Snow began to fall again after midnight.
Not thick goose-feather flakes, but a dense, granular snow-sand, whipped sideways by the wind, scouring the camp. It pattered against the tents with a continuous, rustling sound, like countless tiny fingernails scraping at some wound that had yet to heal.
Inside the command tent, the candle flames were guttering, caught between life and death.
Four tallow candles stood in crude copper holders, their melted wax pooling like pale, coagulated corpses. The wicks flared and danced violently each time the wind snatched at the tent cloth, casting the shadows of the occupants onto the walls—elongating, twisting, overlapping them one moment, wrenching them apart the next. In this flickering half-light, the tent was as silent as a freshly abandoned funeral hall.
Three objects lay upon the central table.
To the left, the Tiger Tally. Its bronze surface gleamed with a cold, hard sheen in the dim light. The charred half of its edge was jagged like fangs, the dark red bloodstains upon it—Chu Hongying's blood from her palm—now dried into a glaze-like layer. In the candlelight, it seemed to pulse faintly.
To the right, a tattered piece of leather. The troop deployment map Helian Sha had flung down, its edges curled like scorched skin, the blurred ink forming patterns like desiccated veins. The central line of text—"Annihilation possible here"—seemed to breathe in the dancing light.
In the center, a copper basin. Two dents marred its rim—one old, its edges worn smooth; one new, its angles sharp and raw. Layered together, they looked like a wound ripped open once, then torn open again.
Four people sat around the table. No one spoke.
Chu Hongying sat in the host's seat, her spine ramrod straight as a spear, but her right hand gripped her left wrist so tightly her knuckles were bone-white. She stared at the Tiger Tally, the flicker of crimson deep within her pupils intermittently flaring and dimming like the last struggles of a candle in the wind. The bloodlock patterns had already crept from her sleeve, snaking silently over the back of her hand, moving beneath her skin like living serpents.
She did not notice. Or she noticed, but had no strength left to control it.
Gu Changfeng stood with his back to the others, facing the tent wall, the muscles of his shoulders and back tensed like forged iron. His fingers unconsciously picked at an old knife scar on the wooden post, his nails digging deep into the grain. Slivers of wood pierced his nail beds, sending a fine, sharp pain. He needed this pain.
Lu Wanning sat opposite Chu Hongying, her Notes on Meridian Syndromes spread open on the table. She held a brush, its tip suspended three inches above the paper. A drop of dark ink gathered at the tip, fell, and bloomed into a black stain upon the page. The patterns within her heterochromatic eyes swirled with unnatural slowness, like a frozen river.
Shen Yuzhu stood just inside the tent entrance, not sitting.
His Mirror Seal operated autonomously. An azure light flowed quietly in the depths of his eyes, his vision sliced into multiple, overlapping layers. What he "saw" was not the ordinary scene, but the underlying patterns of all things—how the candle flame's energy burned and dissipated, the frequency of the tent cloth's vibrations in the wind, the flow and texture of the auras surrounding the other three…
And in the largest, central field of his vision, fragments replayed uncontrollably—
Helian Sha's ice-blue pupils, cold as the heart of a ten-thousand-year glacier, every line within them frozen with the law of the Northern Wastes' bitter chill.
The strange, glassy sheen of the Tiger Tally's charred edge under the Mirror Seal's vision, the residual imprint of high heat fused with a bloodline brand.
The soldiers' suspicious, fearful eyes, the instant their pupils contracted, the cracks in the bedrock of trust reflected deep within their irises.
And that moment when Chu Hongying handed over the Tally, the faint tremor in her fingertips. The Mirror Seal had even captured the remnants of snowmelt in her nail beds, melted by her body heat into the finest trails of moisture, slowly sliding along the edges of her fingers—proof she had gripped it for so long, the snow hadn't had time to be completely brushed away.
At the edges of his vision, fine, crack-like bursts of light constantly erupted.
This was the aftereffect of the loosening of his memory seal triggered by the three words Helian Sha had uttered—"Purification Chamber." Those forcibly sealed images—blinding white light, the cold scent of metal instruments, the sharp pain of something piercing the back of his neck—were trying to break free. He forced them down, the taste of blood rising in his throat, as if he had swallowed a mouthful of shattered glass.
Inside the tent, only the discordant rhythm of four pairs of lungs remained, forming a bizarre duet with the howling wind and snow outside.
After a long while, Lu Wanning spoke.
Her voice was flat, as flat as if she were reciting the properties of medicinal herbs. "From a pharmacological standpoint, the side-effect cycle of the Triple-Hour Awareness Elixir is twelve—"
"What's the use of mixing medicine now?"
Gu Changfeng suddenly turned around, his voice hoarse like a rusted saw dragging across frozen wood.
He didn't look at Lu Wanning. His eyes were fixed on the Tiger Tally on the table. "To treat the hysteria of 'discovering you've guarded the border for a decade for your enemy'? Or the paranoia of 'your strategist is a blade raised by the Night Ravens'?"
His words fell like stones.
The air in the tent solidified instantly.
Even the candle flames seemed to freeze for a moment.
Chu Hongying's fingers gripping her wrist tightened another fraction. The bloodlock patterns on her arm shot up past her mid-forearm, the dark red light churning violently beneath her skin. She still stared at the Tally, did not raise her head, but the line of her jaw was taut as a blade's edge.
The tip of Lu Wanning's suspended brush trembled slightly. Another drop of ink fell, completely drowning the characters on the page.
In that instant, Shen Yuzhu's Mirror Seal reflected anomalies:
The aura around Gu Changfeng was like a brewing storm, his heart rate abnormally fast, that suppressed fury almost materializing into tangible blades.
The energy of Chu Hongying's bloodlock seethed like a boiling cauldron, her physiological suppression reaching a critical point. Any further would likely injure her heart meridian.
The energy field of the entire tent grew increasingly chaotic. The previously stable resonant frequency of the Four Poles Field showed unnatural deviations.
The metallic taste of blood in Shen Yuzhu's throat grew stronger.
Outside the tent, the wind's tone abruptly changed.
From far away came a howling, wolflike shriek—not an actual wolf, but the sharp, harmonic resonance of snow-sand whipped by gale-force winds across the western cliffs, shrill as a blade scraping bone.
Shen Yuzhu's Mirror Seal trembled faintly, perceiving a residue of some icy law lingering in the air—akin to the aura Helian Sha had left behind. It was the Wolf King's lingering influence, the stain his mere presence had left upon the patterns of heaven and earth after his prolonged stay. Though he was gone, the echo of his power still whispered in the very breath of this snowy plain.
The howl lasted three breaths, then gradually faded.
But the freeze inside the tent did not thaw.
Chu Hongying finally moved.
She raised her left hand toward the Tiger Tally on the table with excruciating slowness. The movement was so slow it seemed she was reaching for a red-hot iron bar, her fingertips trembling faintly in the air. The moment her index finger finally touched the charred edge—
The bloodlock patterns erupted!
Dark red light, like a fierce beast breaking its chains, shot up from her forearm, surged past her elbow in an instant, and raced toward her shoulder and neck! The patterns writhed madly beneath her skin, each twist causing a slight bulge. The light burned so hot it singed the cloth of her sleeve, releasing a faint, acrid smell.
This was not a conscious activation.
It was her emotions overwhelming her control.
Chu Hongying's finger twitched. She snatched her hand back as if electrocuted, hiding her entire arm beneath the table. Her fist clenched in the shadows, nails digging deep into the old calluses of her palm. She lowered her head, strands of hair falling to obscure her eyes.
In the same instant—
A sharp, piercing pain exploded at the back of Shen Yuzhu's neck!
It erupted from the Mirror Seal's implantation point, shooting down his spine and flooding his limbs and bones in an instant, like a red-hot iron rod being forced along his meridians. He grunted, his body swaying, and reached out to steady himself against a tent post.
In the central field of his vision, the aura around Chu Hongying detonated!
Crimson spiritual light erupted like a volcano, breaking through all conventional flow patterns, resonating violently with the innate azure spiritual channels of his Mirror Seal. Streams of the two colored lights intertwined, coiled, tore at and attracted each other in the air, forming a bizarre double-helix pattern.
An unprecedented tremor came from the depths of the Mirror Seal:
[High-Tier Bloodline Resonance Triggered]
[Source: Chu Hongying - Bloodlock Seal (Sequence: Unknown | Law Grade: Jia-Shang)]
[Resonance Intensity: Level III (First Manifestation in Non-Combat State)]
[Feedback: Meridian-simulated pain generation... Pain Level: 7 (Severe)]
[Deduction: Resonance nature cannot be classified—]
[Warning: Emotional disturbance excessive. Deduction protocols cannot converge.]
[Recommendation: Immediately activate Mirror Seal isolation barrier. Sever empathetic spiritual link—]
Shen Yuzhu closed his eyes.
His fingertip traced a complex Mirror Seal sigil in the air with extreme speed—not the standard isolation form taught by the Night Ravens, but a self-defense formula he had secretly deduced, modified, and reconstructed over the past few days. The moment the pattern solidified, an azure flash of light filled the tent, forcibly suppressing and erasing all warning messages.
His vision cleared for an instant.
The pain still burned at the back of his neck. But clearer still was the strange, pulling sensation transmitted from the warmth in his chest—as if an intangible spiritual thread extended from his heart meridian, its other end tethered to Chu Hongying's seething bloodlock.
He opened his eyes. The Mirror Seal resumed its flow.
He did not attempt to classify it. He did not force an analysis. He merely left a mark deep within his spiritual consciousness—[First Manifestation - Nature Unclear].
Then he raised his head and looked at Chu Hongying.
She still had her head lowered, her arm hidden beneath the table, but the line of her shoulders trembled minutely. The tremor was so faint, so subtle, only the Mirror Seal's "microscopic reflection" could perceive it.
Shen Yuzhu knew what he had just felt wasn't only pain.
The dead silence in the tent persisted.
Gu Changfeng watched the trembling of Chu Hongying's shoulders, watched her hidden arm. The fire in his eyes gradually died out, replaced by a heavier, duller ache. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but found all words as pale as the snow.
Finally, he turned and walked to the table.
His footsteps were heavy. He stopped beside the table, looked down at the Tiger Tally, and placed his hand on the hilt of his sword—his knuckles white, veins coiling like pythons.
Everyone thought he would smash something. That he would roar.
But Gu Changfeng only took a deep breath.
An extremely deep, extremely long breath, his chest heaving violently. Then he exhaled with excruciating slowness, his breath forming a brief, arrow-shaped plume of white fog in the frigid air.
He released his grip on the sword.
Turned. Lifted the tent flap.
As the flap rose, it knocked over the copper basin by the table's edge—
Clang!
The dull thud of metal striking frozen earth exploded in the silence. The basin rolled twice, coming to rest near the tent entrance, a new crescent-shaped dent added to its rim.
Gu Changfeng's figure vanished into the wind and snow outside.
Three people remained inside the tent.
Lu Wanning gazed quietly at the overlapping old and new dents on the basin's rim for three breaths. Then, very gently, she closed her Notes on Meridian Syndromes. The ink blot had completely obliterated the page. She stood, looked at no one, said nothing, and walked toward the tent entrance.
As she passed Shen Yuzhu, her steps hesitated for a fraction.
A very low, very soft sentence, mixed with the hiss of wind and snow leaking through the flap:
"Her pulse... is like a bowstring stretched to its limit."
Having spoken, she lifted the flap and was gone.
Only two people remained in the tent.
Chu Hongying still had her head lowered, her arm hidden. Shen Yuzhu stood in place. The burning pain at the back of his neck was gradually receding, but the warmth in his chest now pulsed with a clear, unfamiliar rhythm—once, then again, in sync with the faint resonance of the distant Crimson Heart Banner.
After a long while, Chu Hongying stood.
She did not look at the Tiger Tally, the map, the basin, or even at Shen Yuzhu.
She uttered only one word.
"Dismissed."
Her voice was hoarse, like sandpaper grinding against frozen iron.
She picked up her spear and walked out. The tip of her Lie Feng spear accidentally scraped the basin's rim—the screech of metal on metal was sharp as a wail, adding another fine, new scar. She did not stop. Her figure was swallowed by the churning curtain of snow beyond the flap.
The tent was now completely empty.
Only Shen Yuzhu remained.
He walked to the table and looked down.
The Mirror Seal reflected, recording:
[Duration of Assembly: Twenty-two minutes and seventeen breaths]
[Effective Decisions Made: Zero]
[Emotional Peaks: Chu Hongying (Bloodlock Out of Control), Gu Changfeng (Fury Suppressed), Lu Wanning (Rationality Interrupted)]
[Deductive Conclusion: Assembly failed, but vessel of trust not shattered. Core bonds remain.]
He bent down and picked up the copper basin.
His fingertips brushed over the overlapping old and new dents on its rim. The texture was rough, like scar tissue. The old dent's edges were rounded, smoothed by time. The new one's angles were sharp, carved by raw emotion. Layered together, they were like a silent chronicle.
He placed the basin back beside the table, alongside the Tiger Tally and the leather map.
Then he turned, lifted the flap, and stepped out.
Outside, snow-sand lashed his face.
The Crimson Heart Banner hung low in the night, the dark red patterns on its fabric pulsing intermittently with a weak light, like a severely wounded heart struggling to maintain function. Unlike the dazzling interplay of four-colored lights the night before, its pulse was now wildly unstable—sometimes frantic as a dying man's palpitations, sometimes drawn-out as a final breath drawn from the abyss.
The Mirror Seal showed him a troubling picture: the spiritual flow of the Four Poles Field was now over forty percent unstable—a stark decline from the twelve percent of the previous night. The turmoil in Chu Hongying, the core anchor, was the primary cause. While the other anchors—Gu, Lu, and himself—still maintained their basic spiritual channels, their resonance was noticeably weakened.
He lifted his gaze.
Chu Hongying stood beneath the flagpole, her back to the command tent, looking up at the banner.
Snow-sand struck her face. She did not blink. She did not raise a hand to shield herself. She was like a stone statue weathering in the wind. Her Lie Feng spear stood beside her, its tassels splayed in the wind like congealed blood-mist.
Shen Yuzhu walked to a spot three paces behind her and stopped.
He said nothing.
Thirty breaths of silence.
Only the roar of wind and snow, the snapping of the banner cloth, the fine, percussive patter of snow-sand striking leather armor, and—Chu Hongying's breathing, suppressed to the extreme, almost inaudible. Each exhalation produced a wisp of thin, white vapor torn to shreds by the wind the moment it left her lips.
And from the direction of the infirmary tents, faint, muddled ravings.
Broken, incoherent, like the final cries for help from a drowning man at the bottom of a chasm.
The Mirror Seal traced the sound: Li Shuan, one suffering severe hallucinogen poisoning, was repeating, "Mother… wait for me…" in his fevered sleep.
He watched Chu Hongying's back.
The line of her shoulders was still straight, but strained too tight. The light of the bloodlock patterns on her hidden arm seeped faintly through the thick fabric of her sleeve, dark red like dying embers.
He spoke.
His voice was level, as flat as stating a law of nature, yet it cut steadily through the howling blizzard:
"The camp. I will hold it."
Not I can hold it.
Not I will try.
I will.
Three words. Unadorned. Unconditional. Without retreat.
As the words fell,
Shen Yuzhu felt the warmth in his chest give a violent throb.
As if something inside had cracked open, stretched, taken root. The pulse carried a distinct temperature, syncing with the Crimson Heart Banner's weak resonance in the distance, harmonizing with the thrum of Chu Hongying's bloodlock.
Chu Hongying did not turn around.
She did not even move.
Only, very, very lightly, gave a single nod.
The motion was so small it was almost invisible, like the faintest tremor at the very tip of a reed in the wind.
But Shen Yuzhu's Mirror Seal reflected it:
The momentary slackening of the muscles in her shoulders and neck, though it lasted but an instant.
The dark red light of the bloodlock patterns beneath her sleeve receding half an inch, like a tide pulling back.
The blood briefly returning to the white-knuckled grip of her right hand on the spear.
Then she moved.
She picked up her spear, turned, and walked toward the west wall sentry post.
She said not a word. Did not glance at him. Her steps were steady, as if measuring out her own epitaph. Her back vanished into the churning veil of snow.
Shen Yuzhu remained beneath the flagpole.
He raised a hand and pressed his palm against the rough, wooden pole. It was icy to the touch, but from deep within came a faint pulse—the lingering resonance of the Four Poles Field, the imprint of the collective will of over three hundred souls.
A fine, pulling sensation came from his palm.
The Mirror Seal perceived a high concentration of residual emotional energy here and began to reflect it…
Suddenly—
The banner blazed with light!
Crimson, azure, moonlight-white, ash-grey—four colored streams of light, like living creatures breaking their bonds, surged up from the base of the flagpole, spreading wildly along the dark red patterns, intertwining, coiling! In the pitch-black snow night, they blossomed into a brief, brilliant, nameless flower.
The light lasted three breaths.
The four colors intertwined even more tightly, almost merging into one, forming a complex, totem-like pattern resembling a covenant seal.
But at the tail end of the radiance, it dragged a thread of barely perceptible, dark golden interference.
That interference had no shape, no rhythm. It was just abruptly embedded within the harmonious finale of the four colors, like a smear of oil floating on clean water. It flashed and was gone, so fast it was almost an illusion.
Yet Shen Yuzhu's Mirror Seal committed it to memory. The Four Poles Field had resonated again, though weaker than before. And within it was a trace of something else—an anomalous spiritual flicker that didn't belong to any known spectrum. It was negligible for now, but it was there. He would watch.
He released the flagpole and turned toward his own tent.
Inside his tent, there was no lamp.
Shen Yuzhu knelt on a felt mat, eyes closed, regulating his breathing. The cold poison was not yet dispelled; deep within his meridians, pain like ice needles still congealed. But now that pain felt distant—clearer was the warm, persistent pulse of that presence in his chest.
The Mirror Seal flowed autonomously. Unbidden fragments surfaced again in his visual field:
Helian Sha's ice-blue pupils, under the Mirror Seal's reflection, revealing bizarre crystalline patterns.
The glassy sheen of the Tiger Tally's charred edge, flowing with dark red echoes of law in the spiritual vision.
The soldiers' fearful, suspicious eyes, the cracks reflected deep within their irises in the instant their pupils contracted.
And that moment when Chu Hongying handed over the Tally, the tremor in her fingertips.
A self-assessment surfaced from the depths of his consciousness: his emotional state was nearly fifty percent compromised; the stability of his rational foundation had dipped below sixty. The cracks in his underlying memory seals were widening. The system's warning to sever all empathetic links was insistent, but he silenced it again with a focused effort.
Shen Yuzhu opened his eyes.
His fingertip traced another complex Mirror Seal sigil in the air with extreme speed. As the pattern solidified, an azure flash lit the tent, forcibly suppressing all warning messages.
A burning pain flared again at the back of his neck.
He ignored it.
He took the Tiger Tally from within his robes and held it in his palm.
The bronze was cold, its weight substantial, but the charred area held a strange, lingering warmth that felt almost like a sting.
The Mirror Seal analyzed it: slightly warmer than the air, imprinted with Chu Hongying's heavy entrustment, the late Marshal Lu's regretful protection, and the scorching mark of some unknown, purifying fire-law. Within the char, a faint, encrypted command resonated, indecipherable but steeped in a final, desperate trust.
Shen Yuzhu looked at the Tally in his palm.
And suddenly understood.
This warmth was the last trace of body heat Chu Hongying had left upon it, after holding it for an entire day.
He clenched the Tally. Its edge cut into his palm.
"What I have taken on is not military authority," he murmured, his voice low in the empty tent.
"It is the last part of herself that can still believe… that people will protect people."
Here, the Mirror Seal autonomously reflected a memory fragment—
The night before, in the snow. Chu Hongying standing outside a tent, speaking to the gathered soldiers:
"I chose the first one. Not because he deserved to die. Because the last clear thing he said to me was: 'General… if I go mad… don't let me hurt anyone.'"
The scene replayed.
Her profile was hard as iron in the snow-light, but in her eyes flashed something like the glint of water.
Shen Yuzhu closed his eyes.
He understood.
She was now handing him the "burden of choice."
Entrusting it to him, along with all those other heavy things.
Outside the tent, the roar of wind and snow suddenly intensified.
Like ten thousand horses galloping, the entire camp seemed to tremble.
Shen Yuzhu opened his eyes.
The Mirror Seal opened fully.
An azure spiritual map of the camp unfolded in his mind's eye. Three hundred and seventy-four points of light—seventeen of them marked with the ominous, pulsing signature of latent Mirror Puppetry. On the periphery of his awareness, data streamed: grain reserves critically low, defensive gaps gaping on the west wall, morale sinking, and the fading but still present spiritual residues of seven Wolf Rider encampments to the west.
Shen Yuzhu's fingertip moved through the void.
Like a musician tuning strings. Like a player placing stones on a Go board.
A series of clear orders took shape in his mind, etched into place by the Mirror Seal.
First, defense. The west wall sentry rotation needed tightening—half-hour shifts, double guards, signal whistles issued. It was a necessary precaution against Helian Sha deciding to double back.
Second, sustenance. Rations had to be reallocated. The wounded got a ten percent increase. He ordered the kitchen to prepare a nightly broth, citing the post-trauma recuperation principles from Chapter Four of Lu Wanning's Notes. A man had to be standing before he could hold a wall.
Third, the hidden threat. Every known carrier of the latent Mirror Puppetry was to be flagged. Lu Wanning would re-examine them tomorrow. He proposed adding Li Silver powder to her acupuncture regimen—to suppress any triggering command and buy them time to find a real cure.
With the three orders settled, the characters at the top of his spiritual interface began to shift and flow. The former "Strategist's Deduction Platform" dissolved and re-formed into four heavier, more substantial characters, their edges tinged with the dark red of the Crimson Heart Banner:
Overseer's Command Nexus.
Shen Yuzhu gazed at those four characters for a long time.
Then he dismissed the interface, concealed the Tiger Tally close to his body, stood, and walked to the tent entrance. He lifted a corner of the flap.
The snow night held no promise of dawn. The camp lay submerged in a chaotic quiet.
Atop the west wall, Chu Hongying stood facing the wind.
The bloodlock patterns beneath her sleeve gave off a faint heat, resonating weakly with the fragment of bronze she had secretly broken off from the Tiger Tally and kept hidden against her chest. She gazed in the direction of Blackstone Valley—though she could see nothing—and for the first time, uncertainty surfaced in her eyes.
Not fear. Not retreat.
It was the frankness of "I do not know what lies at the end of that road."
Snow-sand struck her face. She did not dodge. Instead, she tilted her chin up slightly.
Beside a campfire, Gu Changfeng sat cross-legged, his Cloud-Cleaver sword laid across his knees.
He took out a whetstone, moistened it with snowmelt, and began grinding the blade's edge. The scrape-scrape of metal on stone was monotonous, persistent. The polished surface of the blade reflected his taut face.
At one point in the grinding, he stopped.
He picked up the wine pouch at his waist, shook it—one last mouthful remained. He pulled the stopper, did not drink, but slowly poured the liquor onto the campfire before him.
The flames hissed and leapt higher, the heart of the fire burning an eerie blue.
"To the drink we never shared," he muttered, the words lost to the wind.
He sheathed his sword, stood, and walked toward the east wall.
Inside the medical tent, a single bean of candlelight burned.
Lu Wanning sat before a table, seven small crystal dishes laid out before her. She held a silver spoon, scooping a tiny mound of pale gold powder from the third dish on the right—finely ground Tranquility Blossom petals.
She looked at that mound of powder in silence for three breaths.
Then she turned her wrist, pouring the powder into a nearby copper tray—not adding it to the medicine, but discarding it.
Her Notes on Meridian Syndromes lay open beside her. On the latest page was written:
"Triple-Hour Awareness Elixir - Modified Version 3"
"Remove Tranquility Blossom component. Cost: Pain sensitivity during efficacy period increased by 30%. Potential accompanying meridian spasms."
"Efficacy: Peak sensory acuity up to 2.5x baseline. Duration extended by half an hour."
"Test Subject: Self."
She finished the final stroke and closed the notebook.
From her medicine chest, she took out that specially crafted set of Li Silver needles, examining each one by the candlelight.
Inside Shen Yuzhu's tent.
The Mirror Seal flowed until the small hours. In a corner of his spiritual awareness, a semi-transparent countdown projection appeared:
[Blackstone Valley Rendezvous: 71 hours, 59 marks]
[71 hours, 58 marks]
The pulse beat steadily.
He sat cross-legged, the Tiger Tally placed before him. The azure light of the Mirror Seal flowed slowly within the tent, gradually synchronizing with the weak resonance of the distant Crimson Heart Banner, with the pulse of Chu Hongying's bloodlock, with the desperate will of over three hundred souls on this snowy plain to simply survive.
It was then—
The Mirror Seal perceived an extremely faint, dark golden fluctuation.
It came from deep within the snow-forest west of the camp, traversing the wind and snow, brushing past the camp's spiritual field like an intangible tendril. It did not linger. It did not scan. It merely passed by, touched, and withdrew.
Shen Yuzhu did not move.
He did not even open his eyes.
He merely adjusted the flow frequency of his Mirror Seal by the tiniest degree, making it adhere more closely to the natural pulse patterns of the Crimson Heart Banner. He hid himself, hid the entire camp's spiritual signal, beneath the inherent breathing rhythm of this land.
The dark golden fluctuation passed, paused for half a breath.
Then dissipated.
As if it had never been.
Shen Yuzhu continued his meditation, eyes closed.
But the warmth in his chest pulsed clearly, steadily.
Outside the tent, the wind and snow howled. The night was long.
But the night watch was in place.
The rift was silent. The silence was tomb-like.
But the road—
Had already unfolded beneath their feet.
The Tiger Tally lay against his chest, like a hidden, burning coal. He knew that from this night on, every step he took would tread upon the crack between two worlds.
And he had already made his choice:
To let the Mirror Seal remember this searing heat.
[End of Chapter 92]