End of the hour of the Rat. Darkness was not dispelled by light, but diluted by a series of overly concrete noises.
No assembly horn, no drill command. Only pure physical sounds, like rustlings from the deep permafrost—the world waking itself:
The soft shush of snow sliding off tent slopes.
The low groan of hemp ropes tightening on frozen wood.
The clink of a pottery bowl against an iron pot rim—once, a pause of five breaths, then again.
A suppressed cough in the distance, not a single one but a chain, as if lungs were trying to cough out ice shards condensed from the cold itself.
Shen Yuzhu opened his eyes within the eternal hum deep in his left ear.
This time, the texture of the hum had changed. It was no longer the residual echo of system directives, nor the fluctuation of anchor emotions. It was more like... background radiation. The heartbeat of the camp itself, conducted through the frozen earth, then amplified by the resonance of his bones. A frequency with no conductor, yet persistently present.
He pushed aside the tent flap and stepped out.
The dawn light was thin, like hemp cloth rinsed countless times, spread evenly over the camp. The scene imprinted itself on his eyes, yet triggered no analytical ritual from the Mirror-Sigil. For the first time, he realized he could simply see, without urgently needing to interpret.
The Mirror-Sigil interface hovered at the edge of his vision, in its lowest power state. Only a few basic readouts remained:
Realm Status: Temp -17°C | Wind: Low | Light: Sparse
Anchor Links: Stable (Chu, Gu, Lu, Bǒ)
Central Directive: None (Duration: 71 hours)
No counsel, no warnings, no classification tags.
The Night Crow Division's observation instruments still operated, but they now resembled mute sentinels—only recording, not speaking.
At the beginning of the hour of the Dragon, in a narrow passage on the camp's west side.
Soldier A carried a newly chopped pine log from the north. Soldier B carried two full buckets of water from the south. The passage was only four feet wide, impossible to pass side by side.
The two men stopped almost simultaneously at the center of the passage.
No words, no gestures. They simply stood there, about five paces apart.
Then, Shen Yuzhu saw—not with the Mirror-Sigil, but with a more primal perception.
Their breathing began to synchronize within three breaths.
Soldier A's breathing was originally slightly faster (carrying a heavy load), Soldier B's slightly slower (carrying water). But in that silent standoff, the rhythm of their chests began to adjust, to converge, finally stabilizing at the same frequency. Not perfectly identical, but a strange harmonic resonance, like two strings of different thicknesses plucked by the same gust of wind.
Then, Soldier A slightly turned his left shoulder.
Almost simultaneously, Soldier B retreated half a step with his right foot, his body turning a minimal angle to the right.
No discussion, no eye contact. The end of the log and the water buckets passed each other with minimal spatial consumption. The tip of the log lightly brushed the edge of a bucket, emitting a soft click, like a punctuation mark of completion.
Each continued on their way without looking back.
Throughout, not a word was spoken.
Shen Yuzhu stood in place, realizing his own breathing had unknowingly fallen into that same rhythm. Not imitation, but naturally being drawn in. As if the camp itself was forming a collective breathing rhythm—not for uniformity, but simply because they all bore the weight of the same sky.
Not far away, a recorder stood in the shadow of a tent, his bronze mirror capturing the entire scene. His pen tip hovered over the paper for a long moment before finally writing seven characters:
Unnamed coordination. Duration: three breaths.
He made no attempt to classify. Only stated the fact.
Same day, before noon, at the perimeter of the cooking area.
The old cook was peeling turnips. His hands were steady, each slice almost identical in thickness, the turnip pieces stacking into a pale white tower on the cutting board. But his eyes weren't watching the knife; they were watching the side.
A recruit stood by the firewood pile about thirty feet away, trying to grip an axe handle with hands frozen purple. His fingers were no longer obedient; the axe trembled slightly when raised, striking half an inch off target when swung down, only slicing off a small chip.
The old cook finished the last turnip slice, set down the knife, and wiped his hands on his coarse apron. He turned and picked up his own pottery hand-warmer from beside the stove—a crude, flattened round jar containing the residual warmth of charcoal ash, its surface smoothed by years of handling.
He walked over, said nothing, and placed the warmer on the wood stump by the recruit's feet.
The recruit froze for a moment, looking down at the warmer, then up at the old cook. The latter had already turned back to the cutting board, picking up the knife to start on the next turnip.
The recruit hesitated for a breath, then set down the axe and cupped his hands around the warmer.
The warmth from the pottery jar wasn't high—but to frozen hands, it felt like fire. He felt the stinging in his fingertips begin to fade, the itchy numbness of blood returning flowing from his fingertips to his palms. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
After ten breaths, he released the warmer, pushed it back to the edge of the stump, and picked up the axe again.
This time, the blade struck cleanly into the heart of the wood.
The old cook didn't look back, but the rhythm of his slicing seemed to quicken slightly.
No here, use this, no thank you. Only heat flowing temporarily from one pair of hands to another, then flowing back. Like the tide, belonging to no one, simply passing through.
Shen Yuzhu stood in the shadow of the cooking tent. No analytical spiritual reflections popped up from the Mirror-Sigil. But he could taste the flow of that warmth—not spiritual energy values, but a more direct perception. He suddenly remembered something Lu Wanning once said: "When body temperature drops to a critical point, morality sheds to become the second layer of skin. The first is always: survive."
And survival sometimes required only a one-degree temperature difference, and ten breaths of time.
Same day, at the edge of the training ground.
A newly transferred reinforcement soldier stood watching two veterans complete a weapon handover without a single word. One handed over a long spear, the other took it, turned, and rested it on his shoulder, the movements fluid as if passing between the same person's left and right hands.
The reinforcement soldier frowned in confusion, unable to hold back: "You... how do you know what the other wants?"
One veteran looked back at him, didn't answer directly, but waved him over.
"Watch my breathing," the veteran said, voice flat. "Don't listen to my words."
The veteran made a slow spear-lifting motion. The reinforcement soldier noticed that when the spear tip reached a certain height, the veteran's chest had an extremely subtle expansion—not a deep breath, but a preparatory signal, like the slight tremble of a bowstring just before reaching full draw.
"Now you," the veteran handed him the spear.
The reinforcement soldier took it, imitating the lift. But he only focused on copying the posture, forgetting to watch his breathing. The movement was stiff, as if moving a rock rather than a weapon.
"Wrong," the veteran shook his head, taking back the spear. "It's not whether you do it right, but whether your body gives that signal before moving. Like how your foot steadies before you throw a stone."
They repeated three times.
First time: The reinforcement soldier thought, I'm going to lift the spear, his arm exerted force, but his breathing became chaotic.
Second time: He tried to control his breathing but forgot the movement.
Third time: He stopped mid-lift because everything felt wrong.
The veteran didn't rush him.
Fourth time: The reinforcement soldier closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Not to exert force, but simply to fill his chest with air. Then, halfway through exhaling, his arm naturally rose—not he lifted his arm, but his arm, within the rhythm of his breath, found where it should rise.
The spear lifted smoothly, stopping at the same height as the veteran's demonstration.
He opened his eyes.
The veteran nodded: "Right. Not you thinking I'm going to lift the spear, but your body telling you first: I'm ready. Then the movement."
The reinforcement soldier half-understood.
But that evening, while moving a wooden crate with another soldier, in the instant before the crate left the ground, he discovered he had exhaled a short, almost inaudible breath first.
And the soldier opposite, at that same moment, lowered his shoulders slightly.
The crate lifted smoothly off the ground.
No words, but something had been taught. Not skill, but a rhythm. The rhythm the body finds for itself after forgetting the mind.
That afternoon, in the cooking area.
The heavy salt jar needed moving from the east side of the stove to the west, about ten paces. The pottery jar was heavy, hard to grip with one hand, usually requiring two people to carry.
Soldier C passed by, saw the salt jar, and naturally reached to move it—this was the current instinct of see a need, act.
But at the same instant, Soldier D reached from the other side.
Two hands almost met in mid-air, paused.
In the old ways, someone would have spoken. But in the current approach, the path of speech had been bypassed. The two simply stood there, hands suspended, eye contact for half a breath.
Not awkward. Using their eyes to ask: You move it? I move it?
C gave an extremely slight lift of his chin toward the jar.
D blinked once, simultaneously withdrawing his hand.
C lifted the jar, carried it to the west side, and set it down. The pottery made a dull thud. After he set it down, D walked over and rotated the jar fifteen degrees—turning the handle toward a more accessible direction.
No words throughout. Only two glances, one slight movement.
The task was completed, but not gracefully. Two breaths slower than two people carrying together.
But no dispute, no wasted effort.
A recorder watched not far away, pen tip hesitating. Finally, he wrote:
Two moved simultaneously, momentum stalled, continued after eye communication. Two breaths slower than joint carry, yet no dispute.
He paused, thought, then added another line:
This approach appears hesitant with simple matters. Yet this hesitation may be the necessary cost of avoiding error.
During the hour of the Monkey, the north wind strengthened.
The canvas canopy on the west watchtower began to flap violently, the cloth emitting muffled slapping sounds in the wind, like the struggling wings of some giant bird. The tower was over twenty feet high. If the canopy flipped, not only would it expose the lookout, but the frozen, brittle frame might shatter and fall.
Two men on the watchtower: Soldier Wu upwind, Soldier Ji downwind.
No orders, no shouts.
At the very instant the canvas billowed to its peak, Soldier Wu moved—but not toward the ropes. Instead, he threw his entire weight against the left-side main post, shoulder and back bracing the wind-tautened canvas edge.
At the same moment, Soldier Ji's hand reached toward the fastening clasp on the right. That clasp originally required two people, but Soldier Ji's fingers—in an incredibly quick motion—looped, pulled, and pressed, completing with one hand a knot that normally required two. The moment the knot formed, he leveraged his body weight to press the clasp into the latch.
Click.
A clear snap of engagement.
The canvas's violent flapping ceased abruptly, like a beast throttled, leaving only residual tremors.
Soldier Wu slowly released his shoulder, exhaling a long breath, the white mist instantly shredded by the wind. Soldier Ji flexed his right wrist, where an old injury ached faintly.
The two didn't look at each other, didn't high-five. Soldier Wu continued watching north, Soldier Ji continued watching west, as if that life-and-death coordination had been nothing more than a blink.
Shen Yuzhu watched from below.
His Mirror-Sigil gave no analytical readings. But it captured something else: in the half-second when Wu and Ji's movements settled, their heart rates, breathing depth, even the distribution of muscle tension achieved perfect mirror symmetry. Not pre-planned, but their bodies, under extreme pressure, spontaneously found the only solution where their forces could align.
It was a somatic arithmetic. Written with bones, tendons, and the speed of blood.
In the medical tent, wounded soldier Geng was shivering. He had caught a cold, fever not yet broken, but the tent's only brazier was in the far corner, about three straw mats away from where he lay. Other wounded inside were either asleep or eyes closed enduring pain; no one noticed his suppressed chattering teeth.
Except for Xin.
Xin lay diagonally opposite Geng, left leg fractured, immobilized with splints. He couldn't move, but his eyes were open. He watched Geng wrap himself in a thin blanket yet still shiver uncontrollably, like the last leaf on a branch in late autumn.
Xin watched silently for a while.
Then he extended his still-mobile right hand, grabbed his own thicker old woolen mattress—brought from his hometown, used for many years, the wool now matted but still warmer than the army-issued thin blanket.
He began to pull.
The motion was slow, to avoid disturbing his injured leg. Using elbow and wrist strength, bit by bit, he pulled the mattress out from under himself. The mattress edge rubbed against the straw mat, emitting faint rustling sounds.
Half a foot, one foot, one and a half feet.
The woolen mattress crawled across the cold ground like a sluggish gray caterpillar. It passed by other wounded soldiers' feet, past scattered bandage rolls, past an old shoe someone had left behind.
Finally, the mattress edge touched Geng's fingers dangling off the straw mat.
Geng trembled violently, opening his eyes.
He saw the mattress, saw Xin's calm profile gazing at the tent ceiling, saw the shallow trail left in the dirt by the mattress's movement.
No words. Geng simply reached out, grabbed the mattress edge, and slowly pulled it over himself. When the weight of wool settled, he almost groaned—it was the weight of warmth, like being embraced by silent arms.
Xin still gazed at the ceiling, as if he'd done nothing.
But on the back of his right hand, where he'd pulled, a faint trace of blood seeped from the stitches of an old wound. He didn't look down.
Lu Wanning stood by the tent flap recording the day's dressing change list. The corner of her eye caught this scene. Her pen tip paused. She didn't write mutual aid or good deed, only added a small line at the edge of the list:
One woolen mattress, moved from Seat A to Seat B. Distance: about three steps. Duration: nearly one hundred breaths. Mover: soldier with leg fracture. Motivation: unasked.
She closed the notebook. Before lifting the flap to leave, she glanced back once more.
Geng had curled up in the mattress, his shivering gradually subsiding. Xin still gazed at the tent ceiling, but there was an extremely faint, almost imperceptible relaxation at the corner of his mouth.
That mattress lay between the two straw mats, like a temporary, soft bridge.
The camp no longer had unified drill horns.
Three days earlier, Chu Hongying had said one sentence to several squad leaders: "From today, decide drill times yourselves. But each person must ensure at least two hours of daily physical activity. Method self-determined."
No details, no supervision clauses, no punishment rules.
Only one sentence, and a pair of calm, unwavering eyes.
Then changes began.
Soldier Ren rose at the end of the hour of the Tiger, walked alone to the training ground edge, and began practicing spear. The sky was still deep blue then, stars not yet faded, breath condensing into white frost. He later told tent-mates: "It's coldest then, muscles tightest, spear strikes crispest. You can hear the wind scraping the spear tip, like a knife being sharpened."
Soldier Gui waited until afternoon, when sunlight was strongest, to take down the bow from the wall. His shoulder joint had an old injury, stiff as iron in cold. But sunlight warmed it, tendons softened. "When fully drawn," he said expressionlessly, "I feel the gap between shoulder blades stretching, like wings about to grow."
Some practiced at dusk. As light slanted, shadows stretched. They practiced silent movement and night vision, weaving through hazy light like wisps of smoke melting into twilight. "Shadows are the best teachers," one whispered, "teaching you how to exist without being seen."
The camp developed staggered, personalized rhythms. Some sweated before dawn, some drew bows at noon, some moved like ghosts at dusk.
Chu Hongying sometimes stood on the high ground outside the command tent, watching all this.
She no longer tried to find a best model. She simply watched, like watching a forest—each tree growing in its own way, some sun-seeking, some shade-tolerant, some unfurling leaves at dawn, some stretching secretly at night.
One evening, Gu Changfeng patrolled there, standing beside her.
The two silently watched for a long time, watching a soldier weave silently between tents in fading light, footsteps light as snowflakes landing.
"Doesn't resemble an army anymore," Gu Changfeng suddenly said, voice devoid of emotion.
"Hm," Chu Hongying responded, gaze still following the figure melting into twilight.
"But they're still here," Gu Changfeng added.
"And," Chu Hongying paused, "they're remembering how they themselves live."
Gu Changfeng turned to look at her.
Chu Hongying didn't avoid his gaze, saying calmly: "Before, they only needed to remember my orders. Now they must remember when their bodies are most alert, when wounds hurt least at certain temperatures, when their eyes see farthest in what light."
"Is that good?" Gu Changfeng asked.
"I don't know," Chu Hongying answered honestly. "But at least they're no longer shadows only waiting for orders."
After saying this, she turned and walked back into the tent. Before the flap fell, Gu Changfeng heard her add, very softly:
"Shadows don't leave footprints in ice. But they do."
During the hour of the Monkey, a soldier sat on an empty wooden crate beside his tent after repairing his leather armor, staring at his hands for a long time.
Not tired. The armor had only three patches, taking less than a quarter-hour.
He simply sat there, hands flat on his knees, gaze resting on the calluses and old scars on his palms. Ten breaths, twenty, thirty.
A tent-mate passed by, asked: "What's wrong? Hand hurt?"
He shook his head, didn't speak.
He didn't know how to describe the sensation: when the last stitch was sewn, thread tightened, armor restored to completeness, his mind went blank for a moment. Not exhaustion-induced daze, but stranger—as if after completing a task, the guidance for what thought to turn to next didn't appear.
Before, after repairing armor, he'd think: Can use this tomorrow on patrol. Or: Can last another month. Even: Skill improved.
But now, none of those thoughts arose. He'd simply finished a task, then... no then. His mind asked: What thought should I turn to next? Then discovered no thought to turn to.
That blankness felt more exhausting than labor.
He finally stood, brushed snow dust off his pants, walked back to the tent. No conclusion, no epiphany, simply his body deciding it was time to move.
Shen Yuzhu sensed this exhaustion vaguely through the Mirror-Sigil. Not emotional fluctuation, but a cognitive-level idling—when the need for explanation is removed, the machinery of thought occasionally spins empty, emitting meaningless hum.
The Mirror-Sigil's private spiritual record automatically noted:
New perception: When suffering ceases, peace itself becomes a condition to bear.
Metaphor: A wounded soldier unwraps bandages, suddenly must learn how to touch air with bare skin.
That discomfort isn't pain, but excessive clarity.
Multiple textures of exhaustion:
Physical fatigue - dull ache of old injuries in low temperatures
Mental fatigue - sensation of cognitive idling when thought circuits spin empty
Existential fatigue - basic energy expended simply to 'be'
This note was kept only for himself, not uploaded.
Because the spiritual hub itself was also undergoing a certain exhaustion.
Deep night, the hour of the Ox. The Night Crow Division's Northern Observation Hub, the Ice Mirror Room empty.
The central main mirror among seven ice mirrors glowed faint blue, like a frozen lake surface. No analytical charts appeared, no dancing spiritual energy parameters, no classification tags. Only a gentle spiritual rhythm waveform flowed slowly, endlessly rightward across the mirror surface.
It was a spiritual reflection of sound.
Recorded from a soldier's entire night of sleep sounds.
Not analyzing sleep quality, not calculating tossing frequency, not inferring dreams. Simply sound waves—breathing, occasional teeth grinding, blanket rustling, tent cloth trembling lightly in wind.
The waveform flowed across the mirror surface, its undulations gentle as distant mountain contours.
No meaning, no purpose, simply existence.
At regular intervals, the waveform would pause briefly, about 0.1 breaths. Not obstruction, not missing reflection. The hub's vast consciousness itself experiencing mental wandering while continuously recording meaningless spiritual information—like a person's gaze losing focus momentarily after long staring at a blank wall.
After one such pause, a line of error warning suddenly appeared at the mirror's lower right corner, spiritual-glyphs crimson:
[ERROR: Observation Target Not Detected]
The warning hovered half a breath, then closed itself.
As if the spiritual hub, unconsciously, still tried to do something with this meaningless spiritual reflection flow, but immediately realized nothing needed doing, so withdrew the impulse.
This self-intervention, self-withdrawal repeated three times over the next half-hour.
At the mirror's corner, a line of small spiritual-glyphs appeared, then vanished:
[Status: Continuous observation]
[Reflection target: Northern Camp - Tent Three - Night sound spectrum]
[Analytical ritual: None]
[Purpose: None]
[Status: Ongoing]
This record wouldn't enter any report, trigger any follow-up action. It was merely the spiritual hub's spontaneous behavior in the unmanned late night—like unconscious meditation, or an aphasic person repeatedly touching the only recognizable word, just to confirm the sensation remained.
At one point, the mirror's lower right corner spontaneously displayed a rare non-regulated record, spiritual-glyphs slightly fainter than usual, like unconscious muttering:
[Energy consumption continues. Output: None. Continues: Yes.]
Then this line also faded, as if never etched.
In the hub's deepest spiritual records, repeated, cyclical self-inspection entries appeared:
[Self-check: Operating]
[Self-check: Still operating]
[Self-check: Continuing operation]
[Self-check: Maintaining operation]
This wasn't malfunction, but mechanistic fatigue arising from rituals set to continue operation after losing clear purpose. Like a soldier ordered stand here but never told until when, can only keep standing until legs go numb, consciousness scatters.
The spiritual hub was learning exhaustion.
In the corner of the Ice Mirror Room, before another smaller mirror, Recorder Two sat.
On the desk before him lay not a regulated observation form, but a sheet of plain paper. No spiritual energy data, numbers, or classification columns. Only minimalist ink lines drawn with a fine brush.
Left: a curved line, starting stroke slightly heavy, ending light.
Right: a straight line, steady, unfluctuating.
The two lines met three inches in, overlapping briefly, then separated, each extending toward the paper edge.
Beside the overlap, he noted in tiny characters:
A and B, met in passage, breathing synchronized three breaths, passed. No words.
No judgment, no analysis, only description.
He gazed at the two lines for a long time. Then lifted his brush, wrote today's date and two characters at the paper's lower right corner:
Present.
He was no longer a recorder. He was a witness. And his burden wasn't to understand what happened, only to confirm: something happened.
At the end of the hour of the Dog, Shen Yuzhu was found by Recorder Two at the camp's western edge.
"Master Shen." Recorder Two's voice was soft, as if afraid of disturbing the night.
Shen Yuzhu turned. Mirror-Sigil operating at low power, no warnings, no analytical reflections popping up. He simply looked at the other, waiting.
Recorder Two hesitated, then asked: "This situation—no explanations, no orders, each person simply doing what seems most necessary in the moment—how long do you think it can last?"
The question hung in the cold air, white mist exhaled from his mouth slowly dispersing.
Shen Yuzhu didn't answer immediately.
He looked up at the camp. It was the short rest period after the evening meal. Several tents had people gathered around small fires, speaking softly; someone sharpening a knife alone, the monotone scrape persistent; by the west wall, Bǒ Zhōng slowly swept wood shavings together, movements slow yet focused.
The knife-sharpening soldier suddenly paused mid-scrape. Not because the knife was sharp enough, nor from exhaustion. He simply stopped, looked down at the knife in his hand for five breaths. His fingers remembered three hundred strokes, but his mind forgot why he was sharpening. Then he continued, no confusion, just a brief disconnect between action and meaning.
Light shone from Chu Hongying's command tent. She should be inside carving wood—Shen Yuzhu could faintly sense the fine, continuous tremor of blade contacting wood. But at one point, the tremor paused, half a breath longer than usual. Not hesitation, but hand asking: Is this shape right? No answer returned, so the hand decided: Just like this.
Shen Yuzhu withdrew his gaze, looked at Recorder Two.
"I don't know," he said.
Recorder Two waited, expecting a however or perhaps.
But Shen Yuzhu simply pointed toward the concrete, ongoing scenes in the camp: a soldier mending his own leather armor, stitches fine; two soldiers jointly adjusting a camp flag blown crooked by wind, no words needed, movements in seamless unison, as if from a single person.
"But look—" Shen Yuzhu said, voice holding something almost tender, "they're sewing these 'unknowings,' stitch by stitch, into the fabric of each day with needle and thread, knots, body warmth, breath."
He paused, gaze sweeping over the silently laboring figures.
"Perhaps ultimately leading nowhere. Perhaps the notion of 'leading' itself is the crutch we just learned to let go."
After saying this, he fell silent again, gazing toward the distant snowfield.
Recorder Two stood still, digesting the words. He initially wanted to press further, wanted Shen Yuzhu to use the Mirror-Sigil to deduce chances of success, give some future prospect. But looking at Shen Yuzhu's profile—no prophet's clarity, no sage's depth, only a calm, accepting exhaustion—he suddenly understood.
This person before him was no longer the observation node who would assert percentages or possibilities.
He had become a fissure.
A fissure standing in the gap between the spiritual hub's inexplicable and the human world's persistent being. He wasn't rushing to mend this fissure, not trying to fill it with answers. He simply stood there, letting winds from both sides pass through.
Recorder Two ultimately asked nothing. He nodded slightly, said very softly thank you, turned and disappeared into the tent shadows.
Shen Yuzhu continued standing, letting night wind pierce his robes.
Deep within the Mirror-Sigil, a private note automatically generated, not uploaded, kept only for himself:
[Day 116 · End of the hour of the Dog]
Situation: Stable. Anchors calm.
External question: "How long can it last?"
Response: "Don't know."
Bodily response: No pain, no overload, breathing steady.
Consciousness state: Accepting "not knowing" as normal condition, not defect.
New perceptual approach: Can taste texture of actions (needle resistance, body heat flow, breathing rhythm), not analyze motives.
Perception of anchor exhaustion storage sites:
Chu - below right shoulder blade (weight of years holding command flags)
Gu - left knee (old injury, heaviness worsened by night patrols)
Lu - fingertips (micro-tremors from repeated writing)
Bǒ - entire right side (diffuse dull pain field from old injuries)
This exhaustion was not pain. It was the sodden garment, the weight that compounds with every step.
Conclusion: I have become a fissure. Fissures do not seek mending, fissures simply are.
And being itself may be the only answer I can give.
After generating, the Mirror-Sigil entered a near-dormant low-power state. Shen Yuzhu closed his eyes, letting camp sounds flow through his hearing: whispers, knife-sharpening, fire crackling, a distant sentry's regular footsteps.
He no longer tried to extract meaning.
He simply listened, like listening to an impromptu ensemble without conductor, yet still forming a melody.
At the beginning of the hour of the Boar, snow began falling again.
First just scattered flakes, swirling hesitantly in the wind, touching the ground. Then gradually denser, becoming a silent curtain gently separating the camp from the outer darkness.
Snow fell on tents, unifying originally messy patches into soft arcs.
Fell on the old crack in the west wall, trying to fill it, only accumulating into fragile white lines between blackstone crevices.
Fell on the Night Crow Division Ice Mirror Room roof, silent, as if the sky was sealing its own silence with another layer.
Also fell on the western stone array.
The cornerstone—the river-polished stone Shen Yuzhu first discovered, deliberately placed—was already thinly frosted. But around it, new objects still quietly appeared.
Tonight added one more thing: an inner garment layered with patches.
Coarse hemp fabric, originally perhaps light gray, but years of sweat stains, washing, mending turned it a mottled, murky color. Looking closely, at least five patches: two at elbows (leather), one between shoulder blades (coarse cloth), one at side waist (unknown thick weave), the collar edge also had dense, fine stitches re-tightening the worn edge.
Each patch's thread color different: black, gray, even one using faded red thread. Stitching styles varied, some rough like a man's work, some fine like a woman's sewing.
This inner garment was carefully folded, placed three paces east of the cornerstone. No weighing stone, no concealment, simply laid openly on snow, like a second skin just shed by some body.
Farther away, a small cluster of hair.
About seven or eight strands, black, gray, white, carefully wound around a fist-sized stone, tied in a simple but secure knot. The stone an ordinary river pebble, but the hair-winding style made it resemble a primitive talisman, or a miniature monument about aging.
Beside it, a palm-sized piece of ice, frozen in its center a shriveled wild berry. The ice clear, the berry's dark red within like a coagulated droplet of blood, or some unspeakable sweet memory deliberately imprisoned in a transparent cage.
No explanation, no signature.
Placers always came when no one was around, leaving faint footprints in snow (quickly covered if snowing), leaving objects, then departing. As if this act itself had become a new form of collective breathing—exhaling un-carryable pasts, inhaling must-continue present.
Same night, in the easternmost tent, a soldier lay awake in darkness.
His hand under the blanket gripped a smooth small stone—picked up from his village riverbank as a child, carried ten years.
He remembered passing the western stone array at dusk, seeing that ice-encased wild berry. He didn't know who placed it, but recognized that berry type. Grew only in deepest northern valleys, sweet, but picking always scratched hands.
He clenched the stone, then released.
Then rose, draped his outer robe, no lamp lit, quietly exited the tent.
Snow still falling.
He didn't walk toward the stone array. Instead walked behind his tent about ninety feet to a dead tree—the camp's only still-standing tree, though long dead.
He crouched, dug a shallow hole by the roots, placed the stone inside, covered with soil, patted flat.
Not to be seen.
Not even to join that foundational procession.
Only because he suddenly felt: some things should be buried where only oneself knows. So even if one day everyone forgets how to live in a world without definitions, at least one stone remembers it was buried here by one person, on one snowy night, for an inexplicable reason.
He rose, walked back to the tent.
Snow quickly covered the fresh soil, as if nothing happened.
Lu Wanning once stood long before the stone array. She wrote on a blank page of her medical records:
"This isn't commemoration, nor declaration. This is metabolism of objects—'excreting' undigestible memories, unspeakable emotions, un-carryable identities here in physical form. The body knows some things must be expelled to continue forward. And this frozen soil has become the collective intestines."
After writing, she closed the notebook, didn't file this passage under any case record.
Some observations belong only to the observer.
Command tent, Chu Hongying wasn't studying maps, nor reviewing documents. She sat on a low stool by the brazier, holding a dagger, carving a piece of pine wood.
The wood came from a rotten rafter in the west wall, texture soft, carrying years of smoke scent. She drew no guidelines beforehand, conceived no shape, simply let the blade follow the wood's grain, shaving off extremely thin wood chips.
Wood chips danced in the brazier's heat current, some landing on her lap, some drifting into the flames, instantly curling, blackening, turning to fine ash. Most simply landed quietly, spreading a淡 golden, pine-scented snow on the felt carpet.
She carved slowly, with a profound, consuming focus. The dagger in her hand was not a weapon here, but a tool of subtraction, seeking a form hidden within the grain.
The sound of the blade scraping against the grain was monotonous and persistent, a dry, rhythmic whisper like the measured drip of a water clock in a forgotten hall, marking a passage of time that required no witness, for its purpose was fulfilled in the doing.
The tent flap lifted, Gu Changfeng passed on night patrol, paused outside, seeing dancing wood chips and her profile in firelight. He didn't speak, but Chu Hongying said without looking up:
"Enter."
Gu Changfeng lifted the flap, no salute, stood three paces away, watching the wood in her hands gradually assume some vague shape—like a bird with folded wings, or a curled dried leaf.
"Don't sharpen the blade too keen," Gu Changfeng said, voice somewhat hoarse from long silence, "easy to cut yourself."
Chu Hongying didn't stop, only hmed, then said: "Just want my hand to remember, besides holding command flags, it can do other things."
Gu Changfeng silently watched wood chips continue falling. Firelight cast his shadow, enormous and silent, on the tent wall, swaying with flames.
After a long while, he said: "...Like snow."
Chu Hongying's dagger paused a moment. She looked up at the vaguely shaped wood block in her hand, then at Gu Changfeng.
"Snow melts," she said softly, "this... at least leaves shape."
Gu Changfeng nodded.
"Shape is good too."
After saying this, he turned and left. The flap fell, cutting off outside wind sounds.
Chu Hongying continued carving.
She was no longer the general in people's minds, no longer a symbol on maps. She was simply a woman in the depth of a winter's night, using a blade to release some nameless, essential shape from a piece of decayed wood—wood that was both decayed and yet held a potential form.
And being itself, on this night, seemed enough.
At the hour of the Rat, snow fell denser.
Right at this moment, in the Night Crow Division Ice Mirror Room, the camp's spiritual meridian map on the central main mirror changed.
That map was no longer clear and distinct, edges of light points and energy flows appeared blurred, diffuse, like viewing a star chart through frosted glass. But right at the first mark of the hour of the Rat, when the snowfall was at its densest— all light points on the mirror surface, their pulsation frequencies suddenly achieved brief, improbable synchronization.
Not completely identical, but harmonic resonance. Like countless different pendulums, at some moment, swinging into the same phase.
Synchronization lasted only about two breaths.
Then, as abruptly as it had coalesced, the resonance shattered. Each node resumed its originally disordered, individual rhythm.
Almost the instant synchronization occurred, the spiritual hub sub-mirror at the camp's west second watchtower emitted an extremely faint snap audible only to spiritual-glyphs themselves.
Not physical shattering. A breakpoint appeared within the mirror's internal framework of spiritual-glyphs, at some node.
Like complex embroidery, at a thread junction, thread ends loosened half an inch.
The breakpoint caused a minute but tangible effect: from that moment, that sub-mirror's displayed temperature reading permanently froze at -16.8°C. Regardless of how the wind and snow intensified or abated, the number no longer changed.
No one noticed.
Because:
That sub-mirror was seldom checked.
The Division's observation focus had shifted.
-16.8°C was a reasonable winter night temperature.
Only deep within the hub's foundational spiritual records, a line self-etched:
*[Node: West Second Watchtower - Spiritual Hub Sub-mirror - No. 7][Status: Reading locked][Reason: Spiritual-glyph fracture][Priority: Low][Action: None]*
But even this record was filed under secondary maintenance list three breaths later, ranked 147th.
In a spiritual hub that had just acknowledged the inexplicable, a minor spiritual energy lock was no longer a problem. The hub had too many incomprehensible matters to handle; one spiritual-glyph fracture was like an invisible tiny scar, neither painful nor itchy, simply existing.
It simply existed. Like an unknown crack deep in frozen soil, silently extending.
And at the central main mirror's lower right corner, a line of small characters now self-generated:
[Phenomenon: Meaningless synchronization]
[Reflection target: Northern Camp all spiritual node points]
[Duration: ~2 breaths]
[Synchronization level: Peak ~85%]
[Causal analysis: None (attributed to random coincidence)]
[Note: When definition is suspended, all things simply exist, performing a dance without audience or judgment, endless.]
This record triggered no warnings, wasn't filed under any critical records. It simply appeared calmly at the mirror corner, lingered ten breaths, then faded out, stored in the base directory.
The directory's security classification was: Public.
As if the spiritual hub finally acknowledged some things need not be encrypted, because they themselves possess no meaning needing concealment.
The instant the record faded, a snowflake drifted into the Ice Mirror Room through a roof gap, spiraled a few times in air, finally landing on a newly formed, almost invisible microscopic crack on the main mirror surface.
The snowflake didn't melt immediately.
It lingered at the crack edge one breath, then slowly melted. Meltwater seeped along the crack's path, tracing a temporary, irregular wet streak.
That wet trace's shape resembled no known geometric form. It was a pattern born of random encounter—the unique microstructure of the mirror's flaw meeting the singular kinetics of a single snowflake.
The hub didn't record this.
Shen Yuzhu stood outside his tent, didn't enter. He let snow fall on his shoulders, hair, eyelashes, feeling the faint, cool touch, then melting, leaving momentary traces of wetness.
The Mirror-Sigil had entered near-dormant state, maintaining only basic anchor spiritual connections. He no longer received the camp's overall spiritual reflection flow, no longer analyzed behavioral patterns. He simply was.
Eyes closed, pure sensory information flooded in:
Perception Log - Hour of the Rat
Auditory Layer:
Tent Three: A dry, short, suppressed cough, recurring roughly every fifty breaths.
Tent Seven: Low, steady snoring, occasionally laced with indistinct muttering.
Command tent direction: The crackling and sputtering of a brazier, its intensity flickering with each shift in the airflow.
The old fissure in the west wall: When the wind struck from a certain angle, it emitted a continuous, low hum.
Somatic Layer:
A faint emptiness in his stomach.
The old injury site at his left shoulder blade: a dull ache, intensity ~2, tolerable.
A faint pins-and-needles tingling in his toes, confined within his boots—the toll of standing too long.
Anchor Spiritual Connections (Vague Sensing):
Chu Hongying: Focused—the minute tremor of a blade carving wood.
Gu Changfeng: Weary yet grounded—the metronomic rhythm of a night patrol.
Lu Wanning: Alert—the soft rustle of a turning page.
Bǒ Zhōng: A calm, steady warmth, like heat radiating from stone near a fire.
These perceptions weren't analyzed, not classified. They simply existed, like snowflakes existing in air, like sounds existing in wind.
Shen Yuzhu suddenly remembered long ago, when the Mirror-Sigil was first implanted, the Instructor's words:
"The Mirror-Bearer's mission is to become a translator between the world and the spiritual hub. Translate chaotic phenomena into ordered spiritual energy; encode ambiguous emotions into clear parameters."
He had believed it deeply then.
Now, standing in heavy snow, he suddenly understood something else: perhaps the highest translation isn't converting one language to another, but learning to stand when both languages fail in silence.
And in that silence, hearing the sound of falling snow.
Hearing his own heartbeat.
Hearing in a distant tent, some soldier turning over, straw mat emitting faint rustling.
Hearing how these sounds weave a night without title, without a central theme, yet ceaselessly unfolding.
He took a deep breath. The cold air stung deep into his lungs, but it also brought with it a certain bracing, lucid clarity—a sensation both painful and undeniably vital.
Then he exhaled, watching the white mist disperse before him and melt into the endless, downward drift.
He stood a while longer in the snow, until the numbness in his toes sharpened into a distinct stinging. He turned to return to his tent.
Just before lifting the flap, the corner of his eye glimpsed a flicker of movement near the western stone array—an indistinct figure, there and then gone. Its motion was peculiar, like a glide over snow, or perhaps merely a trick of the failing light.
He did not walk over to confirm. He simply stood at the entrance, letting the snow continue to fall, gently covering any possible change, that vague figure, any newly added object, beneath a uniform white.
Some things need not be seen clearly.
Just as some questions need not be answered.
He took one last look at that vast white stone array, turned and entered the tent. The felt flap fell, cutting off wind and snow, cutting off that outside world growing on its own, undefined by anyone.
Inside, all was dark, save for the faintest snow-light seeping through the gap in the tent flap.
Shen Yuzhu lay down, closed his eyes.
At the edge of sleep, the Mirror-Sigil trembled one last time.
Not message transmission, not warning, simply like a feather lightly brushing the deep pool of consciousness.
At the center of those ripples, he seemed to hear the entire world—spiritual hub, camp, wind and snow, cracks, silence, and those three hundred wordless objects—simultaneously exhaling one breath.
That breath held no words.
Only warmth.
[End of Chapter 116]