Back inside, the cave had grown quieter—the kind of quiet that precedes revelation or disaster.
One after another, the rest of them had passed through the pond's mirror surface and returned: Yan Zheng, Shen Yao, Lu Rourou, Lan Xueyao. All of them had emerged holding something faintly glowing—spiritual artifacts born of their qi and will, shaped by the cave's ancient judgment into forms that reflected their souls.
But Chen Xinyu was not among them.
"Where's Yu-ge?" Lu Rourou asked, looking around with mounting concern. "He hasn't emerged yet?"
Lingque, arms folded tightly over her chest as if holding herself together, answered with a face pale as death itself. "He disappeared after attempting to enter. He didn't even fall into the pond. Just... vanished into nothingness."
"What?!" Yan Zheng turned sharply, hand instinctively reaching for his blade. "Vanished where?"
"No idea," Shen Yao muttered, frowning deeply with uncharacteristic worry.
Lan Xueyao said with careful deliberation, "That shouldn't be possible. Unless..."
"Unless?" Mochen had returned, voice calm again—too calm, carrying undercurrents of something dangerous.
Lan Xueyao didn't finish the thought. They all stood in heavy silence, staring at the unmoving surface of the pond, each of them caught between action and fear of making things worse.
No one knew what to do.
So they waited, as humans have always waited when faced with the inexplicable.
---
Meanwhile, inside the illusion realm—
Chen Xinyu stood beneath a sky that wasn't truly a sky.
It was all white, not blinding like sun nor dark like night, just... blank, like a page never written on, waiting for ink that would never come.
He turned around slowly, confusion painting his features.
There were no trees. No ground, not really—just a floor of light he could walk on that felt solid yet somehow ephemeral. The space itself felt too large and too still, like breath held indefinitely until lungs might burst.
A woman stood before him.
She wore robes that shimmered like frost under moonlight, and her face was both unfamiliar and vaguely comforting, like a dream he had long forgotten but whose emotional imprint remained.
"Excuse me..." he said, stepping back slightly with instinctive wariness. "Where... am I?"
The woman smiled, voice like wind chimes on glass. "You are in my illusion realm, Chen Xinyu."
---
The fog inside the illusion realm was soft and white, as if woven from a woman's sigh. It clung gently to the ankles and curled around the edges of sight like living silk, erasing all horizons until only the present moment existed.
The woman appeared more clearly now—young in face, but ancient in presence. She wore white robes with long, trailing sleeves like drifting clouds, and each step she took was as soundless as falling petals. She stopped directly in front of Chen Xinyu, gaze dark and still as a winter lake hiding unfathomable depths.
Xinyu did not move. He only looked at her as though trying to recall a dream that had slipped through his fingers like water.
The woman lifted her hand with gentle deliberation and brushed back the collar of his robe. Beneath it, the soul mark at his neck pulsed faintly like a buried ember waiting to ignite the world.
She tilted her head with sorrowful recognition. "Chen Xinyu... do you know where you acquired this mark?"
Xinyu shook his head, unable to speak past the tightness in his throat.
The woman studied him for a long moment, and then, in a voice that seemed both distant as mountains and terribly near as whispered confession, said, "What you are witnessing now... is the soul remnant of the Queen from thirteen years past."
The fog shifted slightly, forming brief shapes of shadowy soldiers, a flash of fire consuming everything, the arc of a falling blade catching moonlight.
"You carry within you a fragment of the soul box," she said with quiet finality. "Not a treasure, not a weapon—but the key itself. You *are* the key. That mark is the seal that binds it to your flesh."
Xinyu's lips parted, but no words came—only shallow, frightened breaths.
She continued with the calm of someone who has long since made peace with terrible truths. "Thirteen years ago, your parents died protecting you from being taken by the Demon Lord. The war that broke out—that bloodbath that buried three sects and blackened the sky with smoke and sorrow—was all for you. They knew what was hidden inside your body. They dared not speak of it, not even to each other in the dark."
Her voice did not rise. It remained calm, like a blade laid gently on silk before it cuts.
"The Demon Lord suspected the key existed, but he never imagined it was a person—a living, breathing child. He searched for a thing, not a soul. It was your shizun who deceived him, who diverted his path, who fought him at great cost... They had once been dear friends, closer than brothers."
Xinyu's legs gave out. He fell to his knees like a puppet whose strings had been severed.
All at once, it came—like a dam breaking, like a wound reopening. Memories he thought were nightmares: a blood-soaked courtyard, a scream that split the night like breaking glass, the cold smell of metal and death. He remembered small arms reaching out desperately. He remembered not reaching far enough to save anyone.
His hands clenched the ground until nails broke against nothing. His body trembled like a leaf in winter storm. The shame, the sorrow, the helplessness—it all broke through his careful walls in silence more devastating than any scream.
The woman crouched beside him with maternal grace. Her hands were pale and cool as moonlight as she lifted his face by the chin, forcing him to meet her gaze.
"Look at me," she said softly but firmly.
He did. His eyes were red, his face wet with tears he hadn't felt fall.
"You must never tell anyone," she said with gentle finality. "Not your closest friend. Not your shizun. Not even your lover—no matter what they mean to you, no matter how much you trust them."
Her words were gentle. But underneath them lay a warning sharp as broken glass.
"If anyone discovers what you carry... the world will tear itself apart to possess it. And you, child, will be the first to burn in that conflagration."
She lifted her hand. A sword appeared in a shimmer of light—long, elegant, forged in a style unseen for centuries. It hovered before him like a gift from heaven itself.
"This sword is bound to your soul. It will awaken only in your hand, and protect you in the dark days to come. I hope it is enough."
The sword settled gently into Xinyu's grasp, as if it had waited centuries for his touch alone.
The woman smiled faintly, sadly, like spring flowers knowing winter approaches. "May we meet again, Chen Xinyu. Though I pray you never need to seek me."
Then she vanished, dissolving like morning mist under rising sun.
---
When consciousness returned, he was surrounded by warmth. Someone was holding him with careful strength.
He blinked slowly, vision clearing. Above him was a familiar profile, cold and quiet as always—but the arms around him trembled slightly.
"...Dianxia?" he whispered, voice hoarse.
"You're awake." Hua Ling's voice was perfectly calm, but his arms hadn't released their hold, as if afraid Xinyu might vanish again.
Chen Xinyu startled. He wiped his face quickly with his sleeve, but it was too late—his tears had long since betrayed his composure.
Lingque rushed to his side with divine urgency. "Xinyu! What happened to you? We were scared half to death!"
He shook his head, unable to meet anyone's eyes. "Nothing... I'm fine."
Rourou peered over Lingque's shoulder and squealed with childlike excitement. "Yu-ge! You got a spiritual sword? It looks so magnificent! What's its name?"
Xinyu looked down. The sword rested in his palm like a sliver of captured starlight, beautiful and terrible in equal measure. His fingers curled slowly around the hilt with new understanding.
"...I don't know," he murmured, voice distant. "I haven't decided yet."
Then, without a glance back, without explanation, he stood and walked away with stiff movements, his figure silent and somehow smaller than before.
Lingque looked after him with divine concern, frowning deeply. "Why is he moving like that? Did something traumatic happen?"
No one answered. Not even Hua Ling, who continued to stare in the direction Xinyu had gone, expression unreadable as ancient stone but eyes holding something that might have been worry—or recognition of a fellow soul carrying unbearable weight.
Only the wind stirred the grass at the cave's mouth, whispering secrets to the uncaring sky.
And deep below consciousness, deeper than blood or bone, the key stirred inside its vessel, waiting to awaken the storm that would consume the world.