long. Which meant... either Xi had gained full control of her Year Aspect—or she had found a way to merge with it through that corrupted core.
Nian didn't know which possibility was worse.
"It doesn't matter," Fangzhou interrupted calmly. "As long as she's still tied to the Drive Core, she can't do too much damage."
He turned to Jingzhe. "Any other intel from Huiqi?"
Jingzhe hesitated. Then slowly nodded.
"One more thing. Something important."
The atmosphere sharpened. Fangzhou straightened. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to her.
"Local reports say a woman with pink hair—an infected—was seen ascending the mountain several days ago."
The room froze.
Pink hair. Female. Infected.
Nian let out a groan and rolled across the floor, trying to dodge Talulah's creeping fingers as she muttered darkly, "Why is it always her?"
There weren't many people who fit that description. In fact, in their minds, there was only one.
The same person who had played puppetmaster behind the scenes from the very beginning.
The same person whose work had brought them the Drive Cores of the Goliath, the Flame Demon, the Banshee, the Blood Lord...
Theresa?
No. That wasn't her name anymore.
"Priscilla," Kelsey muttered, rubbing her temple as though the headache had returned in full force.
Nian and Jingzhe both gave her a puzzled look. "Wasn't her name Theresa?"
It had taken them years to piece together the truth—that the woman masquerading as the former High Priestess of Reunion was, in fact, someone else. Someone older. Someone more dangerous. The architect behind so many of Rhodes Island's struggles since Amiya's rise to power.
And every time something terrible happened—whether in Canaan or Lungmen—the first question was always the same:
Is she behind this too?
And now, even this Year Beast disaster… she had somehow inserted herself into it as well.
If there were a single phrase to summarize what everyone in the room was thinking at that moment, it would be:
"How old are you?!"