Chapter 31: The Cage

“Game over!”

The moment Ye Jinyi realized the terrifying truth, a wave of despair crashed over her.

“Is this… another calamity?”

She quickly arrived at a somewhat reasonable conclusion.

“But… what’s the point of that?!”

Just knowing she was in danger didn’t help at all!

The real question was—how was she supposed to escape?

But clearly, there was no way out for her now.

To her, the world looked like a prison.

She was trapped inside, unable to escape.

It was the city she knew, familiar and wide open—yet it felt so closed off.

Looking up at the unmoving sun, Ye Jinyi finally gave up.

“Screw it. I can’t think of a solution anyway. Might as well go grab some free food while I can.”

As far as she could tell, this world didn’t seem particularly dangerous—so before figuring out how to get out, it was smarter to replenish her energy first.

Ye Jinyi headed into a convenience store, grabbed a bottle of soda from the fridge, cracked it open, and downed it in gulps.

“Mmm~ So refreshing!”

She let the coolness and fizz of the carbonation wash away the fear bubbling inside her.

There was nothing in this world a bottle of soda couldn’t fix.

And if there was—just drink another one!

Inside the screening room.

Duan Bingxia, seated in the back row, watched the loli on the screen.

She hadn’t shown the uncontrollable traits of a typical calamity, nor the terrifying danger of a high-level one.

All she showed… was the kind of confusion that belonged to the ignorant.

“Shishan…”

Duan Bingxia whispered to her red-haired friend beside her.

“That loli—are we sure she’s really a calamity?”

“At the very least, the people who can see her spectrum think so.”

Tong Shishan stared at the girl on the screen.

“You can deny a lot of things, but you can’t deny the spectrum.”

“Technically, the extreme temperatures of the Flame That Burns the World shouldn’t even allow light to exist, but that fire is so abnormally stable that it actually emits a detectable spectrum. It’s just that you and I don’t have the vision to see it.”

Duan Bingxia didn’t understand a word of it.

She shook Shishan’s arm with frustration, pleading for a more direct answer.

“I mean her behavior! She doesn’t act anything like the calamities we usually deal with! Shishan!”

Tong Shishan was silent for a long time before suddenly responding.

“But how much do we really know about calamities?”

Back in the barrier.

Ye Jinyi strolled through the empty world, enjoying the lawless freedom it offered.

At the moment, she was wearing a cosplay costume—dressed as Alice from Kiniro Mosaic.

To match the look, she’d even found a hot spring earlier to wash out the black dye in her hair, revealing the light blonde beneath.

Meanwhile, she licked an ice cream cone she’d just scooped from a milk tea shop—pure bliss.

She hadn’t spent a single cent and was enjoying the good life to the fullest.

It had to be said: Ye Jinyi had a bizarre talent for always grinning like an idiot, no matter what she was doing.

Just like now—despite knowing she was basically as good as dead, she was still trying to adapt to her new surroundings and discover new joys.

Is this what they meant by “a true survivor never complains about their environment”?

…Probably not.

But even while enjoying her new lifestyle, Ye Jinyi couldn’t help letting out a small complaint: “Why haven’t the magical girls shown up yet? How long’s it been already?!”

She felt like a lot of time had passed.

The sun in the sky might not have moved, but her sense of time was definitely real.

She’d been stuck in this calamity space for so long—logically, the magical girls should’ve wrapped things up by now.

“Don’t tell me this calamity’s just too complicated? Like, taking longer than usual to resolve?”

She considered every possible explanation—except the idea that the magical girls had already caught her.

After all, so many days had gone by—it couldn’t be today of all days that they suddenly figured out where she was, right?

Ye Jinyi didn’t want to believe that possibility—not because it was unlikely, but because she simply didn’t want to accept it.

“Whatever, forget it!”

She was comfortable now, so why overthink things?

“I’m gonna enjoy life!”

Throwing her hands high above her head, she let out a joyful cheer and dashed off toward a park in the distance.

By now, a full day had passed.

Most of the magical girls who had been watching from the screening room had already left.

Only a handful remained—those with nothing better to do, or a few who’d returned after dinner to keep watching.

After all, nobody lives just to watch someone else live.

That’d be way too boring.

Only one or two needed to stick around to make sure the girl on-screen didn’t do anything unexpected.

Because no one yet knew how the Flame That Burns the World had reappeared in this world.

The Republic wanted answers.

That fire, once sealed in a different dimension, had suddenly returned—and they needed to know why.

That was a direct order from central command.

It had to be completed.

No one could disobey.

Some unknown amount of time passed, and Ye Jinyi gradually got used to her new life.

When she was bored, she’d sometimes look up at the sun, still frozen in the exact same spot.

Grrr~

Her stomach growled loudly, reminding her it was probably mealtime.

“Time to eat~!”

Ye Jinyi walked into a convenience store, grabbed a self-heating meal from the shelf, and headed back outside.

She found a table in front of an empty, unmanned restaurant by the roadside.

Pulling out a chair, she sat down and placed the meal on the table, starting the heating process right then and there.

Since she had no clue whether it was morning, noon, afternoon, or night, she stopped trying to label her meals. Breakfast, lunch, dinner—it didn’t matter.

After finishing her food, Ye Jinyi checked into a hotel room.

A soft, comfy bed helped her fall asleep quickly.

Hugging a body pillow bigger than herself, she drifted off.

Much later, she woke up.

“Mmmf~”

Rubbing her eyes, Ye Jinyi sat up in bed.

“Feels so empty…”

Now fully awake, she pressed a hand against her chest.

For some reason, it felt hollow inside.

Looking around the room, an indescribable sadness welled up inside her.

“So quiet…”

The silence was suffocating.

Only now did Ye Jinyi truly notice—this world was unnaturally quiet.

She instinctively reached for her phone to play a song and fill the silence, but that’s when she realized.

Her phone was dead.