Layered bells braided through the rafters, threads of sound tightening into a single, drawn wire. The Live Index scrolls quickened, characters strobing like sparks along glass. Ropes hummed in sympathetic tension. Ink and hot brass scented the air; somewhere, stamps fell in a slow, ceremonial cadence—thud, lift, thud—like a heart made of law.
On the balcony, He Rulong stood immovable, the arena's pressure pulled taut around his stillness. Below, Liu Shan angled his slate, the stylus tip already poised for the first mark.
The Legacy Key Window countdown glowed across the main board—00:09:59—breathing cold blue light. As Qin Ye stepped beneath it, a faint vibration ran through the stone under his soles, the building itself bracing.
His fingers grazed a cool, humming pylon sunk into the dais: the Legacy Pylon.
[Daily Sign-In available.]
[Location: Legacy Pylon.]
[Sign-In? Yes / No]
Yes.
[Ding! Sign-In successful!]
[Reward: Legacy Clamp (Lv.1, 20 breaths — bind any "legacy key" action to public badge hash & live echo) + Index Sentinel (1 use — snapshot & pin a clause chain across all hall panes for 5 breaths; cannot be throttled).]
The pylon's current threaded up his arm—then vanished, refined into readiness.
The ordeal began. No bell. Only motion.
⸻
The floor rails chirred. A console slid alongside him, runes brightening as if waking. "Station One — Public Echo," a clerk announced, voice clipped, already falling behind Qin Ye's pace.
He walked with the console, breath locked 4-4-2. "Null Crest—under audit—public," he said, tone steady.
A Quiet Pivot slipped him around a shifting partition; the console tracked him obediently.
"Links Clause 7.4 history." His right hand adjusted a micro-dial—no flourish, only fit. "Binds device parity rule 8.1."
On the main holoplate, his chain assembled like a snapping measure: a clean arrow of text flaring from the Null Crest index to a tight stack of past invocations, then pinning into rule 8.1. The hall's Live Index mirrored it across three tiers of glass.
The panes flickered.
A gray "internal revision" memo crept in from the side margin—thin as smoke—fusing itself to the 7.4 node. The masked registry box, Proc-Hub Δ, ghosted over the line like a shadowed hand.
Qin Ye exhaled once. Hash Sight opened behind his eyes.
For one crystalline breath, the mask turned translucent. A brittle filament marked 7.4 arced from the shadow-box into the line—a hidden clause-hook sharpened to pry.
He didn't speak to it. He spoke to the hall. His foot landed; Clause Weave soldered the words into motion. "Clause 5.4—citation valid when logged."
Then he triggered Legacy Clamp.
A pulse of white surged through the consoles. The attempted legacy call latched to a public badge hash on the nearest registry pane, the live echo projecting the hash like a brand. For the space of a single heartbeat, the masked node's hand was visible—and empty. The supersede stumbled on its own exposure and fell away.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Catch the Clause Hook."]
[Reward: +190,000 Spirit Stones; Hash Clarity +2% (situational).]
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Clamp the Legacy."]
[Reward: +190,000 Spirit Stones; Legacy Resistance +3% (situational).]
Around him, the index panes brightened, his chain unbroken. The console chimed: Station One complete.
He never stopped walking.
⸻
"Station Two — Badge Anchor," a proctor called, stepping back to let the pedestal's scanner halo come up to full glow.
A He-line aide slid into view, registrar-blue ribbon tied too precisely at his sleeve. He held a priority override token between two delicate fingers. "Routing this chain to closed-bench review. Internal memo precedence."
Qin Ye's heel kissed stone; the clause rode the step. "Clause 3.2—public route parity holds until final gate."
The aide's mouth flattened, but he extended the token anyway. The scanner blinked to read.
Legacy Clamp caught it mid-breath and welded the attempt to the aide's own badge hash in ten-point glare. On the pedestal's bezel, two coexisting hashes strobed—one from the token's declared chain, and one from the aide's silent user session. They didn't match. The mismatch flared into a red crossmark audible as a thin chime.
The aide's hand cooled two degrees. He withdrew, face carefully nothing.
"Attempt logged," the pedestal intoned. "Override denied."
Qin Ye didn't look at him. He glanced once at Device Witness instead—making sure the orb had an unbroken angle—and then moved on.
The countdown slid under nine minutes.
⸻
The floor opened into ropes and chalk. A judge's hand cut the air. "Station Three—Open Audit Bout. Live index. No halts."
His opponent stepped from the opposite lane: compact, precise, her baton angles clean enough to sit in a diagram. Her eyes already tracked the Live Index margins, counting lines, not breaths.
The bell rang.
She feinted a soft, stuttering cadence—close enough to feel like breath on the ear—then snapped a needle-line straight for his shoulder seam. Qin Ye tilted the world by degrees: Quiet Pivot; Blade Nudge feathering the guard aside. His baton touched fabric over bone—clean, non-damaging, undeniable.
A tile flipped green. Another hesitated. The opponent raised a hand even as she reset her stance. "Format variance—citation out of node—Clause 7.4 hook—angle retention—"
Clause Weave put his answer underfoot. "Clause 5.4. Logged. Clause 7.2—Device Witness replay."
The orb rewound. Angle lawful, touch first. The panel's tiles snapped—three green. The live index pane showed 7.4's history in polite, pitiless rows.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Point in Panel Light."]
[Reward: +180,000 Spirit Stones; Appeal Resistance +2% (situational).]
She changed pressure. Legal shoulder angles, narrow enough to singe a robe edge; cadence decoys layered like paper fans, all the sound showing up on the index spectrum as harmless static.
Center Pin held. Her next shove met Anchor Step; the push died on his planted foot, the air itself refusing to carry. Vector Lock drank the leftover force and turned it, opening a slip of angle as small and absolute as a cut thread. Blade Nudge stroked that seam open and his baton tapped her wrist.
A reset flag flirted up the pole. He had already stepped. "Clause 8.1—reset requires logged cause."
Device Witness replayed silence where contact with apparatus would have lived. The flag subsided, chastened.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Rope Without Reset."]
[Reward: +210,000 Spirit Stones; Boundary Hold +3% (situational).]
The opponent exhaled once and sharpened. She launched a compound exchange: cadence phantom to pivot bait to low-line sting, then—mid-motion—she tried to bury his answer under an "internal memo" side-pane that crept over the citation field.
The live index flickered gray.
Index Brace wasn't needed; the Sign-In's five-breath hammer waited in his palm. Not yet.
He drove clean instead. Soft entry on Ghost Thread—the step arriving a half-beat early inside the legal window—then steel-thread precise: Blade Nudge, baton tap to shoulder.
The panel split 2–2 on reflex.
Split Bind tripped like a spring. In one breath the replay bloomed across the judges' rostrum. Three green, one red, time-stamped to the same frame.
The opponent's rhythm bled a shade. Her eyes flicked to the board, then back. She was good enough to see the hole her appeal had left—and too bound by compliance to patch it with anything but cleaner technique. She gave him a real line at last, angle true, feint gone.
He met truth with truth. No flourish. One pivot. One nudge. One touch.
The bell rang. The bout's line clipped shut.
⸻
The hall brightened—and then dimmed, the Live Index panes shading as though a cloud had moved across the sun. The countdown whispered past six minutes.
A memorandum cascade uncoiled from Proc-Hub Δ, slim gray snakes sliding to wrap the Null Crest chain in disclaimers and temporary holds. A masked hand tried to choke the echo to a wheeze.
Qin Ye's palm tingled once—the Sentinal's weight a coin ready to spend.
He spent it.
Index Sentinel detonated like a clear bell heard under water. Across the hall, every pane, sub-pane, and little desk monitor burned with the same line, bold as a road cut through rock:
Null Crest — under audit (public) → Clause 7.4 history → device parity rule 8.1.
The five-breath pin landed. The cascade hit and bounced. Nothing throttled. Nothing grayed. The chain sang.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Echo the Chain Under Motion."]
[Reward: +220,000 Spirit Stones; Chain Continuity +3% (situational).]
A clerk at a side console lifted a hand, two fingers poised for a "safety review" that looked an awful lot like a stall.
His foot came down. The clause rode the bone. "Clause 3.1—ex parte and off-flow interventions barred while Station Three active." The hand froze mid-air, then lowered, bones embarrassed into good posture.
He didn't look again. He walked.
⸻
Stations folded behind him like pages. The floor rails whispered into silence. The hall's sound peeled back to rope hum and breath.
The countdown crossed four minutes.
On a high holoplate, the masked node flickered—Proc-Hub Δ—its box vibrating as if something under the mask was fighting to breathe. Hash Sight narrowed his vision to a wire; the 7.4 filament showed again, thinner now, stretched to a hair across the index frame.
A registrar proxy slid toward the nearest admin console, shoulders quiet, expression Vellum-Blank. He reached for a legacy toggle as if to scratch an itch.
Legacy Clamp still burned in Qin Ye's chest—its twenty-breath leash not yet spent. He angled Device Witness so the orb saw both man and mask. "Public badge anchor," he said, voice almost soft. The console obeyed like a statue learning to turn.
The toggle's action latched to the proxy's badge hash—face and number married to the line in seven-point text. The masked node shuddered. The 7.4 filament quavered, then frayed to threads.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Clamp the Legacy."]
[Reward: +190,000 Spirit Stones; Legacy Resistance +3% (situational).]
He didn't smile. He didn't slow.
⸻
A final panel rose at the dais lip—Final Echo Confirm—its metal still warm, a hint of stamped wax on the seam. A He-line functionary hovered too close to Judge #2's shoulder, breath shaped suspiciously like speech.
The Panel Thread tightened like a bowstring. Qin Ye felt the exact syllable's weight. "Clause 3.1—ex parte barred."
The functionary stepped back as if a wire had caught his throat. A stamp fell with satisfying inevitability.
"Proceed," the head judge said.
He did. One last walk past a bank of glass. One last bind on footfall, clear as a hammer on a nail. The chain held in his wake like a properly set keel-line.
[Ding! Optional Objective completed: "Close the Legacy Window with the Null Crest still public & 0 resets/halts."]
[Reward: Technique Cache (procedural/index — advanced, unlocked).]
He opened the cache as he crossed the chalk. Choices lifted in clean script:
• Public Anchor — 10-breath auto-hash mirror for any admin action touching his case.
• Echo Lattice — bind a 3-link clause chain to movement; mirror across all active panes for 5 breaths.
• Panel Latch — force split panels to auto-replay + sim-stamp in 1 breath.
He selected Public Anchor. It slotted into place with the neat sensation of a seal fitting its ring.
⸻
The countdown hit 00:00:10. Then nine. Then eight.
Proc-Hub Δ blinked once, twice—then fissured along an invisible seam. Hash Sight caught the last brittle strand of "7.4" snapping like old varnish. The mask withdrew, not erased but—finally—contained.
The main board shed its ordeal skin for a calmer face. Names flowed into place. Qin Ye's atop—clean margin. Lin Xiu just under him, line true. Further down, Yue Hong's row held a tiny green tick: variance cleared.
[Ding! Core Trials — Completed.]
[Ding! Main Quest updated — Inner Gate Exam: 2 days (Final Posting & Allocation).]
On the balcony, He Rulong's head turned—not a nod, not approval, only notice, as precise as a compass. The gaze lay across Qin Ye for a fraction, weight measured and exact. Then it moved away, dragging the hall's air with it like tide.
Liu Shan's stylus scratched once: "Legacy clamped; echo held."
The ropes' hum bled into quiet. The index panes cooled from white to the dignified gray of settled ink. Stamps fell two more times somewhere behind the dais—thud, lift—closing brackets around the day.
The hall exhaled; the law remained, a line drawn and held.