"If you were truly strong, why did you allow all of this to happen?"
Yang Lujia stared at him for several breaths.
'Smart kid.'
He had not expected Lin Diyu to immediately question the lie.
Yang Lujia coughed and looked toward the frozen Trial Ground. "I was observing the situation."
"While people died?"
"I needed to understand the attack before acting."
"Did you understand it?"
"Partially."
That answer was technically not a complete lie.
Yang Lujia understood that someone was attacking them. He also understood that he did not know who that person was.
Lin Diyu continued looking at him. Yang Lujia noticed the suspicion in the boy's eyes.
"To make the situation more interesting," he eventually added.
Lin Diyu frowned. "What?"
Yang Lujia immediately regretted the answer.
However, he had already said it.
He pointed toward the debris surrounding them. "Look around."
Lin Diyu did.
The child finally noticed that everything had stopped. The flames no longer moved.
The explosions remained suspended, while the people inside the Trial Ground stood motionless in the middle of running, attacking, or screaming.
Lin Diyu looked toward the pillar above him.
It did not fall.
A small piece of vellum slate broke away from its edge and entered the invisible space surrounding them. Instead of continuing toward Lin Diyu, it changed direction and landed several steps away.
The boy's eyes widened.
"Why can it not reach us?"
Yang Lujia looked toward the floating debris.
He did not know.
Perhaps the System created a temporary boundary through the Emergency Preservation function. Perhaps the small amount of strength released from his Blank Manuscript had already begun protecting them. Or perhaps the stillness itself prevented the attack from touching anyone included within the System's intervention.
Yang Lujia understood none of it.
Still, Lin Diyu continued waiting for an answer.
"Reality is complicated," Yang Lujia said.
The child remained silent.
"Sometimes, when someone refuses to accept the ending placed before him, Reality is forced to consider another result."
Lin Diyu looked confused.
Yang Lujia continued before the boy could ask him to explain. "The pillar was supposed to fall upon you. You were supposed to die beneath it. However, that ending has not occurred."
"Because of you?"
"Partly."
"What is the other part?"
"You."
Lin Diyu frowned again. "I did nothing."
"You survived long enough for me to reach you."
"That does not sound impressive."
"It was enough."
The boy looked toward the motionless Trial Ground.
Yang Lujia maintained the calmest expression he could manage. Inside, however, he was still attempting to understand what had happened.
The Eternal Quill appeared before him.
[The Disciple Candidate's will to survive has begun recovering.]
[Emergency Preservation has stabilized.]
Yang Lujia felt relieved. Then more notifications appeared.
[The Eternal Quill requests that the Host re-inscribe the fate of Lin Diyu.]
[Reality is observing.]
[Existence appears amused.]
Yang Lujia's expression stiffened.
He reread the final notification.
'Existence appears amused?'
The battlefield no longer concerned him for several moments.
The wording was too specific.
Reality was observing.
Existence was amused.
Those statements implied more than the System merely describing the surrounding conditions.
"Do Reality and Existence possess their own thoughts?" Yang Lujia asked.
The System did not respond.
"Are they living entities?"
Still nothing.
Lin Diyu looked at him.
"Who are you speaking to?"
"Myself."
"Why?"
"It helps me think."
The boy accepted the answer more easily than Yang Lujia expected.
The vellum changed again.
[The Host has expressed the intention to deny the Disciple Candidate's assigned ending.]
[Beginning temporary fate revision.]
Yang Lujia looked at the notification.
"Wait."
[The fate of Lin Diyu is being re-inscribed.]
"I have not done anything."
The Ink across the vellum continued moving.
[The Host's intent has already been recorded.]
[The Disciple Candidate's original conclusion has been rejected.]
[New conclusion is being written.]
Yang Lujia looked toward Lin Diyu.
The boy remained seated before him.
"Kid."
Lin Diyu raised his head.
"If you survive, do you still intend to help your mother?"
The question caused the boy's expression to change.
"Yes."
"Even if it becomes difficult?"
"It is already difficult."
"Good answer."
Lin Diyu stared at him.
Before the boy could say anything else, his body disappeared.
There was no light.
No Grand Script appeared beneath him.
The space surrounding the child did not distort or release any Ink.
One moment, Lin Diyu remained upon the broken ground.
The next, nothing remained in front of Yang Lujia.
He stared at the empty space.
"When did he—" Yang Lujia looked around.
The boy had not moved somewhere else inside the frozen Trial Ground.
His Blood Signature could not be sensed, although Yang Lujia did not know whether he was capable of sensing one in the first place.
"What happened?"
He looked toward the Eternal Quill.
"System?"
No answer appeared.
"Where did you send him?"
The vellum remained blank for several moments. Then dark Ink formed across it.
[Emergency Preservation has been completed.]
[The Disciple Candidate has been returned to his point of origin within the Verdant Archive.]
[The selected location was subconsciously recognized by the Host as the safest available destination.]
Yang Lujia's eyes narrowed.
"Point of origin?"
[Confirmed.]
"Where is that?"
[Information unavailable.]
"You sent him somewhere without telling me the location."
[The location was selected through the Host's subconscious recognition.]
"I did not select anything."
[The Host's conscious participation was unnecessary.]
Yang Lujia's expression gradually became colder. Those words continued remaining before him.
Subconscious recognition.
He did not know Lin Diyu.
He had never seen the child before the Trial of Ink. There should have been no location connected to the boy that Yang Lujia could subconsciously recognize.
More importantly, the System had used something inside his mind without asking. The Emergency Preservation function had been created according to Yang Lujia's condition. He accepted that.
However, he had not agreed to allow the Eternal Quill to search through parts of his consciousness he did not even understand.
"Is he alive?"
[Confirmed.]
"Is he injured?"
[The Disciple Candidate remains in critical condition.]
"Then why did you send him away?"
[The point of origin provides the highest probability of continued survival.]
"What probability?"
The System did not answer.
Yang Lujia looked at the empty place where Lin Diyu had been sitting.
Until that moment, he had accepted almost everything the Eternal Quill displayed before him.
The System appeared when he was about to die. It changed several events and allowed Zhuquan De to find him. It remained silent for fifteen years before awakening the moment Yang Lujia decided to save someone.
Now, it had created a new function, revised its own Authority, and transported Lin Diyu somewhere beyond his awareness.
None of those things appeared harmful.
However, Yang Lujia realized that he had never seriously questioned why the System helped him.
He had asked what it could do.
He had questioned the conditions of disciple acceptance.
But he had never asked why it selected him.
In one of his previous lives, Yang Lujia had built a large portion of his career around questioning information that other people presented as truth. He examined contracts, searched for conditions hidden inside agreements, and rarely accepted something merely because it appeared beneficial.
Yet he had treated the Eternal Quill differently.
Perhaps it was because the System saved him before he had enough time to question it. Perhaps surviving created enough gratitude that he temporarily ignored the danger. Or perhaps something else had made accepting it feel natural.
That last possibility disturbed him the most.
'Can I trust it?'
The Eternal Quill had not harmed him. At least, not in any way he could identify.
However, it had also explained almost nothing.
He did not know where it came from, what authority created it, or why it possessed the ability to revise conclusions already accepted by Reality.
He did not even know whether the child had truly been sent somewhere safe. The only thing Yang Lujia had personally witnessed was Lin Diyu disappearing.
Everything else came from the System.
'The only evidence I can confirm is that he was there, and now he is not.'
Yang Lujia's fingers tightened inside his sleeves.
The System had already searched through something it called his subconscious recognition.
How much could it see?
His memories?
His thoughts?
The lives he had lived before entering the Verdant Archive? Had it known about them from the beginning?
The translucent vellum remained in front of him.
Yang Lujia looked at it differently.
Before, it resembled an instrument that had saved his life.
Now, he finally recognized it as something he did not understand.
And anything he could not understand possessed the possibility of becoming dangerous.
A new notification appeared.
[The Eternal Quill System selected the Host as its bearer.]
Yang Lujia's gaze sharpened.
"Why?"
The vellum became still.
No answer appeared.
The frozen Trial Ground remained silent.
Yang Lujia waited.
The Eternal Quill did not respond.
Far beyond the Dragon Brush Sect, within a place the people of the Verdant Archive had never recorded, an ancient figure opened his eyes.