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

"We moved all the bronze statues together, and they have coded, seemingly random characters engraved on various hidden parts of their bodies, which wouldn't have been there when they first came out of the factory."

"After careful evaluation and discussion by professional cryptography experts, the experts believe that this is a 'key' used to decrypt another encrypted content, and does not carry much information itself."

Later, the Hero Association's logistics department provided this explanation and also compiled all the ciphers into a document and sent it to the magical girls.

Looking at the dense rows of encrypted text, Su Tianqing's headache worsened considerably.

That's why people call others cryptography experts. If you were to study these random ciphertexts on your own, you probably wouldn't be able to figure them out even after a year or two. But if experts get together and study them for half an hour, they can tell you, "This is actually a key." The difference is quite significant.

But then another problem arose—

Hyacinth successfully completed most of the tasks that were to be accomplished in the new millennium, including the most important task of "hinting at the albatross," which successfully prompted the albatross to begin transmitting information from that mental world to the present-day Chengdu.

Since the "past" can influence the "present," then using something that exists simultaneously in both the past and the future and doesn't change much as a medium can smoothly transmit messages.

Like a football buried underground, a camera that fell somewhere, and several bronze statues that still stand in the square.

But no one completely agreed with Albatross's logic; her thinking was simply too wild:

What exists in Chengdu, both in the past and present? The bronze statue on Qiuxi Road.

If any of these bronze statues are missing, how can I ensure that the message is conveyed completely?

Hey, why not just put ciphers on all the bronze statues, then move them all back to their original locations? That way, wouldn't it guarantee that identical bronze statues will appear in the real world?

That's roughly the logic; it has no cause and effect whatsoever, it's purely driven by passion, which reminds me of a certain acquaintance.

But she actually managed to get it done. The statue only triggered an emergency evacuation and did not cause any casualties.

But there's not much left for the albatross.

The medium of information is very important. If the medium exists in an unstable state, a lot of information will be lost in the long process of wear and tear. After all, this is a transmission of information that spans more than ten years in the real world. Even the mental world will be worn down after so many years, let alone human creations.

Even fixed structures like buildings may not exist in their entirety; the recent Garuda War, which led to a comprehensive reconstruction of the entire city of Chengdu, is the best example of this.

What's left?

"all in all."

"We have obtained a ciphertext from the albatross. Now we need to find the specific information that this ciphertext corresponds to and that we need to decode."

Xin Yuehu stood in front of the television on the villain's rooftop and spoke to her companions who were sitting in a row in front of her.

Cheshire Rabbit and Alice sat on the far side, while Fenrir sat in the middle. After hearing the villainous leader Fox's speech, they all nodded in agreement.

"Speaking of which, I haven't seen Meng Donghua lately. Has she finished her studies in Rongcheng?"

Su Tianqing suddenly remembered something. It seemed that one of her companions was missing a pink-haired rabbit with a very low profile, so she quickly asked Cheshire Rabbit.

The latter shrugged.

"Actually, she has final exams to take at her school in Syracuse, which are about two weeks away."

"Why ask such a terrible question at a time like this?" Hellcat asked quietly.

Alice had no idea what the college students around her were talking about, but since she attended the same Rongcheng College of Arts and Sciences as Nan Xiaofeng, she couldn't quite understand how terrible college final exams were.

Especially medical students like Nan Jiayu... Su Tianqing is an exception.

"Anyway, Youyou went back to Snow City to take her exams. I don't know where she'll go for summer vacation, but I have a guess..."

Xia Taotao didn't dare to be too definitive, and the villains all understood what she meant. They silently planned out Meng Donghua's summer vacation schedule in their minds:

Week 1: Review the invisibility spell and fight the Nightingale.

In the second week, we continued to review the Reinhardt tactics and played against Shura.

In the third week, fight Arisaema; in the fourth week, fight Iris; and starting in the fifth week, you should look for Hyacinths to increase your strength.

Once summer vacation ends, a graduation assessment will be arranged, and Meng Donghua will be locked in her carefully prepared mental world, the "Magical Girl Octagonal Cage," for a real, unrestricted fight with the cat.

This combination of techniques will definitely train Meng Donghua into a qualified magical girl, capable of delivering powerful blows whether facing monsters or villainous magical girls that may appear in Snow City.

...What? You're asking if Meng Donghua really won't integrate into this fox's villain group and become the villain leader of Snow City?

Don't worry, look at Rabbit, she's very upright. If the top beam is so straight, how could the bottom beam be crooked?

Fox is certain.

Su Tianqing suddenly realized something. Before she could ask everyone to brainstorm what else albatrosses could use as a medium of information, she turned her attention to Fenrir, who had a calm expression.

If Arisaema is a puppy, then Fenrir must be a big dog.

"...I always feel like you're muttering some strange things to yourself," Fenrir said, raising an eyebrow.

"No way, I was just thinking of some popular memes." Su Tianqing shifted her gaze.

"Yeah, right! You were clearly talking about me! Waaah!"

The villain's most satisfying bark from the rooftop.

Despite the jokes and playfulness, serious business continued.

After summarizing a series of information transmissions, a reasonable fact has emerged:

"First of all, the changes that occurred during the Millennium do not have a full impact on the present day."

"Did you notice that the hyacinth and that giant hydra had a fierce battle in your mind? The aftershocks of the battle will affect the surrounding area to some extent, but there was no disturbance in Rongcheng caused by the aftershocks."

The girls exchanged glances, and Alice and Jack nodded first.

"That's true, but why can football cameras and bronze statues appear in the real world?" Little Jack asked curiously.

"Good question, because there is a key difference between them—whether the object or event was touched or directly caused by the albatross himself."

"If the albatross had not been involved or had not come into contact with the object, it would not have appeared in the location corresponding to the present-day Chengdu."

"Hyacinth touched a lot of things during its exploration and collected a lot of local exploration data, but we did not find those traces of its exploration in present-day Chengdu."

After Su Tianqing finished speaking, she turned her gaze to the decoded cipher in her hand.

Now that we've covered this much, it's pretty much confirmed that the mental world is closely related to albatrosses—only the controller of the mental world has such great authority.

But how did the "Chengdu" trapped in the year 2000 influence the Chengdu of today? Su Tianqing couldn't figure it out.

Since albatrosses can transmit cameras to the real world, what if hyacinths could bring in high-capacity storage devices, like USB drives or mobile phones? Wouldn't that be...?

"...I have an idea. We don't all need to sit here brainstorming."

The golden fox turned its tail and, thinking of Meng Donghua and Xuecheng, suddenly had a brilliant idea.

"Do you remember Snow City? Kalia's treasure hidden in the valley."

"Isn't the information that Albatross hid in Chengdu in the past a kind of 'treasure'?"

The fox girl flicked her tail, waved her little hand, and said loudly:

"Tomorrow I will have the hyacinth carry something important into the new millennium and give it to the albatross."

"After that, we're calling on everyone to—go treasure hunting in Chengdu!"