"In the Stargazing Tower... I am one of the few who holds a seat at the primary council. I am a decision-maker."
The words dropped into the small, enclosed space with the physical weight of a lead anvil falling into a pool of mercury.
'A decision-maker at the Stargazing Tower,' Ji'an thought, her heart executing a sudden, violent lurch against her locket artifact. 'He is not some common riff-raff, really.'
Her mind that was sharp and perpetually suspicious, immediately began executing a frantic, multi-tiered dependency trace.
If Yan Zhaoge was a high-ranking authority within the Stargazing Tower, the very institution that housed the cosmic astrolabes used to chart fate and manipulate souls, then he was not an innocent bystander who had coincidentally bumped into her during a tour.
He was tied directly to the machinery that had dragged her away from her commercial kitchen on Earth, ripped her across dimensions, and shoved her into the dying body of a general's disgraced daughter.
