The Bell Door screamed like a living thing.
It was not a normal scream. It was a clean, cold sound, like metal being pulled apart inside a silent temple. The black floor of the Bell Coffin shook under Qi Shan Wei's feet, and the pale outline of the door flashed brighter and brighter, like it was trying to blind him before it opened.
Qi Shan Wei stood tall, calm as a cliff in a storm. His long silver hair lifted in a slow wave from the pressure. His golden eyes did not blink.
The Heavenpiercer Ruler was raised in his hands, heavy and steady. The ruler's primordial runes pulsed like a heart. Each pulse matched the beat in Shan Wei's chest, and each beat carried one clear message:
Mine.
The Bell Door's edge cracked.
A thin line opened, no wider than a finger.
And through that line, a hand came first.
It was pale and smooth, like white stone polished by time. It had no blood, no warmth, no smell. Yet the moment it appeared, the Bell Coffin rang again, and the ring hit Shan Wei's name-circle like a hammer.
The circle on Shan Wei's chest glowed.
SELF. RETURN. EMPEROR.
The pale hand paused, as if it could "read" the circle. Then its fingers moved, slow and careful, reaching for the circle like someone reaching for a lock.
A voice came with the hand. Not loud. Not angry.
Just sure.
"Returning Prismatic One," the voice said, calm as snow. "Your circle is flawed. Your words are wrong. Your self is a mistake. Let us correct it."
The voice did not feel like a human voice. It felt like a bell being struck one time, very far away.
Qi Shan Wei answered with the same calm.
"I do not accept correction," he said.
The hand touched the air in front of his chest.
A thin line of pale light formed under its fingers. The line was writing. It looked like a law being carved into the world.
The law tried to change one word.
It tried to turn SELF into PRISONER.
The name-circle shook.
Not because Shan Wei feared it.
Because the Bell Coffin itself was built to steal names.
It was built to make a person forget who they were.
Qi Shan Wei's gaze sharpened.
He did not step back.
He stepped forward.
The Heavenpiercer Ruler moved in a small arc.
Not a wild strike.
A clean strike.
The ruler's edge hit the pale writing line.
The line broke, and the Bell Coffin rang in pain.
For one heartbeat, the pale hand froze, like it felt surprise.
Then the voice spoke again, still calm.
"Violence inside a judgment space is a confession," it said. "You prove your instability."
Qi Shan Wei's reply was simple.
"I prove my will."
He raised his free hand and drew a new prismatic glyph in the air. It was not fancy. It was not long. It was three strokes and one dot, glowing in seven colors.
The glyph sank into his name-circle.
The circle hardened like a shield.
Now the words did not only glow.
They locked.
The pale hand reached again.
This time, its fingertip touched the circle—
And smoke rose.
The fingertip burned.
Not skin-burn. Law-burn.
The hand pulled back slightly.
In the crack of the Bell Door, something shifted, like someone leaned closer on the other side.
The voice did not change tone, but the air grew colder.
"You burn law," the voice said. "So you carry the forbidden flame. So you carry the beast. So you carry the return."
The Bell Coffin's wall glowed with the scar from the failed needle strike.
THE RETURNING PRISMATIC ONE.
The title pulsed.
Outside the coffin, the battlefield trembled.
Inside, the Bell Door widened another finger-width, as if the Silent Bell Monastery pushed harder, refusing to be denied.
Qi Shan Wei tightened his grip.
He could feel it now: the Monastery was not only "watching."
It was trying to step into his prison.
It was trying to put a hand on his fate.
And worse—
It was trying to move on Ling Xueyao.
A thin pain flashed again across Shan Wei's chest, like a thread being pulled. In his mind, a sharp image appeared:
A silver-haired girl standing under a pale moon.
A bell chain around her wrist.
A white temple corridor behind her.
A bell engraved with one word:
EXECUTION.
Qi Shan Wei's eyes narrowed.
His killing intent rose—silent, heavy, and controlled.
Outside the coffin, Zhen stood like a fortress that had decided to live.
His chest core no longer spread into a burst. The zero-point flicker had stopped at the edge, locked in place. His armor still cracked, but his stance changed. He lowered his center of balance, like the ground itself was part of him now.
His voice sounded different. Still blunt. Still simple.
But deeper.
"WALL-LAW MODE… ACTIVE."
Mei Yulan's tears froze on her lashes for a moment. She looked up at Zhen as if she could not believe what she was hearing.
"You… you stopped it," she whispered.
Zhen answered in the same flat way.
"MASTER ORDER: LIVE."
Then, as if the world wanted to punish him for obeying, the Court envoy's second seal struck again.
A pale bell spear formed in the sky and slammed down, aiming straight for Zhen's chest, aiming for the command core.
Drakonix reacted like thunder.
He forced his body out of the cocoon with a brutal pull. More shell shattered away. Prismatic flame poured out like a storm of rainbow fire. His second wing was still half-formed, but he threw it up anyway, shielding Zhen again.
The bell spear hit Drakonix's wing.
The wing shook hard.
Drakonix let out a low, hurt sound—short, angry, and wild.
For a second, his usual "sacred menace" pride vanished.
He sounded like family being stabbed.
Mei Yulan gasped.
"Drakonix!"
Drakonix's eyes snapped toward the sky.
His golden-crimson gaze locked onto the Court envoy.
And his flame changed.
It did not spread like fire.
It cut like a blade.
It rushed upward and wrapped around the bell spear, burning the pale writing on it. The spear started to melt, and the melt looked wrong—like time itself was dripping.
The Court envoy's head tilted slightly, as if they were studying a new rule.
Then they spoke one cold sentence:
"Divine beast class confirmed. Monastery claim escalated."
At that exact moment, the air above the battlefield rang again.
Not the Court's heavy ring.
A lighter, cleaner ring.
A Silent Bell ring.
It was soft.
And it made everyone feel small.
The Thousand Masks Pavilion elites—those still standing—shifted backward. Their "karmaless clause" contract blades had already melted once. Now, the edges of their masks began to crack.
Yin Yuerin moved.
She did not rush. She did not shout. She did not perform.
She simply stepped into deeper shadow, and the shadow accepted her like water accepts a fish.
Her voice came from behind one elite's ear.
"You called it 'kill without debt,'" she whispered. "But you forgot something."
The elite's body stiffened.
Yin Yuerin's hand touched his mask.
And for a blink, the elite saw his own memory—his first kill, his first betrayal, his first lie.
The mask cracked wider.
Yin Yuerin whispered the last part, calm and cruel:
"Debt is not only karma. Debt is also fear."
Her shadow pressed into his mind.
The elite dropped, shaking, his eyes wide and empty.
The others turned in panic, trying to track her.
They failed.
Yin Yuerin's shadow clones appeared—one, two, five, then many—circling them without sound. Each clone wore a different thin shadow mask.
The Pavilion elites began to breathe faster.
Their "karmaless" contract did not cover terror.
And terror was already collecting its own payment.
Across the battlefield, Xuan Chi was still breaking.
Her frozen-law scars flared again, white lines crawling up her arms and neck like frost vines. The air around her was turning into a small winter world. Stone turned pale. Dust turned into tiny ice crystals in the air.
Mei Yulan crawled to her, hands glowing with gentle life light.
"Xuan Chi, look at me," Mei Yulan begged, voice trembling. "Please. Breathe with me. One… two… one… two…"
Xuan Chi's lips moved. Her eyes were half gone into white.
"I… can't… stop… it…"
Mei Yulan swallowed hard.
She reached into her storage pouch with shaking fingers and pulled out a pill—one she had made while they were traveling, one she had been saving because it cost too much.
It was small, green-gold, and warm.
A Life-Clamp Pill.
A pill that could hold a person's spirit in place when their power tried to explode.
Mei Yulan pressed it to Xuan Chi's lips.
"Swallow," she whispered.
Xuan Chi's throat moved weakly.
The pill slid in.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Xuan Chi's chest rose in a sharp breath.
Her eyes focused a little.
The frost circle slowed.
Mei Yulan almost collapsed from relief.
But the Silent Bell ring returned again, soft and cold.
And the frost circle tried to grow anyway.
Because Xuan Chi's awakening was not only her own anymore.
The Monastery was feeding it.
The Monastery wanted her to awaken wrong.
The Monastery wanted "frozen law" to spread so the battlefield could become a temple floor.
Zhen's voice cut through it, blunt and steady.
"AREA TEMPERATURE FALLING. FROZEN LAW SPREADING. SOLUTION: BARRIER REWRITE."
Mei Yulan looked up, shocked.
"You can rewrite it?"
Zhen lifted one hand.
Lines of light appeared in the air, like an invisible map.
Formation lines.
He did not draw with a brush or a sword.
He projected them from inside his armor like a living formation disk.
"IMPERIAL SHIELD MATRIX… WALL-LAW LAYER."
The dome changed shape.
Not bigger.
Smarter.
The shield thickened around the cocoon and allies, but also created a thin "heat belt" near Xuan Chi—just enough warmth to stop the frost from eating everything.
The warmth was not fire.
It was balance.
Mei Yulan breathed out a sob.
"Thank you… Zhen…"
Zhen answered with perfect puppet logic.
"THANK MASTER."
Mei Yulan blinked, half crying, half laughing through fear.
Drakonix, still half out of his cocoon, turned his head slightly and made a low sound like a jealous grumble, as if to say: I also saved you.
It was one tiny, quick moment of humor—small, sharp, and gone.
Because the Bell Coffin rang again.
Inside the coffin, the Bell Door widened.
The pale hand returned, now with a second hand behind it.
Two hands.
Then an arm.
Then a shoulder.
The crack opened just enough for Qi Shan Wei to see beyond.
A white corridor.
Clean stone.
Perfect lines.
No dust.
No dirt.
Like the corridor had never been walked by humans—only by time.
A bell hung at the end of the corridor.
It was huge.
And on its surface, one word was carved deep:
EXECUTION.
Qi Shan Wei stared at it without flinching.
The Silent Bell voice spoke again, closer now.
"We do not hate you," it said. "We do not love you. We correct the flow. Returning ones break the flow."
The pale figure stepped forward.
Not fully into the coffin yet.
But enough to be real.
A monk shape, tall and still, wearing white robes with thin silver bell lines. A bell mask covered the face—smooth, round, expressionless.
The monk's hand lifted.
In the monk's palm was a small bell, no bigger than an apple.
The small bell rang once.
The ring hit Qi Shan Wei's name-circle again.
The circle held.
But the ring did something else.
It reached for the thread pain in Shan Wei's chest.
It reached for Ling Xueyao's thread.
Qi Shan Wei's eyes turned colder.
He pointed the Heavenpiercer Ruler at the monk.
"You will not touch her."
The monk's voice stayed calm.
"Consort threads are part of your instability," it said. "The Court audits. We correct. If a thread is lost, we seal it. If a thread is stolen, we retrieve it. If a thread is dangerous…"
The monk paused.
Then finished.
"We cut it."
Qi Shan Wei's killing intent grew heavier, like a mountain being lowered into the world.
The monk did not react with fear.
The monk lifted the small bell again.
"Prisoner Qi Shan Wei," the monk said. "By Silent Bell law, you are ordered to accept the title written on you."
The monk's finger drew pale writing in the air.
It tried to rewrite the scar on the wall.
It tried to make the coffin's title stronger.
THE RETURNING PRISMATIC ONE became—
THE RETURNING PRISMATIC PRISONER.
Qi Shan Wei moved.
His ruler came down.
The strike hit the air-writing.
The writing shattered like glass.
The monk's head tilted slightly.
Then the monk's other hand lifted, and a thin bell chain appeared, made of pale light.
The chain snapped forward and wrapped toward Qi Shan Wei's wrist.
It was not trying to crush him.
It was trying to bind his movement.
It was trying to make him "safe" for execution.
Qi Shan Wei did not panic.
He used his mind.
He used the one thing the Monastery did not want him to use inside a prison:
Creation.
He drew a second glyph with his free hand.
Not a normal formation glyph.
A prismatic glyph.
It was simple:
A circle.
A line.
A dot.
LOCK-BREAK.
The chain touched the glyph—
And burned.
It burned like paper in fire, but the fire was clean and bright. It did not spread wild. It only destroyed the binding.
The monk's hand paused.
The monk's voice finally showed a thin change—not anger, but interest.
"You make new symbols," it said. "You forge law while standing inside a law prison."
Qi Shan Wei's reply was cold.
"I forge what I need."
The monk lifted the small bell again.
"Then we cannot allow you time."
The small bell rang—
And the entire Bell Coffin shook.
The black walls pressed inward for one heartbeat, like the coffin tried to squeeze Shan Wei into nothing.
Qi Shan Wei planted his foot.
His robes snapped in the pressure wind.
His Heavenpiercer Ruler stabbed into the floor.
The ruler's runes flared.
Shan Wei's voice stayed calm.
"Not enough."
He pushed prismatic flame into the ruler, but not in a wild blast.
He fed it like a smith feeds a furnace.
The floor under the ruler cracked, and a thin prismatic line spread outward.
A formation line.
A new formation line.
A line that did not belong to the coffin.
The line was his.
The monk's voice grew colder again.
"You anchor inside a coffin," it said. "You are worse than unstable. You are… returning."
Qi Shan Wei did not answer.
He pulled on his link to the outside.
The link to Zhen.
The link to Drakonix.
The link to the cocoon.
The coffin tried to cut it.
But the prismatic line he anchored in the floor held the link open like a door wedge.
Outside, Zhen's eyes flashed.
"MASTER SIGNAL DETECTED."
Mei Yulan's head snapped up.
"Shan Wei?"
Drakonix's half-formed second wing trembled.
He felt Shan Wei.
He felt the anchor.
He roared, and the roar carried new power—space and flame mixing together.
The prismatic flame around his wing changed again.
It began to burn something invisible in the air.
Thin, pale lines.
Time-chains.
The chains that held the Bell Door stable.
The chains that let the Monastery push into the prison.
Each chain burned, and the burn looked wrong—like a moment of time was being erased.
The Court envoy noticed.
Their voice sharpened.
"Stop that beast."
They raised both hands, forming a third seal—larger, stronger, filled with hard judgment writing.
The seal aimed for Drakonix's chest.
But before it could fall, Yin Yuerin moved again.
She appeared behind the envoy like a whisper turning into a knife.
Her hand lifted, and a thin shadow needle formed at her fingertip.
Not to kill.
To mark.
To curse.
She whispered softly:
"Remember me."
The shadow needle touched the envoy's robe.
A tiny black mark sank into the cloth.
The envoy turned their bell mask toward her.
"Assassin," the envoy said.
Yin Yuerin's eyes were cold.
"Pavilion," she answered.
Then she vanished into shadow again.
The envoy raised a hand to strike—
And paused.
Because the black mark on their robe started to glow.
It was not a normal curse.
It was a mirror curse.
It reflected their own seal lines back at them, just for one heartbeat.
Their third seal wobbled.
That wobble was enough.
Zhen stepped forward, Wall-Law Mode active.
He raised both arms.
"IMPERIAL SHIELD MATRIX… SECOND SHIFT."
His dome moved like a living fortress, sliding forward under the falling seal, catching it and spreading the pressure across the whole shield instead of letting it crash into Drakonix.
The dome groaned.
Zhen's cracks widened.
But he held.
Mei Yulan screamed, "Zhen!"
Zhen answered, blunt as stone.
"HOLDING."
Drakonix used the opening.
He burned more chains.
The Bell Door's crack shook.
Inside the coffin, the monk's body flickered slightly, like the Monastery's hold was being weakened.
For the first time, the monk sounded less calm.
"Stop," the monk said softly.
Qi Shan Wei's eyes narrowed.
He could feel it: Drakonix was burning the connection.
If Drakonix burned enough chains, the Monastery would be pushed out.
But the Monastery had one more move.
The monk lifted the small bell one last time.
"This bell does not bind," the monk said. "It calls."
The bell rang.
The ring did not hit Shan Wei.
It flew past him.
It hit the coffin wall—
And the scar title on the wall flared like a beacon.
THE RETURNING PRISMATIC ONE.
The title became a call.
A signal.
A flare sent into time.
Qi Shan Wei's chest thread pain exploded for one heartbeat.
And in his mind, he saw Ling Xueyao clearly now.
She was not on this battlefield.
She was elsewhere.
In a cold place.
A place where a moon hung too close.
A place where white temple stone met ancient ice.
A bell chain tightened around her wrist.
And a voice—another monk voice—spoke near her ear:
"Execution is scheduled."
Qi Shan Wei's calm face did not break.
But his aura changed.
The air inside the coffin grew heavy.
The Heavenpiercer Ruler's runes flared brighter.
Qi Shan Wei spoke, low and deadly.
"You will not take her."
The monk's voice was quiet.
"You cannot be in two places," it said.
Qi Shan Wei's answer was simple.
"Watch me."
He raised his free hand and pressed it to the prismatic line he had anchored into the floor.
He did not draw a long formation.
He did not chant.
He did one clean thing:
He forged an order into the line.
A new glyph appeared on the floor, burning in seven colors.
RETURN-STEP.
The Bell Coffin shook hard.
The monk's hands lifted, trying to seal it.
"Do not—" the monk began.
But the prismatic line surged.
Outside, Drakonix roared again and burned the last chain he could reach.
The Bell Door screamed.
The crack widened too far for the monk to control.
The monk's body flickered again, unstable now.
Qi Shan Wei lifted the Heavenpiercer Ruler and slammed the ruler's tip into the floor-glyph.
The coffin rang in pain.
The monk's bell mask tilted sharply.
And for the first time, a new emotion entered the monk's voice.
Not fear.
Alarm.
"You are anchoring a step through a coffin," the monk said.
Qi Shan Wei's golden eyes burned.
"Yes," he said calmly.
Then, without hesitation, he stepped forward—
Not toward surrender.
Not toward execution.
Toward the Bell Door.
Toward the white corridor beyond.
Toward the word carved into the bell:
EXECUTION.
His foot crossed the crack.
His robe brushed the pale light.
The monk raised a hand, trying to stop him—
But Drakonix's flame burned the monk's wrist line, and smoke rose.
Qi Shan Wei entered the corridor.
For one heartbeat, the Bell Coffin behind him screamed like it was losing control of its prisoner.
Then the corridor's air hit Shan Wei's skin.
It was cold.
Not ice-cold.
Time-cold.
It felt like stepping into a place where moments were stored like books.
Far away, the great bell engraved with EXECUTION began to vibrate.
Not ringing yet.
Just waking.
Qi Shan Wei looked ahead.
And in the corridor's pale light, a second monk silhouette appeared in the distance.
This one held a long bell needle.
And on the needle was written one word:
XUEYAO.
Qi Shan Wei's eyes turned razor-sharp.
His voice stayed calm.
"That," he said softly, "is a mistake."
The execution bell began to ring—
And the corridor doors on both sides started to open.
To be Continued
© Kishtika., 2025
All rights reserved.