The Mongolian safehouse nestled in a windswept valley, a stone yurt cloaked by jagged cliffs, its interior warmed by a crackling fire that fought the steppe's biting chill. Ruoxi sat on a woolen rug, her forearm bandaged from Lin Wei's blade, the phoenix tattoo a soft pulse beneath her sleeve—steady but weary, its fire tempered by Turpan's strain. The relic skull's golden veins haunted her, a fragment of the phoenix's source now safe in Xiao Zheng's pack, but its weight pressed heavier than her scars. Pang Yuwei's vision—"find the source"—felt closer, yet incomplete, a truth half-glimpsed in Xinjiang's ash.