The villainous magical girl's daily mission is to find fault.

A seemingly bizarre disappearance case has uncovered such a profound secret.

Caught off guard, the girls tentatively began to explore, only to arrive at a conclusion even more horrifying and terrifying than the inside story.

The gloom that plagued Chengdu in the past was merely concealed by human intervention. This gloom has never completely dissipated; in fact, it has gradually grown stronger during the period of its disappearance, becoming a formidable force.

The emergence of the theory of "death cycle" sent chills down Su Tianqing's spine. She was very glad that she hadn't used the mental world as a bomb to destroy Garuda once and for all when she fought against him.

If that had actually been done back then, not to mention whether Chengdu could still be preserved today, this fragile old-fashioned mental image would definitely not have been able to withstand the aftershocks of the explosion. At that time, it would have had to face both the fully-formed astral behemoth Garuda and a giant hydra of unknown origin at the same time.

...Is its origin truly unknown? Su Tianqing had a big question mark about this.

"There are only two possibilities for its origin," Cheshire Rabbit said. "First, it may have been a hydra that fell from the astral plane into the mortal world many years ago, accidentally falling into the mental world and being intercepted by its predecessor."

"That's quite a strange possibility. What about the second one?" Fenrir retorted casually.

"Secondly, just as Fox Fox said, this hydra may be the hydra body left behind by the jellyfish that Senior Red Snow killed and destroyed back then."

The pink-haired bunny girl sat up straight and raised this serious possibility.

No one was surprised by this conclusion, not even Su Tianqing.

All the evidence currently available points to the second possibility—the alternate dimension is real, Chengdu twenty years ago is real, the albatross and meerkat stargazer are real, and the giant hydra is also real.

Meanwhile, the Crimson Snow Lilac and Autumn Poplar, who are active in the alternate dimension, are in a very delicate state. It is hard to say whether this state is good or bad, but the fact that their memories and even their existence are reset at regular intervals is still enough to be called the number one unsolved mystery in the alternate dimension.

"Putting all that aside, we are now facing a serious problem."

Fenrir said,

"That giant hydra isn't staying still inside; it's been making quite a few disappearances lately."

"The student who was swallowed by it wasn't seriously injured because of the timely rescue, but what if it had been any later? What if we had discovered it even later, or what if it had captured other victims in another hidden place?"

On the villain's rooftop, everyone looked at each other in silence.

An ordinary middle school student, after being swallowed by that giant hydra, can be transformed into a giant umbrella that can cover half of Chengdu. If two or even three children with magical talents were swallowed, what terrifying power would that hydra display?

I can't even imagine it.

As for countermeasures against the giant hydra... to be honest, Su Tianqing originally had a few ideas in mind, but after careful analysis, she felt that none of them were very reliable, and each method had an unavoidable failure rate.

"Our next focus needs to be clear: if there really is an inherent cycle of reincarnation in that alternate dimension, as we have deduced, then we need to find the specific beginning and end of this cycle and find a way to break it."

The villainous companions, each with their own tasks, began to ponder deeply.

Two-Colored Alice was responsible for trying to recreate the Chengdu of yesteryear, full of the dreamlike atmosphere of the millennium, in the world of mental images. Rabbit and Dog studied the information brought out by Yue Tianxin and Bai Ling together, trying to find clues that Su Tianqing had overlooked from the pile of information.

Su Tianqing didn't have that kind of arrogant and conceited mentality. She never thought that she could handle everything on her own. Letting Rabbit, a professional intelligence officer, analyze things was the best decision she could make.

"..."

For some reason, the gray wolf girl suddenly pricked up her ears, straightened her back, looked around, and fixed her gaze on herself.

Fox whistled and looked away. Fenrir squinted, as if he wanted to say something, but he couldn't bring himself to say it.

Hellcat couldn't find a fight, and the weather was so hot today that she lost all interest in going out to fly around Chengdu. So she simply sprawled on the sofa in the lounge, enjoying the free magical air conditioning and receiving grooming services from her fox-like familiars.

The fox-like familiars leaped and bounded around the catgirl, while a flurry of lint rollers, hair combs, and conditioners swarmed her, offering a vigorous massage in return.

Listening to the purring sounds coming from the catgirl beside her, Su Tianqing directed her familiars to massage the parts of the catgirl's muscles that she used most frequently, while she opened the Star Library borrowing page of the Secret Codex and began to review the advanced magic exam syllabus that she had been reading for almost half of recently.

Soon, Rabbit's side came to a very important conclusion:

There's a problem right now.

"Albatross and her stargazer spirits have given us so much information, but why haven't they told us about the existence of some kind of 'time loop' in the other dimension? And why did they strictly forbid Hyacinth from relaying this to Crimson Snow Lilac and the others in the other dimension? What is she worried about?"

"And another thing... look at this, the Hero Association just conducted an investigation of the scene ten minutes ago and found this thing."

The Cheshire Rabbit carried a magical light screen filled with densely packed reasoning diagrams to Su Tianqing's side, showing her a photo with two red circles drawn on the screen:

The picture shows the scene of the football field where the spatial rift disappearance just occurred. The green field was almost completely overturned by the aftershocks of the hyacinths and irises, and the meadow soil was turned upside down, leaving a mess.

And right there on this messy green field, beneath the upturned meadow, something that shouldn't have been there was photographed by the Hero Association's frontline personnel—

A deflated soccer ball.

football?

Su Tianqing was completely confused.

You can do without anything else on a football field, but you should have a football, goal, and net. It's like how you might not be able to find hot pot in a university cafeteria, but you'll definitely find a ten-yuan boxed lunch.

"No, no, I know there should be a football on the football field. Fox, take a closer look at the detailed description from the frontline staff."

Suspicious.

Su Tianqing took the magic light screen again with a look of suspicion. Hellcat had just finished a phase of hair care and sat up straight with curling irons on its head. Together with Cheshire Rabbit Fenrir, they looked at the detailed instructions that Heart Moon Fox had displayed on the light screen.

The message was sent by Nightingale. She must have thought this information was important, which is why she sent it. This briefly piqued Su Tianqing's interest, but what's so interesting about a dirty, shriveled soccer ball?

[Frontline Report]

[Team A found the soccer ball beneath the meadow stirred up by the aftershocks of the battle; at first, we thought it was just an ordinary discarded soccer ball.]

[Messiah was the first to notice its anomaly. After digging it out from under the meadow, the ball's skin showed a production date of 20XX, which was last year.]

What puzzles us is that the meadow on the football field at Rongcheng Sports Center was originally designed as a permanent implanted turf. It was only covered and renovated once after the Astral Jellyfish attack 16 years ago, which covered the subsided and damaged meadow underneath.

Judging from the filth and disarray of this shriveled soccer ball, it was likely covered and buried under the meadow during the renovation. But why would a soccer ball manufactured last year appear on a meadow from 200X?

This is a formal report for filing.

A football manufactured last year is appearing in a meadow from sixteen years ago?

silence.

Su Tianqing's brows furrowed, as if she had discovered an incredible clue.