Volume III: The War of Heart and Reason —
In the aftermath of the Mirror Sea's collapse, even time seemed to hold its breath. Particles of mirror-dust drifted through the air like the sigh of stardust, settling gently upon the shoulders of the four. In that moment, the only sound in the world was the echo of heartbeats beneath the rubble—not of flesh, but the sound of souls awakening.
Chu Hongying opened her eyes, her first sensation being one of "dislocation." Her spirit seemed still adrift in the streaming light of the sea of consciousness, while her body had heavily returned to reality. Subconsciously, her fingers traced the blood-lock on her arm—where a warm pulse was quietly synchronizing with another frequency.
She turned her head and saw Shen Yuzhu sitting quietly not far away, meditating with closed eyes. Yet her blood-lock "heard" the fluctuations beneath his rational icy exterior—not data, not calculation, but exhaustion, pain, deeply suppressed tremors even he was unaware of.
"You..." she began softly, words faltering before something that felt too real to name.
Shen Yuzhu opened his eyes, his heterochromatic pupils reflecting her hesitant expression. "The Oathheart Lock is not merely a connection of power," he said quietly, his voice carrying an unprecedented warmth, "but a resonance of souls."
Between them hovered the Oathheart Lock—the crystal at its core pulsing with their collective breath, bright then dim, like the world's newborn heart. And deep within the ruins, a nearly extinguished point of light stubbornly flickered, like an unfinished last word.
"We must test the limits and risks of the Oathheart Lock," Shen Yuzhu said, rising to his feet, his voice regaining its usual calmness, yet now tinged with something else.
The four sat in a circle, palms facing, breaths connecting. The moment she closed her eyes, Chu Hongying felt herself sink into a tide of warmth that breathed—she sensed the battle-zeal coursing through Gu Changfeng's blood, the silvery points of light swirling in Lu Wanning's thoughts, and the towering, lonely ice fortress in Shen Yuzhu's sea of rationality.
"Empathic connection, stable," Lu Wanning said softly, silver light flowing from her fingertips, guiding energy toward the unhealed wound on Chu Hongying's arm. The wound closed at a visible rate, leaving only a faint red mark.
Gu Changfeng let out a low shout, his gaze meeting Shen Yuzhu's. In the next instant, he swept forward like the wind, the arc of his long blade perfectly matching the trajectory Shen Yuzhu had visualized.
The synchronization of tactics and intuition was dazzling. But the next moment—battlefield roars, collapsing data, weeping spirits—four sets of memories overlapped in the same second, like four timelines brutally tangled together. Dizziness, loss of focus, arrhythmia; they all felt—they were "becoming each other."
"Over-resonance can trigger memory backlash and sensory distortion," Lu Wanning recorded, breathless. For a moment, no one spoke—the echo of four overlapping lives still trembling in the air.
In that very moment of chaos, Shen Yuzhu "saw" a gaze that belonged to no one—distant and silent, as if from the depths of time, quietly watching them.
"The cost has not vanished, but has been 'transferred' and 'transformed'," Lu Wanning concluded softly, probing the energy flow of the Oathheart Lock with her silver needle. Her gaze was focused, as if deciphering a poem written with light and tears.
She detailed: the fragments of the lullaby Chu Hongying had lost, now reappearing in Gu Changfeng's unconscious hum; the nuanced emotions Shen Yuzhu had shed, transformed into an almost instinctive protective reflex toward Chu Hongying; the bloodline protection Gu Changfeng had severed, becoming an invisible shield enveloping them all; and the absolute rationality branded upon her, now infused with an unprecedented tenderness when she applied her needles.
"What we lost has become the pieces of each other's souls," Chu Hongying murmured, gazing at the crystal core of the Oathheart Lock, suddenly understanding—perhaps "loss" itself was the exchange the world offered them. Only by relinquishing a part of oneself would the doors between souls open.
Gu Changfeng grinned, clapping Shen Yuzhu on the shoulder. "You, the ice-cold strategist, now blocking blades for others?"
Shen Yuzhu lowered his gaze, his voice barely a whisper: "Just... don't want to lose anymore." The words lingered, fragile as glass, and yet heavier than any vow they had ever sworn.
In that moment, what flowed between them was no longer just a contract, but something warmer, more resilient.
Lu Wanning watched the energy waveform of the Oathheart Lock, detecting an extremely subtle "fifth layer of resonance" within the harmonious vibration—as if someone, or something, was quietly nestled within their soul-link, breathing softly.
"The mirror array has collapsed. The Emperor will have noticed," Shen Yuzhu said, unrolling a map of the Northern Frontier, his fingers tracing snow plains and mountain ranges. "The Northlands are where the Web of Order is weakest. It's also Changfeng's roots."
"My father left outposts there. If they still live... they will help us gain footing," Gu Changfeng stated firmly, a flicker of nostalgia for his homeland in his eyes.
Chu Hongying stood, her spear, Stormbreaker, gleaming coldly in her grip. "We are not fleeing. We are shifting the battlefield. If reason seeks to erase the human heart, then we shall make the heart a crack it cannot calculate."
Shen Yuzhu added quietly, "Rational analysis marks the Northlands as a 'dead zone'—no resources, no signals, no future." Yet, as he folded the map, he did not follow the algorithm for the first time. "But I believe—answers lie there." Reason had been his only faith; now, for the first time, he was proceeding without an answer.
The four gathered the mirror-ash from where Zhao Yuan had dissipated, burying it at the center of the ruins. Chu Hongying used her spear tip to carve a stone stele: "The stargazer falls; the heart-holders advance."
Shen Yuzhu stood silently for a moment, then added in a low voice, "He staked his existence, just to let reason see its own fear."
As the wind rose, the mirror-ash swirled upwards in streams of light, like stardust, like tear tracks. When the ashes settled into the earth's veins, a faint, pulsing sound echoed, as if answering the Oathheart's birth. Chu Hongying looked up, imagining she saw Zhao Yuan's final gaze in the light—not pity, not mockery, but something akin to "anticipation."
And at their feet, the Oathheart Lock trembled slightly, as if silently absorbing something.
Before departing, Lu Wanning's Inversion Needles grew warm. Their points resonated with the Oathheart Lock, swirling with a warm glow. "These needles... are recording our emotions... as if generating a new language," she murmured, suddenly realizing that perhaps the Oathheart itself was learning to "think."
Gu Changfeng gazed deeply toward the northern snow line. "If my father's outpost still stands, he might tell us what the Empire truly fears."
In the distance, clouds churned, and a shaft of cold light pierced down from the heavens like threads of light honed into blades. "He's watching," Shen Yuzhu murmured—his tonal softness belying the tension where fear met reason. The Emperor's gaze had pierced a thousand miles, settling upon their shoulders.
At daybreak, the light on the snow plains cut through the remnants of night like fine blades. The four stepped out of the mirror hall ruins, their shadows stretching long in the dawn light. Chu Hongying's Stormbreaker caught a strand of golden light, its tassel fluttering in the wind like a banner, like a flame.
"We are not fleeing. We are shifting the battlefield," she declared.
The Oathheart Lock rotated quietly in the morning light, a single starlight deep within its dark crystal, softly flickering. That light belonged to no one—not even to their contract. It seemed to breathe, to record—the world's next heartbeat.
Perhaps it was not the herald of dawn, but the Oathheart itself learning to become a new kind of existence.
—As four hearts bound themselves by oath, that resonance transcended the nature of the contract, opening unseen eyes between the breaths of light.