Lieyan crawled through the deep of the inheritance, each breath a ragged pain, each wingbeat a struggle—yet she healed. The Phoenix watched Shandian thrash and scream as the chains bound him, the sound swallowed by the vast chamber.
She moved closer to the destroyed coffin, but an invisible pressure held her back. A torn hand pushed up from within the rubble, sparks crawling across it. The sparks flared, coalesced into a single golden mote, and shot like a living thing toward a mark on the far wall. The hand fell back lifeless. The mote struck the mark; the stone cracked and peeled away.
From the rent in the wall a puppet stepped forth.
It was the size of a man but not a man: no mouth, four unblinking eyes, limbs sleek and polished, every joint engraved with tiny encryptions. Across its chest a core of golden lightning pulsed and roared under the surface. A symbol of golden lightning gleamed on its back. When the puppet flexed, its joints clicked; lightning threaded into its eyes and then it began to move.
It did not rush to attack Shandian. Instead it moved to the shattered coffin and, with deliberate motion, raised stone from the floor. Under its command the ruins reformed into a new coffin, pristine and humming with warding lines. Then the puppet turned toward Shandian and set to work—with a speed no single human hand could match—casting formations into the air, etching glyphs that flared with power.
Shandian screamed at it. "YOUR PUPPETS WILL NOT STOP ME, YOU COWARD! I'LL RIP THAT CORPSE OF YOURS APART SOONER OR LATER. MARK MY WORDS—BUT FIRST I WILL TEAR THIS INHERITANCE TO PIECES!"
He clawed at the stone. The air around his talons shuddered; the space itself began to fracture from the force of his wrath. The puppet did not answer with more attacks. Instead, two arms unfolded from its back. Golden sparks blossomed at its hands and streaked across the chamber, striking other sections of the wall. Where each spark fell, another puppet sprang into being.
One was large and bulky, a walking shield with armor plates that bristled like a fortress. Another was tall and thin, its arms and legs elongated into blade-like appendages; four eyes studded its face and two more watched from the back of its head. They moved to intercept. The bulky puppet engaged Shandian directly while the blade-like puppet danced between strikes, cutting away the edges of crack and collapse.
Shandian absorbed blow after blow. He took the pain and answered destruction with more fury; the chamber shook violently. The first puppet's core burned brighter, lightning coursing through its frame until it tore a spark free and flung it toward another wall. From that impact yet another strange puppet emerged.
This new figure wore a short robe. Its arms were uncanny—one long arm split at the wrist into another limb, and its legs ended in hands rather than feet. Six appendages, arranged like tools for a craftsman. It had a single large eye in its face. It did not charge the beast. Instead it set to work, calmly weaving formations, sealing breaches, then folded into the walls and vanished as if it had never been there.
Meanwhile, Zhennan ran with Han Lei in his arms. He tried to command the inheritance's formations—tried to find the Phoenix's guidance—but the link that had pulsed through him went dead. He cursed and pressed on. Ahead, a puppet thundered past, its many hands and tools carving protective encryptions at impossible speed. Zhennan had no understanding for the thing.
The chamber shuddered; ceilings slumped and walls split. A yawning, bottomless darkness opened below them and the very air began to suck outward. Zhennan's ribs strained against the pull; he poured every ounce of Qi into keeping his son safe, weaving defensive techniques around the child like layers of glass. The puppet at once pivoted, owl-like, and began to stitch the broken space closed. Light pillars rose where stone had split, and new walls knitted together from the seams. It worked as a surgeon closing gangrene from a living body—isolating rotten parts, excising them, restoring the whole.
Terrified but relieved, Zhennan with only one single, sober instinct: follow it. If the puppet could make new walls where old ones crumbled, it would be safer than any other path.
The puppet's temporary repairs held where nothing else could, and the path it left behind was the only place the collapsing inheritance did not tear open around them.
Back in the coffin room, the puppets gathered at the last intact wall. They pooled sparks from their cores, pressed them to the stone, and the wall shuddered outward to reveal a towering monolith. Cracks webbed across that stone until it moved like molten rock given shape: a towering, lava-like colossus. It lumbered toward Shandian, who roared in fury, "NOT THIS AGAIN!"
He looked at the coffin and cursed, rage spilling into every syllable. "I DESTROYED YOUR PRISON ONCE; I WILL DO IT AGAIN. THIS IS NOT THE END—NOT WHILE I LIVE. I WILL ERASE YOUR CORPSE, ERASE YOUR EXISTENCE AND I WILL NOT EVEN LET YOU STAY AS MEMORY AND WILL WIPE ANYONE WHO CAN EVEN SAY YOUR NAME FROM EXISTENCE I WILL MAKE YOU'RE FORGOTTEN AND ABANDONED!"
The living stone advanced and, piece by piece, began to engulf him. It crawled up his talons like a consuming tide, turning flesh to burning stone. Shandian screamed as the molten stone coalesced over him, head to talon, until the figure that remained lay silent. The gryphon—stone and lightning once more—settled into stillness, breathing no sound at all.
The puppets fell silent and began to move toward the new coffin, their cores' golden sparks dimming until each figure stood still—like sentinels finally at rest. After a long moment the last puppet arrived. Two of its arms were missing—sacrificed when sections of the inheritance tore away—and its metal torso bore fresh gouges. It ran the length of the chamber in short, jerking strides, weaving formations into the air as if repairing damage in real time. Then it halted in the center, planted its remaining limbs, and took its spark into its chassis.
Lieyan had been at the coffin's edge, healing in quiet desperation. The Phoenix rested on the floor nearby, battered but watchful. Running footsteps echoed, and the young man to whom the Phoenix had granted authority entered the room—Zhennan. He approached slowly, clutching a child to his chest. From across the hall he called, voice ragged, "I've done what you asked. Now I want to leave this place with my son."
The Phoenix studied him for a long moment. This inheritance belonged to the Han bloodline; the creature who had freed Shandian could not claim the bequest for himself. Lieyan inclined her head. She was not the keeper of judgment—only a guardian of what remained. Before she could speak, the great puppet stepped forward.
Its voice was mechanical, flat: "THE INHERITANCE HAS BEEN STABILIZED, BUT AT THE PRICE OF REMOVING MULTIPLE SECTIONS. THE REMAINING SECTIONS ARE: THE SECOND TRIAL AND THE INHERITANCE CORE. THE FIRST AND THIRD TRIALS WERE LOST DUE TO SPACE FRACTURES. THEY HAVE APPEARED OUTSIDE THIS SUBSPACE INTO THE REALM; THEIR LOCATIONS ARE RANDOM AND CANNOT BE TRACTED. MULTIPLE TREASURES HAVE VANISHED—EITHER STOLEN OR LOST DURING THE BREAKS."
It paused as if checking for confirmation, then continued in the same mechanical cadence, waiting for the Phoenix's instruction.
Lieyan asked quietly, "Is it safe to keep Shandian here?"
The puppet's metallic articulation whirred; a faint sputter of energy fuzzed its voice. "THERE IS NO ABLE METHOD FOR ME TO SLAY HIM. BANISHING HIM WILL ONLY ALLOW HIM TO HEAL AND RETURN—HE IS A WARDEN OF THE PATH OF SPACE. IN THE LAST CENTURIES THERE WAS ONLY A FEW SPACE PATH FORGERS LET ALONE WARDENS ONLY HE COULD REBUILD THIS PLACE AND ONLY HE CAN FIND IT WITHOUT THE NEED OF AN ALREADY ESTABLISHED SPACE FORMATIONS. THEREFORE, CONTAINMENT HERE IS THE LEAST RISKY COURSE."
The Phoenix absorbed the answer. Her gaze moved to Zhennan and then to the man who had released the beast in her head.
The puppet, its voice glitching faintly now, stuttered, "YOU YOU YOU SHOULD CONTINUE THE MISSION THE MASTER GAVE YOU—TO FIND AN HEIR FROM HIS — HIS CLAN."
The words slurred, the puppet's core sputtering. Lieyan looked hard at Zhennan and asked plainly, "What is your standing in the Han clan? And the man who freed Shandian—what is he to you?"
Zhennan's jaw tightened. "He is the patriarch of the Han clan. He is my father. He betrayed me—he killed my wife and tried to use me and my son to open a portal to this place."
The Phoenix searched for loopholes, for any contradiction. None showed themselves. If Zhennan truly spoke truth—if his father had tried to slaughter his family and drag their blood into this place—then the choice she faced was sharp and ugly. She had no faith that the inheritance could be rebuilt easily; the space-path knowledge to remake stable gates was gone. The puppet's reserve of energy was failing os it cannot trust this ordeal to the puppet and even if it did the puppets knowledge cannot even compare to shandian's since the gryphon was a warden of the space path.
She made her decision. "We have destroyed the link between this subspace and the outside so there's no way for now to allow anyone to return. I also lack the space-path knowledge to remake such gates and This puppet will not sustain the work since it will lose its energy soon. So I'll have to choose otherwise the inheritance will never be taken by anyone."
Zhennan arms tightened around the child between his arms, Anger and relief warred within him—if the inheritance became his, if the power here were his to command, perhaps he could punish the one who had butchered his life. But before he could speak the puppet moved with a speed no human eye easily followed: its razor-edge motion cut across Zhennan's hand in a flash. Blood welled, and the metal fingers sucked it in as if tasting it. For a breath Zhennan staggered—then the puppet took the child from his arms.
He could only watch; the puppet's grip was faster than any protest. It drew blood from Han Lei, measured it in some cold, mechanistic calculus, then returned the boy to Zhennan. The puppet—an expressionless machine—paused. Then, to both the Phoenix's and Zhennan's astonishment, something like recognition shifted in the puppet's posture. Where nothing had shown before, an almost-human inflection entered its tone.
"NO," it intoned, then after a calculation, "HE IS NOT COMPARABLE WITH THE MASTER'S DEMANDS—HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO INHERIT THE ARTS."
It studied the child, then reversed its judgment. "YES. HE WILL DO. THIS ONE WILL BE APPOINTED HEIR OF THE INHERITANCE. HE WILL BE ABLE TO INHERIT THE MASTER'S ARTS."
Zhennan's stomach clenched. He had not meant for his son to bear this weight; he did not want the child dragged into the same cycle of violence. But the room's forces were not to be bargained with. The puppet knew more than either human or phoenix, and it had declared in its cold, efficient manner. Zhennan bowed his head reluctantly but he could do nothing but that.
The puppet stepped forward and placed a small amulet in Zhennan's hand. "HERE," it said. "I retrieved this from the thief who took treasures from the inheritance. He escaped when the spaces cracked. Take it."
Zhennan cursed under his breath as he recognized what the amulet implied—his father had not been fully destroyed. The spark of hope that Zhennan had felt hardened into something else: a resolve to end this, himself.
The puppet turned its head—metallic servos whirring—and addressed the Phoenix. "DO NOT MESS UP AGAIN. THIS IS YOUR FINAL CHANCE TO LIVE UP TO THE MASTER'S EXPECTATION."
Its form shuddered with a grinding stutter. The last golden light drained from its core. With one slow, deliberate motion it returned to the great stone coffin and settled beside it. The spark in its chest blinked twice, then faded.
Silence filled the chamber. The last puppet's systems wound down. Its frame slumped and, finally, it went motionless—the light in its core extinguished.