Dawnlight seeped into the camp like gauze washed too thin—even, but devoid of warmth. The crack in the western wall had fallen silent, its mournful groan suppressed by the nameless stone. Yet fissures of another kind were quietly spreading through this overly orderly stillness.
Bo Zhong sensed the strangeness the moment he rose.
It wasn't the phantom pain in his residual limb—that was a part of him now—but a weight of gazes. In the thirty paces from the medical tent to the western wall, at least seven pairs of eyes lingered on him before darting away. Not with vigilance or hostility, but with a harder-to-define expectation, light yet sticky as spider silk clinging to his frame.
He crouched by the wall's base, his fingers swollen with overlapping frostbite and old injuries, like overripe frozen tumors. With every movement, his joints emitted faint cracks, as if ice crystals were shattering within. This was his first "task" of the day—unrelated to good or evil, merely straightening frozen leather strips so they might endure a few more days in the bitter wind. His movements were deliberate, for slowness could slow thought as well, could temporarily avoid pondering what those entangled gazes truly desired.
The footsteps approached then, hesitant and heavy.
He didn't look up, but he could hear the burden in their rhythm—not the pace of patrol, nor the haste of urgent duty, but the tread of men carrying something they could not bring themselves to set down.
Four soldiers weren't so much carrying as holding aloft.
They used a tattered felt blanket that barely qualified as a stretcher, each gripping a corner, their steps unnervingly synchronized. Upon it lay a young soldier, his face deathly grey, lips crusted with frozen spittle, frost flowers still unmelted on his lashes. The boy's body swayed slightly, limbs slack, like an offering being borne to an altar.
They stopped at the corner where Bo Zhong habitually worked.
Setting him down, their movements were so gentle it seemed less like handling a wounded man than placing a fragile ritual object. The blanket corners were spread flat, the boy positioned precisely in the center, his posture even adjusted—his head pillowed toward the east, the direction from which the camp's first light arrived each day. Then the four stepped back a pace, not dispersing, but forming a silent guard.
Not toward the medical tent. This was the spot they had chosen—the corner where Bo Zhong repaired walls, tended plants, secretly left food for the wounded. As if this patch of earth itself had been sanctified, and any suffering placed here would automatically receive salvation.
Shen Yuzhu stood at the edge of the command tent's shadow, the mirror patterns in his eyes maintaining their lowest-power silent flow. With the noise-filtered vision of his reduced load, certain structures grew clearer. He "saw": in the spiritual network diagram, numerous faint white "strands of expectation" extended from the soldiers' spiritual auras, weaving into a net in the air, all ultimately entangling Bo Zhong's form. This wasn't trust; it was the entrustment of wishes—the handing over of one's own due choices, the fragile hope that "goodness begets reward," placed entirely upon a "statue of goodness" already molded by collective gaze.
At the substrate level of his mirror patterns, a line of icy blue text flashed: [Environment matches 'paradigm trigger' prediction. Execution probability estimate: 92%.]
Bo Zhong finally looked up.
He saw first the young soldier's purplish-grey face, then slowly, one by one, met the surrounding eyes. Those eyes held no coercion, no plea, only a deeper, almost naïve certainty: You'll handle it, right? You always do.
Time congealed for three breaths.
The phantom pain in his residual limb surged then, sharp as ever. But this time, it was mixed with something else—
The first layer: familiar pain. Ice spikes piercing bone, a daily companion.
The second layer: shame toward the pain itself. "Must even pain be measured and displayed? Too much appears weak, too little seems false."
The third layer: the deepest fear. Staring at the boy's bluish face, he realized: he was being expected to become a prescription. Not to cure this boy, but to cure the faith of all watching. If they believed "goodness begets reward," believed "heaven rewards the benevolent," then today he must perform this play to its end, using his own broken body to prove a principle that might not even exist.
The feeling rose from his gut, cold and viscous. Not anger, but complete realization: he had been cast as a bridge for all to cross, to reach their respective shores of comfort. And a bridge shouldn't cry out in pain.
He slowly straightened up. His joints cracked, resisting some invisible weight.
The crowd's gaze lifted with him.
Bo Zhong's eyes finally returned to the boy's face. He spoke, his voice hoarse like tearing cloth:
"My leg… hurts badly."
The words were light, yet like a stone thrown into a frozen lake, they shattered invisible cracks into the silence.
He paused, drew in a breath of biting cold air, and continued:
"Today… I only wish to tend my own pain."
With that, he turned.
Without looking at anyone again, without explanation, without apology. He limped away, his steps so fast they were nearly stumbling, as if fleeing an incense hall about to claim him as its sacrifice, fleeing the statue named "Bo Zhong" that even he had once believed in.
The camp fell into a vacuum.
Not anger, not uproar, but the weightlessness after something more fundamental had been pulled away. One corner of faith silently collapsed within that plain statement.
For several heartbeats, no one moved.
Then Soldier A—a young man who usually followed Bo Zhong, learning to help others—suddenly threw himself forward. He frantically tore off his own outer coat, wrapping the boy's frozen feet, his movements panicked to the point of roughness. His motivation wasn't steady compassion, but panic at the void left by the paragon's sudden absence, desperately trying to fill that suddenly gaping position named "goodness."
Soldier B stood rigid, eyes vacant. Staring at Bo Zhong's retreating back, his lips moved slightly, muttering: "If even he grows weary… what exactly have we been emulating?" The words were too soft, yet like a thin blade, they sliced open doubts many hadn't been aware of.
Soldier C shrank at the crowd's edge, hugging his own arms, whispering to himself, so low yet piercingly clear in the dead silence: "So… one can refuse?"
Soldier D stood at the crowd's periphery, fists clenched tight. He suddenly spat, his voice not loud but each word distinct: "What's the act? Weren't you the best at playing the good man?"
Once spoken, he himself froze first. People around turned to look at him, expressions complex—surprise, condemnation, but also a hidden, unspoken recognition.
Soldier D's face flushed red, then rapidly paled to ashen white. He whirled around and almost fled back to his tent. That spit—was it aimed at Bo Zhong, at this absurd expectation, or at the self who had once followed Bo Zhong in learning "goodness"? No one could answer.
Gu Changfeng rushed over from the eastern sentry post as matters were nearing their end. He only saw the soldiers' silently dispersing backs, and the empty felt blanket on the ground—the boy had already been carried to the medical tent.
"What happened?" He stopped Soldier A, voice suppressing fire.
Soldier A mumbled a few incoherent words. An old soldier nearby softly added: "Bo Zhong… didn't take it."
Gu Changfeng froze for a breath. His gaze swept the crowd, found the medic crouched treating the boy's frostbite by the wall, then looked toward the direction Bo Zhong had left—the man had already vanished into the shadows between tents.
He should have been furious. A soldier who saw injury and didn't help—in his command, such men never met good ends. Military law was unyielding as mountains, comrades were like limbs, iron principles carved into his bones.
But at this moment, he remembered the nameless stone under the western wall last night. Remembered what he had said to the stone: "This doesn't count as a 'good deed,' right? No one saw, no record… but you steadied this wall."
Yes, that didn't count. So did this now count as 'not doing good'?
A complex emotion clogged his throat. Not anger, but a deeper aching understanding—he suddenly realized that Bo Zhong's "not taking" today and that stone's "being wedged" might be two sides of the same truth: When good deeds become quotas that must be fulfilled, their opposite is no longer "evil," but "the limits humans ultimately have."
In the end, he didn't chase Bo Zhong, nor did he reprimand the soldiers. He simply walked to the medic's side, crouched down, and helped hold the boy's convulsing, frostbitten leg.
"Rub with snow, don't roast directly by fire," he said hoarsely, his movements so practiced they seemed unlike a deputy commander's—more like a veteran who had seen too many frozen corpses on battlefields. His hands were steady, but his knuckles showed a drained bluish-white from excessive force.
The medic glanced up at him, eyes showing surprise, but also a kind of relaxation—as if Gu Changfeng's simple helping action, at this moment, anchored the hearts of the men more than any order or principle could. It was a confirmation beyond words: even if the paragon collapses, the wall remains; even if principles become chaotic, people remain.
What Gu Changfeng didn't know was that thirty paces away, Shen Yuzhu's mirror patterns clearly reflected:
[Individual: Gu Changfeng]
[Behavior: Assisting frostbite emergency treatment]
[Motive spectrum: Mixed]
[Components: Duty inertia (34%) | Instinct to fill 'rule failure' void (28%) | Empathy-transformed concern for Bo Zhong's situation (22%) | Pure concern for boy's life (16%)]
[Nexus categorization attempt: Failed—motives too complex, no dominant item to label]
This record was later filed alongside Bo Zhong's "refusal record," becoming two "anomaly samples" in the Paradox Garden spiritual resonance archive that could never be simplified and categorized.
Chu Hongying stood at the command tent entrance, her Gale-Piercer Spear leaning against the doorframe. From beginning to end, she hadn't spoken a word, hadn't moved a step. Only when Bo Zhong turned to leave did she give an extremely slight, almost imperceptible single nod. That wasn't approval, nor disappointment, but like finally confirming some truth about human limits she had long foreseen.
And when Gu Changfeng crouched to help, her gaze lingered on his back for one breath, the corner of her mouth relaxing almost invisibly—like severe ice cracking open a fine seam, revealing beneath it a trace of real warmth.
Night Crow Division · Temporary Spiritual Nexus Tent · Real-time Observation Log
The young recorder stared at the nexus mirror surface, the confirmation key beneath his fingertips icy cold.
The mirror rippled and flowed with real-time generated analysis:
[Spiritual resonance intercept: Garrison A7's "ethical anchor" shows active abandonment manifestation.]
[Network deduction result: Collective will-order in disarray. Fluctuation amplitude sharply increased by forty-seven points. Steady-state resonance spectrum shows non-harmonic vibration.]
[Risk identification: Virtue fatigue syndrome, initial appearance. Possesses contagion properties. May trigger paradigm chain collapse.]
[Law-statute proposal: Initiate "anchor replacement ritual." Need to select individual with more stable emotional spectrum, slower decay curve to re-establish paradigm.]
He had seen the nexus handle "anomalies," deal with "defiance," but this was the first time he saw it so coldly scheming: replace a "righteousness wedge" showing cracks. As if that weren't a person, just a worn ritual component.
A scene suddenly flashed in his mind: three days ago, his frostbitten fingers being wrapped with a damp cloth handed by a silent old soldier. That cloth was coarse, stained with cooking smoke and blood, yet held a real, clumsy warmth. What had he recorded then? [Non-standard material transfer. Motive unclear. Process efficiency impact: none.]
And now, the law-statute he had to confirm was: [Initiate anchor replacement ritual]—to mark the person who had handed him that cloth (perhaps Bo Zhong, perhaps another, in the Law-Sea's eyes both were quantifiable resonance points) as "material awaiting replacement."
His finger hovered. The mirror reflected his own face, pale, something unfamiliar struggling in his eyes.
What was that?
He dared not name it. Naming it would be resonance pollution.
Three breaths. The nexus emitted a faint urging hum, like the vibration of insect wings.
He closed his eyes and pressed down.
[Law-statute proposal confirmed. Anchor replacement ritual enters preparation sequence.]
Shen Yuzhu closed his eyes, then opened them.
The mirror patterns in his reduced-load state let him see "deeper," not "broader." The moment Bo Zhong turned, he clearly "saw": an invisible heavy shell peeling and shattering from that hunched back. That was the "embryo of a saintly statue," brick by brick, tile by tile, cast over years by collective will, expectations, and imitative gazes. When the shell broke, there was no sound, only a dense, grey pattern of web-like fissures in his spiritual resonance vision.
A chill shot up his spine—not fear, but trembling from insight.
He suddenly understood completely.
The crux was never "goodness being measured."
But rather—when goodness is erected as a paradigm, carved into the agenda of laws and statutes, it begins to consume from within the one who provides it.
How can flesh and blood bear a symbol that never tires?
If that "Paradigm Zero-Seven" were truly solidified and promoted, tomorrow would bring the eternal cycle of: "replicate paragon → exhaust paragon → replace paragon." The Law-Sea didn't kill people; it merely, meticulously and precisely ground them down into replaceable ritual components.
And colder still: he felt a chill seeping from deep within his own mirror patterns.
He suddenly understood that stumbling turn of Bo Zhong's—that wasn't just fleeing, but breaking free. Breaking free not from responsibility, but from the shackle of "who I should be" molded jointly by the crowd, the Law-Sea, and even his own heart.
Wasn't he himself the same?
Mirror-pattern bearer. Observation node. Interface between Law-Sea and humanity. Each title was a layer of expectation, a shell. He had thought filtering out noise would preserve his self, but now understood: the true burden wasn't noise, but those expectations themselves, defined as "function" and "meaning."
Bo Zhong's shell had shattered. What of his own shell? How much real flesh and blood still pulsed beneath the twenty-two-point-seven self-recognition degree?
In the deepest part of his spiritual awareness, outside all mirror-pattern records and law-statute channels, he carved a privately sealed imprint never to be transmitted:
"It is not he who betrays righteousness," the thought carved itself into him. "It is righteousness, when it is decreed that 'thou shalt not grow weary.'"
The characters cut like blades through the dark side of his consciousness, leaving a searing, lucid scar.
Dusk settled into the camp like iron rust.
This day saw no grand acts of kindness, no moving scenes. As if Bo Zhong's words "my leg hurts badly" had drained the collective will to keep up the performance.
But some trivial, nameless things emerged in the silence:
One soldier saw his neighbor's bandage loosening at the wrist. He silently crouched and retightened it. The gesture was practiced, but before the other could look up to thank him, he had already turned and left, offering no word.
Someone carried a broken wooden bucket, scooping away the dark frost and filthy snow newly accumulated at the wall base overnight. No one assigned it, no one saw, nor were there thanks. He simply did it, then left when finished, as if merely sweeping snow before his own door.
On the rough wooden table in the kitchen hut, half a brick-hard grain cake appeared at some point. No note beside it, no signature, just sitting there quietly, as if left for "any who need it"—a nonexistent person, an infinite possibility.
Bo Zhong sat alone by the waste pile at the camp's easternmost edge, far from all campfires and gazes. He curled up, hugging the residual limb of his left knee, trembling slightly. This time, no one watched, no one held expectations, no one took him as an answer or a vessel for their projections. He had gained a nearly cruel freedom—the freedom to be "ordinary." And ordinary pain, it turned out, was so profoundly lonely, yet so undeniably real.
Night Crow Division Spiritual Nexus · Daily Summary
The mirror surface rippled and flowed, attempting to categorize, grade, and fit this day into paradigms.
[Behavior classification: Failed. No dominant ethical paradigm detected.]
[Emotional spectrum analysis: Scattered. No peaks. Cannot correspond to existing emotional marker library.]
[Collective spiritual resonance steady-state rating: Third Class, Lower Tier (continued observation).]
[Nexus self-check state: … resonance sluggishness.]
The state indicated in the final line was unprecedented. "Resonance sluggishness"—not an error, not a breakdown, but a pause approaching "uninterpretable." For the first time, the Law-Sea faced a form of "goodness" without a paragon, without a template, without peaks, impossible to categorize. It was like a set of precision calipers attempting to measure fog, succeeding only in leaving one's hands cold and damp.
Shen Yuzhu stood in the deepening dusk, sensing that rare "sluggishness" within the basal layer of his mirror patterns. He felt an almost absurd sense of solace.
Such "crownless goodness," rough, silent, intermittent, forming no template, building no high platform—this was perhaps the traces of real life-breath that the Law-Sea could never encode, never optimize, never fathom.
His mirror pattern state quietly updated, characters calm:
[Self-recognition degree: 22.0 → 21.7]
[Note: Decrease cause—primarily bore collective faith void caused by 'paragon failure.' This loss judged as 'necessary contamination.']
He knew this 0.3-point drop wasn't regression, but stained with the weight of humanity.
That mutated Serenity Grass, within the stone fissure before the command tent, in the dusk unnoticed by any gaze, sprouted yet another new leaf.
The leaf was misshapen, asymmetrical on both sides, its edges curling like a question refusing an answer. Dark gold veins and a silver-grey base color violently intertwined, conforming to no paradigm recorded in the Hundred Herbs Spiritual Codex, yet it lived with more vigor than any orderly, perfectly formed leaf.
The recorder hovered his pen tip over the end of today's final parchment log for a long time.
He wanted to write yesterday's state of that plant—"Resonance spectrum anomalous. Unclassifiable. Proposal: continue observation." That was the standard observation record.
But today, looking at that aberrant form breathing silently in the dusk, he suddenly couldn't write it.
Finally, he wrote:
"Day N. The paradigm broke. The garden did not."
After writing, he stared at these words. They didn't conform to any observation log format, carried no resonance analysis, no law-statute citation, purely a personal, cross-boundary whisper.
The nexus mirror surface glowed faintly, attempting to capture this "non-standard record." It wavered, flickering between the "poetic interference" and "effective observation summary" categories.
Then, it fell into 0.7 breaths of output-less blankness.
An echo of yesterday's "fifty-breath silence."
In this blankness, the camp's night wind arrived as scheduled, sweeping past the silent western wall, past the nameless stone in the wall's fissure, lightly brushing each tent, also stirring that Serenity Grass growing into "the shape of a problem."
The grass leaf trembled slightly.
Like a shudder.
Or like, breathing.