Hello, Dear Traveler and welcome to the next phase in our silly little saga. You're about to hear of The Divine Cave of Three Stars – a most exciting and monumental turning point in our humble monkey god tale.

At least, that's what I'm supposed to tell you. Honestly, just be prepared for a lot of collisions between big personalities.

What's that, Dear Traveler? You have questions before we begin? Well all right, let's hear them then.

Is Sun Leaf my real name? Of all things to ask me.... No, it is not. My real name is embarrassing. What's your other question?

Oh. Sweet immortal – no! I wouldn't do that to you, Dear Traveler. Sure, I will have to leave you at some point. But I don't have any intentions of doing what Sun Duza did and just ghost you like that. When I run out of tobacco, that's my cue to move on, but I will absolutely let you know first.

Right. Let's get into it.

The Divine Cave of Three Stars begins with our oh so cautious and ever observant spider...

Contrary to popular belief, the bulk of an assassin's job had less to do with the killing and more to do with sleuthing.

Anari didn't carry weapons on her person. Such a thing was considered illegal in many parts of the Ninth Heaven. All she had were her fangs, her poison, and her silk. She could make her silken threads softer than a luminary's hair or make them cut like the sharpest wire.

You may not remember, but the source of Anari's weakness all boils down to running out of venom and silk. She absolutely must dedicate the energy reserves towards producing them on her own time before setting out on any serious mission.

Though Anari had worked under Sun Bai for many, many seasons, she had always felt like a stranger in a strange land. There were no other spider spirits that she knew of in the whole special ops department at Next Dimension. Or in the whole Ninth Heaven for that matter.

This fact both benefited and set Anari back. Due to the likelihood that her targets would be unfamiliar with her kind, it made them extremely vulnerable in the sense that they greatly underestimated or overlooked her potential to end their lives.

The flipside to this was that Anari had no reliable mentors while she was coming up as a newly groomed assassin. The truth is, spider spirits are not born with potent venom. At most, the poison from their fangs merely stings or slightly disorients a target if released directly into the bloodstream. That killing effect must be cultivated over time.

As you can probably surmise, many spiders don't have any reason to turn themselves into killing machines. They're much more concerned with having enough groceries to take care of their families or reinforcing their homes to weather the harshest tropical storms.

Anari is a bit of an anomaly among her own kind in that regard. She has always been. It's why she left the peaceful island giant where she was born. But more on that later, Dear Traveler.

As Anari reacclimated to living inside of HQ, she had one goal in mind: Find out if Sun Surina had ever been employed by Next Dimension. Her true aim was to learn the reason behind the collapse of the bridge. The unfortunate spirits who had been crushed could not replenish their essence in the Lake of Ninefold Darkness. In a sense they were both trapped and dead. Anari wanted to know if this was intentional and if not, what Bai's response would be for this sort of tragedy. The crushed spirits had been neither construction workers nor contractors — they were prisoners of the Kawaii Village judiciary complex. What was the reason behind that when Next Dimension could have easily employed more qualified labor?

It was dangerous for Anari to approach the question of the Kawaii bridge head on. Her investigation required a level of finesse. This is why she chose a roundabout approach. If she could link the staff-stealing Sun Surina to Next Dimension, then it would be far easier to track the sun clone down and see what information she may have on the bridge.

Digging through records on the bridge project itself might alert Bai too fast — especially if it had been marked as sensitive information. Anari had no doubt that it had. Even if the project was under heavy classification, her search could set off an alarm, notifying Bai that she was snooping around.

Going through Sun Surina might just be the safer route. There was the plain fact that Surina wouldn't know a damn thing about Next Dimension's collapsed bridge. She might not even be under Bai's employment now or ever. But if there was a chance that they were all connected, Anari could possibly be in possession of more truths than she bargained for.

The spider spirit stood on the balcony of her apartment floor – a featureless shelf of cement jutting out of a salmon-shaded high rise. Each balcony edge was overflowing with waxy hoyas thanks to the special troughs carved into the top of shelf.

Nothing, however, was real. Because everything from the permanent midday sunshine down to the tropical succulents was a simulation.

Next Dimension HQ functioned inside of a paper space. This particular space happened to be the top of the line premium model, but it was a paper space nonetheless. As a rising company, you couldn't get more modest than that.

Anari missed her old paper space – the one that projected an actual sunrise and sunset. This one, once inside, gave the impression of being in a high rise at the edge of a beach city. Below her pink concrete balcony, she saw pedestrians and the occasional rollerblader moving along wide, curvy boulevards.

The scenery never changed. Not since Bai first settled his offices here. Ironic given how much Next Dimension had expanded.

Anari's toaster made a binging noise from inside her kitchenette. She left the balcony and went to catch her waffle. The spider spirit ate her breakfast dry as she made her way to the basement floor. That's where all of the archives were kept. She moved with purpose, taking the longer, security personnel routes so she wouldn't bump into any coworkers on the way down and be forced to engage in small talk.

Her plan worked. She got to go over her other strategy while making her way down to the archives. The whole floor was dedicated to filing shelves that stretched all the way up to the ceiling. Nothing was damp and dusty like you would expect, but the floor was dark. The only other spirit who spent time down there was the clerk — a crepuscular owl spirit who went by Pang, if Anari remembered correctly.

The spider ventured as deep as she could go down the aisles before taking a seat at an old computer. Then she cracked her knuckles and got to work.

Anari pulled up a historical log of all Next Dimension hires. That, at least, qualified as public knowledge within the company. A quick search revealed that Sun Surina had never held a position under the company name. Anari tried to locate temporary hires or individual contractors. That was a bit nested, but the information was there. She did a manual search this time. Nothing came up for Surina, nor anything under her idol name, Sailor Sun.

Still, Anari was on edge. During her search, she had brushed by a series of disorganized files. It caught her attention only because everything around it followed a similar, stacked structure. This uneven group label had receipts in it. And one of these file receipts, Anari learned after pulling up the time stamps and folder info, had been removed.

A simple glamour purchase history had once been there, but now it wasn't.

This shouldn't have been anything to worry about. The inconsistency in the log had a simple explanation. Someone probably wanted to make space for some other important data. So they started to clean out the stuff that didn't matter. Like old purchases.

Anari stared at the gap in the log. For a long time she studied it, wondering why a sweep of past receipts would look this way. Everything was organized by dates, so wouldn't that affect what got deleted when? Why had this receipt been plucked so deliberately from the middle of the pack? As if everything else belonged and that was the one thing that needed to go?

Anari tentatively investigated a little more, wondering if there was any kind of trace left by the missing file. Based on the receipts that came before and after the gap, Anari could assume that the purchase was for Sun Bai specifically, but was not initiated by him. He never did his own shopping. The other receipts had been entered by different assistants and coordinators for minor events. There were too many to guess which one oversaw the purchase of the missing file. But then!

There. Anari found a trace. Against the grainy black screen, the evidence blinked back at her in lime green font.

[deletion detected.]

Anari highlighted the affected area and entered a command.

[operation history?]

She was answered with a serial number. Her heart chased its way up her throat as she ran a search and waited for a name to pop up.

Instead of a name, she got a position – stylist – and a confirmation that their status was terminated quite some time ago.

Anari leaned back in her chair, taking the time to breathe and assess the new information. Whoever had moved this file was once Bai's personal stylist. They no longer worked for Next Dimension, Inc. And it wasn't clear why they left or were let go.

What was odd was that there was no other information on them. Certain things needed to stay private, sure, but name and spirit type should have been in the description at the very least. Anari thought back, trying to remember if she had heard any gossip about some drama between Bai and one of his stylists. Nothing was coming to mind.

Something in her gut told her that it was time to leave. Anari still wasn't sure if Surina was off the table, but she had new questions that plagued her. Plus it would be safer for her to look for answers away from headquarters for the time being. Tracking down this nameless stylist... that was something she could work towards.

But first she had to get this tournament job out of the way.

On her way to the elevator, Pang the owl asked, "Planning to come by the mixer this evening? It's going to be up in one of the atriums this time."

The spider stopped. This was the first she was hearing about a mixer. Had Bai organized this one himself? Pang was kind enough to give Anari the details. Apparently the party had been rushed. All current residents were invited. The thing was meant to be casual, but Sun Bai was going to be there, so there was definitely pressure to show up.

Anari welcomed this new thing to agonize over as she walked off the elevator onto the central spoke that connected all of the major departments. Should she be worried that Bai hadn't invited her to this function?

That's when Sun Bai himself suddenly came into view. He coolly stepped off one of the moving escalators and approached Anari. First he apologized for the late notice. Then he asked if she could spare time in her schedule to attend the mixer.

Anari reminded Bai that whenever she spent more than one night at HQ, it usually meant she had nothing going on with her schedule.

"Bai, is something up?" Anari fired before he could take off again.

Bai's lime green frames caught the bright, indoor light as he dipped his chin slightly. The angle of the lenses shielded his eyes in a way that left Anari a tad unsettled.

"There's a theory I need to test tonight. It's probably nothing, but..." he adjusted his frames, disrupting the glare and leaving only that lime green sheen over an otherwise even expression. "I need to clear the air before we leave for the Sevenfold Peach."

That was all Anari got. But it was all she needed to spark her assumptions. Bai was having suspicions about something going on inside his company. And he needed to gather as many employees in one place in order to drag those suspicions into the light.

As soon as Bai left her to get ready, Anari practically flew to the nearest exit.

She had to know. Was it...?

The spider spirit broke free of the paper space, where it floated in a quiet stone garden somewhere in the Snake Province.

And yes. It was just as she feared.

There was a full moon in the morning sky.

Meaning Sun Bai's psychic energies would be at their strongest.