The chill from the stone chamber of the Cold Mountain Sect had yet to dissipate from their bones. Outside the window, the menacing black scar in the Northern Frontier's sky still hung like a judgmental eye. The four of them sat around the dying hearth, the air thick with the lingering shock from the revelation of the soul imprints in the previous chapter.
"That scar... it doesn't feel like destruction. More like... a manifestation," Shen Yuzhu murmured, his heterochromatic eyes fixed on the sky outside, faint data streams flickering within them like dying fireflies.
Just as Chu Hongying was about to speak, the world around them was abruptly stripped of sound.
It wasn't silence, but a void where sound had been plucked out by the roots. Then, the colors in their vision rapidly bled away, transforming into a deathly, monochrome grey. More bizarrely, the shadows of every object—on the floor, the walls—began to writhe autonomously, twisting to point towards impossible light sources.
"On guard!" Chu Hongying's sharp cry became a thought in the absolute quiet, the Lie Feng Spear materializing in her grasp.
Shen Yuzhu paled, fingers pressing against his throbbing temples, his voice reaching the others directly through the Oathbond: "It's not an illusion! It's 'Mirror Vein Resonance'... Situ Ming is using his authority to overwrite the local laws of reality!"
Before the thought fully formed, the entire space seemed to fold under an invisible hand. The surrounding stone walls, the view outside the window, peeled away like shattered glass, revealing a chaotic, distorted nothingness behind.
The Mirror Domain had descended.
Chu Hongying found herself standing alone on a scorched wasteland. A familiar, acrid scent of blood and smoke assaulted her senses. Before her eyes, the burning Lu Manor, the piled corpses of the Northern Frontier battlefield, and the vast, silent plains where a hundred thousand war souls screamed, all merged into one, materializing into a tangible hell.
"Look, General Chu," Situ Ming's voice seeped in from all directions like icy meltwater, pouring directly into her soul. "You couldn't protect your family, your comrades, the land beneath your feet. What has your persistence brought, besides more death?"
Each scene was unbearably real. The faces of those she had failed to save replayed their final moments before her eyes. The Scarlet Bloodlock on her arm burned fiercely, as if branding through her flesh. The pain was so authentic, far beyond any illusion—it originated from within her, from the responsibility and memory deeply ingrained in her bloodline, now ruthlessly amplified and twisted by the Mirror Domain.
"Silence..." she gripped her spear, knuckles white, resisting the guilt threatening to crush her.
Shen Yuzhu was trapped in an endless, pure white space. Countless light screens floated and rotated around him, each coldly displaying the same outcome—Chu Hongying's death. Pierced by stray arrows, consumed by the Cold Poison, devoured by schemes... thousands of ways to die, each precisely annotated with the same shocking survival rate: 0.07%.
"Reason tells you, Shen Yuzhu," Situ Ming's voice here became a stream of pure logic, devoid of any emotion. "Your calculations cannot account for her variables. The intellect you pride yourself on is useless before the greatest uncertainty: 'emotion'. What you fear is not losing her, but the moment your 'omnipotent calculations' fail regarding her."
Shen Yuzhu tried to compute an escape, but his processing power felt mired in quicksand; every derivation led to the same hopeless end. He felt suffocated, the walls built by his rationality cracking under the weight of absolute 'impossibility'. Just as his consciousness was about to drown in the countless "0.07%"s, the unfamiliar, intricate patterns deep within his heterochromatic eyes flashed once more.
A thought he had never entertained struck him: his obsession with reason might not be a pursuit of truth, but an inability to endure the primal fear born from 'uncertainty'.
Gu Changfeng stood on a desolate snowfield, surrounded by the familiar souls of fallen Northern Frontier soldiers. They encircled him in silence, bearing mortal wounds, their hollow eyes posing a silent, accusatory question. At their head was his former lieutenant, a broken spear lodged in his chest.
"Young General," the lieutenant's ghost spoke, its voice a convergence of countless souls, "does your blade swing for the glory of the Gu family, or for this land beneath your feet, for us, these nameless bones?"
Past doctrines, family teachings echoed in his mind. He was accustomed to charging ahead, accustomed to wielding his blade in the name of the Gu family, but he had never truly confronted this question. He tightened his grip on the Cloud-Sever Blade, his own struggling face reflected in the steel.
Then, he remembered his epiphany within the Sea of Consciousness, facing his own remorse. He took a deep breath, his raging fury miraculously calming. He did not raise his blade. Instead, slowly, resolutely, he planted the Cloud-Sever Blade into the snow before him with a definitive shing.
"I, Gu Changfeng," his voice was steady, his gaze sweeping over the multitude of souls, "fight for the 'Path' I believe in, for the comrades who would entrust me with their lives! Not for the hollow name of a single clan!"
The blade in the snow seemed to sever an invisible shackle.
Lu Wanning floated in a space composed of countless sickly, distorted energy channels. These channels represented the corrupt principles of the Empire, spasming, festering in agony, emitting silent wails.
"Physician Lu," Situ Ming's voice held a feigned pity, "can your silver needle pierce this deep-seated malaise? To heal is to intervene. To intervene is to control. How is your healer's heart, performing acts of salvation, fundamentally different from the Empire enforcing its order in the name of suppression?"
Her fingertips held the Inversion Silver Needle. Faced with this vast, systemic 'sickness', she hesitated for the first time. To apply the needle risked being corroded by the immense 'sickness', endangering herself. Not to act meant watching the suffering spread.
She closed her eyes, feeling the faint resonance between the Dark Heartlock on her arm and this space of pain. When she opened them again, her gaze was clear.
"A healer's path lies in 'awakening' vitality, not 'replacing' will," she whispered to herself, and to the space itself. "True healing is allowing life to recover in its own form."
She did not direct her needle at the most festering nodes. Instead, she guided the 'Heartforce' accumulated by the Heartlock, transforming it into a gentle, nourishing dew, evenly sprinkling it upon these painful spiritual channels. She could not cure the entire Empire, but she could nurture those parts not yet completely extinguished, those parts 'willing to be saved'.
Just as the four of them teetered on the brink within their respective Mirror Domain fragments, their consciousnesses on the verge of being consumed by their obsessions—
Hum!
An invisible wave erupted from the center of the four of them! The Oathbond, this tether forged by fate and choice, triggered a deeper resonance under the extreme pressure!
Into Chu Hongying's mind flooded Shen Yuzhu's terror—the molten lava of fear hidden beneath the frozen logic as he faced the countless "0.07%"s.
Into Shen Yuzhu's infinite calculation space blazed a crimson light—the unwavering, fiercely protective fire that never extinguished within Chu Hongying's bloody memories.
Gu Changfeng heard, beyond the ghosts' accusations, a calm and compassionate heart-song—Lu Wanning's resilient will to heal in the face of the world's pain.
Lu Wanning felt clearly a savage yet pure battle intent, and beneath that intent, an almost clumsy yearning for 'belonging' and 'trust', coupled with deeply buried guilt.
No words were needed. No explanations. On the level of consciousness, they truly saw each other for the first time—not just the polished armor and calm masks, but the scars beneath the armor, the vulnerabilities and fears behind the masks.
A shared realization dawned within them simultaneously, like light splitting the dark night:
"We are... not merely companions."
"We are each other's missing fragments, the pillars holding up each other's worlds, the blood and soul flowing within the same... lifeline."
Crack—!
The Mirror Domain space emitted a groan of unbearable strain, the sound of shattering glass. The law designed to divide and isolate could not withstand this connection that transcended calculation and originated from the very soul. Countless fissures spread from within, instantly covering the entire grey, dead space.
The scene restored itself. The four of them still stood in the Cold Mountain Sect's stone chamber, faces pale, breaths ragged, their spirits as if scourged. But their eyes were clearer and more resolute than ever before.
Shen Yuzhu was the first to stand, the residual data streams in his heterochromatic eyes not yet fully settled. He looked out at the scar in the sky, his voice hoarse from mental exertion but laced with a chilling insight:
"We were all wrong... that scar might not be an external invader at all."
Lu Wanning followed his gaze, her healer's intuition sensing a grand 'sickness'. She continued softly: "It seems more like... an ulcer formed on the world itself under unbalanced laws, a gasp of breath."
"Not an approaching enemy, but the distorted world itself, gasping." Chu Hongying repeated the words quietly, the phrase illuminating a more disquieting possibility like a lightning strike.
It was then that the four of them almost simultaneously felt the peculiar aftereffects in their bodies—the Mirror Domain's trial was not without cost.
Chu Hongying's Scarlet Bloodlock radiated waves of abnormal heat—not the warm flow of power, but an unstable scorching, as if the energy within had grown agitated from excessive resonance, causing her vision to occasionally flicker and distort for an instant.
Deep within Shen Yuzhu's heterochromatic eyes, the mysterious patterns flickered uncontrollably, bringing brief dizziness and a stabbing pain. The edges of his vision seemed overlaid with a faint, shifting geometric afterimage.
Gu Changfeng's Cloud-Sever Blade emitted a low, almost inaudible hum. The blade vibrated slightly, as if responding to the lingering fragments of the Mirror Domain's laws in the air, or perhaps issuing a warning of unease.
Lu Wanning felt a slight numbness in her fingertips. The Inversion Silver Needle trembled between her fingers. When she resonated with the Heartlock, a cold energy backflow seemed to impart a slight shock to her nerve endings—the necessary burden of channeling such vast 'Heartforce'.
Situ Ming's phantom coalesced once more from the dissipating Mirror Domain fragments. He observed the four of them, his expression not one of frustrated anger, but rather a look of near-satisfied, scholarly curiosity. His gaze swept over the subtle abnormalities manifesting on their bodies, as if recording precious data.
"Magnificent," he applauded, a note of admiration in his voice. "The 'Heartforce' tempered in such extremity—its purity and resilience exceed expectations. This is precisely the ultimate sample of human brilliance His Majesty wishes to observe."
His form began to fade, his final, profound gaze resting on Chu Hongying.
"But do you think it was you who 'chose' each other, who forged the Oathbond?" He chuckled. "Is it not possible that the rules of the 'Oathbond' itself selected the most suitable vessels for its burden from the vast sea of humanity?"
"I have no intention of destroying you. I am merely testing whether you are qualified... or rather, whether you can withstand the 'next stage' that is to come."
"Cherish this power. After all..." His voice faded with his form, leaving only a final echo drilled into their minds: "...what you just experienced was but a negligible projection... of the true 'Mirror Domain'."
Silence returned to the stone chamber, broken only by their ragged breathing and the subtle, undeniable aftereffects of the Mirror Domain.
Suddenly, Gu Changfeng's head snapped up. His eyes, filled with a beast-like, intuitive dread, locked onto the black scar in the sky outside the window. The humming of his Cloud-Sever Blade grew sharper, more urgent.
"...Wrong," his voice was dry, trembling with a fear they had never heard before. "That thing... it's not expanding."
Chu Hongying, Shen Yuzhu, and Lu Wanning followed his gaze.
Against the grey canopy of the sky, the edges of that menacing black scar seemed to... quiver faintly. Like the inadvertent breath of a slumbering leviathan, tugging at the very pulse of the world.
Gu Changfeng's voice, laden with suppressed horror, ground out, word by word:
"It's... breathing."