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

Bai Lili put forward a series of harsh conditions, but she never expected that there would actually be someone who could meet the requirements.

—Akayuki, a retired magical girl.

She possesses one of the mental worlds that only three people in the world can use, has the strength and magical perception of the Shadow of Stars, and is also a former teammate of Albatross, with whom she has a very close relationship.

Most importantly, she personally witnessed the albatross unfurling the "Millennium," unless she had experienced some kind of melodramatic amnesia during that time...

"No matter what, let's find her first."

Bai Lili was the first to offer a suggestion.

"Akayuki has recently resumed her unfinished retirement trip. No one knows where she went. Only the Hero Association might be able to track her down."

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's hurry up and contact Messiah and Meteor Teacher!" Nightingale said, hurriedly taking out the Divine Stone and starting to make a call.

Upon hearing the magical girls' sudden request to "find Akatsuki's whereabouts," Meteor and Messiah exchanged bewildered glances, feeling that this was indeed a difficult matter. Meteor even teleported himself to the meeting room where the girls were discussing the issue to explain it to them face to face:

"You may not have any idea about Akayuki's retirement trip, so I have to explain it to you."

"Do you know where Akashi's first trip after retiring was?"

The group looked at each other in silence and shook their heads.

Meteor took a deep breath and said:

"Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean, the farthest point from land in the entire ocean, she swam more than two thousand meters around the Point Nemo beacon."

"...?"

The fox's tail tried to bend into a question mark shape like a cat's tail, but unfortunately it wasn't as flexible.

"Then she went boat fishing in the Amazon rainforest of South America—laluga fishing during the flood season, fighting with fish that are two or three meters long. It is said that she even made a short film called 'Red Snow and River'."

Bai Lili's face was full of question marks.

"Then we went hiking on the Antarctic ice sheet to the South Pole, and planted a flag with a polar bear on it."

"Stop, stop, stop! Isn't there anything normal here?" Qiu Gui interrupted hurriedly, asking.

"Yes, last time, she set off from Chengdu to that winged village and walked all the way there, and just then she encountered the Garuda attack."

Everyone looked at each other in silence.

Su Tianqing's ideal retirement trip should look like this:

Traveling by bus with family and friends, chatting and laughing all the way, taking photos and drinking tea at the scenic spots, playing a couple of rounds of mahjong, and enjoying a local meal, and if you have enough energy, hiking and swimming – this should be the life of a retiree.

But what does it mean to swim two thousand meters to the place farthest from land in the world?

What does it mean to go into the Amazon rainforest and fight two or three-meter-long fish?

What else is meant by planting a flag with a polar bear on it at the South Pole?

What does it mean to casually banish one of Garuda's avatars back to the astral plane during a hiking trip?

Su Tianqing seemed to suddenly understand that this was not a retirement trip at all, but rather Chi Xue's twelve trials.

"I heard that Chi Xue's next destination is the Northwest Desert. She plans to hike across the entire desert to reach the oasis. She's probably already in the desert by now."

"...I have a bit of a psychological aversion to that place."

Qiu Gui shivered violently, her face turning pale, as if she were recalling some unpleasant memories.

"Ah, it's that thing, right? You guys had your car break down in the Gobi Desert..." Bai Lili started to say, but was interrupted by Qiu Gui covering her mouth.

So this has spread quite widely in the magical girl world? Su Tianqing couldn't help but think to herself.

Bai Lili chuckled and said, "Actually, I've collected a lot of gossip news from everyone, I'll tell you about it another day." Qiu Gui added, "Do you know that there are people on the black market of forums who are willing to pay a high price to eliminate the gossip news you have?"

Su Tianqing suddenly realized why the cat wanted to fight Bai Lili whenever it saw her; it turned out the cat was a bounty hunter.

That concludes our brief digression.

With a general understanding of Akashi's role, the girls demonstrated remarkable execution:

Qiu Gui has a psychological trauma and is reluctant to go to the Gobi Desert, while Bai Lili shows considerable interest and even suggests taking her teammates to the Gobi Desert together—the idea being that many hands make light work.

Su Tianqing unusually did not invite Maomao and Tutu along, as the two of them were facing final exams for two consecutive courses tomorrow, and it was better to give them enough time to review.

"Then why did you bring me along?" Fenrir immediately asked.

Alice and Jack, on the other hand, paid no attention to any of this. They were engrossed in flipping through the Gobi Desert travel guide and discussing which route Chixue would be hiking along.

"Hmm... because I think you might have unique insights into surviving in the Gobi Desert." Su Tianqing thought for several seconds before coming to this conclusion.

Fenrir stared at the golden-haired fox girl in front of him with a questioning look for a long time, but he couldn't see anything unusual in her bright fox eyes. Then he muttered to himself, "I feel like something's not right..." as he walked into the opened portal.

After the gray wolf girl entered the portal, Su Tianqing finally breathed a sigh of relief, silently repeating the words she had subconsciously wanted to blurt out:

When you're looking for someone, you always need to bring a dog along, right?

Fenrir naturally didn't hear this, nor did he hear it after traveling through the portal to the Northwest Desert.

With the advance notice from Meteor and Messiah, the local Hero Association quickly located several magical girls who had traveled from afar and pointed out several popular hiking routes for their reference.

With the magical girl's compass, the arduous task of finding a hiker in the vast Gobi Desert was quickly accomplished.

Starting at 6 p.m. and flying until around 7 p.m., a small tent and a campfire in the wilderness caught Su Tianqing's attention.

The girl, wrapped in a blanket and eating dinner by the campfire, saw the magical trail of a flying object streaking across the sky from afar. She summoned her guardian star from her magical space and silently transformed on the spot.

"Heart Moon Fox? White Lily?" Chi Xue looked at the two people in front of her with curiosity and asked.

"What are you two doing here? You've come all this way to the Gobi Desert. Could it be that Garuda has started attacking Chengdu again?"

"It has nothing to do with Garuda. Didn't Senior Red Rose confirm that it was completely destroyed?"

Bai Lili said,

"To tell you the truth, we've found the albatross."

Chi Xue's hand holding the camping pot suddenly trembled, spilling a lot of soup from the bowl, which crackled and popped in the campfire.

She almost immediately straightened up from her seat by the campfire, not even caring that she had spilled a lot of her dinner, and hurriedly asked:

"Who? Did I hear that right? Tell me again, who is it?"

"Albatross, your former companion, perished together with the Astral Jellyfish sixteen years ago, and has been missing ever since."

"We found her whereabouts, but she is trapped in a very strange state, and only one person can guide us into her unfinished mental world."

Bai Lili reached out and pointed to the crimson-red girl in front of her, whose eyes were wide open and whose body was stiff.

"That's you, Akashi."