Subtitle: When an observer chooses to become a meteor, he traces his first true trajectory.
The silence of the Mirror Sea was torn apart by a resolute light.
That light was not a beginning, but a prelude to annihilation. Zhao Yuan stumbled forth from the rift, half his form already turned to transparent, smoldering ash, like the marginalia of ancient texts being consumed by time.
Between one page and the next, was a wind frozen in time.
With every breath he took, the streams of data-light around him twisted and crumbled, emitting faint, ice-cracking sounds; with every word he spoke, his form was mercilessly erased one fraction more by the world's foundational laws, as if he had never existed.
His voice, like a faint glow seeping through millennia of ice, carried an ancient chill and a final urgency: "Time… is short. Before I am completely deleted… I must leave… the truth."
He did not waste a single heartbeat. The moment his soul-source ignited, blue-white flames burst from his chest like a breath flowing backward. Consciousness surged like a torrent, forcibly linking their four spirits into one. Within the raging currents of light, memory fragments exploded like shattering glass, piercing each of their minds—
They saw clearly: the new Emperor, standing at the heart of a vast mirror array. His body was inhumanly translucent, and beneath his skin, what flowed through his veins was no longer warm blood, but a cold, viscous, liquid light, pulsing rhythmically, mechanical yet eerily alive.
Shen Yuzhu felt an intuition colder than any calculation; Chu Hongying, meanwhile, scented the end of all things beneath this pure law.
Zhao Yuan's voice, mixed with the crackle of his burning soul, seemed to weep blood with each word: "He is no longer mortal. He does not wish to control the world—he desires to shed this mortal coil and become the 'World's Reason' itself."
Gu Changfeng let out a low, cold laugh upon hearing this. "If reason could truly replace fate, then the blood spilled on the battlefield should be calculable as a victory rate." His knuckles turned white, voice gritted between his teeth. "A pity… humans always make irrational choices in the chaos. That is what it means to be alive."
His voice seemed to grow from the ashes of the battlefield.
The cruel truth of the "Three-Lock Trial" pierced their last illusions like an ice spike—it had never been a punishment, but a cold, calculated screening. The Mirror Lock, the Blood Lock, the Reason Lock—all were merely vessels prepared to bear that vast, icy "Will of Reason."
Lu Wanning furrowed her brow, as if diagnosing a paradox. "If reason is truly a perfect order, why does it require flesh and blood to bear it? Shouldn't it, by its very nature, be infinite…? An infinity like that—why should it fear chaos?" Her tone was as if questioning herself, yet also resisting the rational instinct within her.
When the "Oathlock of the Heart" achieved its final resonance, what they would lose was more than just memories and emotions—it would be the last vestige of their independent will as "human beings"—to be wholly integrated, transformed into precise yet lifeless cogs within that eternal, temperatureless order.
Zhao Yuan's fading image gave a bitter smile, trembling amidst the shattering light. "You struggle desperately, believing you are breaking the game… Unaware that your every step of resistance, your every moment of resonance, is merely being tempered by him, forged into the sturdiest extension of that 'Order'."
Chu Hongying's fury exploded within the sea of consciousness, like magma erupting. "If reason expands infinitely, devouring everything, then where does the human heart belong?! Our flesh and blood, our memories, our loves and hatreds… are they all just errors to be purged?!"
Zhao Yuan's reply, calm to the point of cruelty, sliced through reality like a scalpel: "Correct. That is precisely what he must purge first—the tumors called 'Error' and 'Uncertainty'.
His voice was almost gentle, that calm more terrifying than a roar.
In the perfect order he seeks, not a single variable is permitted."
Shen Yuzhu watched the continuously dissipating remnant, his heterochromatic pupils reflecting the final points of light, his voice low and clear: "What of you, Zhao Yuan? In this life of yours, standing outside the mirror, observing all living beings… for whom did you observe? And for whom do you exist?"
A brief silence, enough to still the very Mirror Sea.
His voice grew soft, as if passing judgment upon himself.
Zhao Yuan looked down at his increasingly transparent hands, his tone revealing, for the first time, a deeply buried vulnerability and confusion: "I have never truly 'lived'. I am merely a mirror-reflection left behind by the 'Creator of the Primordial Mirror Sea Laws', a tool designed to observe human nature and record variables. I thought myself transcendent, standing outside the game board… until this moment, I understood: I am but a mirror, wiped too many times, long blurred, the scenes I reflect… all belong to another's will."
With each truth conveyed, his form disintegrated further. When the last particles of light fell from his fingertips and sleeves, scattering like fireflies, he turned to Shen Yuzhu and Chu Hongying.
His voice, uncommonly gentle, was like a faint warm current beneath frozen earth.
"I have traversed endless mirror images, searching a lifetime for 'truth'… and the bond between you, which defies all calculation, is the closest thing to light I have ever witnessed in that void."
His gaze finally swept over Gu Changfeng and Lu Wanning, a faint smile touching his lips.
"If action and intellect can walk together, perhaps this world still holds redemption."
The smile had barely formed before it scattered into motes of light.
He raised his hand. A mirror-heart fragment, riddled with cracks and its light nearly extinguished, shimmered in his palm. He cast it forth gently—
A gust swept across the Mirror Sea, like a silent funeral held in his honor.
Before it vanished into nothingness, it branded the final words of his soul into the air: "Trust not me, nor him. Trust only the heart you see."
The words of light dissipated. Zhao Yuan's remnant shadow turned into a sky-full of drifting ash, swirling down like a meteor streaking through the eternal night—soundless, traceless, and without a place to return.
The observer's disappearance removed the final keystone of balance. The laws of the Mirror Sea collapsed. Light currents reversed, space contorted, groaning under an unbearable burden. A simultaneous, searing pain struck the four as one. The "Oathlock of the Heart" rang out sharply—the price magnified instantly, mercilessly branded upon their souls:
Chu Hongying's Bloodlock burned. The memory of her mother humming a Northern lullaby under lamplight faded completely, leaving only a nameless, desolate melody.
The sea of light convulsed once more.
Shen Yuzhu felt an ice wall slam down, severing his emotional connection to the world. Everything retained its color, yet could no longer stir the slightest ripple in his heart, leaving only the persistent, dull ache at the edges of his reason.
The sound of time seemed to shatter.
The warning "Trust Not Me" was ripped root and stem from Lu Wanning's mind. Her silver needle was shadowed by an eternal darkness, symbolizing her absolute reason losing its bearing.
Fragments of law fell like rain.
The protective lineage patterns on Gu Changfeng's hand turned to ash inch by inch. A clear, snapping sound echoed in his soul. From that moment on, beneath the boundless sky, he stood alone.
A violent tide of light swept their consciousness away, hurling them from the collapsing sea, crashing them back into their physical bodies. In the moment their awareness returned to flesh, each knew with stark clarity—some precious part of their soul was forever buried in that annihilated Mirror Sea.
Within the mirror hall ruins, a dead silence reigned. Shen Yuzhu reached out and caught a wisp of mirror-ash that still held a trace of warmth. The faint glow lingered at his fingertip for a moment, then cooled completely. His voice was calm, yet it resonated like a vow in the stillness: "He wagered his very existence to prove a single truth—reason without humanity is the purest form of madness."
The four exchanged glances. No words were needed. Trauma and sacrifice, like a cruel alchemy, had tempered a new covenant between them.
In the distance, the massive mirror array hummed to life once more. The sound was stern, yet seemed to carry a hint of… amusement—like a player seated high above the clouds, watching with keen interest the struggles of the pieces on the board, awaiting their next move.
At the origin point of the Mirror Sea, a strand of residual light struggled to flicker, like a dying firefly, mustering its last strength to form a fragmented maxim:
"The gambler is gone. The game begins."
The words faded. The last point of light was swallowed by darkness. A soundless pressure surged in from all sides, like an incoming tide.
They could not tell if that tidal sound was the heartbeat of the world, or the laughter of reason.