Bao Yaolan’s vision narrowed, the world contracting to a pinpoint of cold, pure calculation. Shenjue, her best battery, her unwilling but potent array core, lay broken. This was unacceptable. This was inefficient. Her combat-focused mind, usually so oblivious to emotional nuance, registered a searing, unfamiliar heat in her chest. Not sorrow, not fear, but a white-hot fury that demanded immediate, overwhelming systemic correction. She ignored the Author of Fate’s condescending chuckle, ignored Zang Weiming’s pathetic struggles to untangle himself from the stone gargoyle, and ignored the rapidly darkening sky. Her gaze, behind the mask, swept over the Loom of Destiny, taking in its intricate, seemingly boundless lattice. To her, it wasn't an act of godhood, but a poorly constructed, overly complex spatial array, its anchors weak, its power distribution wildly uneven. It had a glaring vulnerability: it needed a massive, chaotic disruption to overload its control nodes. “Mo-Mo,” she stated, her voice sharp and devoid of its usual inflection. “Distraction. Maximum output. Now.” The air-carp, previously hovering nervously, a small, dark shadow against the stellar backdrop, shuddered. It had spent the last few minutes digesting the geometric singularity it had swallowed, a process that had left it looking uncomfortably distended, like a bloated dumpling. As Yaolan spoke, a low, resonant hum vibrated from Mo-Mo’s round body, growing in intensity. The Weaver of Fate paused its casual re-lacing of Zang Weiming's cords. Its myriad eyes flickered toward the sound, narrowing with sudden wariness. The hum intensified into a low, rattling shudder that set the courtyard flagstones vibrating. Mo-Mo, the unassuming ink-carp, shone. First came a milky luminescence, like salt-marsh phosphorescence. Then, an amber glare built in intensity, swirling and coalescing into the unmistakable horned outline of a sky-spanning sovereign beast. The Weaver's mouth twitched, its manifold limbs drawing back. Such a silhouette, forged from unblemished chaotic mass, breached the boundary parameters of the Loom. “A… a sovereign beast transformation?!” the Weaver shrieked, its voices overlapping in a discordant rattle. “Impossible! Such a beast cannot exist in this realm! It is not written!” It began to frantically knot fresh strands, desperate to contain the nascent surge. Yaolan, however, watched with a critical eye. The amber hue shone brightly and the serpent silhouette looked grand, but the inner matrix told another story. Mo-Mo was still Mo-Mo. She recognized the specific resonance of compressed geometry, not spiritual ascension. This was a glorified lantern show powered by gut distress. The bright flare peaked, stinging the eyes for a breath, then collapsed. The Weaver lowered its jointed arms, peering through the settling haze. Horror curdled into confusion, then into blank bewilderment. The magnificent, reality-bending silhouette had vanished. In its place hung Mo-Mo. The carp was still a carp, round and plump, but it had grown astronomically. Imagine a salt whale, then imagine it was a goldfish cast from thick, gleaming ink. Mo-Mo was easily ten times its original bulk, a monumental mass of blubber blotting out half the pavilion's courtyard, its gills fluttering against the wind. It was profoundly, obscenely huge, like an overfed titan plucked from a trench. “My apologies,” Yaolan stated, her voice betraying not a hint of humor. “I believe its growth array was a touch… over-calibrated.” Mo-Mo wobbled in mid-air, small eyes blinking. A wet, echoing burp rattled the roof tiles like distant thunder. The sheer ballast of its new form proved too heavy for its buoyancy charm. With a heavy hiss, the colossal ink-carp tilted downward, slipping an inch at first before plunging headlong, a massive torpedo of pure fish flesh. “Oh, no, no, no!” the Weaver screamed, limbs flailing. It tried to stitch a defensive barrier, but Mo-Mo's crude bulk defied the grid's predictive calculus. The delicate spindle array sat directly in the carp’s descent path. With a wet, squelching thud that shook the flagstones, Giant Mo-Mo dropped from the sky. It flattened the Weaver and its apparatus beneath tons of magically distended belly meat. The apparatus groaned, its struts snapping in rapid succession before falling silent under the glistening bulk. A solitary jointed arm twitched beneath the dorsal fin, then went limp. Mo-Mo, content, let out another bubbling burp, blubber quivering. The impact provided the opening Yaolan needed. Her prepared talismans hummed in her sleeves. Moving with surgical economy, she darted forward and pinned six chalk-inscribed nodes onto the fractured spindle remnants, seating them directly against the primary power conduits. Each node whirred with compressed geometric force, set to shatter the lattice. She stepped back. The timing was narrow. One final element remained: the nodes required an ignition catalyst to spark the chain reaction, a dense spiritual battery tuned to the realm's core frequencies. Her gaze swept across the cracked masonry. It settled upon Crown Prince Zang Weiming. He remained wedged in the gargoyle's stone claws, limbs dangling, but a distinct amber sheen radiated from his collarbones. It was the unearned spiritual endowment of heaven's favored scion—pure, high-yield fuel. Yaolan walked toward Zang Weiming's shimmering halo, drawing a spare copper grounding peg.

Ascension of the Ink-Carp