What Happened

The Ether Rift looked like a wound torn open, its edges glowing faint purple. The moment the three of them stepped inside, light erupted around them.

As she passed through the rift, Cui Ji felt as though a pair of hands had covered her ears. All she could hear was the hum of Ether.

The darkness came quickly and vanished just as fast. When Cui Ji opened her eyes again, she was standing in a corridor. Griseo and Pardo were ahead of her, looking around carefully.

"Where are we? This place looks so familiar!"

Cui Ji studied the corridor. Cold alloy flooring lay beneath her feet, and the walls on either side were made of white composite material. Emergency lights were set every few meters. The air smelled of hospital disinfectant and a sickening, sweet scent of blood.

"Is this an interior passage in some kind of facility?" Cui Ji asked uncertainly after a closer look.

Pardo pressed herself against a wall. Her cat ears lay flat against her head, and her tail wrapped around her waist as she said, trembling,

"Little Griseo, I don't like it here. Let's go! This place smells just like Snake Sis's underground lab. It can't be anywhere good."

"It does look like Grandma Mobius's underground lab!" Griseo surveyed their surroundings.

"Wait! A lab!" Cui Ji's expression changed the moment she heard the word.

Disinfectant, formalin, blood, and that sweet stench of decay mixed with chemicals—the smell that came from human tissue stored too long. How well she knew it!

She had suffered endless torment in a hellish research facility.

After Griseo rescued her, Cui Ji and her younger sisters had become so absorbed in ordinary life that she had nearly forgotten that part of her past.

"The Ravenlock Family!" Cui Ji said coldly. "This