The Fog Island Lotus appeared with perfect naturalness.
His arrival felt so seamless that it was as if he had been standing there all along, rather than blocking someone's path.
The double images in the courtyard had not fully dissipated yet, and echoes from another realm lingered in the air.
Li had just taken a step forward when a voice stopped him in his tracks.
'This far and no further.'
It wasn't an order or a threat, merely a statement.
Li looked up to see Kirishima Ren standing not far ahead. His uniform was immaculate, his expression composed and his breathing rhythm precise beyond that of an ordinary person.
He emitted no spiritual pressure and adopted no offensive stance.
Yet simply by standing there, he seemed to make space itself yield, forming an invisible line that Li dared not cross.
Li halted.
'Your doing?' He glanced at the overlapping zone behind him. 'Quite troublesome.'
The Fog Island Lotus didn't look at that space.
His gaze remained fixed on Li the entire time.
'You did come, as expected.' His tone held no surprise.
In that instant, an uncomfortable feeling stirred within Li.
It wasn't the feeling of being targeted, but rather of being validated.
'You know me?' Li asked.
'I know your "state", not you as a person,' Kirishima Ren corrected.
The air visibly grew colder at his words.
'Your existence frequency doesn't belong in this phase. You shouldn't have manifested prematurely, much less interfered," he continued, his tone steady as if he were reading a report.
Li frowned. 'Is this the new catchphrase among your student council members?'
Kirishima Ren finally narrowed his eyes slightly.
Not in anger, but in confirmation.
'You lack self-awareness,' he said. 'That makes you all the more dangerous.'
The next instant, Li distinctly felt the surrounding space lock down.
Not sealing, but judgement.
If he took one more step forward, the 'enforcer of order on the human side' would reach a conclusion without hesitation.
Eliminate or reclaim.
Li suddenly smiled.
'So you're standing here now to take action?'
Kirishima Ren fell silent for half a second.
'Not now. I'm only here to confirm one thing.'
He regarded Li as if cross-referencing him against some pre-existing standard answer.
'To confirm that you truly have no place here.'
Those words carried more weight than any threat.
They weren't an emotional judgement, but a system-level negation.
'Conclusion upheld,' Kirishima Ren stated, turning away. 'Henceforth, every action you take will be recorded.'
He walked away decisively.
He didn't look back.
Li stood rooted to the spot as that familiar resonance slowly spread through his chest.
For the first time, he realised clearly: The most dangerous thing wasn't the spirit entity.
It was this kind of 'person' who had already decided whether or not to let you stay.
Mio plunged almost directly into the depths of the dreamscape.
No buffer, no transition—the rules shattered beneath her feet.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
The system's "existence verification" had activated, not for her, but for Li.
Once complete, Li would be permanently marked.
Mio had no time to consider the cost.
She bypassed the tier she was permitted to occupy.
The dreamscape screeched in alarm as its structure began to disintegrate. Frames fell away piece by piece, like a world model being forcibly dismantled.
She finally understood:
This wasn't Li's dream. The system was verifying the layer he occupied.
Data, frequencies, echoes of history—each aligned, ready for validation.
Mio didn't call his name.
She knew it wouldn't help.
She reached out, inserting her consciousness into the verification circuit—
not to overwrite, but to interfere.
She left a trace.
Not information, not memory, but a fragment of existence that would be automatically classified as "meaningless noise."
The cost was that this trace would be excised from her own being.
Mio understood.
When she awoke, she wouldn't remember what she'd left behind, or even who she once was.
But she did it anyway.
"Don't confirm now," she whispered in her dream.
The system's verification process faltered momentarily.
Marking failed.
Existence verification forced into delay.
The dream began violently receding, as if tearing her entire consciousness apart. In the split second before being pulled away, Mio felt something peel away from her.
It didn't hurt.
Just felt hollow.
Li Meng sat bolt upright in bed.
His heart was racing wildly.
He had no idea what had happened; he could only remember that, in the previous instant, something had seemed to shield him.
He raised his hand to press it against his chest.
'What did you do now?'
There was no response.
At a deeper level, Mio's name appeared incomplete in the system records for the first time.