The courtyard was still an inferno of clashing forces.
Swords rang like a tide breaking against stone. Chains of black seals knotted through the night, colliding with witchfire, mirror-light, and blade-gleam, each collision shredding a new fracture into the dark.
Shen Jin's chest burned as though an ember were lodged in his lungs, choking him with every breath. The seal-chains pressed in from all directions. His arms were forced to guard, body trembling under the assault—yet the brand on the back of his hand beat like a second heart, pulsing fire along his veins until it felt as though his own flesh was being peeled away.
Then the whisper came again.
Closer now. Clearer than ever. As if a stylus scraped across paper deep inside his mind.
—The next stroke. Write my name… or be erased.
The words cut sharper than any sword, a verdict driven straight into his soul.
Shen Jin shuddered violently. For an instant his vision warped—the chains binding him no longer looked like metal or glyphs, but lines of black script twisting in midair, their strokes rewriting themselves before his eyes.
Luo Qinghan swept forward. Her paper mirror flared, layering a shield of pale light between him and the descending net. The silver surface rippled like a calm lake, but in the next heartbeat the law-net of the golden-back tablet descended, summoning a lattice of runes heavy as iron. Mirror-light and law-net collided, showering sparks of glyph-light across the courtyard.
"I can't hold it!"
Luo Qinghan's voice trembled despite her composure.
The lead escort shout cracked like thunder:
"Bind the spirit. Seal the soul!"
Ten chains leapt all at once, black serpents lunging to coil around Shen Jin, each rune dripping with authority not of men but of heaven.
And in that instant—something deep within Shen Jin's body snapped.
A lock, buried far beneath flesh and spirit, gave way.
He raised his hand, and the brand upon it was no longer a mere scar of flame.
It had become… an inscription.
Lines of red fire twined into script, stretching up his arm, across his chest, and then bursting outward like burning characters etched into the very air. Each stroke blazed with unbearable brilliance, a writing that refused to be ignored—writing not upon paper, but upon reality itself.
"…Release of the Seal's Breath—!"
A voice cried out from the escorts, choked with disbelief.
The moment the chains touched him, the inscriptions detonated. A web of crimson light erupted outward, sweeping across the courtyard like a tidal wave of flame. The black serpents shrieked with a sound that was not metal nor spirit, but the shrill tearing of rules unraveling. They burned away into ash, glyphs shredding mid-form like spiderwebs set alight.
The ground convulsed. Tiles shattered upward. The hidden matrix of the sealing array fractured, its law-lines ripping apart in jagged bursts of light. Even the golden-black tablet in the air flickered, its edges distorting as though pressed down by a power of higher order.
Half a Seal Domain… expanding.
The night froze.
Every breath halted, as if the world itself had forgotten how to continue.
This was no simple spell. It was not a weapon wielded by a cultivator's will. The courtyard itself—the pulse of time, the angles of space, the rhythm of breath—were being rewritten by some invisible hand.
"…The domain of the Seal."
Ling Wanzhou, standing at the flank, could not keep his expression calm. His lips shaped the words as if naming them might steady him, but his eyes betrayed shock.
The crimson net spread wider. Sealing chains crumbled to dust at its touch. The green witchfire arrows that streaked from the shadows fizzled into smoke the instant they crossed the boundary. A calculation-disc from the starwatchers of Miaoji Tower clattered onto stone and melted into glowing slag. A monk from the Kulian Temple lifted his wooden fish to strike—but the instrument exploded in his hands, shards embedding in his brow as blood ran down the bridge of his nose. Even the rune carved into his forehead tore open, leaving a wound that pulsed like a third eye.
Shen Jin himself was more terrified than anyone else.
His own blood seemed to reverse in his veins, surging backward, boiling against his skin. His mind roared like a furnace. The whisper was no longer distant but breathing beside his ear, so close he could feel the cool tip of the pen scraping across some blank parchment of his soul.
—Write my name. Or be erased.
A demand. A lure. A verdict.
"No… I never wanted this!"
His throat was raw, words dragged like ash across stone. The flame-script was not his to control. It rose and flared of its own accord, fed by his pulse, his breath. With every heartbeat the domain widened another inch.
Luo Qinghan tried to catch his arm, but the searing light repelled her. The edge of her sleeve blackened and crumbled. For the first time her eyes betrayed a flicker of fear—this was not merely spirit-force or magic. This was the tearing of law itself.
"The Seal is using you as the pen,"
She murmured, voice low, nearly drowned in the chaos.
"It is writing a new law with your body."
The others heard as well, gazes sharpened.
Elder Shang Luhan of the Taiqing Sect narrowed his eyes, his voice a cold sneer:
"So it truly can rewrite order itself. If Taiqing holds this Seal, why should we bow to decrees from the gods?"
Mingjue Master of the Kulian Temple clasped his hands, chanting a solemn verse—but beneath his lashes a killing edge gleamed.
"This boy cannot be allowed to live. His presence alone is chaos."
Song Shuangyi of Miaoji Tower closed her starbook with a faint smile, gaze unreadable.
"The calculations end here… all outcomes circle back to him."
From the shadows, the witch emissary Wu Dulu of the Nanhuang Sect licked his lips, voice a rasp like scales on stone.
"Half the Yao Abyss… yes, it's here. It's in him."
And across the roofs, disciples from the Eight Sects exchanged glances. Some touched talismans at their belts. Others released faint tendrils of spirit-sense to pass secret signals.
The meaning was the same across them all:
This was no longer the Ningyuan Judiciary's business. Shen Jin was a prize.
But Shen Jin himself had no space for their schemes.
His mind was breaking open. The Seal's gaze was close—so close he felt as if a pair of burning eyes were peering out through his own skull.
"Stop! If you let it write, you'll never come back!"
Luo Qinghan's voice cracked. She slashed her sleeve, mirror-light cascading like silver rain, trying to shear through the inscription-light spreading from his body. The clash shook her chest, made her cough blood, the taste bitter against her tongue.
Shen Jin dug his fingers into the tiles, nails breaking, blood smearing stone.
Write my name.
The whisper pressed harder, merciless.
Sweat streamed down his face, into his mouth, like salt and iron. His only thought—the only thought left—was that if he let the stroke fall, would he still be himself? Or would there be nothing left but the name written through him?
The wind howled.
The crimson web blazed across the courtyard, unmaking every formation it touched. Runes shattered like shards of glass. For this moment, the world's law seemed fractured.
And in the shadows, countless eyes glimmered.
The Five Orders and Eight Sects.
Every one of them had seen the truth.
Every one of them had made the same decision.
They would hunt him.
And in that instant, Shen Jin understood: from the moment the brand ignited upon his hand, the path behind him had already vanished. There was no way back.