The Live Index Arena hummed with spectral energy. Public clause tickers scrolled the walls in clean bands of light. Device Witness orbs hovered like silent sentinels above the rings. Ropes creaked under taut, calibrated tension. A pre-bout bell tone resonated, pure as a blade's edge.
A He-line clerk stepped into Qin Ye's lane, slate raised. "Lane reassignment. Index load-balancing requires your shift to a later slot."
"Clause 2.1," Qin Ye said, eyes already on the ring. "Route parity. No formal reassignment log exists."
The clerk's stamp hovered, then fell with a dull thud. "Proceed."
⸻
At the apron, Qin Ye's fingers brushed a cool, humming Live-Echo Pylon.
[Daily Sign-In available.]
[Location: Live-Echo Pylon.]
[Sign-In? Yes / No]
Yes.
[Ding! Sign-In successful!]
[Reward: Index Brace (Lv.1, 20 breaths — immune to index throttles/ghost memos) + Panel Echo Seal (1 use — force judges' votes + clause basis to broadcast live with timestamps).]
The pylon's charge steadied in his palm, the promise of a clean channel through noise.
Zhou Han waited across the line. A He-line index-duelist: razor posture, eyes glass-still as they tracked the live index feeds. No flourish. All angles.
The judge's hand cut the air. The bell rang.
⸻
Zhou's first step was a razor feint, cadence snapping high then dropping into a needle-line thrust.
Qin Ye slid a Quiet Pivot across the stone—two fingers of angle, nothing more. A minimal Blade Nudge touched the incoming wrist and turned it a fraction. His baton kissed Zhou's shoulder. Clean.
Zhou's hand came up before the echo faded. "Clause 7.4 hook. Angle retention precedent."
As he spoke, the live index pane carrying Qin Ye's last citation flickered, a ghost gray washing over the line—someone tried to throttle the feed.
Qin Ye breathed once and triggered the Index Brace.
The feed snapped back to full clarity. His citation—bound to his footfall by Clause Weave—remained pinned in bright text, timestamped.
"Clause 5.4," Qin said, voice flat. "Verbal citation is valid when logged."
The panel's tally tiles clicked. Three green, one red. The point stood.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Hold the Echo Open."]
[Reward: +180,000 Spirit Stones; Index Tolerance +2% (situational).]
⸻
Zhou pressed immediately, no complaint, no pause. A tight two-beat deception stole forward into a stiletto angle. Qin yielded a half-step, then returned pressure with Center Pin, holding the inner circle as if it were nailed down. A clip of wood against sleeve; his baton marked the torso seam.
The judges leaned in. Two tiles flipped green; two red.
Split Bind ignited of its own accord.
The Device Witness orb rolled back the contact inside a single breath. Slow, unmerciful clarity: pivot lawful; touch undeniable. The third tile turned green.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Bind the Split."]
[Reward: +180,000 Spirit Stones; Panel Sense +2% (situational).]
Zhou's gaze didn't flicker. He pivoted out, feet whispering on chalk dust.
⸻
A clerk drifted near Judge Two. A nearly silent exchange—lips, not words.
Qin Ye felt the Panel Thread tighten in his throat. He picked the single breath when all four judges' focus lifted.
"Ex parte contact barred during active exchange. Clause 3.1."
A soft warning tone rippled across the wall displays. The aide vanished like smoke. The rod of tiles stilled.
Zhou shifted tactics. He began to lace the space with live-index tricks: a cross-reference winked onto the public panes—"internal memo"—right as Qin's next citation left his mouth, trying to bury it under layered formatting.
Qin's heel found the stone node. Clause Weave bit down on his phrasing, format-proof. Then he broke the seal.
Panel Echo Seal.
A pulse flashed, and the hall's displays split into four: judges' votes and clause bases forced live with mirrored timestamps. The memo had nowhere to hide. It browned out under the glare and died.
On a side holoplate, a nicked hash flickered into being and back out again.
Proc-Hub Δ : Legacy Key Schedule: 4h
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Face the Hall."]
[Reward: +200,000 Spirit Stones; Wedge Resistance +3% (situational).]
Zhou's jaw set. He stopped chasing the screens and started hunting the rope.
⸻
He layered legal shoulder angles, herding with no wasted movement. The rope sang at Qin Ye's side, tight and high; chalk grit whispered under his heel.
Qin planted.
Anchor Step nullified the shove for a breath. The leftover pressure rolled into Vector Lock, rooting Zhou where he stood and popping a sliver of space. Center Pin held the inner circle steady as a post in a flood. Qin's baton tapped the sternum seam: precise, non-damaging.
A marshal's flag twitched. "Safety reset—"
"Clause 8.1," Qin Ye said as he stepped off the angle, voice landing on the stone with his foot. "Reset requires logged cause."
The orb replayed a blink of the contact. No rope breach. No apparatus touch. The flag lowered.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Rope Without Reset."]
[Reward: +200,000 Spirit Stones; Center Retention +3% (situational).]
On the balcony, He Rulong's stillness deepened. Pressure without motion.
⸻
Zhou used the lull to try a different wedge. "Foot outside node on citation. Format mismatch."
The marshal's hand hovered.
Qin lowered his heel to the chalk ring, letting the tread whisper. "Clause Weave binds citation to footfall." His phrasing rode the beat; the pane ghosted a frozen frame of sole-on-node exactly as the words left his mouth. Stamped valid.
The pane kept scrolling. Qin let it.
"Null Crest under audit links Clause 7.4 history," he said, a breath later, turning the space with a Quiet Pivot. "Which binds device parity rule 8.1."
The walls echoed his chain. A ghost flicker tried to gray the link. Index Brace absorbed the attempt without a ripple.
Zhou pushed through the noise. A clean, textbook feint steepened into a stab at the wrist line. Qin's timing shifted—not a leap, not speed. His step simply arrived a half-beat before it should have.
Ghost Thread.
His baton nudged; his fingers touched. The bell answered.
Two tiles clicked green at once. The last two followed a heartbeat later.
⸻
Zhou didn't break. He pressed into cadence illusions—double ticks, echo rhythms, the elegant ugliness of weaponized timing. Qin emptied the air from them with the steady, unmusical count inside his chest. His Tempo Sense sharpened the entry beat, and each time Zhou tried to make the rope a blade, Center Pin turned it into a chalk line.
Another needle-line came silent and fast. Qin's response was surgical: Blade Nudge for a single inch, Quiet Pivot for a single breath, and the touch landed without drama.
From the corner, a whisper attempted to bloom again. The Panel Thread slid between syllables.
"Panel replay priority. No halt."
The judges' eyes stayed front. The orb stayed live. Momentum did not die.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Phrase on Beat."]
[Reward: +160,000 Spirit Stones; Panel Presence +1 (situational).]
Zhou's expression didn't change, but something in his rhythm did. The space grew honest. Harder, but honest.
⸻
They circled once. The rope hummed. Chalk motes spun in the angled light.
Zhou sank into the cleanest line he'd shown all bout: no memo, no gray, only weight and angle and breath. Qin welcomed it.
Silent Step shortened the distance without a sound. The baton never left regulation. A final, precise contact touched the shoulder seam.
The bell rang. The panel's rod of tiles flipped, all four at once, clean as a stamp.
[Ding! Optional Objective completed: "Win under Live Index with zero resets & zero overturned citations."]
[Reward: Technique Cache (index/combat, unlocked).]
The arena exhaled.
⸻
He opened the cache. Three options pulsed:
Index Fuse (10-breath hard-lock mirroring citations),
Panel Cadence (micro-pause widening panel acceptance),
Hash Sight (briefly surface a masked node's clause-hook on flicker).
He chose Hash Sight.
The perception settled along his gaze like a faint second lens, tuned to the artifacts behind masks.
⸻
A clerk slid near as he stepped off the ring, smile too smooth. "Slower lane advisory for tomorrow's final prep…"
"Clause 2.1." No heat. No room to wedge.
The clerk's stamp fell behind him.
The board thudded into place. Qin Ye still led; Lin Xiu a breath behind; Yue Hong without penalties.
[Ding! Core Trials — Day 6 complete.]
[Ding! Main Quest updated — Inner Gate Exam: 3 days.]
The arena lights dimmed a fraction. On the index wall, a flicker ran along the tree.
Proc-Hub Δ : Legacy Key Schedule: 4h
The same nicked hash pulsed, then thinned to a hairline. Hash Sight caught a ghost-fine note strung through the node—two characters' worth of a clause-hook before the mask snapped back: 7.4.
He Rulong's gaze crossed the arena, cool as shade. No words.
Qin Ye set his heel on the stone and let the breath ride out on four, then anchor four, then two. The wall breathed with him, a single pulse under the skin of the hall.
Tomorrow's window would open. And when it did, the mask would have to blink.