Snow fell again in the deepest hours, fine as sand, pattering against the tents with a sound like countless tiny nails scraping at something frozen.
Shen Yuzhu lay on the low cot in the medical tent, eyes open. It was not from sleeplessness, but from daring not to sleep.
The backlash from the heart-realm rift was worse than anticipated. Lu Wanning's silver needles had sealed his main meridians, but the images forced into his consciousness—Chu Hongying's childhood inferno, his own mirror-implant, their shoulders pressed together in the snowy night—replayed on their own. Like a shattered mirror, each fragment reflected wounds from different times.
What chilled him most was this: whenever those images flashed, the warmth in his chest pulsed in sync.
As if they were not phantom afterimages, but the memories of another heart, growing into his flesh through the cracks.
Footsteps sounded outside, extremely light.
Shen Yuzhu closed his eyes and feigned sleep.
The tent flap lifted a corner. A sliver of oil-lamp light leaked in, casting a long shadow that paused at the entrance for three breaths. It did not enter. Then came an almost inaudible sigh, lost in the wind and snow.
The flap fell. The footsteps receded.
He knew who it was. Knew she would not enter—because he pretended, and she respected that pretense.
This understanding had formed like cracks on ice. No words were needed. Both walked along that fissure.
When dawn light struggled through the clouds, the camp woke.
Not by horns or commands, but spontaneously, tentatively. People emerged, first looking up at the Heartfire Banner—still there, fluttering silently, its dark crimson patterns deeper than yesterday, like a wound after scabbing.
Then they moved.
Old Chen, one-armed, shouldered new-cut wooden stakes toward the east wall. Amur led herdsmen to inspect the snow shelters over the horse pens. Li Shuan walked from the medical tent, needle punctures still seeping blood, straight to the cooking area to take the paddle stirring the gruel.
No one directed them. Everyone knew.
This order was not trained. It was bought with last night's fear—when you nearly forget your own name, you cherish remembering what to do.
Gu Changfeng stood on the half-finished watchtower, his wind domain expanded like an invisible web, sensing the camp's aura flow. Mostly tired but steady pulses. Faint fear-aftershocks. A crude equilibrium.
Until his senses touched the western water channel.
Two soldiers were reinforcing the fence there. Their movements were standard. Their rhythms synchronized. Their breathing nearly identical.
But their eyes held no light.
Not fatigue. Utter emptiness—like wells scooped dry, leaving only black hollows.
Gu Changfeng leapt down.
When he landed before them, they halted simultaneously and turned. Their eyes were still vacant.
"Names."
The left soldier's throat worked. "Wang… Wang Wu?"
The right spoke flatly: "Patrol shift, third quarter of the Chen hour to the full Si hour. East wall to west channel. No abnormalities."
Gu Changfeng waved a hand before their eyes. Their pupils contracted, lagging half a beat. Cognitive disconnect.
"Medical tent."
They turned without objection, their steps perfectly in unison, like puppets on one string.
Gu Changfeng followed, his wind domain locked tight. He heard it—beneath their breathing and heartbeat, another layer of fluctuation. Subtle. Regular. Chillingly so.
Not a human rhythm.
A mechanical cadence—too regular, too hollow.
Lu Wanning had just changed the last dressing when Gu Changfeng brought them in.
One glance. Her heterochromatic pupils contracted sharply.
"Don't touch them." Her voice dropped low as she drew specially-made needles—shafts wrapped with dawn-silver filaments, tails tempered dark blue.
Gu Changfeng halted. His wind domain contracted, isolating them.
Lu Wanning walked to Wang Wu. She didn't take his pulse. Three needles: neck side, brow center, wrist pulse. The needle tails sank in and erupted with fine black cracks—radial fissures on struck ice.
"Delayed mirror-poison activation." Each word was cold as an ice spike. "Not poisoning. Implanted behavioral commands. Dormant normally. Triggered by specific conditions—" She paused. "Like the Banner's pull tightening around all of them."
She withdrew the needles. The tips brought wisps of faint ice-blue mist that writhed, formed a complex sigil outline, and dissipated.
"Night Crows' Mirror Puppetry Art." Lu Wanning looked at Gu Changfeng. "Last night's heart-realm rift wasn't an accident. It was the trigger."
Gu Changfeng's expression darkened. "How many?"
"Unknown." Lu Wanning turned to organize her chest. "Doesn't affect physiology. Can even enhance execution. Undetectable unless they show 'cognitive void' like these." Lower, she added: "The command could be anything. Patrol. Build. Distribute rations. Or—at a specific moment—plunge a knife into the comrade beside them."
Silence.
Distant drilling shouts mixed with the wind's howl, making the quiet more acute.
"Cure?"
"Need time to analyze the command structure. But first, identify all latent carriers. Isolate. Otherwise, the next Banner resonance—"
She didn't finish. Gu Changfeng understood.
Next time, it wouldn't be two men patrolling vacuously.
It could be twenty men, slitting throats beside them in their sleep.
Atop the west wall, Chu Hongying received the wind-domain message:
Mirror puppets sighted. Return immediate.
She held a broken crossbow component—last night's remnant, bearing the raven-feather engraving. Her fingers tightened. The wood groaned.
Three breaths. Release. The part fell into the snow.
"Batu."
The plainsman below looked up.
"West wall to you. Build by Shen Yuzhu's chart. Any anomaly, whistling arrow." She leapt from the wall, spear-tapping the snow for leverage, vanishing toward the camp center.
She didn't go to the medical tent first. She detoured behind the main tent, to the Banner.
It snapped fiercely in the morning wind, its dark crimson patterns like congealed blood under the overcast light. She looked up for three breaths. Reached out. Her palm pressed the flagpole.
Cold. Rough. But deep within, a faint pulse—last night's Four Poles resonance, the imprint of three hundred wills.
She closed her eyes.
The blood-lock warmed slightly, resonating.
Then she saw.
Not images. Connections—the Banner as a center, countless light-threads spreading to every person. Most were stable, tired but clear. But a dozen or so… were severed.
No. Not severed.
Reconnected by threads of another color—ghostly blue, cold, unnaturally regular. Puppet strings.
Their other ends vanished into western shadows, pointing to the deep snow forests.
Chu Hongying opened her eyes. Crimson blazed deep in her pupils.
She understood.
The Night Crows never left.
They changed tactics—from external assault to internal corrosion.
Shen Yuzhu had risen before Gu Changfeng arrived.
His mirror-imprint was damaged, but basic perception remained. When those two "vacant" soldiers entered the camp, his mirror patterns trembled spontaneously—like a beast smelling a kindred scent, repelled yet attracted.
He forced himself to the tent entrance, heard Lu Wanning's words: "plunge a knife into the comrade beside them."
His fingertips turned ice-cold.
Not fear. Deeper chill—a familiar scent. Wolf-Owl Camp training: "Latency and Triggering." How to turn a person into a living trap.
Back then, he was the learner and the potential implement.
Now, he was a potential victim and the decision-maker who must prevent this.
The conflict pierced him like ice spikes, stabbing his newly warmed chest.
When Chu Hongying arrived, the four were gathered inside, the flap closed, Lu Wanning's meridian barrier sealing sound.
Brief report. Chu Hongying looked at Shen Yuzhu: "Identify all latent carriers?"
He closed his eyes, forced his mirror-imprint to operate. Splitting pain erupted. He didn't stop. Three breaths, hoarse: "Need the Banner as a hub for a full scan. But the cost—if the Night Crows planted countermeasures, the scan might trigger commands prematurely."
"Trigger leads to?" Gu Changfeng.
"Unknown." Shen Yuzhu opened his eyes, patterns swirling with chaotic data. "Rampage. Self-destruction. Or… sophisticated camouflage, forever undetectable."
Chu Hongying fell silent.
The oil lamp light flickered across her face, making her calm eyes bottomless. Her fingers gripping the spear turned white-knuckled, but her voice stayed startlingly steady:
"If we don't scan, we gamble. Gamble the next resonance won't make someone draw a blade." Pause. "I can't afford that."
Shen Yuzhu looked at her: "If scanning triggers a rampage now?"
"Then we deal with it now." Simple. "At least we're awake, blades in hand."
"You'd kill someone under control?" His voice rose slightly, mirror-light flickering.
"If necessary." Chu Hongying met his gaze, eyes like iron. "Shen Yuzhu, this is a battlefield, not a debate. My responsibility is getting most people out alive, not ensuring every one is redeemed."
"So repeat what the Empire does?" He stood, swayed slightly weak, his voice sharp as a blade. "Preemptively eliminate 'threats,' calling it 'for the majority'?"
The air tensed.
Gu Changfeng's hand moved to his sword hilt—instinctive vigilance. Lu Wanning's needles were ready between her fingers.
Chu Hongying didn't anger.
She looked at Shen Yuzhu for a long time. So long the lamp wick spat a tiny spark—a crackle.
Then:
"Shen Yuzhu, look into my eyes. Tell me—if right now, through your mirror-imprint, you saw in the next instant that Li Shuan would rampage, snap Old Chen's neck, what would you do?"
He froze.
"You'd first analyze the command structure, find a way to break it, right?" Calm as stating tactics. "But analysis takes time. Old Chen's neck snaps in one second."
She stepped forward, closing the distance, her breath audible.
"In that second you analyze, Old Chen dies." Each word was enunciated. "Then you suffer, blame yourself, think 'if only I'd been faster.'"
"But I wouldn't." Her voice was low, struck his chest like a hammer. "Before that, I'd spear Li Shuan through the shoulder, disable him. If that crippled him, I'd support him for life. If he died—"
Pause. Crimson deep in her pupils glowed like magma:
"I'd remember his name, add another mark to my sin ledger. Then keep guarding those left."
"That's our difference." She stepped back, creating distance, her voice returning to calm. "You seek bloodless solutions. I've walked in blood since ten years ago."
Shen Yuzhu opened his mouth, found all words pale as snow.
He knew she was right.
Between ideal and reality, salvation and survival—there were no perfect answers. Only choices and their costs.
Lu Wanning spoke then.
She didn't look at the two, head down sorting needles, voice flat as a diagnosis:
"Mirror-puppetry command structure, analyzed from residue." She looked up, her heterochromatic eyes swirling with complex meridian patterns. "Three trigger conditions: One, specific energy resonance—like the Banner's collective pull. Two, specific time. Three, remote activation by the caster."
To Chu Hongying: "A full scan means energy resonance. Trigger risk over seventy percent."
To Shen Yuzhu: "Leaving it, waiting for natural or remote trigger—casualties worse."
Conclusion:
"Compromise."
"Not Banner hub scan. Group screening. I'll needle-seal main meridians. Shen Yuzhu probes with minimal mirror-resonance. Find latent carriers, immediate isolation. I'll attempt needle deconstruction."
"Slow. Might miss. But risk controllable." Pause. "Medical 'palliative treatment'—doesn't cure the root, but buys time."
Chu Hongying was silent for a moment. "How long?"
"Three hundred seventy-four people. Groups of ten, half an incense stick per." Quick calculation. "Non-stop, two days two nights."
"If Night Crows attack during?"
"Hence guard." Lu Wanning looked at Gu Changfeng.
He nodded: "Wind domain can cover the whole camp, but sustaining it for two days drains me."
"Then drain." No hesitation. "Wanning, group them. Changfeng, defend. Yuzhu—"
She looked at Shen Yuzhu, her gaze complex for an instant, then firm. "Last two days?"
He looked at her, at the deeply buried exhaustion and resolve. The warmth in his chest pulsed again—a needle-like pain.
He knew the pain wasn't from mirror-backlash.
It was from understanding—her choice, the battlefield's cruelty, knowing he'd never stay unstained in blood and fire.
He closed his eyes, nodded lightly.
"Good." She turned, lifted the flap. "Begin. First group: my personal guard."
Screening began in the afternoon.
Spacious tent beside the medical one. Lu Wanning's dawn-silver needles demarcated a meridian barrier, isolating energy. Gu Changfeng's wind domain covered the camp at minimal output—every wisp an extension of his senses.
Shen Yuzhu sat on the only wooden chair. Before him, ten soldiers sat cross-legged.
All Chu Hongying's northern border veterans—determined eyes, straight backs, but tight-lipped, unable to hide their tension.
Lu Wanning's needles first—three per person: heart meridian, soul aperture, energy sea. The needle tails vibrated, moonlight-white energy flowing, forming a stable suppression.
Then Shen Yuzhu opened his eyes.
Mirror-imprint forced into activation, indigo light spilling, sweeping each person subtly. He didn't dare go deep—only touched surface soul-meridians, like fingers tapping ice, sensing the water beneath.
First. Second. Third… No anomalies.
Seventh—his mirror patterns trembled violently.
A middle-aged soldier. Scarred face, left ear missing half—a relic from northern barbarian resistance three years back. In Shen Yuzhu's perception, deep within the soul-meridians: an extremely fine ghost-blue thread. The other end extended into the void—a puppet string waiting to be pulled.
His breath hitched.
Lu Wanning instantly noticed, her needle-tip at the soldier's neck vital point—one prick from temporary paralysis.
But the soldier opened his eyes.
His gaze was clear, even confused: "…Strategist? I… problem?"
He didn't know he had something inside.
Shen Yuzhu looked into those eyes, at the clear, living emotional fluctuations, his throat tightening.
"Lately… repeating dreams?" Soft. "Or moments feeling you're watching your own body from outside?"
The soldier froze. His face paled slowly.
"Yes…" Voice trembled. "Last night… dreamed of walking in snow, endlessly, couldn't stop. Woke, found myself actually outside the tent, feet numb from cold… Thought I was sleepwalking…"
Lu Wanning and Shen Yuzhu exchanged a glance.
Latent phase symptoms. Commands not fully active yet, but already influencing the subconscious.
"Name?" Chu Hongying's voice from outside. She stood there at some unknown time, didn't enter, voice clear.
"Zhao… Zhao Shi."
"Zhao Shi, listen carefully." Chu Hongying's voice calm as daily orders. "You may have hidden Night Crows' injuries inside, requiring isolation observation. During this time, Physician Lu treats you. You may lose some mobility, but won't die."
Pause. Added: "Order. Accept?"
Three breaths of silence. Then Zhao Shi straightened his back, saluting. "Understood, General."
No questioning. No panic. A soldier's obedience, and deep beneath—a trace of gratitude: told the truth, a chance to be treated, not disposed of as a monster.
Shen Yuzhu watched. The warmth in his chest swelled again—a sour heat.
Before turning to leave, Chu Hongying glanced at him.
Brief. But he understood: "You see? My way."
Not just slaughter. A third path carved between slaughter and neglect—acknowledge danger, give choice, bear consequence.
Difficult. Clumsy. Full of risk.
But a human way.
By deep night, screening had identified nine latent carriers.
Of the nine, three had mild symptoms like Zhao Shi, six were completely unaware. They were placed in three new gray tents on the west side—Lu Wanning's "observation camp." A dawn-silver needle array surrounded the tents. Gu Changfeng's wind domain focused there.
Whispers began circulating.
"Heard? Those west tents…"
"Night Crows cursed us!"
"Will the General… them all…"
Fear spread like unseen mold in the cracks of order.
Chu Hongying didn't explain.
She did one thing: moved her command tent next to the observation camp.
Adjacent—three paces between tents, her door facing the camp entrance. Any disturbance, she'd know first.
A silent declaration: I am here, sharing your risk.
The whispers stilled.
Replaced by a heavier silence—people looked at the gray tents, at Chu Hongying standing spear outside, stopped talking, lowered their heads, built walls more forcefully, patrolled more carefully.
As if saying: Since the General chose the hardest path, the least we can do is not make trouble.
Midnight. Shen Yuzhu finally collapsed—mirror-overload backlash, coughing dark blue blood.
Lu Wanning forced him to rest for one incense stick.
He leaned against the tent wall, gazing at the observation camp lamplight in the distance. Chu Hongying's silhouette was cast on the tent cloth by the light—upright, solitary, like a spear thrust into snow.
"How long will she stand there?" Hoarse.
"Until screening ends. Until she's certain no one else rampages." Lu Wanning mixed medicine calmly. "Or until she collapses herself."
Shen Yuzhu closed his eyes.
His consciousness replayed today's scenes: Zhao Shi's slightly trembling salute, Chu Hongying's tight jaw saying "order," Gu Changfeng's sweat-beaded temple expanding the wind domain, Lu Wanning's intensely focused, almost cold needling gaze…
These scenes intertwined with past memories—Wolf-Owl Camp's cold instruments, Order-Web's merciless erasure, Mirror-Guards' empty eyes—a bizarre contrast.
One side: systematic, efficient, icy "processing."
The other: clumsy, risky, yet warm "attempting."
He suddenly understood Chu Hongying's words.
"I've walked in blood since ten years ago."
Not self-pity. Not complaint.
A statement of survival—when you choose to keep walking through blood, staying clean is impossible. All you can do is try, with each step, to tread less on those still struggling.
Even if you stain yourself deeper red.
One incense stick later, screening resumed.
By the beginning of the Yin hour, the last group finished.
Three hundred seventy-four people. Seventeen latent carriers in total.
All sent to the observation camp.
Lu Wanning began turn-needle suppression. Shen Yuzhu assisted with command structure analysis using minimal mirror-imprint. Gu Changfeng's wind domain persisted until the third double-hour, finally cracking—he coughed blood, but didn't stop.
Chu Hongying remained standing outside the camp, spear planted in the snow beside her, like a silent statue.
Dawn light came again. The first scream erupted from the observation camp.
Not rampage. Pain backlash from command deconstruction—the mirror-poison within a latent carrier, touched at its core by Lu Wanning's needles, resisted fiercely. Ghost-blue light spilled from seven orifices, his whole body convulsing violently, mouth issuing inhuman howls.
Everyone outside tensed.
Chu Hongying's hand gripped the spear haft.
Shen Yuzhu rushed from the tent, mirror patterns flashing wildly: "Can't force removal! Commands have self-destruct! More stimulation ruptures soul-meridians!"
Lu Wanning's voice from inside, calm to the point of cruelty: "I know. But if not handled now, waiting for natural trigger, more than he dies."
Pause: "Hongying, decide."
Chu Hongying stood outside, fingers tight on the spear haft, knuckles white.
Snow fell on her shoulders, eyelashes, accumulating a thin layer. She didn't move, as if turned to stone.
The howls inside grew increasingly wretched, mixed with incoherent pleas: "Kill… kill me… please…"
A human voice. Not a beast's.
Shen Yuzhu looked at her, wanted to speak, found himself voiceless. He knew whatever he said would be cruel—persuading to save was cruel, persuading to abandon was cruel.
Then Chu Hongying moved.
Didn't charge in with her spear. Turned, facing the camp.
There, dozens had gathered at some point. Awakened by the screams, standing silently in the snow, watching.
Her gaze swept each face.
Fear. Bewilderment. Sympathy. Hidden doubt—What will the General do?
She inhaled deeply. Cold air stabbed her lungs, a sharp pain.
She spoke, voice not loud but enough for all:
"The man inside: Liu Dachuan. Forty-seven, from Youzhou. Twenty-three years in the army. Seven blade wounds, three arrow scars." Pause. "Has a son, nineteen this year, studying in Jiangnan. Greatest wish: his son never holds a blade."
The crowd was silent.
Only wind, snow, and the screams from the tent.
She continued, her tone calm as a casualty list:
"Now has mirror-poison inside, flaring. Physician Lu is treating it, but may not save him. If untreatable, two outcomes: One, die now—painful but brief. Two, turn into a mirror-puppet, someday kill one of you, then be killed by me."
She looked at the people: "If it were you, which would you choose?"
No answer.
But many eyes changed—from fearful observation to personal gravity.
They realized: the person in the tent wasn't a "latent carrier" or a "danger source."
He was Liu Dachuan—the veteran who snored in the next tent, the uncle who gave fatty meat to the youngsters, the elder who yesterday smiled saying he'd teach fist forms after the snow stopped.
Chu Hongying turned back to face the tent.
The howls weakened, turned into intermittent gasps—a broken bellows' last breaths.
She spoke the heaviest words of the night, her voice soft yet like nails hammered into frozen ground:
"I choose the first."
"Not because he deserves death."
"Because when he was still Liu Dachuan, his last clear words to me were: 'General, if I go mad… don't let me hurt anyone.'"
Her words fell. Inside the tent, it abruptly stilled.
Not dead silence. A deeper stillness, as if time itself froze.
Three breaths later, Lu Wanning's voice emerged, weary and hoarse:
"…Commands suppressed. Unconscious, but soul-meridians preserved. Needs continuous needles for seven days. Success rate… fifty percent."
Chu Hongying's body swayed lightly, as if struck by an invisible blow, but immediately steadied, the spear still straight in the snow.
She didn't speak. Raised a hand, wiped her face.
Wiping away snow or something else—unknown.
She turned, said to the people:
"All return to rest. Today's wall-duty is halved. Use the extra time to be with those you care about."
The crowd dispersed silently.
No cheers. No relief. Heavy footsteps crunching snow—crunch, crunch—like a wordless elegy.
Shen Yuzhu remained standing, watching her back.
She still stood straight, but her shoulder line had sunk slightly—the body's honest reaction at extreme exhaustion.
He wanted to walk over, say something, do something.
But ultimately, he just stood there.
He knew now she needed no comfort, no sharing.
She only needed no one disturbing this moment, this vulnerability belonging solely to the General.
That evening, something new appeared beneath the Heartfire Banner.
Not a stele. Not a plaque. A half-man-high rough blue stone, its surface unpolished. Before it, three crude earth-incense sticks were planted, smoke curling up, mingling with the wind and snow.
No words were carved.
But everyone passing knew whom it was for—all the souls struggling between "human" and "tool" last night and this dawn.
And for that General who stood in the snow, chose the hardest path, and stained her hands red for it.
Chu Hongying came to the stone late at night.
She stood for a long time—so long the incense burned out, the smoke dispersed, the snow covered the stone's residual warmth.
Then she said very softly, her voice so low the wind and snow nearly swallowed it:
"Forgive me."
"But this was the only choice I could make."
Having spoken, she turned and left. Didn't look back.
Shen Yuzhu, in the distant shadows, heard.
His mirror patterns faithfully recorded: her slightly trembling shoulders, clenched fists, and as she turned—a flash at the corner of her eye, colder than snow.
He closed his eyes.
The warmth in his chest now felt heavy as iron.
But strangely, he no longer felt repelled.
He knew that weight was no curse.
It was the brand of walking together in blood.
Deep in the distant snow forest, the Raven Chief lowered his observation mirror.
His pale face surfaced a faint, almost appreciative smile.
"Heart versus mind." His voice was flat, devoid of warmth. "Strain exceeding parameters. Yet the cracks… tighten them."
Yunji behind him recorded, stylus scratching slate: "Banner resonance up three points. Structural stress localized."
"Pain binds." The Raven Chief murmured, not to her, but to the snow. "Pain also prepares."
He turned, his black robes swirling powdered snow. "First phase complete."
"Next?" Yunji asked.
He gazed toward the gradually brightening eastern dawn, his smile deepening:
"The Wolf King's turn."
"True fractures… never come from within."
"They always come from the past they buried."
Dawn light pierced the clouds, falling on the Heartfire Banner.
On its face, within the dark crimson patterns, those indigo cracks remained clear.
Yet the banner still snapped fiercely in the wind—like a heart, scarred but refusing to stop beating.