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Having said that, Su Jin never expected An Changsong to answer.

An Changsong could see the future—from something as small as an opponent’s movements to something as vast as the shape of the world. But he could not speak of it. Heaven’s secrets were not to be revealed; doing so would shorten his life.

Su Jin had protected her daughter exceptionally well. She had sealed away every piece of bad news concerning Lu Ming. In Su Yuehe’s eyes, Lu Ming ought to have been nothing more than a dead man.

Her daughter was naturally exceptional. No one would suspect a dead man, let alone question the talent she had been born with. That was the arrangement Su Jin had made.

Su Jin turned to look at the figure on the screen, her voice pressed down in her throat.

“Lu Ming destroyed my life, and that still wasn’t enough. Now he wants to gamble our daughter’s life on that absurd truth of his.”

That was something she could never allow.

An Changsong placed a hand on the table. “Old friend, Lu Ming may be an outright madman, but he is also Yuehe’s father.”

He looked at Su Jin’s rigid back. “Perhaps we should trust the contingency he left behind.”

“Besides, do you really think Yuehe is completely unaware of all this? With her intelligence, could she truly remain deceived by you forever?”

Su Jin suddenly raised her head. “Absolutely impossible!”

An Changsong raised his head as well, refusing to yield. “Nothing is impossible!”

Just then, the command computer on the operations platform let out a string of shrill beeps.

Red alarm lights flashed wildly across the tent’s ceiling, casting the two faces in alternating light and shadow.

A flurry of hurried footsteps approached from outside the tent.

“Report, Chairwoman!”

A technical officer’s gruff voice rang out beyond the tent flap.

An Changsong rose swiftly and retreated into the darkness, hiding his figure behind the enormous folds of canvas.

It was not yet time for him to appear in public.

Within a second, Su Jin had reined in every emotion. She turned around, her voice once again cold and businesslike.

“Come in.”

A young officer lifted the tent flap and strode inside, a freshly printed report in his hand.

He had no time to salute. He went straight to Su Jin and handed her the report.

“Chairwoman, something happened at the coordinates where the eastern team previously reported detecting the echo.”

Su Jin accepted the report, her eyes sweeping over the fluctuating data lines.

“The readings spiked by ten orders of magnitude in a short period. It’s a precursor to a runaway event.”

The officer’s forehead was covered in cold sweat, and he spoke at breakneck speed.

“One minute ago, the spacetime structure in that area was completely torn apart. The weak point in space collapsed.”

Su Jin’s fingers gripped the edge of the report, pressing a deep indentation into the paper.

“Get to the point.”

The officer swallowed and pointed toward the coordinate northeast of east on the sand table.

“A stable vortex has formed there. According to the instruments, it’s a temporary entrance large enough for physical matter to pass through.”

“Should we… send people in?”

…

The heating in the women’s barracks was turned up so high that a layer of white condensation filmed the windowpanes.

Su Yuehe lay on the lower bunk, facing the wall, her breathing kept as quiet as possible.

Her eyes were closed, but her mind was filled with the figure that had flashed across the tent’s screen for a single second.

The dark-gray protective suit hung loosely on him, ill-fitting and smeared with frozen mud.

The man had been crouching amid a pile of purple crystals, his back curved in a way that carried a suffocating familiarity—one she had seen countless times in photographs.

From childhood onward, everyone outside had told her that her father, Lu Ming, had died in a failed experiment.

An Changqing, who had grown up alongside her, believed the same thing. He never mentioned that wound, and everyone saw her as a pitiful girl who had lost her father.

Even she herself had believed it—until she was twelve, when she discovered that the man had never actually died.

The truth was that her mother, Su Jin, had personally ordered the construction of a Demon-Suppressing Tower.

The tower stood on their family’s private island, guarded year-round by elite troops.

Her mother had told everyone that a high-ranking demon was imprisoned there.

When Su Yuehe was twelve, she had thought of the island while studying demonology. It was also the first time in her life that her mother had refused one of her requests. Her reason had been that it was too dangerous.

That was absolutely impossible. If her mother accompanied her, how could it be dangerous? In all the world, how could any place with her mother present be dangerous?

The seed of curiosity did not vanish simply because her mother had refused her. Instead, she began to question the secret hidden on the island.

What, exactly, was inside the tower?

She had seen her mother descend to the bottom of it with her own eyes.

How could a high-ranking demon eat ordinary human food?

That was the first time Su Yuehe had relied on the power of forbidden magic. Taking advantage of the elite guards’ lack of suspicion after returning from a shift change, she learned the truth.

There was no demon below.

There was a person.

Su Yuehe gripped the edge of the thin military blanket.

Her nails dug into her palm.

If her father had been imprisoned at the bottom of the tower all along, then who was the figure lingering at the edge of the rift in the northern wilderness?

What was he looking for?

And how had he escaped?

Or perhaps it was merely an echo of the past. But if so, why had her father from those bygone days come here?

Su Yuehe had few memories of her father. Most of what she knew of him existed only in photographs, making it impossible for her to judge.

Hong Yuan entered from the communal washroom, wiping her damp hair, a cloud of soapy warmth following her in.

She draped the towel around her neck, pulled out a chair, sat down, and unscrewed her thermos to take a large gulp of hot water.

“You’ve been acting strange today.”

Hong Yuan set the cup on the table and leaned over to look at the huddled figure. She could tell at a glance that the girl was not asleep.

Hong Yuan pretended to sleep every night while secretly reading novels. How could she fail to tell whether someone else was really asleep?

“You haven’t said a word since you got back from the survey. Did that godforsaken place freeze your brain, or were you scared witless by that creepy voice?”

Su Yuehe rolled over and did not tell her the truth. “It’s probably because I was out in the wind too long. I have a headache, and my stomach feels sick.”

Hong Yuan went over to tuck the blanket more securely around her and patted her shoulder.

“Drink some hot water and sweat it out. The weather in the northern frontier is damn good at curing people of their arrogance. If you still feel bad tomorrow, go to the infirmary and get some medicine.”

Su Yuehe murmured in acknowledgment, drawing her chin into the blanket.

The dormitory’s overhead light went out, leaving only a few dim yellow rays spilling in from the corridor.

Listening to Hong Yuan’s breathing gradually settle, Su Yuehe reached beneath her pillow and pulled out her phone.

She opened her contacts and left her finger hovering over An Changqing’s name for a long time.

She couldn’t call Changqing.

She moved her hand away, slid her thumb downward, and stopped on another name.

The pale light from the screen illuminated her bloodless face.

Five minutes later.

At the foot of the windbreak wall behind the men’s dormitory, the cold wind howled past, carrying shards of ice.

Chen Guan leaned against the wall in a military overcoat, both hands in his pockets, looking like a pensioner standing guard.

[Haha, I knew it would be Chen Guan again.]

[AAA Psychological Counselor Chen Guan is now open for business.]

[This is seriously so weird. Why is every heart-to-heart session with that mysterious coffin man?]

[Forgot what came before, forgot what came after. Anyway, he looks like some evil medieval warlock…]

[Doesn’t anyone else find him kind of sacred?]

[The person above should go sit at a table with a pair of star-crossed lovers.]

Watching the chat descend into chaos, Chen Guan still managed to extract the key information from all the deliberately bizarre comments.

Namely, Su Yuehe had something she needed him to help her work through.

Damn it. He really had become the psychological counselor now.

After shivering in the cold wind for a while longer, a slender figure finally appeared around the corner of the building. She pulled her coat tighter around herself and hurried toward him.

Su Yuehe stopped in front of him, tiny ice crystals clinging to the tip of her reddened nose from the cold.

“Sorry. It’s freezing out here, and I still made you come out. Hong Yuan woke up just now, so I was delayed.”

She spoke softly, the white mist of her breath quickly swept away by the wind.