The wind and snow began their howling once more.
Chu Hongying sucked in a sharp breath. The icy air, laden with snowflakes, stung her lungs with a pain that felt intensely real. She hadn't awakened from unconsciousness; it was as if an invisible wave had spat her back into reality. Her body landed heavily in the soft snow, the cushioning powder doing little to soften the cataclysmic shifts deep within her consciousness.
She immediately rolled into a half-crouch, her gaze sweeping her surroundings like a lightning strike. Shen Yuzhu was kneeling on one knee, one hand pressed into the snow, his brow obscured by his disheveled hair. But the chaotic, screeching cascade of data-light that had once surrounded him was utterly gone, replaced by a deep, introverted stability, like a sea fallen silent after a storm. The Mirror Patterns on his arm, once clear but rigid, seemed to have shattered and re-woven themselves at a deeper level into more intricate, profound tracings, like a miniature, self-contained star chart.
Gu Changfeng was simply standing. He hadn't stumbled into existence; he was like a nail hammered directly from the void back into reality. His Cloud-Edge Blade was planted in the snow beside him, the blade reflecting the snow-light. His feet were planted firmly on the earth, …and imperceptibly, the blizzard around him…, for a small radius, became docile, orderly. There was no radiant aura, no bursting vigor, just an undeniable, foundational stability, as if his presence alone prevented the sky from falling further.
Lu Wanning had landed gently, as if held by invisible hands of snow. She opened her eyes. Her heterochromatic pupils were no longer filled with the scream of data or the passive reception of shared pain, but with a clear, serene insight into the pulse of all things, brimming with compassion. She lifted a finger, and a single Li Silver Needle hovered silently, its tip vibrating with an almost imperceptible tremor that matched the faint, distant heartbeat thrumming from the depths of the earth.
The four looked at each other. No words were spoken. The struggles within the trial space, the tremors of facing their deepest fears, the choices made in moments of ultimate clarity… a torrent of emotion and memory flooded between them in that instant through an invisible bond, more profound than any speech. They were still themselves, yet no longer who they had been.
Chu Hongying looked down at her arm. The Blazing Bloodfire Chain no longer brought soul-scorching agony. The dark red patterns throbbed like living vasculature under her skin, pumping a warm, vast power steadily through her limbs. For the first time, she felt it so clearly—the blood was not a shackle, not a curse, but flowing energy, a force cognate with the vast, wild land beneath her feet.
"Mirror…" Shen Yuzhu slowly raised his head, the restructured Mirror Patterns in the depths of his eyes swirling with a cold, precise light. He whispered to himself, his tone carrying a newfound, almost proprietary certainty. "...For the first time, it reflects for me." The mirror was no longer just a tool reflecting external data, but a clear glass showing his own will.
Gu Changfeng cracked his neck, the joints emitting a faint click. He grinned, a sharp smile that seemed to have shed some invisible burden, and uttered two simple, forceful words: "I'm here." This was no longer a passive declaration or a response to his comrades, but an active anchoring, an absolute affirmation of his existence in this very place and time. He was the coordinate, the unshakable fulcrum of reality.
Lu Wanning lightly tapped the air. The hovering silver needle chimed with a faint, clear sound. She closed her eyes, listening, and said softly, "The pulse of the world… I hear it. It's clogged, but also flowing. It's in pain, but also healing." She perceived no longer the floating dust of surface emotions, but the deeper rhythms and balances that constituted the world's operation.
The moment her words fell—
Hum…
A vibration, incredibly faint yet seeming to strike directly within the souls of all four of them simultaneously, rippled out from their center.
The Blood Seal on Chu Hongying's arm pulsed with a warm, powerful beat. A profound light flowed for an instant through the Mirror Patterns in Shen Yuzhu's eyes. Lu Wanning's silver needle's hum suddenly harmonized. And Gu Changfeng, merely standing still, felt that intangible sense of "presence" become starkly clear and solid, forming the steadiest, most essential foundation of this sudden resonance.
Blood, Mirror, Reason, Wind. Four divergent yet cognate forces, four seals bearing different destinies, for the first time, not forced by external pressure or passive defense, but as if finding their missing puzzle pieces, began to resonate autonomously, harmoniously. An invisible, stable, four-polar energy field naturally formed around them, gently pushing back the screaming blizzard, creating a strange pocket of calm.
"The four of us…" Lu Wanning, feeling this wondrous, wordless connection born from their very essence, had a flash of understanding in her eyes. "...right now, don't we resemble some kind of 'Four Cardinal Seals' meant to stabilize the world?"
Shen Yuzhu's voice was calm and certain, without a trace of doubt. "Not resemble. We are." His gaze swept over Chu Hongying, over Gu Changfeng, finally meeting Lu Wanning's serene eyes. "Blood, Mirror, Reason, Wind. The Four Poles are established." He pronounced this not just based on data, but on this soul-deep resonance.
Chu Hongying met his gaze. Her Lie Feng Spear was already in her hand, its cold metal a strange comfort now. The spear tip lifted naturally, pointing north—the direction from which the call in her blood was strongest, most urgent. "Since the Four Poles are established, where do we go?"
Gu Changfeng yanked his Cloud-Edge Blade from the snow, hefting it onto his shoulder with a casual yet firm motion. His grin carried a reckless, untamed edge, carrying an air that could cleave through all obstacles ahead. "Who cares where we end up! Right now, the question is, can we walk this path?" He paused, his voice iron-steady. "If we can't, then we'll cut a path we can walk!"
This time, their steps were no longer stumbling, swept along by the torrent of fate. They themselves were choosing to step into that torrent, determined to steer its future course with their own hands.
In the depths of the Mirror Palace in the Imperial Capital, the flowing mirror walls, after a moment of absolute stillness, flickered back to life with difficulty. But the light flowing across them was chaotic, littered with fragments of residual data from a higher dimension that defied parsing, like strange scabs forming over a healing wound.
The new Emperor slowly rose from the center of the mirror array. On the sleeve of his magnificent imperial robe, a glaring patch of crimson was slowly spreading, like a malignant flower blooming in snow. He raised a hand, wiping the lingering blood from his lips with his fingertip without a care. His deep, well-like eyes held no frustration, no rage, only a near-mad, scorching excitement and greed.
He stared at the four points of light on the mirror wall that had reignited, their nature utterly transformed. They were no longer isolated sources of emotion, but four energy nexuses interconnected, forming a stable geometric structure.
"Chu Hongying… Shen Yuzhu… Lu Wanning… Gu Changfeng…" He murmured their names, his voice even, yet like the recitation of some ancient, forbidden chant. "Supreme Scrutinizer… so you were not carrying out a judgment of destruction. You were… forging the key to the final domain for me."
He stretched out a long finger, pointing at the stable energy connection flowing between the four points. A waterfall of data surged in his eyes, calculating, analyzing, deducing every mystery of this new structure.
"The Four Seals are complete, resonance is born… The foundational laws of the world have never been so clearly displayed before my eyes…" he whispered, a vast, cold plan solidifying completely in his mind. "Strip away the human impurities that disturb order, graft the authority that commands all… When you, the perfect 'vessels,' bear all the 'noise' of this world, the source of pure 'Order' itself will be plucked by my own hand."
"The Seal-Seizing Plan. The time is ripe. Commence now."
In a secluded, perpetually snow-locked valley in the Northern Frontier, Lu Changfeng, his hair and beard white, stared dumbfounded at the ancient Bronze Disc passed down through countless generations of 'Recorders' in his hands.
The central needle, which had guided so many predecessors, was completely shattered, reduced to a pile of spiritually inert metallic dust. And the phantom of Xuan, who had manifested at the critical juncture to leave his world-altering "Annotation," had also vanished without a trace, as if he had never been, leaving no mark.
Yet, on the bare surface of the disc, the ancient, mottled cracks now seemed imbued with life, slowly spreading and intersecting on their own, finally forming two lines of ancient script he had never seen before, but whose meaning he understood the moment he saw them:
Four Seals' First Cry.
The Door's Breath Stirs.
His aged, wrinkled finger trembled as he gently traced the marks that seemed to still carry residual warmth. A vast, primal wave of intent, saturated with "life," transmitted directly to his soul through the cold bronze. This feeling was identical to the will—gentle yet unyielding—that Xuan had imparted with his "Annotation." This was not a reappearance of Xuan's own power, but the "imprint" left upon the world's laws themselves after his crucial "intervention," once they had been disturbed and rewritten.
"He's gone… but he carved 'change' directly into the world's underlying logic…" Lu Changfeng muttered to himself. Xuan's "Annotation" seemed to still echo in his ears, driving the strange transformation of the disc before him, and seemingly, on a deeper level, driving the tracks of fate itself. He, the "Recorder" who believed himself objective, now clearly realized he was no longer recording eternal, calm laws, but a world forcibly injected with variables, now awakening from slumber, beginning to breathe with vivid life.
At the peak of the Northern Frontier, a place of eternal ice and endless, roaring wind and snow, Helian Sha stood like a wolf-statue fused with the ancient glaciers beneath him, trying to use his own boiling wolf-blood to commune with the savage, primordial will sleeping deep within this land.
Suddenly—
"Ugh!"
A completely alien sensation, belonging to no known power system in the Northern Frontier, yet weirdly carrying a faint, bloody familiarity, exploded from the very core of his spine without warning! It was as if an invisible hand had pierced through space and bloodline barriers, precisely reaching into the core of his power source and giving it a fierce jolt.
He grunted, caught off guard. His powerful body, capable of weathering storms, was forced uncontrollably to one knee. The iron-hard, millennial ice cracked into a spiderweb under his impact. The thick blood-mist around him churned and spilled out uncontrollably. This was not the active power of his wolf-blood, but a pure, uncontrolled outburst from the core of his bloodline.
He snapped his head up, his crimson pupils contracting into dangerous pinpricks. his gaze, sharp as a blade, pierced the heavy snow, locking unyieldingly onto the south—the general direction from which the force had come. A low roar of shock and fury squeezed through his clenched teeth:
"Who… who out there is prying at my blood source?!"
The strange tugging sensation was gone in an instant, but it had already carved a mark into his soul—one that felt cold, smooth, and mirror-like, impossible to erase.
On the snow plains, the four figures standing side-by-side felt the invisible four-polar resonance field around them stabilize and draw inward, no longer outwardly visible, yet making the connection between them more seamless than ever, as if they had become a single, complete organism.
Lu Wanning suddenly frowned slightly. She bent down, placing her pale hand gently on the cold snow, closing her eyes to sense carefully.
"The earth-pulse… is accelerating." She looked up, a clear worry in her eyes as she addressed the others. "Like a heart that slept too long, waking, beating hard. But… the 'veins' of the Northern Frontier are the oldest, most fragile. When the next, stronger 'breath' comes… this land might not withstand it. It could tear apart."
Shen Yuzhu's Mirror Patterns swirled, quickly integrating Lu Wanning's sensory feedback with his own reading of the changing energy data around them. "This isn't the precursor to a calamity," he concluded calmly, "but the world itself recovering its proper, living rhythm. It's just…" His tone grew heavier, choosing his words carefully to avoid naming the entity that might draw unwanted attention, "...this Northern land is the thinnest 'membrane' in the entire structure, the point of connection to the 'other side.' It can't withstand too violent a… 'breath.'"
Gu Changfeng lowered his Cloud-Edge Blade from his shoulder, its heavy tip planting firmly in the snow, drawing a clear line. His voice was resolute, without hesitation. "It's going to tear? Then what are we waiting for? Let's move, now, and plug it!"
Chu Hongying took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the unique cold of the North mingled with the newborn warmth from her blood. Her gaze was calm and sharp, sweeping over her three life-and-death companions. Her Lie Feng Spear trembled slightly in response to her will, emitting a low hum, its tip pointing unerringly north—not just the direction of the earth's pulse, but the source of the strongest pull in her blood.
"Then we go together." Her voice was level, yet carried a decisive will that could cleave through all confusion and hardship.
"The Four Seals advance together. The Northern Frontier is our beginning."
The wind and snow still rushed at their faces, but as they neared the edge of the invisible field around the four, they naturally parted and flowed around, as if even this celestial fury acknowledged the domain they now formed.
Beneath their feet, under the deep layers of snow, on ancient rock strata unseen by any, dim, bronze-colored patterns—seemingly natural yet hinting at an ineffable order—pulsed with a faint light, slow and deliberate, in time with the deep, primal "breath" of the world, like blood flowing under the skin of a slumbering leviathan, before fading once more, leaving no trace.
The world's breath grew deeper, more powerful, with the first step they took.