General Qingque: Ballad of the Lone Star

Well, this is a short story based on the author's fantasies. When the Denizens of Abundance launch the Fourth Great War, Xianzhou Yuque, Xianzhou Zhuming, and the other ships are trapped in the fighting and unable to send aid. The Luofu is left as the Alliance's lone vessel. General Jing Yuan dies at the Jade Gate, and the Diviner Fu Xuan burns through her life to leave a final command: “Only Qingque can bear the weight of chaos.”

The diviner who once hid away in the parlor, playing tiles and slacking off, is forced to take up the bloodstained general's seal. She uses jade tiles to mark out defensive zones and gleans intelligence through games at the table. But as the Abundance coalition seals off the airspace, the Borisin strike at the flank, and the Wingweavers seek to turn the Luofu into a “nourishment pod” for the Ambrosial Arbor, she gradually awakens the power of a Hunt's Emanator.

From using the “Fishing for the Moon at the Bottom of the Sea” tactic to raid enemy supplies, to linking three defensive lines with a “Four Ones Concealed Kong” formation, to facing an Emanator of Abundance with a silver bow of the Hunt in hand, Qingque is torn between wanting to slack off and knowing she has to carry on. In the end, she protects the Xianzhou that Jing Yuan and Fu Xuan gave their lives to save, in her own way. This is a war fought by a “chaos card player,” and a legend of a lone star inheriting a legacy, its dying lamp illuminating the board.