The resonance of the Mirror was a slow, rhythmic drumbeat in the center of Li Fan's soul.
For thirty suns, he watched the ethereal scroll unfurl behind his eyelids. The "Ancient Ink" dripped with agonizing slowness, filling the translucent vessel drop by drop. To the world, he was still the same fragile Sect Leader, sitting in the damp shadows of the Ancestral Hall, but his spirit was already anchored elsewhere.
Jing'er looked at him often during those days—eyes wide with a concern she tried to hide behind bowls of watery gruel and forced smiles. She didn't see the azure script. She didn't feel the pull of the currents across ten thousand years.
"Sect Leader, the Iron Fist Hall... they will be at the gate by the next watch," she whispered on the final evening. Her hands were stained with the ash of the hearth she had been tending all day.
"Let them come," Li Fan said. His voice was distant, his gaze fixed on a point far beyond the crumbling walls of their mountain home.
In his vision, the scroll was now a blaze of celestial azure. The final drop of ink had fallen.
[RESONANCE COMPLETE]
[THE PASSAGE OPENETH]
Li Fan took a deep breath. He leaned back against the cold, mossy stone of the Sect Leader's throne. A sudden, heavy silence descended upon the room. The wind ceased its howling. The flickering candle flame froze in mid-dance.
Then, the world shattered.
It wasn't a journey of light and sound, but a Great Fading. The colors of the Present drained away like water into sand. The walls of the Ancestral Hall dissolved into mist, and for a heart-stopping breath, Li Fan was suspended in a void where Time itself seemed to be holding Its breath.
When his feet hit the ground again, the sensation was as sharp as a blade.
Crunch.
Cold. Biting, absolute cold.
Li Fan gasped, his lungs burning as they pulled in air that was thin, crystalline, and devoid of the heavy, "coarse" Qi he had lived with his entire life. He looked down and saw his boots—not the worn leather ones he had been wearing, but boots of a heavy, dark sable fur.
He looked up.
The Sunset Mountain was still there, but it was a ghost of its former self. The peaks had been ground down by ten thousand years of erosion, smoothed by the patient hands of the wind. Above, the sky was a deep, velvet indigo, filled with stars that were brighter and more numerous than any he had ever seen in the Present.
The Sect was gone.
In its place were ruins of such magnificent scale that they made the palaces of Cloud-Pass City look like mud huts. Towering pillars of white jade, half-buried in the snow, rose like the ribs of a fallen giant. Great arches, inscribed with characters of light that had long since dimmed, spanned the valleys.
It was beautiful. And it was utterly silent.
Li Fan walked through the knee-deep snow, his breath puffing out in white plumes. There was no Qi here. The world had entered its Great Winter, a low-energy era where the spiritual sap of the universe had long since dried up.
He reached the site where the Ancestral Hall should have been. Only a single base-stone remained, carved from a material so durable that even the end of time couldn't claim it.
Pinned beneath a fallen jade beam, Li Fan saw a fragment of stone.
He knelt, his fingers numbing as he brushed away the frost. It was a common slate, the kind disciples used for basic calligraphy practice. In his time, such things were considered trash, worth less than a handful of copper.
But as he looked closer, the characters carved into the stone were different. They weren't the flowery, wasteful scripts of his era. They were sharp, geometric, and concentrated—the Sacred Decrees of the Dust-Era.
[MORTAL-GRADE: REFINED BREATHING OF THE STELLAR DEPTHS - THE THREE PILLARS]
[I. THE SEALING PILLAR: TO CLOSE THE GATES SO THE SOUL-FORCE MAY NEVER ESCAPE.]
[II. THE RESONANCE PILLAR: TO VIBRATE THE SPIRIT IN SYNC WITH THE HEAVENLY DAO.]
[III. THE RECLAIMING PILLAR: TO SHATTER THE COARSE DREGS AND RETRIEVE THE HIDDEN MARROW.]
Li Fan's heart hammered. This wasn't just a manual; it was a philosophy of survival. It taught that when the world is empty, one must become a master of the "Small Truths."
He began to read, the words etching themselves directly into his soul. To a high-level cultivator, it was a peasant's trick for starving dogs. To Li Fan, it was the key to an empire.
To Li Fan, the "Void Sink," it was a divine miracle.
He closed his eyes, following the first thread of the script. As he breathed according to the future pattern, the "leaking" sensation in his chest... slowed.
"History's trash," Li Fan whispered, a smile touching his frozen lips. "My ancestor's true legacy."
Before he could read more, the azure scroll in his vision began to flicker.
[HEAVENLY COOLDOWN EXPIRED]
[THE ANCHOR PULLS]
The snowy wasteland began to fade. The velvet sky dissolved. Li Fan reached out, clutching the memory of the characters to his chest as if they were made of gold.
The Fading returned.
When he opened his eyes, the smell of woodsmoke and damp moss hit him like a physical blow. He was back in the Ancestral Hall. The candle was still flickering.
Outside, he heard the heavy, rhythmic thud of horses' hooves. The Iron Fist Hall had arrived.
Li Fan stood up, and for the first time in his life, he didn't feel the hiss of escaping Qi. He felt silent. He felt sealed.
"Jing'er," he called out, his voice cutting through the gloom. "Prepare the tea. I have a guest to entertain."