The snow ceased at the coldest hour before dawn.
The camp stirred slowly from the lingering haze of the previous night's poison. Men mended tents and melted snow in silence, their movements sluggish yet stubborn—like roots clinging to life in frozen earth. The Blood-Heart Banner hung limp in the windless morning, its dark crimson patterns pulsing faintly, a heart barely past calamity.
Gu Changfeng was the first to sense the disturbance.
As he adjusted the final fence post, his fingers touched wood and his wind-domain delivered its warning—not of silence, but of displacement. All natural sounds within a hundred paces had been smothered beneath something heavier, more deliberate. Wind, snowfall, the distant earth-pulse—all replaced by a single rhythm: the muffled thud of felt-wrapped hooves moving through deep snow.
Three hundred cavalry at least. Elite. So disciplined their horses breathed in unison.
"Alert!" Gu Changfeng's roar tore the quiet as he leaped onto the platform. "West forest! Enemy advance—"
Shen Yuzhu's copper basin struck the snow at the same instant.
He dropped to one knee before the water could splash, Mirror-Glyphs erupting—indigo light bursting from his eyes not in analysis but raw alarm. His vision flooded with fragments: black wolf-fur, ice-blue eyes, and a deep, instinctual revulsion that felt older than memory. Frost poison clenched around his heart meridian like a fist.
Chu Hongying emerged from the main tent without her spear. Barefoot in snow, wearing only a single layer, yet the blood-lock patterns on her arms already writhed like living serpents, crimson light climbing from shoulders to jaw—her body awakening to threat before her mind could follow.
She looked west.
Figures emerged from the treeline.
When Helian Sha stepped from the forest, the camp's breathing ceased.
Not because of the three hundred black-armored wolf cavalry standing motionless behind him. Not because of the massive cloak made from a snow-plains wolf king's pelt, the hood shadowing eyes cold enough to freeze dawn itself.
It was how he occupied space.
With each step, snow within three feet settled into perfect, compact bricks. Wind currents parted around him without touching his cloak. As if reality itself conceded: this ground belongs to him.
He stopped ten paces outside the perimeter. Precise as a blade's measure.
"General Chu." His voice held the Northern Frontier's rasp—blunt steel scraping frozen stone. "Or should I address you as—" Ice-blue pupils locked onto her, "Lu Hongying?"
The name Lu hung in the air.
Elderly herdsmen fell to their knees, foreheads pressed to snow, muttering old tribal prayers. "Memory-Devouring Wolf..." one whispered. "The Snow-Plains Judge..."
Chu Hongying stood unmoving. Only her clenched fists, knuckles bone-white, betrayed tension.
"Ten years," Helian Sha continued, his gaze sweeping over the Blood-Heart Banner and the shaken faces beneath it. "Ten years ago, fire consumed ninety-seven of the Lu clan. The sole surviving orphan hid at the border and raised a banner." His mouth twisted without warmth. "If your father watches from heaven, does he rejoice you became a general, or grieve that you guarded your enemies' frontier for a decade?"
He raised a hand.
A wolf cavalryman urged his horse forward, leaned down at the perimeter line, and placed an object upon the snow.
A bronze tiger tally. One half remained intact; the other was charred and twisted, its surface fused with dark, aged blood. At its center, the character Lu was carved deep, its edges glazed vitreous by extreme heat.
Chu Hongying's breath caught.
She knew those contours—not with her eyes but with blood-deep memory. The old scar on her father's left palm matched the tally's molten indentations perfectly.
"Lu Zhengcang's personal mobilization tally," Helian Sha stated, his words driving into the silence like ice spikes. "The night before Snow Wolf Valley, he gave this to his deputy, ordering an escort through secret passages. The deputy died. The guard unit was wiped out. Yet this tally was preserved—only the half used to mobilize troops was burned. The half for identification was left intact."
He watched her pupils contract. "Do you comprehend what this signifies, Daughter of Lu?"
Her throat was too tight for words.
"It means someone needed this relic recognized," he answered, his tone disturbingly calm. "Someone required a witness, ten years later, to see it and know—this belonged to Lu Zhengcang. And fire that melts bronze into glass does not exist on the Northern Frontier. Only three places within the Empire produce such heat."
He raised three fingers. "The 'Eternal Furnace' beneath the imperial tombs. The 'Star-Scorch Array' in the Astrology Bureau's deepest vault. And—" A flicker of something akin to pity crossed his ice-blue eyes, "the Night Crow Division's 'Purification Chamber,' where forbidden things are unmade."
Purification Chamber.
The term left Shen Yuzhu swaying on his feet.
A violent warning exploded within his Mirror-Glyphs—not aimed at Helian Sha, but at the words themselves. A sealed memory fought its bonds: sterile white light, the scent of cold metal, searing pain at the base of his skull. He forced it down, but cold sweat beaded at his temples.
Helian Sha's dissecting gaze cut to him.
"That scent on your strategist," Helian Sha said, derision now unconcealed, "that 'thoroughly cleaned' odor—it carries for miles through wind and snow. Does a hound raised by the Night Crows feel surprise at his master's handiwork?"
Every eye in the camp fixed on Shen Yuzhu.
Soldiers took an involuntary step back. Even Gu Changfeng's hand tightened on his sword, his wind-domain extending subtly to envelop Shen Yuzhu within immediate control.
Shen Yuzhu lowered his gaze, offered no defense. He straightened slowly, meeting Helian Sha's stare, the indigo light of his Mirror-Glyphs flickering across his pale features. He swallowed the metallic taste of blood and spoke words calm to the point of cruelty: "It is true. I came from the Night Crow Division."
A suppressed ripple of shock moved through the ranks.
"But now," he continued, his voice light as settling snow yet clear in every ear, "I stand here." He lifted his eyes to Chu Hongying's rigid back. "Only here."
She did not turn.
Her gaze remained locked on the tally, as if she could burn it through will alone. The blood-lock patterns writhed beneath her skin, their crimson glow brightening like magma beneath a sheet of ice.
"Pretty words," Helian Sha sneered. "The first lesson a Night Crow learns: 'Loyalty is a situational function.' Today you take a blade for her; tomorrow you may sheath it in her back for a new order." He turned his attention back to Chu Hongying. "Daughter of Lu, is that a gamble you are truly willing to make?"
She moved.
Step by step toward the perimeter, her bare feet leaving deep prints in the snow, each step deliberate as treading a knife's edge. She stopped at the boundary line, bent down, and lifted the bronze tally.
The metal was icy cold, yet the charred sections held a residual, stinging warmth. Her thumb traced the Lu character, fingertips brushing the vitreously smooth fracture lines. A long silence stretched.
Then she looked up at Helian Sha.
In her eyes, usually calm as still water, now burned something he had never seen—not mere anger, not simple grief, but something deeper, more resolute: a vow forged in flame.
"Helian Sha." Her voice was hoarse, each word a driven nail. "Did you come today only to deliver this relic and spout divisive poison?"
He raised an eyebrow, a silent challenge.
"If that is all—" She clenched the tally, its sharp edges cutting into her palm. Blood seeped between her fingers, dripping onto the snow and sizzling tiny, dark holes. "—then you may leave."
His ice-blue pupils contracted to pinpoints.
"But if you have more to say—" The blood-lock patterns on her arms suddenly erupted, dark crimson light wrapping her limbs like tangible fire, casting her entire form in the grim aura of a battlefield asura, "—say it plainly."
Dead silence fell.
Even the wind seemed to freeze in place.
Helian Sha stared. He stared so long the distant cavalry began to stamp their hooves restlessly, so long Gu Changfeng's blade eased half an inch from its sheath, so long Shen Yuzhu's Mirror-Glyphs neared their operational limit, static like falling snow encroaching on the edges of his vision.
Then Helian Sha laughed.
It was a low, rasping sound—a wolf's short, joyless howl on a snowy night, carrying only a cruel thread of acknowledgment.
"Good." For the first time, real emotion surfaced in his eyes—not mockery, but a complex, heavy mixture of regret and appreciation. "Lu Zhengcang's daughter indeed has the same pattern carved into her bones."
He took a single step back and drew a second object from within his robes.
Not a message tube, but a tattered piece of leather, its edges charred and curled as if torn violently from a ledger. He tossed it forward. The flimsy page cut through the air like a slab of iron, landing with precision at Chu Hongying's feet.
"The complete deployment map for the Battle of Snow Wolf Valley," Helian Sha announced, his voice now holding a note of almost-mercy. "Not your army's copy. The one the Ministry of War delivered directly to the Northern Di royal court. It bears the Minister's personal seal and the annotations of the supervising eunuch from that time."
Chu Hongying looked down.
The ink was faded, but those lines, those markings, the arrows... she knew them. She had replayed them for ten years in her nightmares, searching in vain for a flaw in an inescapable checkmate. And here, on the enemy's map, she saw more—
Her own army's weakest points, clearly marked.
Interception sites along their supply routes.
And even... a special notation at the very pass where her father was ambushed: 'Complete annihilation possible here.'
The handwriting was composed, the strokes steady—the calm record of a hunt whose outcome was already known.
Her vision blurred. Not from tears, but from the dizzying rush of blood to her head. She steadied herself, teeth sinking deep into her lower lip, the iron taste of blood spreading through her mouth.
"This map, together with that half-tally," Helian Sha's voice came again, cruel as any mercy, "were intercepted three years ago when I raided a secret Ministry supply convoy. They were escorted by an entire unit of Mirror-Guards." He turned his gaze to Shen Yuzhu. "Do you know what that means, Strategist?"
Shen Yuzhu's face was deathly pale, his Mirror-Glyphs spinning wildly as they analyzed the overwhelming implications. He opened his mouth. No sound emerged.
"It means the Empire never intended these 'evidences' to survive," Helian Sha answered for him. "They were meant to vanish completely a decade ago. Only chance placed them in the hands of an 'enemy.'"
His focus returned to Chu Hongying. "Do you understand now? Your father, your brothers, a hundred thousand Chu troops—they did not fall to Northern Di blades. They died in a play whose ending was scripted from the start. And you—"
He paused, his ice-blue pupils reflecting her swaying form.
"—these ten years you have spent guarding the border, killing enemies, shedding your blood—you have merely been helping the true murderers wipe away the last traces of their crime."
Boom—
A deafening roar filled her ears.
The world spun. Snow, tents, the banner, every face—all dissolved into blurring patches of color. Only the sting of the tally in her palm and the horrifying words on the leather remained real, burning into her soul like red-hot brands.
She staggered, her balance failing.
Hands steadied her from behind.
Shen Yuzhu. He had somehow moved to her side, the light of his Mirror-Glyphs chaotic as a blizzard, his face ghostly pale, yet the hand supporting her elbow was as steady as cast iron. He did not look at Helian Sha, merely leaned close, his voice a soft, urgent whisper in her ear:
"Breathe."
She gasped. The cold air cut into her lungs like knives, yet it strangely pulled back a shred of crumbling awareness.
She steadied herself, pulled her arm free from his grip, and faced Helian Sha once more. All vulnerability had vanished from her face, leaving only the cold, hard armor of a general standing before the enemy line.
"State your terms," she said, her voice hoarse but no longer trembling. "What do you want in exchange for these things?"
Helian Sha smiled.
This time, it was a real smile. The corner of his mouth lifted in an expression of hunter-watching-prey-fall-into-trap satisfaction.
"Blackstone Gorge," he said. "Three days from now. The hour of the ox. You come alone."
"To do what?"
"An ancient path there leads to the site where your father's last personal guard unit was annihilated." An obscure light flickered deep within his ice-blue eyes. "And to some... things that were not completely burned. You should see them."
"Why should I trust you?"
"You need not," Helian Sha said, turning away. His black cloak billowed as if in a wind that did not touch the surrounding snow. "But your father's relic is in my hands. The truth about your Lu family army is in my hands. You can remain here, hiding, playing General Chu, guarding this banner whose lifespan no one can predict—"
He glanced back over his shoulder, one final look.
"—or you can come to Blackstone Gorge. See what your father truly intended to leave you."
With a casual wave of his hand, he gave the signal.
The three hundred wolf cavalry retreated like phantoms, melting soundlessly back into the forest shadows, their hoofprints expertly erased from the snow. Within ten breaths, the treeline stood empty once more, as if no one had ever been there.
Only that page of leather on the snow, and the fresh blood still dripping from Chu Hongying's palm, proved otherwise.
The camp was silent as a tomb.
Every soldier watched her. They watched her hand gripping the bronze relic, watched the invisible weight upon her shoulders pressing her spine straight as a spear. No one spoke. Even breathing seemed suppressed.
She stood there for a long time.
So long that the sun fully cleared the eastern ridge, casting a blinding, pale gold over the snowfield, illuminating every strained line on her face, every bloodshot thread in her eyes.
Then she turned to face her camp.
Her face held no expression. No tears, no fury, no collapse. Only an ice-sealed, near-cruel calm.
"Everyone, return to your duties," she said, her voice not loud but clear in every ear. "The wall is not finished. The horses are not fed. The wounded still require treatment."
She paused, her gaze sweeping over the tense, waiting faces. Then she added, her words falling like stones:
"I am still here."
Three words.
The camp's collectively held breath eased—not a relaxation, but the settling of a heavier, more solid reality. The General was still here. However cruel the truth, life would go on.
People dispersed silently back to their posts. But their movements were different now... infused with a blunter, more stubborn resolve.
Clutching the tally and the leather page, Chu Hongying walked toward the main tent.
As she passed Shen Yuzhu, she did not stop, only tossed a low phrase over her shoulder:
"One hour. The medical tent."
"You, me, Wanning, Changfeng."
Shen Yuzhu nodded, wiping away a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth he hadn't noticed seeping out. He understood. Some truths could only be examined within the circle of the most trusted.
And some choices, once made, permitted no retreat.
Inside the main tent, an oil lamp flickered, its light weak and unsteady.
The tally lay on the left side of the table, the leather page spread open on the right. Chu Hongying sat before them, staring at the horrifying map without moving.
Gu Changfeng entered, bringing a gust of cold air with him. He glanced at the items on the table, then moved silently to lean against a tent post, crossing his arms as he looked out at the Blood-Heart Banner.
Lu Wanning arrived second. She still held her case of silver needles, having come directly from the medical tent. She asked no questions, simply took a seat opposite Chu Hongying. In the dim light, her heterochromatic eyes flowed with intricate pulse-diagnosis patterns as she began analyzing the material of the leather and the age of the ink.
Shen Yuzhu entered last. His face retained its pallor, but his Mirror-Glyphs had stabilized. He did not sit, choosing instead to stand beside the table, his gaze fixed on the damning annotations on the leather, indigo light flickering deep within his pupils.
"It is genuine," Lu Wanning stated first, her voice as calm as if she were reading a medical report. "The leather is 'Military Secret Hide'—exclusive to the Ministry of War. The ink composition matches Ministry archives from ten years ago. The private seal's paste formula... it also matches."
She looked up at Chu Hongying. "This map originated from the Ministry. It is not a copy. It is the original document."
The air in the tent grew denser, heavier.
"Helian Sha was not lying," Shen Yuzhu said softly. His fingertips traced a subtle pattern in the air as his Mirror-Glyphs projected a complex, shimmering network diagram. "Reverse-engineering from this map indicates that nearly all Chu army movements at Snow Wolf Valley were fully exposed to enemy prediction. At least seven key command decisions were made under the condition of leaked intelligence."
He paused, his voice dropping even lower. "This was not a tactical error. It was... orchestrated annihilation."
Dead silence followed.
The oil lamp wick cracked, spitting a single spark.
Chu Hongying finally moved. She reached out, picked up the leather page, her fingertips lightly tracing the line that read 'Complete annihilation possible here.' The motion was gentle, yet it carried a tension that suggested she might tear the page to shreds in the next moment.
She did not. Slowly, deliberately, she folded the leather and placed it beside the bronze tally.
"Blackstone Gorge," she said, her voice raspy as sandpaper on iron. "What are your thoughts?"
"It's a trap," Gu Changfeng answered without hesitation. "Helian Sha is a Northern Di prince. Our enemy. Why would he help you investigate the Lu family case? It is far more likely he is setting an ambush there to eliminate you, the newly risen variable."
"But the evidence he provided is real," Lu Wanning countered, frowning slightly. "If his sole intention was Hongying's death, his three hundred cavalry could have charged the camp just now. We would have fallen. He did not need to take this indirect step."
"He is fishing for bigger prey," Gu Changfeng insisted, a cold smirk touching his lips. "Hongying is now the soul of the Blood-Heart Army. If she dies, this force we have just gathered will scatter immediately. But if he can control her with 'truth,' if he can turn her彻底 against the Empire itself... then this force becomes a poisoned blade he can thrust into the heart of the Northern Frontier."
Both men looked to Shen Yuzhu.
Shen Yuzhu remained silent for a long moment. The light of his Mirror-Glyphs flowed and churned within his eyes, finally coalescing into a quiet conclusion. "What Helian Sha desires may not be Hongying's life."
"Then what?" Gu Changfeng pressed.
"Her 'choice,'" Shen Yuzhu said, lifting his gaze to meet Chu Hongying's. "He is forcing you to declare your stance. To remain the Empire's general, or to become the Lu family's avenger. That ancient path in Blackstone Gorge, wherever it truly leads, will force you to see clearly—to understand exactly what manner of court has stood behind this border you have guarded for ten years."
He paused, his voice becoming almost inaudible. "And once you see it... you can never go back."
Silence reclaimed the tent.
Chu Hongying looked down at the relic in her palm. The charred edges gleamed with an eerie, vitreous sheen in the lamplight, a silent, mocking artifact.
She remembered her father's words the last time he had left home, his hand patting her head. "Hongying, if you ever lose your way, look back at our Lu family banner. Where the banner is, your path will be."
But now, the banner was long ago reduced to ashes. And the path... was drowned beneath a decade of blood.
She slowly exhaled, a plume of white mist dispersing into the cold air of the tent.
"I will go," she said, her voice calm, carrying a resolve that severed all remaining hesitation.
"Hongying—" Gu Changfeng began, urgency coloring his tone.
"But I will not go alone," Chu Hongying cut him off, her gaze sweeping over the three of them. "Changfeng, you will take twenty elite troops and infiltrate the periphery of Blackstone Gorge half a day before I arrive. If you detect any unusual movement, any sign of an ambush, you will not wait for my signal. You will act immediately."
Gu Changfeng was taken aback for a second, then a fierce grin spread across his face. "Should have done it that way from the start."
"Wanning," Chu Hongying turned to Lu Wanning, "I need a medicine. One that, after ingestion, doubles sensory acuity for three hours. The price may be weakness for a full day afterward. Do you have such a compound?"
Lu Wanning's heterochromatic eyes flickered with rapid calculation. "I do. But it is deeply damaging to the body's foundations."
"As long as it serves its purpose," Chu Hongying nodded. Finally, she looked at Shen Yuzhu.
Shen Yuzhu quietly returned her gaze, the indigo glow of his Mirror-Glyphs flowing silently in the gloomy tent light.
"Yuzhu," she said, her tone more solemn than he had ever heard it, "I need you to stay at the camp."
His pupils constricted sharply.
"Helian Sha exposed your origins. Now the entire camp knows you came from the Night Crow Division." Her voice was flat, but each word struck with the force of a nail. "If I take you with me, the soldiers will believe I am still under Night Crow influence. If I leave you here at the camp—"
She paused, delivering the next words with deliberate clarity.
"—you become the 'supervisor' I leave behind. In my absence, you will have full authority over the camp."
Dead silence filled the tent.
Even Gu Changfeng was stunned into stillness. Lu Wanning's silver needle case slipped from her fingers and clattered onto the wooden table.
Shen Yuzhu looked at Chu Hongying for a long, measured time. Deep within his Mirror-Glyphs came a fine, unfamiliar tremor—not a system warning, but a deeper, more fundamental vibration. It felt like a lake frozen for millennia, struck suddenly by a red-hot stone, cracking open its first fissure.
"You... trust me with this?" His voice was extremely light, as if afraid to wake something fragile.
She did not answer directly.
Instead, she stood, walked to stand before him, and reached out—not to touch him, but to gently place the blood-stained bronze tiger tally into his open palm.
"The last thing my father left behind," she said, her gaze like twin torches burning into the depths of his eyes. "Now I give it to you. If I do not return—"
She stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished.
But Shen Yuzhu understood. If she did not return, this tally would become the Blood-Heart Army's next token of leadership. And she had entrusted that token—her father's relic, her own symbolic authority—to a man who was, by all accounts, an "enemy" from the Night Crow Division.
This was not merely trust.
This was an entrustment that wagered everything.
He looked down at the cold bronze resting in his palm. The vitreous sheen of the charred parts reflected in the intricate patterns of his Mirror-Glyphs, refracting into broken, complex light. Slowly, so slowly, he closed his fingers, gripping the relic tightly.
"I will guard it well," he said, his voice hoarse but carrying a new hardness that had broken through a layer of internal ice. "Until you return."
She gave a single, slight nod.
Then she turned, facing the darkening sky visible through the tent's entrance.
"Three days from now," she said, her voice sinking like a stone into the deepening dusk. "Blackstone Gorge. I will go and see what my father truly intended to leave me."
"And I will see where this path... is truly destined to lead."
Outside the tent, the Blood-Heart Banner snapped sharply in the rising evening wind.
The banner's dark crimson patterns seemed to flow in the failing light, reflecting the last remnants of the sunset, resembling nothing so much as a wound that had just begun to scab but was fated to tear open once more—
A stark bloodstain against the coming night.
In the hour of the rat, the camp slept.
Shen Yuzhu stood alone outside the main tent, gazing up at the banner. His Mirror-Glyphs operated autonomously, absorbing and processing all subtle energy flows within a hundred paces—the steady breathing of sleeping soldiers, the weak pulse of distant earth-veins, the presence of Night Crow Division scouts hidden in the far snow forest... and, from within the main tent, the faint, troubled fluctuations transmitted by Chu Hongying's blood-lock patterns as she tossed in restless, uneasy sleep.
He tightened his grip on the tally in his palm. The sharp, unforgiving edge of the bronze bit into his skin, delivering a clear, anchoring pain.
"Why?"
The voice came from directly behind him. Gu Changfeng. He had approached without a sound, now leaning casually against the tent post, arms crossed, his contemplative gaze resting on Shen Yuzhu's profile. There was no hostility in his look, only open curiosity.
"Why give him the tally?" Gu Changfeng asked plainly. "You know what he is. Where he came from."
Shen Yuzhu was silent for a moment, then answered indirectly. "What Helian Sha said today... do you believe it?"
"I believe half of it," Gu Changfeng replied, a faint grin touching his lips. "If you could fully trust the words of a Northern Di wolf-king, then the rabbits on the snow plains could learn to chew wolves. But the evidence he gave us is real. That much is enough."
"And the other half?" Shen Yuzhu prompted.
Gu Changfeng's smile faded. He looked out toward the western snow forest, where the darkness lay thick and impenetrable as spilled ink.
"The other half," he said softly, "is that I think Helian Sha did not finish his story. He has other things. Things heavier than a tally, heavier than a deployment map." He turned his head, pinning Shen Yuzhu with a direct look. "And you... you seem to know what those things are."
Shen Yuzhu did not deny it.
He merely sighed, an extremely light exhalation that dispersed as white mist in the frigid air.
"The Night Crow Division's 'Purification Chamber,'" he began, his voice calm, as if narrating someone else's history, "is not merely a place for handling forbidden objects. It also specializes in... 'handling' people deemed 'unsuitable.'"
Gu Changfeng's pupils contracted slightly.
"Three months before the Lu family massacre ten years ago," Shen Yuzhu continued, the indigo light in his eyes flowing with quiet intensity, "the Purification Chamber's task registry acquired a new top-secret operation. Codenamed 'Old Banner.' Its objective: to erase all material and living traces related to an entity called the 'Bronze Gate.' Its execution level was classified as Top Grade A."
He paused, meeting Gu Changfeng's stare. "Top Grade A authorization grants the power to mobilize Mirror-Guards, to bypass all standard judicial procedures, and to ensure that any individual... can be made to 'reasonably disappear.'"
Gu Changfeng's breathing grew subtly tighter.
"And the Lu family," Shen Yuzhu's voice grew even lighter, barely a whisper on the wind, "as far as the secret archives indicate, their ancestors were once responsible for guarding certain 'ancient ruins.' The codename for those ruins in the most classified files is—"
He did not finish.
But Gu Changfeng understood. He straightened slowly from his slouch, his hand coming to rest on the hilt of his sword, knuckles whitening.
"So Helian Sha wants Hongying to go to Blackstone Gorge," Gu Changfeng rasped, the pieces clicking into place, "not to see the site where the Lu family army was annihilated. He wants her to see... those 'ancient ruins'?"
Shen Yuzhu offered only silence.
The silence itself was confirmation enough.
From somewhere in the distance, a night crow called out. Its cry was shrill, short-lived, tearing through the fabric of the silent snowy night.
Gu Changfeng took a deep, deliberate breath, then let it out slowly. He looked at Shen Yuzhu, his expression complex. "Why haven't you told her any of this?"
"Because it remains, for now, only speculation," Shen Yuzhu replied, shaking his head slightly. "Mirror-Glyphs can analyze intelligence, cross-reference data, calculate probabilities. But they cannot discern absolute truth. Truth... requires her to see it with her own eyes. To choose her path with her own will, once she has seen."
He clutched the tiger tally in his hand, then turned his head to look toward the dark, silent main tent.
The lamp within had been extinguished. But the weak, stubborn fluctuations of Chu Hongying's blood-lock patterns still reached him through his Mirror-Glyphs, a steady, rhythmic pulse, beat after beat, like a silent, resonant echo of her turmoil.
"All I can do," he said, so softly it was almost a whisper to himself, "is to ensure that after she makes her choice, no matter where that path may lead—"
He stopped. The indigo light deep within his Mirror-Glyphs suddenly brightened, illuminating his pale, resolute features in an otherworldly glow.
"—I will be there to accompany her down it."
As his words faded, the night wind rose abruptly, sharp and cold.
The Blood-Heart Banner danced wildly in the darkness, its dark crimson patterns engorged and vivid like coursing blood vessels. For a single, breathtaking moment, four distinct streams of colored light—vibrant crimson, deep indigo, pure moon-white, and steely blue-gray—ignited simultaneously upon the banner. They wove together into a brief, radiant, and intricate totem, enveloping the entire sleeping camp in a faint yet undeniable celestial glow.
Gu Changfeng stared blankly at the spectacle, momentarily robbed of words.
Then he smiled. It was not his usual irreverent, cocky grin, but something deeper, more resigned, and profoundly resolute—the acceptance of a veteran who has seen the odds and decided to meet them head-on regardless.
"Fine," he said, reaching out to clap Shen Yuzhu firmly on the shoulder. "Then it's settled. We'll just have to—"
"Go mad with her to the very end."
The two men stood side-by-side beneath the banner pole, their figures stark against the night, silently gazing west into the endless, swallowing darkness.
Out there, Blackstone Gorge slept under the moonless sky.
And what awaited within its depths might be more than mere truth.
It might be the first move in a game where the stakes were nothing less than a judgment long foretold.
[Chapter 91 End]