The mountain path was damp and icy.
Fine beads of water clung to the stone walls like countless eyes staring at him from every direction.
Bai Lin's footsteps were heavy; each one carried rhythmic pain.
The burning deep in his chest had not faded—like an invisible flame slowly searing his heart.
The Demon Emperor lurked silently in his veins, saying nothing.
That silence unsettled Bai Lin more than any words could have.
The Demon Emperor always spoke when things grew "interesting."
His silence now meant something abnormal was happening on this path—something even he could not ignore.
Footsteps echoed between the walls.
But they were not his alone.
…Drip.
Bai Lin stopped.
The sound was too soft—not a pebble falling,
more like a drop of blood hitting bone.
He crouched, fingertips brushing the ground.
No blood.
Yet when he raised his eyes, every hair on his body stood on end.
A hair-thin crack had appeared on the rock wall ahead.
As though someone had just scratched the stone with a fingernail.
So thin it was nearly invisible—
yet the entire wall twitched, as if breathing.
Bai Lin took a step back.
Only then did the Demon Emperor speak, his voice unnaturally low:
[…It has caught up.]
Bai Lin clenched his fists until his knuckles went white.
"You mean… the Boundary Layer?"
The Demon Emperor gave a soft laugh.
[You think the Boundary Layer itself would bother chasing you?]
[What pursues you is only its influence—not the thing itself.]
Bai Lin frowned. "Influence?"
[Yes—like moonlight does not move, but shadows do.]
[The true Boundary Layer never leaves its place, but its "folding traces" can follow you.]
Bai Lin stared at the crack.
Moments ago it had been a single thread.
Now there were second, third, fourth lines…
spreading like a spiderweb.
Bai Lin's heart lurched. "It's getting closer?"
Demon Emperor:
[Not closer—it is "copying your path."]
Bai Lin's breath hitched.
The cracks on the wall perfectly matched the places he had just stepped.
Even at sharp turns, the angles of the fissures mirrored his exact route.
The Demon Emperor spoke slowly:
[You think you are fleeing.
In truth, every step you take is being recorded by it.]
Bai Lin's eyes narrowed. "Recorded…?"
Demon Emperor:
[Put simply—it is reproducing you.]
[Soon it will possess "your way of walking."]
A nauseating chill rose in Bai Lin's gut.
"…It can imitate that much?"
Demon Emperor:
[It can imitate more than walking.]
[Once it draws close enough… it will imitate your choices.]
Sweat beaded on Bai Lin's palms.
Choices?
Meaning—who he would kill, who he would save, where he would go?
The Demon Emperor seemed to enjoy watching his face drain of colour:
[The Boundary Layer's greatest talent is dismantling "existence,"
then reassembling it according to its own understanding.]
[Your gait, your breath, your killing—everything can become its material.]
Bai Lin closed his eyes, forcing his breathing to slow.
"…Then how do I shake it off?"
The Demon Emperor was silent for a moment.
[You cannot shake it off.]
[It is not following you—it is rewriting the places you have walked.]
The cold inside Bai Lin deepened.
A sudden realisation struck him:
"So… it isn't chasing me, it's chasing—"
The Demon Emperor finished for him:
[—the blood you leave behind.]
Bai Lin's pupils trembled.
He looked back.
Sure enough—
near the drops of blood he had shed earlier, the wall was now covered in twisted cracks,
as though some silent corruption were pursuing the traces of his life.
Demon Emperor:
[Your blood is what interests it most.]
Bai Lin gritted his teeth, swallowing his fear:
"Because I was… a sacrifice?"
Demon Emperor:
[No.]
[Because you are a "retrieval error" for the Boundary.]
Bai Lin's heart stopped.
"…Retrieval error?"
Demon Emperor:
[The way you died, the instant you revived, the moment you had no shadow—
none of it followed the normal "sacrifice protocol."]
[The Boundary thinks you belong to it.]
[Now it is simply… reclaiming what is its.]
Bai Lin's fingers turned ice-cold and stiff.
He suddenly felt like an object misplaced—
and its owner was tracking him down by signal.
"So…"
His throat was too dry to speak.
"…In its eyes, I'm not even a 'person'?"
The Demon Emperor's voice was soft yet freezing:
[It has no concept of "person."]
[You are merely one of its fragments.]
Bai Lin fell silent.
Disgust and rage churned inside him, indescribable.
Then—real footsteps, not cracks.
He tensed and whipped around.
On the far side of the path, a grey-black mountain beast crawled out from the bushes,
ears drooping, eyes wide with terror.
It must have been driven here by the aura of the cracks.
Bai Lin exhaled slightly—
only for the beast to suddenly freeze.
The next instant,
its belly began to swell, distort, twist—
as if a hand inside were trying to rip it open.
Bai Lin's face changed.
"Another Boundary trace?"
Demon Emperor:
[When it reaches the vicinity of your blood, it leaves after-images.]
[Any creature that touches an after-image will be "folded" by it.]
The beast's abdomen tore open.
Blood and entrails spilled out—
yet the pile of gore began to writhe on its own,
as though trying to form a human shape.
Bai Lin's breath turned cold. He retreated at once.
Demon Emperor:
[Do not touch it. It is copying you.]
"Copying me?!"
Demon Emperor:
[Not exactly.]
[It is copying "what you might have done" while near it.]
Bai Lin's fingers tightened, throat constricting:
"I might have… killed it?"
Demon Emperor:
[Precisely.]
The mass of flesh began crawling toward Bai Lin,
moving in a way that was grotesquely unnatural—
not on four limbs,
but in "the way it believes Bai Lin might walk."
Knees bending wrong, bones snapping at copied angles,
even mimicking the contortions of his corpse-like state.
Cold sweat drenched Bai Lin.
This was not a monster.
It was a mirror reflecting his murderous intent.
Demon Emperor:
[If you do not run, it will try imitating your "way of attacking."]
Bai Lin's heart clenched.
If it copied the way he had slaughtered the wolf in the abyss—
it would become something far more dangerous than a mountain beast.
Bai Lin bit down:
"Run!"
He turned and sprinted.
The writhing flesh pursued faster than it appeared.
Cracks spread madly along the exact route he ran,
two lines extending in parallel—
one was the path he took.
the other was the path it rewrote.
Demon Emperor:
[The faster you run, the faster it records.]
"Then I stop?!"
Demon Emperor:
[Stop and you die.]
Bai Lin: "…"
Demon Emperor:
[It is not chasing you—it is chasing your "state of being alive."]
[The more fiercely you cling to life, the better it can imitate.]
Bai Lin felt as though a boulder crushed his chest.
For the first time he understood—
the Boundary Layer was learning,
and he was teaching it.
No matter which way he went, he was teaching it.
The path suddenly widened into a steep downward slope covered in dead vines and loose stones.
A thought flashed through Bai Lin's mind: slide down—could he lose it?
The Demon Emperor warned instantly:
[Don't!]
"Why?"
[It will imitate your leap.]
[But it will leap faster, more times.]
[You fall once and break a bone—it will fall ten times and break ten bones.]
[It will master "how to fall without dying" faster than you.]
Cold sweat rolled down Bai Lin's forehead.
"…Then what do I do?"
The Demon Emperor was silent for a moment.
[Leave your blood… in a direction you will not go.]
Bai Lin froze.
"You mean… trick it?"
Demon Emperor:
[It will follow your blood trail.]
[Make it follow the wrong one, and you delay its recording of you.]
Bai Lin glanced at the slope and bit down hard.
He tore open his fingertip.
Three thin trails of blood scattered along the edge of the slope, carried by the night wind.
Bai Lin took a deep breath,
then turned—
onto a different, narrower path.
He forced himself not to run, to leave as little scent as possible.
Half a minute later—
Behind him,
the mountain path tore open.
"That thing" shot straight toward the slope like a tentacle drawn to blood,
plunging downward.
Bai Lin heard the rapid crack-crack-crack of bones breaking below.
It was imitating "jumping."
But jumping faster, more brutally than he ever could.
Demon Emperor:
[Good. You made it record the wrong thing.]
[You deceived it once.]
Bai Lin exhaled a turbid breath.
But the Demon Emperor continued:
[Only once.]
[It will realise the mistake. Next time it will walk all three paths at once.]
Bai Lin's heart went cold:
"It will… split?"
Demon Emperor:
[It will try.]
Bai Lin's spine prickled.
It was not alive—
yet it could imitate the concept of splitting.
Bai Lin inhaled deeply:
"…How long until it catches up?"
The Demon Emperor paused.
[…Two incense sticks' worth of time.]
Bai Lin clenched his fists.
"Then within those two sticks—where do I go?"
Demon Emperor:
[To a place it cannot imitate.]
Bai Lin's heart pounded:
"It cannot imitate? Isn't it capable of anything?"
Demon Emperor:
[It cannot imitate things you yourself do not know.]
[It cannot imitate what you have never seen, never thought of.]
Bai Lin: "…Do I know any such place right now?"
The Demon Emperor pressed close to his consciousness, voice brushing the back of his ear:
[You do.]
[The place where you died—
the Heavenly Sacrifice Platform.]
Bai Lin halted dead in his tracks.
"…You're telling me to go back?"
Demon Emperor:
[You are not escaping—you fled in the wrong direction.]
Bai Lin's throat tightened.
The Demon Emperor whispered:
[The Boundary Layer wants to reclaim you.]
[And the Heavenly Sacrifice Platform is the one place… it dares not reach into lightly.]
Bai Lin:
"Why?"
The Demon Emperor laughed:
[Because—
the Heavenly Sacrifice Platform was never meant for it alone.]
[There is something there… that it fears.]
[…Something you saw when you died.]
Bai Lin's entire body turned to ice.
His memories of death were shrouded in blood-mist; he could not recall—
but the Demon Emperor's tone told him:
the Boundary Layer was not the only thing there.
There was another presence…
that even the Boundary feared.
Bai Lin raised his eyes.
"Then I'll go back."
The Demon Emperor's voice lightened:
[Good.]
[Then—thirty li to the northeast.]
[Behind the second barren peak, you will find an old sacrificial road.]
[Take that road. Not because it is safe, but because—]
The Demon Emperor's voice drifted from some ancient, hollow depth, laced with unspeakable delight:
[That road… will let you see again the thing you lacked when you died.]
Bai Lin's heart grew heavy, yet he did not falter.
He turned northeast.
Behind him, the cracks in the walls slowly folded back,
already correcting their path.
It was finding him again.
Bai Lin stepped forward, his voice cold as bloodless steel:
"I am alive."
"So—"
"Come chase me."
Wind screamed.
From deep within the stone walls came the second low moan of folding.
The Boundary Layer had discarded one mistake
and was preparing to correct.
Bai Lin did not look back.
But he knew—
that moan meant:
It had seen him again.