They arrived smoothly at a seaside manor. After getting out of the car, Wen Yaquan looked around, satisfied with the scenery.
In a bay that curved inward, the manor stood quietly at the edge of the sea.
It was said that its previous owner didn’t survive the catastrophe, perishing during the sea beast attack, and this manor had only been repaired afterward.
Strictly speaking, this was a haunted house.
But that didn’t matter much.
Here, there was an ancient Magical Girl, her teammate, her husband, two modern Magical Girls, plus a useless fairy cake—no haunted house could compare to this bunch.
Besides, the previous owner wasn’t exactly absent, either.
Yes, until a few days ago, this manor didn’t belong to Wen Yaquan.
But with a little of her cash power, she acquired it easily.
This wasn’t some quadrangle courtyard in the capital—just a seaside manor in a small city. As long as the price was right, the original owner had no reason to refuse.
Pushing open the manor’s grand doors, the interior décor was nothing short of luxurious.
Yet everyone present was either truly indifferent or just didn’t care much about money; no one showed much interest in any of this.
Oh, except Jiang Lingwei, who looked around in astonishment, touching this and that.
“Wow… wow…”
She’d thought that the big villa they currently lived in was already the pinnacle of wealth in her imagination, but hadn’t expected there were true experts out there.
This place was worth at least ten of her old tube apartment!
“This place isn’t bad, right?”
Wen Yaquan said at her side, “Even though it’s by the sea, the damp-proofing is really well done, and someone cleaned up before we arrived. What do you think?”
“It looks so expensive, it must be great.”
Jiang Lingwei replied without hesitation.
Wen Yaquan was momentarily speechless, but she knew that Magical Girls were all like this—always astonishingly straightforward about some things.
That was why she liked befriending Jiang Lingwei and the others.
Only these people, till now, had never cared how much money she had, nor tried to curry favor or take advantage of her with false pretenses.
“Hey, Jiang Cheng.”
Calling to Jiang Cheng, who was over there helping Old Liu move suitcases, Wen Yaquan said, “Lend me Xiao Wei for a bit.”
Then, dragging Jiang Lingwei—who muttered under her breath, “Why does that sound so weird?”—they dashed up to the top floor.
Pushing open the glass doors to the top-floor terrace, the two of them sat together on the newly arranged chairs from that morning. Sea breeze brushed their cheeks, and their hair fluttered in the wind.
Here, Wen Yaquan had some things to say to Jiang Lingwei.
“So you’ve decided to walk this path again?”
Without any pointless preamble, Wen Yaquan spoke directly.
Hearing her, Jiang Lingwei’s smile faded, and she nodded.
“Mm.”
“Hey hey, don’t be like that, smile!”
Wen Yaquan waved her hand in front of Jiang Lingwei’s eyes. “Why the sudden combat face?”
“How could I possibly smile right now.”
Grabbing Wen Yaquan’s wrist, Jiang Lingwei said helplessly, “About the first-generation ‘Magical Girls’—news about that ‘Magical Girl of the Sea’—some of that information was declassified recently, did you know?”
“Huh?”
Wen Yaquan tilted her head. “When did that happen?”
“I knew it.”
Jiang Lingwei let out a breath and continued, “I only just found out. The day before yesterday, I went to the aquarium with Chengzi and our child—you know what I saw?”
“There’s a place there that screens documentaries. You could find the same one if you looked it up, but to get to the point: in that film, the Magical Girl of the Sea’s magical equipment—”
“That’s Tianpin’s [Abyssal Sea Dragonspine].”
“What?!”
Wen Yaquan jumped to her feet in shock.
“How is that possible?!”
“Keep your voice down! Sit, sit.”
Calming Wen Yaquan, Jiang Lingwei glanced over the railing. It seemed Jiang Cheng hadn’t heard them—he was downstairs, opening a suitcase, trying to shake Xiao Bai (squished into a pancake) back into its usual round form.
Jiang Lingwei asked, “So you hadn’t heard anything about this before?”
“Not a thing.”
Wen Yaquan still hadn’t recovered from her shock, tapping her head. “I’d tried looking into the ‘first generation’ before, but their information in the database wasn’t even locked down—it just didn’t exist at all, you know? The most likely scenario is they didn’t leave any digital records, only paper files, physically sealed away. Back then, I even suspected there might be nothing left at all.”
“Once that lead broke off, I stopped paying attention to the ‘first generation.’”
“As for the information you said was declassified…”
Wen Yaquan pulled out her phone, searching online, then said, “As I thought, there’s nothing on the internet—just a few posts by tourists who happened to see it, and those are barely discussed, like someone’s actively suppressing it. What kind of ‘declassification’ is that?”
“Even the documentary you saw must have a lot of heavily edited versions.”
She added cautiously, “Are you sure that was [Abyssal Sea Dragonspine]? Not just something that looked similar?”
“Absolutely sure.”
Wen Yaquan’s guess was spot on, and Jiang Lingwei explained what she’d seen and her reasoning.
After listening, Wen Yaquan’s reaction was much the same.
“Sea God’s Spear—what the heck is that?!”
—But leaving that aside, she couldn’t help but fume, “That name is so tacky and awful, it sounds like some random ‘Tang God King.’ What did our Tianpin ever do to deserve this?!”
“The heat’s got me shaking with anger—look, we’re just low-key, not dead!”
“Who made this documentary? I want to blow them up!”
“Blowing them up won’t help.”
Jiang Lingwei tried to calm her. “Let’s focus on the current situation. Is there any other news about first-generation Magical Girls?”
“No… well, not necessarily. If they’ve declassified one, maybe they’ll declassify another. I’ll investigate as soon as I can.”
“No need to rush,” Jiang Lingwei shook her head. “It’s already been years, a few days won’t matter. It’s vacation—we should enjoy it.”
Not mentioning what would come after, Jiang Lingwei gave a quick summary of what she’d heard from Jiang Cheng.
“So, now there are two threads. One is the unknown magic in my magical core, which for now only Chengzi seems able to activate.”
“The other—” her gaze turned to the sea, “is the information they left for me.”
“If this were a game, I’d need to complete both lines to get the true ending.”
“Xiao Quan-jie, do you understand now?”
Jiang Lingwei straightened up.
“I have to go. I have no choice. Remember? The dark enemies are also seeking the magical equipment. I have this feeling that if I don’t act, something much worse will happen later.”
“Alright.”
Wen Yaquan considered, then immediately suggested a solution.
“If we can’t find the exact location of Abyssal Sea Dragonspine on land, what about the sea?”
“The sea?”
Jiang Lingwei, who’d been troubled about finding the spear, immediately perked up, but she was still hesitant. “But… how do we get there?”
“With a submarine, of course.”
“Ah.”
Jiang Lingwei frowned. “A submarine… that’s not really possible, is it?”
The oceans had never been entirely peaceful, but these days, the dangers of the sea had multiplied many times over.
Thanks to sturdier ships and advanced tech, humans could usually sail safely, but after the invasion of dark enemies, the sea truly had monsters straight out of ancient legends.
With so many relatively docile magical marine creatures, there were bound to be far more violent ones.
Otherwise, why would seafood be so expensive?
Only the mass-farmed, hardy “seafood”—not picky about their environment, not requiring proximity to the actual sea—were something ordinary people could eat regularly.
And even then, it was still outrageously expensive.
When Jiang Cheng bought some farmed seafood and grilled squid from that shop, a single meal cost them enough to stay at a high-end hotel for half a year.
Not to mention, if terrifying dark creatures like Shark King could appear in the ocean, there must be other powerful beings as well.
Going down in a submarine, she’d rather go solo—at least that way, if things went south, she’d have a better chance to escape.
And anyway, where would they even get a submarine right now?
“We can do it.”
Wen Yaquan nodded vigorously from across the table.
“The whole point of the submarine is to save your energy as much as possible. I’ll add some magic-detection equipment.”
“If it’s as you said—Abyssal Sea Dragonspine flying out from the Gate of Darkness and ending up with that ‘first generation’ Magical Girl—” Wen Yaquan frowned in clear annoyance at the mention of “first generation,” then continued, “Anyway, if things really happened that way, we’re sure to find it on the sea floor.”
“As for where to get a submarine—don’t worry. I can get you one any time. It’s just money. Who’s using submarines these days, anyway?”
She slapped her hand on the table, eyes wide.
“Wait! I just realized, there really is one thing only you can do. No one else can!”
Seeing Wen Yaquan’s serious look, Jiang Lingwei couldn’t help but ask, “What is it?”
“You can simulate everyone’s magic, right?”
Wen Yaquan went on, “Now I understand—completely. Of all of us, only you can do this.” Her voice suddenly rose. “Xiao Aurora!”
“I—I’m here!”
“I brought Mieye too.”
“Huh?”
Jiang Lingwei exclaimed in surprise, “How did you get her past security? Aren’t you afraid of being attacked?”
“I slipped her onto my private jet before the inspection, easy. As for enemies, I’ll explain that later.”
Wen Yaquan hadn’t expected the question, but after a pause, continued, “Go check on Mieye and you’ll see. Their magical equipment should all be in ‘semi-dormant’ state, so magic still seeps out now and then. No one else can use that, but you’re different. You can completely simulate their magical waves. As long as we can record those into modern machines, we can search the sea for matching signatures—”
“Even in the worst case, even if it takes years, we’ll definitely find it.”
“That’s amazing!”
Jiang Lingwei lifted her head, excited.
“If that’s the case, things will go twice as fast with half the effort!”
“But!”
Wen Yaquan gazed intently at Jiang Lingwei.
“Before that, I have to ask—”
“Xiao Aurora, are you sure you want to do this?”
“…I’m sure.”
“Don’t be so quick to answer.”
Wen Yaquan paused, then, with some difficulty, said,
“I have another plan. We could ask the authorities for help, hand all this over to them, and just get on with our lives. What do you think?”
Jiang Lingwei was silent.
She stared at Wen Yaquan, certain she was serious.
It was hard to imagine words like that coming from Wen Yaquan’s mouth.
Since they’d reunited, she’d always been against cooperating with the authorities.
Jiang Lingwei could easily imagine—back when Wen Yaquan helped found the Bureau, it was probably just out of a desire to help humanity. If she’d really intended to invest herself in the Bureau, with her skills, she’d be in politics, not business.
Why had she suddenly changed her mind today?
Jiang Lingwei understood.
It was for her friend’s sake.
To give Jiang Lingwei the right to live an ordinary life, Wen Yaquan was willing to change her principles.
Throwing the magical equipment through the last-opened Gate of Darkness—just from that, she could tell the odds of their friends’ return were slim.
So Wen Yaquan chose to support and cherish the only friend truly sitting before her now.
One second, two seconds—Wen Yaquan looked at the silent Jiang Lingwei, a little anxious.
“…No.”
Jiang Lingwei said.
She leaned forward slightly.
“Not just because it’s my responsibility.”
“And, the bigger something is, the bigger its flaws.”
“Remember the sand guns I told you about?”
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