From Incompleteness, Blooms Intertwined Wholeness
The silence that followed the Mirror Sea's collapse was even more suffocating than any battlefield's roar.
When Chu Hongying opened her eyes, the first thing she felt was not pain, but "emptiness." Instinctively, she hummed the lullaby her mother used to sing—the only warmth she had carried through ten years of war—but as her lips parted, the melody broke in her throat, leaving only fractured notes.
She froze, her fingers curling unconsciously, as if trying to grasp something already lost.
Not far away, Shen Yuzhu slowly sat up. He looked at her, his rational mind instinctively beginning its analysis: "Heart rate up three percent, pupils dilated... physiological signs of grief." Yet the "empathy" that should have accompanied this observation was blocked, as if by an intangible wall of ice. He knew she was in pain, but could no longer feel that pain.
Just then, Gu Changfeng, who had been silent, began to hum a faint melody. The tune was both unfamiliar and familiar, carrying the flavor of the northern frontier's snows, yet it strangely soothed the hollowness in Chu Hongying's heart.
"This is...?" she asked softly.
Gu Changfeng scratched his head, equally perplexed. "Don't know. Just... suddenly remembered it. Feels... warm."
Lu Waning watched this scene quietly, her voice soft. "The warmth hasn't vanished. It just exists in a different form now."
Chu Hongying struggled to her feet and walked towards a larger shard of mirror. The glass reflected her face, pale and weary, and Shen Yuzhu's still figure standing behind her.
She reached out, her fingertips not touching her own reflection, but gently brushing against the image of Shen Yuzhu's brow in the mirror. The gesture was as light as a prayer.
"My blood," her voice was hoarse yet edged with iron, "remembers your soul."
Shen Yuzhu's form trembled almost imperceptibly.
"He used non-existence to prove existence," Chu Hongying said, not turning around. "Then what should we, who still remain, do?"
Shen Yuzhu was silent for a moment. "Continue to exist. And remember—the price of rationality."
"If rationality is the price," Chu Hongying turned slowly to face him, "then what is the answer?"
His gaze met hers in the air. Those heterochromatic eyes, capable of discerning the data of all things, in this moment shed all barriers of logic:
"You."
The word hung in the air, and even he seemed startled by it. This was not within any calculation.
"Success rate unknown, loss rate unknown..." he added softly, something deep within his eyes shattering and reforming. "If reason cannot explain the heart, then I will embrace this error as truth itself."
Reason, in this moment, reached its limit and crumbled. Yet something warmer took root and sprouted amidst the ruins.
Lu Waning took each of their pulses in turn, tears gradually welling in her eyes.
"The price... wasn't erased," her voice steadied, the tremor fading. "It was transferred—shared!"
She explained in detail:
The lullaby Chu Hongying lost had found a home in Gu Changfeng's memory.
The delicate emotions Shen Yuzhu shed had transformed, within the lock of Chu Hongying's blood, into an inextinguishable protective urge.
The severed bloodline protection Gu Changfeng lost had become a will to guard, underlying Lu Waning's silver needles.
The forgotten warnings from Lu Waning's past had taken root in the depths of Shen Yuzhu's rationality as purest vigilance.
"This isn't a fusion into perfection," Lu Waning said, tears shining in her smile, "but a sharing of incompleteness."
Gu Changfeng grinned. "So, you're saying we've taken our hearts apart, and pieced them back together with each other's pieces?"
Shen Yuzhu gave a soft "Mm," the ice in his heterochromatic eyes beginning to thaw.
The four gathered at the spot where Zhao Yuan had dissipated. The dulled shard of the Mirror Heart lay there, like an unmarked tombstone.
Chu Hongying untied the hair-tassel fastened with her family emblem and solemnly bound it to her Huntwind Lance.
"With the warmth I have lost, I vow to protect the humanity within each of you."
Shen Yuzhu crushed a Go piece in his hand, letting the fragments bite into his palm, using the pain to sear this non-rational moment into memory.
"With the emotions I have discarded, I vow to analyze the path ahead for you all."
Lu Waning raised her ink-black silver needle, its tip gleaming with a subtle light in the gloom.
"With the warnings I have forgotten, I vow to heal the wounds you bear."
Gu Changfeng tore off his rank insignia and pressed his hand over his heart.
"With the bloodline I have severed, I vow to become your steadfast rear guard!"
Four ribbons of light intertwined and converged upon the Mirror Heart shard—blazing blood-red, cold silver-blue, serene pale-white, and solid deep cyan. The fragment shuddered and transformed into a profound, dark crystal, hovering between the four of them, pulsing in time with their heartbeats.
The "Heart-Oath Bond" was thus forged.
In that very moment, the Reversal Silver Needle within Lu Waning's robes transmitted a wave of warm, pulsating heat. She pressed a hand to her chest in surprise. "The price... perhaps it isn't the final outcome. This bond... might be the antidote."
Hope, like the thawing snow of early spring, quietly nourished each heart that had endured the harsh winter.
Deep within the imperial capital a thousand miles away, the new Emperor sat alone at the core of the Mirror Hall, surrounded by flowing streams of data and light. Suddenly, a fine cracking sound came from one of the mirror-screens before him—a black ripple, impossible to parse, spread through the once-impeccable network of rationality.
"Oh?" he murmured to himself, his fingertips tracing the crack on the mirror's surface. "To make an oath with the heart... it can actually shake my Web of Order."
An attendant knelt prostrate on the floor, voice trembling. "Your Majesty, the mirror array has detected an unknown resonance source. The energy signature... is unclassifiable."
The Emperor chuckled lowly, the sound echoing coldly in the vast hall. "So this is what you call the human heart? Hah. More interesting than I expected."
He raised a hand. A dark crystal nucleus condensed from the void, faintly resonating with the distant "Heart-Oath Bond" forged by the four, yet radiating an aura of glacial order that was its complete opposite.
"Since you have chosen to use your hearts as your bond," he stroked the crystal, his gaze piercing through layers of palace walls towards the northern frontier, "then let me see how long this heart can beat before absolute reason... If it can still beat, then it means... Reason has begun to learn fear."
The morning light pierced the gloom of the ruins, falling upon the shoulders of the four.
Chu Hongying gripped her Huntwind Lance, the newly fastened tassel fluttering lightly in the breeze.
"He wanted us to become rational extensions without warmth. But we choose to be people of flesh and blood."
Shen Yuzhu stood by her side, his gaze gentle. "Error is the strongest proof we ever lived."
In the distance, the snow line glittered with golden light under the rising sun. The dark heart-lock slowly rotated between them, like the world's newly regained heartbeat.
Motes of light swirled up like reborn wings on the wind, brushing past their faces—
"Trust— the human heart."
The words were quiet, yet they landed clearly in each of their hearts.