The snow fell thick and silent in the deepest hours of the night, like a soundless mourning between heaven and earth.
Shen Yuzhu lay in his tent, eyes open.
Not from sleeplessness. From the inability to sleep.
The lingering warmth that had taken root in his chest since Chu Hongying left was now gnawing at the frost poison deep within his mirror patterns, sending out sharp, ice-crackling pains. He tried to deduce—was this the medicine's effect, residual poison, or some unnamed physiological reaction?
Deductive threads surged through his spiritual awareness, but gave no answer.
Because when he tried to categorize this "warmth," what his mirror patterns reflected back was not a medical chart, but the faintly pale knuckles of her hand holding the bowl, the steady, water-like gaze she cast before the tent flap fell, the undeniable weight in her tone when she said, "I will watch over you."
Impossible to parse.
This realization made the hairs on his nape stand on end.
As a mirror-marked one, "parsing" was the foundation of existence. All things could be deduced, all emotions categorized. Fear was a survival alarm, anger was surging qi and blood, trust was a stake of life and death… but this thing burning and pounding in his chest now, disrupting all his meridian energy—what was it?
He closed his eyes, forcing himself into deep meditation.
Then—
Heart palpitations.
Not a metaphor. His meridians reversed, qi and blood surging backward, his heart channel clenched as if by an invisible hand.
Immediately after, his mirror patterns erupted autonomously.
Sapphire-blue light exploded from his eyes, countless images flooding in like a broken dam—
Not memories, but real-time resonance.
Snowfield, rapid footsteps, the shriek of Huntwind Spear tearing through the night mist.
Anxiety. Fury. And… fear.
A name, not a sound, but a shockwave of thought, crashing again and again against the walls of his consciousness:
Shen Yuzhu.
He sat up abruptly, clutching his throbbing forehead.
The mirror-mark's instinct screamed a sharp warning: [Detected high-concentration emotional spiritual source erosion. Source locked: Blood-marked entity 'Chu Hongying.' Prohibit contact. Repeat, prohibit—]
He severed the warning.
Fingernails dug into his palm, leaving crescent-shaped blood marks. For the first time, his breathing lost its rhythm.
Where was she? What was she fighting? Why… was she "calling" to him?
On the last wall of his rational fortress, cracks spread like spiderwebs.
A deductive result coldly surfaced:
Option one: Stay. Maintain mirror-mark stability. Await the event's natural dissipation. Survival probability: eighty-seven percent.
Option two: Proceed. Extremely high probability of intensifying mirror-mark burden, triggering immediate frost-poison outbreak. Survival probability… cannot be calculated.
Shen Yuzhu looked at the words "unable to estimate," the corner of his mouth quirking faintly.
Like self-mockery.
Then he rose, grabbed his outer robe, and pushed through the tent flap.
Wind and snow struck his face.
At the same moment, eastern wall of the camp.
Gu Changfeng was adjusting the angle of a fence post with two veterans when his hand suddenly froze mid-air.
The wind was wrong.
Not the direction or speed. It was the "essence" carried in the wind—an extremely faint, needle-sharp disturbance of law, coming from the direction of the western ruins, mixed with familiar blood-mark energy, and… a mirror-mark frequency on the verge of collapse.
"Old Chen, take over here." Gu Changfeng's voice turned heavy. Without waiting for a response, he leaped down from the wall and vanished into the wind and snow in a few bounds.
He didn't charge directly toward the source of the disturbance, but circled to the flank—instinct honed from years on the battlefield. When the enemy situation was unclear, take the high ground first, see the whole picture.
When he jumped onto a half-collapsed watchtower, he saw it.
Below the abandoned western watchtower, Chu Hongying knelt on one knee, chaotic blood-light writhing around her like mad serpents. And before her, Shen Yuzhu was staggering into an area of visibly distorted mirror-images.
"Reckless!" Gu Changfeng gritted his teeth in a low rebuke.
He wasn't scolding Shen Yuzhu's rashness, but recognizing the danger of that mirror-trap—a cage of mind specifically targeting those with high perception. Forcing entry would only multiply the backlash.
His right hand settled on his sword hilt, his wind domain quietly unfolding. Not to attack, but to be ready to tear open an escape route by the most violent means if necessary.
Just as he gathered his energy, a sudden change occurred.
At the center of the ruins, red and blue light exploded, swallowing the two figures. Not the blinding light of an explosion, but a more bizarre inward devouring, as if space itself had split open.
Gu Changfeng's wind domain, touching the edge of that area, was silently repelled.
His face changed.
This was a level of power he couldn't comprehend.
Inside the medical tent, Lu Wanning was sorting the last batch of Li-silver needles.
Her fingertips suddenly trembled; a needle fell to the ground, its tail bending of its own accord into a strange curve.
Meridian sense warning.
Not from a wounded soldier, not from plague, but from some violent disturbance of heavenly law, directly interfering with reality's underlying fabric.
She shot to her feet, not even bothering with her outer robe, snatched up her medical kit and rushed out of the tent. Her heterochromatic pupils contracted sharply in the night, her gaze piercing through wind and snow to lock onto the abruptly "silent zone" to the west.
There, snow no longer fell.
There, wind no longer flowed.
Like a blank space carved out of a painting.
She understood instantly—it was a rift in the heart-boundary. A phenomenon recorded only in theory in ancient texts: when two source marks resonated deeply under extreme emotion, they could briefly tear open reality's veil, exposing the "realm of truth" at the foundation of law.
And the ones within that area now could only be—
"Hongying… Yuzhu…"
For the first time, Lu Wanning felt her fingertips go cold. Not from the wind and snow, but from a deeper chill. She knew the danger of heart-boundary rifts: those who entered might face each other's deepest fears and memories; those with weaker wills could have their spirits trapped forever in that unreal gap.
She quickened her pace, her mind rapidly calculating emergency measures. The Li-silver needles needed tempering to "soul-guiding" state, the Heart-Protecting Elixir required the last bit of thousand-year ginseng root, and…
She suddenly stopped.
Ahead, from behind a broken wall, Gu Changfeng's figure emerged. He shook his head at her, then pointed toward the abnormal area, making a "cannot approach" gesture.
Lu Wanning took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm.
She walked toward Gu Changfeng, her voice low: "How long?"
"Three breaths." Gu Changfeng stared intently at the area, maintaining his wind domain at minimal range. "The energy fluctuations are intensifying, but the structure… is strange. Not like an attack, more like…"
"Resonance." Lu Wanning finished for him, taking a palm-sized bronze mirror from her kit—her teacher's "Meridian-Reflecting Mirror," capable of observing the underlying patterns of energy flow.
In the mirror's surface, red and blue light veins were intertwining with unprecedented complexity, forming a pattern of law that even she found stunning.
"They are inside… 'seeing' each other." Lu Wanning murmured, her tone complex. "This is forced alignment of dual marks. An unavoidable trial."
Gu Changfeng was silent a moment, then asked: "Will they die?"
"That depends on fate." Lu Wanning put away the mirror, beginning to prepare her needles. "If they drown in it, spirits scattered, it's no different from death. If they endure… the marks will deeply fuse, but the cost is no more privacy. Each other's deepest wounds will become shared scars."
She looked up at Gu Changfeng. "Which do you hope for?"
Gu Changfeng didn't answer immediately.
He gazed at that silent zone, remembering these past few days, the occasional ripple—perhaps unnoticed even by herself—in Chu Hongying's always-calm eyes when she mentioned Shen Yuzhu. Remembering how Shen Yuzhu's gaze would unconsciously follow her figure when deducing tactics.
"Either is fine." He finally said, his sword-gripping hand steady. "Just come out alive."
He paused, then added softly:
"Anyway… they were never the type to speak soft words to each other. 'Seeing' like this might actually be more straightforward."
Lu Wanning glanced at him, shaking her head faintly, whether in helplessness or agreement.
Just then—
The silence shattered.
Chu Hongying, below the abandoned western watchtower, had stumbled into the Night Crow Division's laid "mirror-trap."
Not an attack, but bait.
Using a broken mirror-guard mask as a trigger, they had provoked the conditioned reflex deep within her blood-mark toward the "Lu Clan massacre." Her blood-lock went out of control, dark red patterns writhing around her arm like living snakes, scorching energy surging through her meridians, her vision filled with blood-red and shattered mirror-shadows.
She was resisting.
Resisting the illusions, and the near-boiling killing intent and grief within.
Huntwind Spear stood planted in the snow. She knelt on one knee, five fingers digging deep into frozen earth, trying to use pain to anchor reality. Her lip was bitten through, blood beads falling, burning tiny holes in the snow.
Can't go mad.
Can't go mad now.
Yuzhu's poison isn't cleared yet, Changfeng's wall isn't finished, Wanning's medicine isn't enough—
Shen Yuzhu.
The moment this name exploded in her heart, a low, beast-like whimper escaped her throat.
Almost simultaneously, the mirror-trap's fluctuations were brutally torn apart by some external force.
A figure burst into the formation's eye.
Blue robes stained with snow, face pale as a ghost, mirror patterns swirling wildly in his eyes, a thread of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth—the backlash from forcibly severing his analytical link.
Chu Hongying looked up, pupils contracting sharply.
"…You…" Her voice was so hoarse it was almost incoherent. "Who told you… to come?!"
Shen Yuzhu didn't answer.
Or rather, he answered with action.
Ignoring the distorted mirror-images around, ignoring the law-traps laid by the Night Crow Division, even ignoring the on-the-verge-of-collapse screech from his own mirror patterns, he walked straight to her, crouched down.
His gaze fell on her blood-streaked arm, then lifted, into her eyes now tinged crimson from the blood-mark's rampage.
"You were calling me." He said, his tone so calm it was almost eerie, a terrifying contrast to his chaotic appearance.
Chu Hongying froze.
She hadn't made a sound. From beginning to end, not a sound.
"Here." Shen Yuzhu raised a hand, tapping his fingertip lightly against his own chest. "I heard it."
In that instant, the rampaging blood-lock within Chu Hongying, and Shen Yuzhu's nearly-shattered mirror patterns, produced some inexplicable synchronous resonance.
Hum—
Heaven and earth lost sound.
Snow, wind, ruins, distant campfire light… all scenery faded like a receding tide.
They fell into a rift between real and unreal.
Beneath their feet was endless void, above flowed starry river-like currents of spiritual essence. And between them, red and blue light veins twined and grew like vines, weaving flowing images—
Her brand.
Her childhood manor collapsing in fire. Her father's last glance, pushing her into a snowdrift. For ten years after, the wind and snow of the Northern Frontier carried the scent of that night's fire and blood.
His brand.
The "purification chamber" of the Wolf Talon Camp. Cold instruments clamping onto the back of his neck, the agony of mirror-mark implantation. The first time he executed an erasure order, the target's eyes reflecting back his own face, growing colder by the day.
Each other's brand.
She saw: In the mirror array, when he reversely parsed the poison patterns for her, cold sweat soaked his temples, his lips frighteningly pale, yet his fingers traced through the air steadily, without a tremble.
He saw: On the snowfield, her back carrying his unconscious form, each step sinking, breathing labored like bellows, yet never pausing, never looking back.
Shared brand.
Beneath the Crimson Heart Banner, four standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Her hand on the flagpole, his gaze resting on her profile. Wind and snow howled past, the banner snapping sharply, like a heartbeat.
The images froze there.
In the void, a voice neither male nor female, ancient as the murmuring of earth veins, directly branded into their consciousness:
"Mirror reflects truth, blood bears weight."
"Twin marks resonate, door glimpses shadow."
The rift in the heart-boundary thus opened.
Only three breaths passed in reality, but for the two in the heart-boundary, it felt like experiencing several cycles of life and death.
Shen Yuzhu broke first, coughing blood and kneeling over.
Chu Hongying was pulled back to awareness by that mouthful of dark blue blood. All illusions faded, leaving only this person before her, paying the price for rushing into the trap.
"Shen Yuzhu!" Her voice changed tone, no longer a commander's rebuke, but something close to panic, a sharp cry. She lunged over, not to help him up, but to yank him up from the snow, her palm pressing against his back, the residual warmth of her blood-lock's energy pouring in without reserve.
"Have you gone mad?! Your mirror patterns will shatter! You'll die!"
Gu Changfeng and Lu Wanning charged forward the moment the fluctuations subsided.
Lu Wanning didn't waste words. She knelt at Shen Yuzhu's side, both hands moving simultaneously—three Li-silver needles in her left hand inserted into the vital points at his neck, needle-tails glowing bright moonlight-white; her right hand already on his wrist pulse, the patterns of her meridian sense rapidly swirling in her heterochromatic eyes.
"Mirror-mark overload, frost poison backlash, heart channel cracked." She spoke rapidly, looking up at Chu Hongying. "Your blood-lock energy infusion is too fierce; his meridians can't bear it."
Chu Hongying's arm stiffened, instinctively starting to pull back.
"Don't stop." Lu Wanning stopped her. "Use thirty percent strength, stabilize his sea of consciousness. If you withdraw now, he'll immediately fall into inner demons."
Chu Hongying gritted her teeth, complied.
Gu Changfeng held his sword guard on the perimeter, wind domain fully expanded, sensing any movement within a hundred paces. His back to the three, his voice steady: "The Night Crow's tails are still nearby, but not approaching. Seems like… observation."
"Let them watch." Chu Hongying's voice squeezed through clenched teeth. With her free hand, she was pressing Shen Yuzhu into her embrace, wrapping him tightly in her cloak, her movements carrying a certain undeniable force.
Shen Yuzhu struggled faintly in her arms, as if trying to maintain some last shred of dignity.
"Don't move." Chu Hongying ordered lowly. "Move again and I'll knock you out and carry you back."
Shen Yuzhu went still.
Lu Wanning looked up, gazing at Chu Hongying's eyes, bloodshot from overexertion and emotional turbulence, then at Shen Yuzhu's paper-pale, oddly compliant face in her arms. She was silent a moment.
Then she said: "Enough."
Chu Hongying looked at her.
"Energy stabilized. Take him back to the medical tent. I need to needle-guide the residual heart-boundary backlash." Lu Wanning stood, packing her kit, her tone returning to its usual calm professionalism, though her faintly trembling fingertips betrayed her consumption. "You must also regulate your breath immediately. Your blood-lock just went berserk; not smoothing it in time will damage your foundation."
Chu Hongying nodded, tried to stand herself, but staggered.
A strong hand steadied her arm.
Gu Changfeng had turned without them noticing. He didn't look at Shen Yuzhu in Chu Hongying's arms, just said firmly: "I'll escort you back."
The four moved silently through wind and snow.
Chu Hongying half-supporting, half-holding Shen Yuzhu walked ahead, Gu Changfeng guarding alertly to the side, Lu Wanning following close behind, already holding newly tempered silver needles, ready for any emergency.
A peculiar procession—the wounded, the escort, the healer, the guard—each carrying varying degrees of exhaustion and injury, yet in silence forming a wordless, solid line of defense.
Back in the medical tent, Lu Wanning began treatment at once.
Chu Hongying was told to sit on a low stool nearby and regulate her breath. Gu Changfeng stood guard outside.
Inside the tent, only the faint sound of needles through air, and Shen Yuzhu's suppressed coughs and gasps.
After an unknown length of time, Lu Wanning finally straightened, a thin layer of sweat on her forehead.
"Life is saved." She said, her voice weary. "But the brand of the heart-boundary resonance… will remain permanently in his sea of consciousness. From now on, when his mirror patterns sense your intense emotions, they may produce uncontrollable resonance."
Chu Hongying opened her eyes. "Is there a cure?"
"None." Lu Wanning looked at her. "This is binding at the mark level. Unless you die, or he completely destroys his mirror-mark."
She paused, then added: "Similarly, your blood-lock will also react to his mirror-mark fluctuations. From this day forward, your safety… in a sense, is truly bound together."
Silence filled the tent.
After a long while, Chu Hongying spoke, her voice calm: "Understood."
She rose, walked to the low cot where Shen Yuzhu lay, looked down at his brow still slightly furrowed in unconsciousness. Then reached out, using her fingertips to very lightly brush aside the sweat-dampened hair from his forehead.
A movement so natural it seemed done a thousand times before.
Lu Wanning watched this quietly, saying nothing, just silently packing the blood-stained needles.
Outside the tent, Gu Changfeng leaned against the canvas, looking up at the gradually lightening sky.
Wind and snow were subsiding.
He heard Chu Hongying's extremely soft voice from inside the tent, speaking to the unconscious Shen Yuzhu:
"Once is enough for losing balance."
"Next time… it's my turn."
Gu Changfeng closed his eyes, the corner of his mouth lifting in an almost invisible curve.
He thought, some things were perhaps destined from the start.
Like wind following the banner's direction.
Like snow eventually covering this land.
Like those two—one willing to shatter his mirror-mark to rush into the trap, the other draining her blood-lock to pull him back—
Such desperately entangled fates, how could reason ever hold them back.
At dawn's first light, the Crimson Heart Banner unfurled in the morning wind.
On the banner, the dark red patterns, in an unnoticed corner, quietly extended new branches.
This time, not just the intertwining of blood and mirror.
But also traces of wind, and patterns of order.
Four marks, faintly interwoven, like a silent vow, branded upon this flag that had witnessed too much life, death, and choice.
And deep within the distant snowy forest, the Crow Commander lowered his observation mirror.
"Spiritual essence records complete?" He asked.
Behind him, Yun Ji nodded. "Heart-boundary resonance fully recorded. Dual-mark binding confirmed. Signs of four poles interaction… beginning to manifest."
A smile appeared on the Crow Commander's pale face.
"Good." He said softly, as if admiring a nearly finished work.
"Next, let's see what kind of beautiful scene this cracked mirror… can reflect during the 'Judgment.'"
He turned, black robes sweeping up remnant snow.
"Pass the order. In three days—commence 'Mirror-Heart Judgment.'"
Morning light pierced the clouds, falling upon the snowy plain, gently covering all traces of last night.
Only that banner, silently fluttering in the wind.
Remembering everything that had happened.