Subtitle: When the body is imprisoned, the heart begins to escape.
Dawn had not yet broken. In the west wing of the Returning Clouds Residence, night and morning still bled into one another, a grey limbo that mirrored Chu Hongying's own confinement. Since the court turmoil, she had been "temporarily confined to her quarters"—a polite term for a gilded cage. Imperial guards, their faces as impassive as stone statues, patrolled beyond the courtyard walls; the shimmering veil of the mirror array remained active, a constant, humiliating reminder of lost trust. Mist clung to the window lattices like unbroken nightmares, the silence so profound it seemed to swallow sound itself, leaving only the faint rhythm of her own breathing.
Chu Hongying sat motionless on the couch, her spine straight with a soldier's discipline even in repose. Her eyes, usually sharp enough to assess a battlefield in a single glance, were now downcast, tracing the cold patterns on the floor. The rhythmic, clockwork tread of iron-shod boots echoed from outside, a metallic heartbeat to this prison. Meanwhile, the residual light of the mirror array swirled upon the walls like countless cold, watching eyes, making the very air feel heavy and accusatory.
She couldn't tell whose heartbeat she had heard first—a faint, intrusive pulse beneath her own—until the two rhythms overlapped, and a deep, resonant pain began to seep, slow and insidious, into her bones.
It wasn't her heartbeat. This one was steadier, more suppressed, carrying the icy echo of a rationality straining at its limits. It emanated from the depths of her very marrow, a phantom rhythm perfectly synchronizing with her own pulse, an unwelcome intimacy forced upon her.
The shimmering mirror-light cast her pale profile on the wall, like an invisible spectrogram of this shared, tormenting heartbeat.
If the body is a cage, she whispered silently in her heart, her fingers curling into a tight fist, then this heartbeat is the chain, rattling to break free.
At the striking noon, Lu Wanning entered quietly, her movements as precise and noiseless as ever. She carried her ornate medicine chest, the scent of rare herbs trailing in her wake. The distant sound of the changing guard's horn echoed—a stark, practical reminder that this "rest" was merely another form of bondage.
With cool, clinical fingers, she placed her fingertips on Chu Hongying's wrist. Her touch was light, but her focus was absolute. After a moment, her brow furrowed slightly. "The resonance is overloading," she stated, her voice low and even. "The thresholds of your souls are blending. The flow is no longer one-way, but mutual." She was a diagnostician of the spirit, stating facts without comfort.
Chu Hongying looked up, her gaze sharpening. "His rational agony will scorch you," Lu Wanning's tone grew heavier, laced with a rare hint of warning. "And your emotional turmoil will tear him apart in turn." She paused, letting the gravity of her words settle in the quiet room. "If you do not build mental defenses, the mild consequence will be spiritual depletion and physical collapse. The severe…" she hesitated, "…your boundaries will gradually merge until you become one being, losing all sense of self."
The air in the room seemed to freeze.
Chu Hongying was silent for a long moment, absorbing the terrifying prognosis. Then, her voice low but clear, she countered, "If a mental defense is a wall, then who is imprisoned inside it—me, or him?" It was the question of a general who had always fought her way out, now confronting a battle where conventional tactics failed.
She lowered her gaze, her calloused fingertips trembling slightly against her will. She remembered the silent, frozen corpses on the snowy plains of the Northern Frontier—perhaps the heartless, she thought with a bitter taste in her mouth, truly did find it easier to survive.
Lu Wanning did not answer. There was no answer she could give that would satisfy a warrior's heart. She withdrew her hand, turning to record the pulse observations on a scroll. Her brush paused briefly, and she finally added a small, precise line: Blood sigils faintly burning—perhaps resonating with the Door.
At the same moment, deep within the stark, minimalist confines of his suspended residence, Shen Yuzhu was engulfed in an utter, suffocating silence.
On the third day after the court interrogation, the Night Crow Division had sent their "Heart-Calming Tonic"—a cruel euphemism for a potion that was ostensibly for comfort, but in truth, a tool for surveillance. He knew the rules of this dark game: if he did not drink this poison, the full weight of the mirror array's scrutiny would immediately shift back onto her.
With a face devoid of expression, betraying none of the turmoil within, he uncorked the vial and drank the bitter liquid in one go.
The moment the scorching pain spread through his throat, the psychic illusions arrived as expected. Visions of blazing flames on the Northern Frontier snowfields violently intertwined with the relentless inferno of the Lu family's massacre. Deep within the chaotic fire, Chu Hongying's determined face overlapped repeatedly with the terrified, innocent eyes of that little girl from ten years ago—a ghost he could never escape.
Cold sweat beaded on his temples. His fingertips, pale and slender, dug deep into his palms, drawing half-moons of blood. The cage of reason was not an external thing, but a lock he himself had meticulously forged and now struggled to maintain.
A sheet of pristine white paper lay spread on his stark black desk. Compulsively, almost desperately, he picked up his brush, his movements usually so controlled now showing a faint tremor. He wrote over and over again, the characters stark and bold—Protect her.
The ink was copious, bleeding through the page. Then, one by one, he held each confession close to the candle flame, watching the paper curl, blacken, turn to ash, and fall like cold, silent snow between his icy fingers.
"I built a cage of reason to imprison myself," he whispered hoarsely to the oppressive emptiness, "yet I cannot cage the relentless drumming of your heartbeat."
Night fell like spilled ink, utterly enveloping the courtyard.
Chu Hongying practiced with her spear in the confined yard, the Lie Feng Spear cutting through the thick silence with sharp, whistling arcs. She pushed her body to its limits, muscles burning, trying to use sheer physical exhaustion to smother the turbulent storm deep in her soul.
Suddenly, a searing, sharp pain in her chest! The Blood Oath Mark burned as if branded by an invisible fire, a direct conduit to his suffering.
Her vision blurred momentarily, and through the connection, she "saw"—him sitting alone in profound darkness, his formidable rationality being devoured by the poison and the torrent of agonizing memories surging within him.
So resonance can also be a blade, she realized, a weapon that cut both ways.
She no longer resisted the pull. Instead, she stopped her forms, closed her eyes, and focused her formidable will entirely on the burning mark over her heart. The raw, powerful will to "protect," tempered in countless battles and solid as iron and stone, gathered and then flowed back fiercely along the invisible thread of resonance!
On the other end, Shen Yuzhu was sinking, drowning in the quagmire of illusionary poison, when a warm, steadfast force suddenly surged into his mind like a lifeline. It was fierce, yet unwavering, enveloping his nearly frozen consciousness. The raging, chaotic illusions miraculously quieted for a precious moment, held at bay by her strength.
A night wind swept through her courtyard, carrying the scent of damp earth, like a distant, answering echo. Two heartbeats, in different cages, skipped a beat in perfect, painful unison.
Chu Hongying opened her eyes, her breath slightly ragged, but her gaze shone strikingly bright in the moonlight.
I'm not saving him, she told herself, clenching the shaft of her spear, I'm just standing with him. It was a distinction that mattered to her warrior's pride.
Late at night, heavy with dew, and because the imperial confinement order remained in effect, the heavy courtyard gate was still sealed. Gu Changfeng, ever the shadow, could only scale the high wall under cover of darkness, a jug of strong wine swinging casually from his hand.
"This confinement of yours is busier than my night shifts," he remarked, his voice a familiar, teasing gravel as he landed softly on the stones. "Listening to heartbeats, watching visions. Quite the repertoire you're developing."
Chu Hongying, her practice done, wiped the fine sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. "I'd rather be on the battlefield," she replied, the longing for open skies and clear enemies stark in her voice.
Gu Changfeng paused, his usual mocking smile fading into something more sincere. He let out a quiet laugh, that almost turned into a sigh. "Where the battlefield is doesn't matter," he said, his voice softening remarkably. "What matters is—don't forget how to breathe while you're fighting it."
His words were like a passing wind, slipping through the locked courtyard and the iron armor she had built around her heart. He drained his cup in one gulp, and in the moment he looked up, his smile was swallowed by the night—the wind understood the cold outside the cage, and knew the stubborn heat within.
With a fluid motion, he flipped back over the wall, leaving as silently as he came, the night wind carrying away the rest of his unfinished advice.
Approaching dawn, the world settled into its deepest silence.
Chu Hongying stood before her bronze mirror, slowly removing the pieces of her practice armor. The polished metal reflected her pale, tired face, but the next moment, the outline wavered, faintly overlapping Shen Yuzhu's gaunt, pained reflection—the blood-red glow of her own aura tangled with the cold, silver halo surrounding him, the two lights wrestling, inseparable.
She reached out and touched the icy mirror surface, as if trying to reach through it.
The mirror rippled like disturbed water, the sound of it extremely faint, yet it resonated like an echo flowing directly from the heart. The lingering shadow of his frantic brushstrokes, the desperate characters Protect her burning on the page as he consigned them to flame—flashed once, vivid and poignant, in the shimmering light.
"She once thought the mirror was a cage," Chu Hongying gazed intently at the dual reflection, a slow understanding dawning in her eyes, "only now understanding—Beyond the mirror, there are no boundaries; within their cages, they share one heart."
A single black crow feather, sleek and ominous, drifted down onto Shen Yuzhu's windowsill, as if materializing from the shadows themselves. It pinned down a plain, unadorned note, the handwriting sharp and precise: "Teacher, the Night Crow Division misses your singular reason. The tea is prepared, awaiting your return to the nest."
At the same time, in the flickering candlelight of her study, Lu Wanning added a final, decisive line to the last page of her medical record, her expression unreadable: "The blood sigils glow intensely, as if some deeper, primordial force is awakening."
— It was the first soundless exhalation, rising from the depths of the world.