Gu Yue Xuan looked back at Lin Xinxin, her gaze as cold as the moonlight she commanded.
"Miss Lin, you will have to wait for several days. This seat has matters of gravity to attend to regarding the Great Arrays. It appears an intruder has brushed against a formation anchored in the lower worlds. If the karmic threads are within my grasp, we shall descend to that world at once."
Lin Xinxin met that gaze with an unsettling calm, nodded once, and glided from the hall.
Staring at the space the girl had occupied, Gu Yue Xuan felt a ripple of unease. She shook it off and raised her silver token. It erupted in a brilliant, cold radiance that illuminated the entire hall.
"Holy Lord," a deep, resonant voice echoed from the light. "We have narrowed the coordinates of the resonance disturbance. The law-web is vibrating."
"Identify the node. I will be there before the echo fades," she replied. With a flick of her sleeves, she dissolved into a shimmer of moon-dust, vanishing into the void.
In a Hidden Dimension: The Law-Anchor Station
Beyond the physical planes, in a realm where stars were used as lanterns to support a massive, shifting web of geometry, a group of masters stood in silent vigil.
The Great Formation before them pulsed like a living lung. It was a masterpiece of the Holy Grade, layers of solidified law flowing like slow, silent tides across the vacuum. At its geometric center, a faint speck flickered intermittently. It was no larger than a grain of dust, yet it drew the absolute focus of the most powerful formation masters in the sector.
The lead master narrowed his eyes. His fingers danced across a floating array plate, adjusting the runic frequencies. "The detection node has confirmed the frequency for the third time. There was a genuine intrusion here."
Another master stepped closer, his brow furrowed in disbelief. "Impossible. This formation spans three thousand planes. To even sense it would require eighth-grade mastery at the minimum. To access the sixth-grade substrate so rapidly... it defies the current logic of the lower realms."
"That is the core of the problem," the first replied, his voice dropping an octave. "The intruder did not stop at the lower grades. They reached the Holy-Grade outer layer."
A chilling silence fell over the group.
"But the Holy-Grade layer is a trap," a third man spoke, his tone heavy with dread. "The moment a soul touches it, it should be seized. The soul-shackles are absolute. There is no path forward after that threshold."
"Exactly," the second master agreed. "The Holy-Grade section is linked directly to the Higher Law Network. Any unauthorized consciousness that brushes it should be marked, restrained, and harvested. There are no exceptions."
"And yet," the leader said slowly, "the logs show no backlash. No soul-capture was triggered. There is no residual soul-signature left in the traps."
A cold wind seemed to blow through the airless void.
"Are you saying," someone asked in a hushed whisper, "that the intruder escaped without leaving a mark?"
"Not escaped," the leader replied. "Withdrawn. As if he perceived the Law-Trap before it snapped shut. He touched the edge of the abyss and had the clarity to pull back before the gravity of the Law could claim him."
"To sense a Holy-Grade trap and survive..." another muttered. "His perception must have brushed against the framework of the Great Dao itself."
Suddenly, the surrounding space groaned.
A ripple passed through the dimension, smooth and absolute, forcing every stray rune to align instinctively. The masters straightened at once, their auras bowing.
A figure stepped from the emptiness.
Gu Yue Xuan.
Her presence alone caused the chaotic fluctuations to stabilize, as if the very laws of the dimension recognized their master. The floating runes dimmed, paying homage to her authority.
"Report," she commanded.
The masters cupped their fists in unison. "Holy Lord," the leader said, stepping forward. "An anomaly was detected at the outer perimeter. Based on the resonance, the intruder's formation attainment is at least eighth-grade... perhaps even surpassing the limits of our current categorization."
Gu Yue Xuan's eyes narrowed slightly, reflecting the glow of the Great Array. "And the Holy-Grade layer?"
"It responded," the man replied. "But there was no harvest. The formation shows no successful restraint."
Gu Yue Xuan's gaze shifted to the flickering dot in the projection. "No trace at all?"
"A trace was found," another master answered carefully. "But it vanished in a micro-second. No soul-marking was achieved. It is as if the intruder touched the fire and withdrew before he could even be burned."
The silence that followed was heavy.
"To retreat unharmed from a Holy-Grade Law," she said softly, "means this person either possesses a Primordial-tier soul realm, or they carry a legacy that does not belong to this era."
Uneasy glances were exchanged.
"Increase the sensitivity of the peripheral nodes," Gu Yue Xuan ordered. "Do not provoke the formation into full suppression—we do not want to scare the prey. If he touches the web again, I want to see the path of his retreat."
"Yes, Holy Lord!"
She turned her gaze back to the flickering dot, a trace of cold interest surfacing in her phoenix eyes.
"So," she murmured to herself, "someone in the mud is reaching for the stars. Someone is touching things they are not yet meant to understand."
She waved her hand, and a three-dimensional projection of the Azure Star Galaxy unfolded before her. A single point glowed faintly near the outer spiral.
"Give me the exact origin," she said.
"The Eastern Peripheral Zone, Holy Lord," the master replied. "A cluster of medium and lower worlds. Ungoverned. Lawless."
"Which formation did he probe?"
"The Heavenly Boundary Concealment Formation. The very wall that hides the lower worlds from the higher gaze."
Gu Yue Xuan's tapping finger stilled. "And the subordinate arrays?"
"Three reacted," another master bowed. "The Spirit Vein Stabilizer, the World Barrier, and the Spatial Anchor. All rippled for less than a breath. None were breached. They were merely... brushed by an unfamiliar Will."
Gu Yue Xuan stood in silence. "So the intrusion began at the Holy-Grade layer and worked inward."
"Yes," the leader confirmed. "Which suggests the intruder did not approach from within the planetary layer, but sensed the formation from a higher state of consciousness and probed downward."
The masters felt their hearts cold.
"Mark the region," Gu Yue Xuan commanded. Then, her voice turned deliberate. "Did the soul show any resonance with a Heavenly Registry Token?"
The masters looked at each other. "No, Holy Lord. We checked the feedback loops multiple times. There was no registry resonance. Not at the mortal level, not even at the ancestral level."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing," the leader replied. "It was as if that soul did not exist within the order governed by the Heavenly Registry at all. A total void."
Gu Yue Xuan's eyes sharpened into blades of light. "Troublesome. Every being acknowledged by the Heavens leaves a mark. To have no mark means extreme concealment... or something fundamentally outside the established order of the Universe."
She turned back to the projection, her eyes scanning the rotating galaxy.
"Trace it through the Holy-Grade nodes. Cross-check with every lower array. I want the exact world. The exact planetary layer. The exact coordinate. Do not bring me speculation. Bring me the world."
"Yes, Holy Lord!"
The masters began to work, their fingers flying over complex runic consoles. Hours passed in a blur of light and calculations.
Finally, Du An, the head of the station, stepped forward and bowed deeply. "Holy Lord. We have it."
Gu Yue Xuan raised her beautiful eyes. "Which world?"
"The Luoshui World. Heiyun City. The Eastern Region."
"Luoshui World?" Gu Yue Xuan whispered the name, her gaze piercing through the void toward the distant, spinning plane. "A mere medium-level plane... harboring such a method?"
A faint, chilling smile touched her lips.
"Interesting."