Cooking together — in theory, at least. In practice, Li Fei had already finished all the prep work long before Bai Mengtian arrived. The washed and sliced vegetables sat in neat piles, their cut surfaces still beaded with droplets of water, fresh and glistening. All that remained was to add them to the pot in the right order; the broth was already simmering on a low flame, held at a gentle, steady heat.
Bai Mengtian groaned and whimpered for a good while before finally hauling herself upright. Her large, dewy eyes looked on the verge of tears, and she turned them on Li Fei with the most aggrieved expression imaginable.
Loxibrook's pride. A once-in-four-millennia genius. And right now, Bai Mengtian looked every bit the picture of a girl in the full bloom of sixteen.
Her eyes were a deep, luminous black — clearer and livelier than those of a newborn fawn — though in their depths, just barely visible, flickered a faint, ambiguous crimson that was veiled by a hazy mist, making it impossible to see clearly. Her skin was so pale it was almost reflective. Her silken black hair spilled loose over her shoulders. Her lips were a vivid, arresting red — more striking than rose petals — and her face was still flushed with a suspicious warmth, the interplay of black, white, and red weaving together into a countenance that managed to be both pure and dangerous, sweet and aggressively alluring all at once.
As for Bai Mengtian's figure — it gave full meaning to the word breathtaking. Her top was a fitted little blazer in red with black trim, worn over a crisp white blouse, the kind of combination that looked like it had been designed specifically to make breathing difficult in the chest area; and yet the very same fabric that pulled so tight it seemed ready to restrict the girl's respiration somehow loosened considerably at the span of her waist, draping over a flat, smooth stomach and covering the waistband of her skirt with a deceptive ease.
Her long legs were sheathed in sheer black stockings. It was difficult to imagine what astonishing elasticity lay coiled beneath that smooth surface. One of her small leather shoes had been kicked loose at some point, and the foot left behind — encased in its soft, smooth stocking — seemed to radiate a faint warmth, shifting and fidgeting restlessly. The red cord tied around her delicate ankle swayed back and forth like a rose shedding its petals in the night breeze, or blood flowing from the lips of an angel — vivid and sinful.
Li Fei spared her a glance and found the view thoroughly distracting. Ideal type, through and through — she would have said so out loud if she had any shame.
But since they were sisters in every sense except blood, Li Fei didn't let any strange thoughts take root. She waved from the kitchen doorway. "Come on, come on."
"What kind of host makes a guest do the cooking?"
Bai Mengtian kicked off her other shoe and padded over to stand behind Li Fei, wrapping her arms around her from behind. She buried her face against the back of Li Fei's neck and drew in a long, slow breath, nose nuzzled into her hair.
"Stop pressing those overfed assets into my back."
Li Fei wriggled. "Do you want dinner or not."
"You're not even wearing a nude apron. No wonder the food won't taste right."
Bai Mengtian grumbled into her neck.
"Ha. Are there actually people who cook in that thing?"
Li Fei let out a derisive snort.
"All my kitchen maids wear them!"
Bai Mengtian answered with complete and righteous conviction.
"You obscenely wealthy creature."
Li Fei clenched her fist.
...
After dinner, Li Fei was draped sideways across the sofa, exhaling a lazy curl of smoke. Bai Mengtian lay with her head pillowed on Li Fei's stomach, idly reaching up to pluck the cigarette from between Li Fei's fingers. A brief moment of indirect contact — and when she exhaled, the smoke came out in a string of little grey hearts.
"What happened to washing the dishes?" Li Fei gave Bai Mengtian's head a nudge. "And get off my stomach — we just ate."
"Done."
Bai Mengtian snapped her fingers. The dishes on the table were instantly gleaming, stacked in a neat, perfect pile.
"Dishes have to be washed by hand to have any soul! And you have to wash them seven times, otherwise you'll get fired."① Li Fei said, deploying a joke that probably only the two of them — possibly in the entire world — would understand.
"Pure urban legend. I went traveling abroad once and had someone spend half a day digging through the sewers — there was absolutely no engineer wrapped up in oil paper down there, I checked myself."②
Bai Mengtian shifted and squirmed, rubbing the back of her head contentedly against Li Fei's stomach until she found the perfect spot — soft, yielding, and exactly right.
"Ugh. I never even got to travel abroad. I went straight from the real world to this one via a dump truck. What kind of life is that."
Li Fei sighed and reached down to take the cigarette back from between Bai Mengtian's fingers.
"Hey, speaking of which — did you ever, you know, do it before you transmigrated?"
Bai Mengtian pivoted naturally into the kind of private, blush-worthy conversation that best friends fall into without thinking.
The topic gave Li Fei an immediate second wind. She perked up and grew more animated by the second.
Amid a chorus of "Fei-jie, stop it—" and "Let me see, let me see!" the cigarette tumbled to the floor, forgotten, and slowly burned itself out.
"Alright, up. Let's go."
Li Fei straightened her rumpled clothes and hair, then gave Bai Mengtian a light, satisfying smack on one rounded curve. The sound it made was very crisp.
"Where to?"
"Take me somewhere like a black market. I need to fence my loot."
"I knew it!"
Bai Mengtian puffed out her cheeks. "I treat you like my best friend, and you treat me like an errand girl."
"Tian-bao~ Mama loves you~"
Now it was Li Fei's turn to coax. After a round of soft wheedling, foot-squeezing, and leg-kneading, Bai Mengtian's complaints eventually dissolved into cooperativeness.
"Here."
Bai Mengtian held out a small, crystalline gem in a delicate pink hue, set in a tiny golden casing. The casing was shaped like a little pagoda: flat and rounded at the base, like an upturned bowl, tapering to a smooth teardrop at the top.
"What's this?"
Li Fei took the trinket — it looked like an exquisite little pendant — and studied it for a moment. Something about it felt vaguely familiar...
"You don't recognize it?"
Bai Mengtian slanted her a sideways smile.
"A Soul Gem? The one Madoka uses to transform?"③
The legendary yuri masterpiece Puella Magi Madoka Magica — of course Li Fei had seen it. And what Bai Mengtian had just handed her bore a striking resemblance to the Soul Gems from that anime — the crystalline objects that housed the magical girls' power and their souls, which they'd produce whenever they were about to fight a witch or each other.
"Mm-hm."
Bai Mengtian put her hands on her hips and flashed a brilliant smile. "I figured you were dragging me out tonight to fence stolen goods, so obviously I came prepared. Can't go out there without a disguise, can we?"
Li Fei quietly pulled up the System Panel.
[Bai Mengtian's Deception Gem — Pink]
Equipment Rating: Blazing Sun
Attributes: Helps the holder disguise themselves as a specific identity.
"Holy — it actually lets you transform? That's genuinely criminal, sister."
Li Fei stared at the equipment description for a long moment before she came back to herself, and her voice rang with pure admiration.
As far as she knew, Transcendent equipment was rated across nine tiers: Firefly, Starlight, New Moon, Full Moon, Dawn, Blazing Sun, Radiant, Immortal, and Epic — corresponding to Sequence 9 through Sequence 1.
Generally speaking, Blazing Sun-grade equipment was already capable of affecting Transcendents at the Sequence 4 level...
"It's a handcrafted piece, made by yours truly," Bai Mengtian explained. "Just channel your mana into it and say the incantation — 'Magical Girl Transformation!' — and you'll become someone else entirely. Unless you're a high-Sequence Transcendent or you have 'Expert Appraisal,' you won't be able to see through it."
"I'll believe the disguise part. The incantation, less so."
Li Fei's skepticism wasn't about the gem's capability — just the activation steps. She skipped the six-word chant entirely and simply willed her mana into the Deception Gem through pure intent. A gentle surge of warm magical light immediately bloomed outward, enveloping her completely.
"Hey—"
Bai Mengtian's scheme thoroughly foiled, she couldn't help but puff out her cheeks, and turned off her phone's camera function with visible reluctance.
The transformation was far faster than Li Fei had expected. In the blink of an eye, the light from the Deception Gem faded. Li Fei walked over to the full-length mirror and surveyed her new appearance.
"Oh..."
The mirror showed a captivating young woman. She had long, fluffy hair — white with a rosy blush — and eyes as clear and luminous as polished rubies. Her neck and bare shoulders formed a line of pale, slender elegance. The skirt she wore was a burnt-orange that outshone autumn maples, though it was, perhaps, somewhat audaciously cut: the neckline just barely covered the upper curve of her collarbone before parting widely downward, leaving the soft, snow-pale southern hemisphere and a smooth, white midriff entirely on display — like the unfolding wings of a phoenix, breathtaking and vibrantly lovely.
As for everything below the skirt — beautiful legs, black stockings, ankle boots. Nothing more to say; it speaks for itself.
The Deception Gem had transformed Li Fei into a completely different person, head to toe — and a thoroughly gorgeous one at that. Functionally, it was flawless. But Li Fei stood before the mirror for a long moment, and the look in her eyes was complicated.
"Is this what your personal Madoka looks like?"
Li Fei pointed at the reflection — a girl who looked inexplicably sweet and innocent despite wearing an extremely indecent dress — and turned to Bai Mengtian with a perfectly blank expression. "This is clearly Inori Yuzuriha."④
Li Fei had never watched Guilty Crown, but she had most certainly used the full-color yuri comics featuring Inori and Mikoto Misaka. She knew exactly who this was.
"My dear friend, what do you think I make Deception Gems for?"
Bai Mengtian spread her hands. "You have to understand my situation."
Li Fei furrowed her brow and considered this for a moment.
She had, in fact, heard Bai Mengtian's name from traveling bards.
Adopted by Loxibrook's city lord in early childhood, she had kept a low profile until the age of fifteen — the most people knew was that the distinguished Lady Elizabeth had quietly taken in a strikingly beautiful Eastern girl to raise in private at the manor. Then a powerful duke had pressured city lord Elizabeth into accepting a political marriage — an attempt to put Bai Mengtian under someone else's thumb — and had thus managed to infuriate the she-devil who spent her days lounging in debauchery within the city lord's estate.
The she-devil had emerged from her lair. In a single night, she leveled the duke's estate and swept through the city's noble houses in passing, turning Loxibrook upside down.
A girl of fifteen — already at high Sequence, with a level of power so staggering it had rolled right over the entire noble coalition. A talent so earth-shattering it had sent all six of the great factions reeling. The title "once-in-four-millennia genius" had spread without any help at all — because only four thousand years ago, in that chaotic, mystical age when the gods had not yet retreated from the world, could miracles of that kind have occurred, leaving behind only scattered whispers that the world had been singing ever since.
Which raised an interesting question.
Bai Mengtian — invincible, undefeated, with a public reputation for willful and domineering conduct — clearly had no need to conceal her identity. And what Li Fei had received was specifically the [Bai Mengtian's Deception Gem — Pink], which implied there was necessarily a full collection: yellow, blue, and more. So what, exactly, was Bai Mengtian doing making these things in the midst of her many... activities? What was their intended purpose?
Li Fei, who shared more than a few traits with her best friend in certain respects, figured it out quickly.
To put it politely: novelty accessories. Much like the certain specialty potions Li Fei had culled from her battle loot and set aside for personal future use.
"That makes sense... Madoka is hard to find attractive in that way, but Inori is much more... applicable."
Li Fei had a sudden revelation.
Then, immediately, she pressed: "This one you're giving me... you haven't used it before, right?"
"Of course I only give them out after I've thoroughly finished with them."
Bai Mengtian stated this with complete and righteous confidence.
Li Fei immediately made a face. God only knew which particular corner this 'Soul Gem' had been extracted from.
"Oh, don't be so dramatic — I gave it a thorough cleaning before handing it over."
Bai Mengtian waved a breezy hand and produced several more Deception Gems in various colors from somewhere. "There are other variants, too."
[Bai Mengtian's Deception Gem — Yellow]. [Bai Mengtian's Deception Gem — Black]...
Li Fei pinched one of the 'Soul Gems' between her thumb and forefinger, holding it at arm's length, and studied the suspicious droplets of moisture still clinging to its surface in silence.
"Try one! Try one!" Bai Mengtian leaned over eagerly, urging her on.
"Sure. I'm curious too."
Li Fei's expression shifted into something decisive. She lunged without warning and pinned her completely unsuspecting best friend flat against the sofa, straddled her stomach, locked her in place with both thighs, and proceeded to tickle her mercilessly with one hand while the other produced a phone — forcing Bai Mengtian to try on each and every colorful 'Soul Gem', one by one.
The once-in-four-millennia genius, it turned out, was extremely ticklish. Her resistance was brief and her surrender was absolute.
Violet Evergarden. Chitanda Eru. Yukino Yukinoshita...
Legendary beauties who should have existed only in imagination were compelled, one after another, to strike a series of deeply undignified poses — all of which Li Fei captured on camera with professional dedication.
Only when she had thoroughly satisfied herself did Li Fei relent and release her poor, helpless, and deeply flustered best friend. She pocketed the [Bai Mengtian's Deception Gem — Pink], then gathered up the gold coins and stolen goods into a bag.
"Which way?"
Li Fei — now wearing Inori Yuzuriha's face — stood in the doorway with a large bag slung over one shoulder and glanced back.
"Just follow me."
Bai Mengtian quickly stepped back into her shoes and looped her arm through Li Fei's, and the two of them set off toward the eastern side of the city.
...
A blinding bolt of lightning split the darkness.
A sacred unicorn screamed and fell, bleeding out, its pure white coat stained crimson.
A beautiful girl with grey hair reaching her waist stepped lightly toward the unicorn's body, produced a small knife, and opened its chest with a clean, practiced cut. She reached in and drew out the heart — still warm, still trembling.
"The Unicorn's Heart... the last ingredient for the secret reagent needed to advance to 'Witch of Pride.' It's finally all together."
The grey-haired girl smiled — sweet and genuinely pleased.
"Irena... are you really sure about this?"
Behind her, a girl with short black hair — also robed as a mage — trembled. "If Dean Nicole finds out..."
"Even a high-Sequence Archmage cannot peer into another person's 'Class,' you know."
Irena tucked the unicorn's heart away safely, tilted her head, and leaned close to the black-haired girl, her voice reassuring. "Don't worry. I'll help you advance to 'Witch of Wrath' as well."
"But — but—"
The black-haired girl was on the verge of tears. "Why does it have to be like this?"
"The past, the present, and the future will all belong to the Witches."
Irena extended her bloodstained hand and, in the pale moonlight, cradled the black-haired girl's delicate face in her palms. "Saya — didn't we make a promise? No matter what happens, you'll stay with me."
Through the blur of tears, Irena's flawlessly beautiful smile distorted and grew hazy in Saya's vision, wreathed in a faint, creeping crimson; but those brilliant blue eyes — those twin sapphires — remained as captivating as ever, swallowing every thought Saya had left.
"Yes. Right."
Tears and the blood smeared across her face mingled together, running scarlet, dripping from her chin and soaking into her collar.
Saya's eyes dimmed, like a devoted believer prostrated at the foot of a shrine, her lips moving in an endless, monotonous devotion: "Stay with Irena no matter what... Irena, Irena, Irena, IrenaIrenaIrena..."
"I feel your hunger for me."
In the blood-scented moonlight, Irena pressed a gentle kiss to the black-haired girl's forehead. "Saya is going to become a magnificent Witch."
...
"You can fence stolen goods here?"
Li Fei pointed at the sign that read Mercenary Guild, puzzled.
"Of course." Bai Mengtian seemed a little drowsy; she hung from Li Fei's arm and stifled a yawn. "Little odds and ends like yours — there's no point dragging them to a free market or an auction house. It's way too time-consuming. Just hand them over to the Mercenary Guild or the Thieves' Guild and let them deal with it. They'll give you a fair price, generally speaking."
"In that case, let's go to the Thieves' Guild — I have a bit of a connection with the Guild Master..."
Li Fei suggested.
"For a handful of Firefly-grade junk? You want to bother the Guild Master with that? You'd be better off just showing up at her house freshly cleaned and offering yourself — she'd probably give you a red envelope afterward worth more than everything in that bag."
Bai Mengtian shot down the idea. "Besides — don't you think you need to register a mercenary identity?"
"Ah, wait — make that two identities."
---
Translator's Notes:
① A viral story claims that a foreign student working part-time as a dishwasher was fired for washing plates only four or five times instead of the required seven.
② Another viral story: a piece of underground infrastructure broke down and no spare parts could be found locally. When the foreign engineering company that originally built it was called, the engineer told the callers the 'solution' was right next to the damaged component. After a search, they found brand-new spare parts, wrapped in oil paper — preserved in perfect condition.
③ The Soul Gem from Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
④ Inori Yuzuriha, the female lead of Guilty Crown.
Author's Note: Bai Mengtian's appearance can be referenced against Yumeko Jabami (蛇喰夢子 from Kakegurui). More reference art for Yumeko and Inori coming when there's time.
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