The blood on the wooden porch was still wet.
Ye Chen's breath hitched, the air emptying from his lungs. Suspended ten feet above the exact replica of his childhood courtyard, two figures writhed against chains of black fire. Their faces were obscured by the smoke, but the tattered clothes were unmistakable—his father's indigo hunting coat, his mother's pale blue shawl.
"Mom... Dad..." Ye Chen's voice fractured.
The Celestial Key inside his ribs reacted instantly to his emotional spike. It didn't just thrum; it screamed. A blinding, volatile surge of golden Yang Qi erupted from his pores, radiating a heat so intense the damp stone floor of the cavern began to hiss and crack.
He broke his grip on Xiao Mei's hand and sprinted toward the obsidian threshold.
"Ye Chen, stop!" Yue's voice cracked like a silver whip. "It's a Heart Demon Array! It feeds on your deepest regrets!"
He didn't hear her. The logic couldn't pierce the blinding roar of blood in his ears. He crossed the threshold, stepping onto the illusory dirt of the courtyard. The moment his boot touched the ground, the black chains tightened around the suspended figures, drawing a horrific, agonizing scream that echoed in his mother's voice.
"I'm here!" Ye Chen roared, his right arm blazing with compressed golden fire as he prepared to leap and sever the chains.
Before his knees could bend, a weight slammed into his back.
Xiao Mei tackled him around the waist, her momentum driving them both into the dirt. The impact knocked the breath out of him, but the sheer, agonizing heat of his skin instantly blistered her forearms.
"Let me go!" Ye Chen thrashed, his eyes wide and bloodshot, fixed on the sky.
"They aren't real!" Xiao Mei screamed over the roar of his Yang fire. She didn't let go, burying her face into his shoulder to protect her eyes from the blinding light. She flooded every ounce of her Yin Qi into his violently unstable meridians, taking the brunt of his self-destructive agony. "Ye Chen, look at me! It's a trap!"
The pain of Xiao Mei's blistering skin bled backward through their Yin-Yang connection. Ye Chen felt her agony alongside his own panic. It was a sharp, grounding shock of ice water to his fevered mind.
Yue stepped onto the courtyard behind them, her violet eyes scanning the environment with surgical detachment. She didn't offer comfort; she offered the blade of truth.
"If the Shadow Sect had your parents, Commander Feng would have held them over the gorge to make you surrender," Yue stated coldly, her silver lotus hairpin glowing as she approached. "This array read the resonance of your Key and built a cage out of your memories. If you strike those chains with your Yang, the array will absorb your core and leave you an empty husk."
Ye Chen froze, trembling violently against the dirt. He looked up at the suspended figures. Through the smoke, their faces remained blurred, featureless mannequins draped in familiar clothing.
His mother's scream echoed again, but this time, he heard the metallic, grinding undertone beneath it—the exact same sound the Qilin had made.
"It's fake," Ye Chen choked out, the realization crashing over him.
He closed his eyes, leaning back against Xiao Mei. He stopped fighting her cooling Yin and embraced it, drawing her stabilizing rhythm deep into his chest. The blinding, destructive flare of his Yang Qi slowly condensed, drawing back into the jade pendant.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, feeling Xiao Mei's trembling hands loosen their death grip on his shirt. "I'm sorry."
"Save the apologies for when we aren't standing in a death trap," Xiao Mei breathed, her voice shaking but fiercely relieved.
Ye Chen stood up, pulling her with him. His amber eyes were no longer clouded by panic, but hardened into cold, absolute resolve. He looked at Yue. "How do we break it?"
"The illusion is sustained by the false sky," Yue pointed the tip of her silver hairpin toward the pitch-black ceiling above the cottage. "We strike the center. Together."
Ye Chen nodded. He extended his left hand to Xiao Mei, and his right hand to Yue.
Xiao Mei hesitated for a fraction of a second, her gaze flicking to the silver-haired Guardian, before her jaw set in determination. She grabbed his hand. Yue did the same without a word.
The tri-fold circuit snapped into place. Gold, azure, and silver light twined together, racing up Ye Chen's arms and concentrating in the center of his chest. With a unified, thunderous shout, Ye Chen thrust both palms upward.
A pillar of tri-colored Qi blasted into the false sky.
The replica of Willow Creek shattered like a mirror struck by a hammer. The sky, the cottage, and the burning figures dissolved into falling shards of black glass, fading into mist before they hit the ground.
When the dust settled, they were standing in a small, circular stone chamber.
In the center of the room sat a lone pedestal carved from white jade. Resting atop it was a single, ancient bamboo slip, glowing with a faint, warm light.
As Ye Chen stepped forward and reached for the slip, a deep, resonant voice echoed not in the room, but directly inside his mind.
"If you are hearing this, my son, then you have awakened the Key. And you are in terrible danger."