Xīng Hé watched the door close behind Yao Xian.
Silence rushed in, heavy and suffocating. The mirror floated before her, pulsing softly, waiting.
What does this mean?
Yao's behavior made no sense—the sudden authority, the unspoken decisions, the way she'd left without guidance. It felt deliberate.
Does she know something?
There was no answer. Only uncertainty—and something else. A hollow tug at her thoughts, like a thread pulled loose.
She'd forgotten something important.
She tried to grasp it.
Nothing came.
The absence lingered, formless and frustrating, but whatever it was would have to wait.
Xīng Hé exhaled and turned to the mirror.
Training came first.
Her true concept was still hidden. That was an advantage—but only if she could wield it when the time came. She needed to understand herself. Her limits. Her capabilities.
And despite everything—
She was excited.
She reached forward.
The moment her fingers touched the mirror, understanding flooded her mind.
Not words. Not images. Pure knowledge.
Environments. Weather. Gravity. Time flow. Scenarios—battlefields, disasters, impossible conditions.
And more.
The mirror didn't only create.
It remembered.
That realization carried weight she didn't yet understand.
She focused on what she needed.
She didn't want to fight. Never had. If there were another way to end this system—another future worth pursuing—she would take it without hesitation.
But this world listened only to strength.
So she would train.
Her concepts surfaced in her awareness: Balance. Preservation. Restoration.
Restoration stirred most strongly.
It had acted before without her intent—healing wounds, mending what was broken. She would start there.
What can Restoration do… after battle?
The intent crystallized.
The world shattered.
One moment she stood in the training room.
The next—she stood in hell.
Divine existences littered the land. Some motionless. Some barely alive. Their bodies twisted by forces beyond mortal comprehension.
Mortals lay among them.
Or rather—what remained of mortals.
Broken bodies lay scattered, red blood pooling beneath them, mixing with something else. Something golden. Something etched with shifting runes.
Most had nothing left at all.
No remains. No trace.
Just absence.
The ground had melted into vitrified stone. Forests were gone—not burned, not reduced to ash, but erased entirely, as if they had never existed.
The stench followed.
Blood. Death. Ozone. Reality itself felt scorched.
Golden blood pulsed across the battlefield, runes flowing within it—each pool a different truth, a different concept, all reduced to the same leaking light.
And this—
This was just a local battle.
Not a war. Not a conquest. A minor clash. The kind that never made it into records.
And this was the result.
This is the future they're shaping us for.
The thought burned.
This was the destination of training. Of cultivation. Of guidance.
Weapons forged to fight in places like this. To kill. To die.
She tried to look deeper—to understand the forces at play.
Pain detonated in her skull.
White-hot. Blinding.
Her consciousness buckled under the recorded presence of higher-stage divine existences—auras unleashed without restraint, their weight crushing everything beneath them.
She was too weak to witness this.
Xīng Hé tore her gaze away.
The pain faded slowly.
She stood amid the aftermath of ancient slaughter, heart pounding.
She couldn't allow this to continue.
Not for mortals.
Not for divine existences.
Not for this world.
She clenched her fists.
I will end this.
Whatever it takes.
---
Xīng Hé moved toward the fallen divine existences.
Her feet carried her across melted ground, past pools of golden blood still pulsing with fading runic light, toward the nearest body that still showed signs of movement. She needed to understand what her Restoration could do. Needed to test its limits against real damage, real injuries, real—
Pain flooded her mind.
Her head throbbed. Her vision fractured into shards of light and shadow. The world tilted sideways, and her legs gave out beneath her.
Then nothing.
---
She woke on the floor.
Her cheek pressed against cool stone—the actual floor of the training room, not the simulated battlefield. Her body ached with dull exhaustion, the kind that came from the mind shutting down to protect itself.
The battlefield was still displayed around her.
She pushed herself upright slowly, blinking against residual pain behind her eyes. The fallen divine existences remained where they'd been—twisted, broken, leaking golden light. The mortals remained erased. The destruction remained absolute.
And she understood now why she'd collapsed.
The presences.
This was a recorded battle. Real divine existences who had fought and died here, their full power unleashed without restraint. Even through the mirror's display—even separated by years or decades or centuries—their presences remained embedded in the recording.
Higher divine existences. Domain stage, perhaps. Ascendant.
Beings so far beyond her that simply existing in their proximity, even simulated proximity, was enough to overwhelm her consciousness.
She couldn't bear their presence.
Not yet.
Xīng Hé closed her eyes and directed her intent toward the mirror.
Only Resonance stage. Remove the higher presences.
The response was immediate.
Relief washed over her like cool water. The crushing weight that had lurked at the edges of the simulation—the oppressive aura of powers far beyond her own—vanished. The battlefield remained, but it felt different now. Bearable. Something she could exist within without her mind threatening to collapse.
She opened her eyes.
The scene had changed.
The higher-stage divine existences were gone—removed from the display, their bodies and their lingering presences excised from the simulation. What remained were the Resonance-stage casualties. The ones closest to her own level. The ones she might actually be able to affect.
There were more than five hundred of them.
Xīng Hé stood among the fallen and began to plan.
How many can I heal?
How fast can I heal them?
How far does the healing go?
These were the questions that mattered. The limits she needed to discover.
She looked at the nearest body—a young man, barely older than her apparent age, his chest torn open by something that had carved through him like paper. Golden blood seeped from the wound, the runic symbols within already fading toward stillness.
It's not healing, she reminded herself. I'm not a healer. I'm restoring what was.
The distinction mattered. Healing implied fixing damage, mending wounds, closing injuries. Restoration was something else—returning things to their original state, undoing what had been done, reversing the change itself.
But she couldn't do as she liked.
Not yet. Not without understanding. Not without practice.
She would start with something familiar. Something she'd already done unconsciously—the healing that had confused Heiyun Jue, the mending that happened without her direction.
She would make it conscious.
She would learn its limits.
Xīng Hé knelt beside the fallen divine existence, extended her hand, and began.
---
The training consumed hours.
She moved from body to body, testing her Restoration against wounds of varying severity. Small cuts. Deep gashes. Shattered bones. Internal damage she could sense but couldn't see.
She failed more than she succeeded.
She pushed until her head throbbed and her vision swam.
She rested. Then pushed again.
By the time the simulated light began to fade—the mirror recreating the approach of evening within its constructed space—she had learned things. Not enough. Never enough.
But it was a start.
Nightfall came, and Xīng Hé finally let the simulation dissolve.
The training room returned to its bland, empty state.
She sat on the floor, exhausted, and began to process what she'd discovered.
---
Chen Yè sat in Bai Zixian's room, waiting.
The space was small—not designed for multiple occupants, not meant for the five of them who had spent the night here. Bai, Kiran, Noah, Seren, and himself, clustered in a room built for one.
Chen Yè had slept in worse places.
The others hadn't complained out loud, but he could read their faces. The cramped quarters, the uncomfortable positioning, the restless shifting through the night—none of them would call yesterday's rest good.
But they'd endured.
The six in the Insight Chamber hadn't emerged since entering.
Yet Chen Yè wasn't worried.
The Insight Chamber was just an added bonus. His method—the definition approach—was the real mechanism of their evolution. The room might help, might accelerate, might smooth the process. But the outcome was guaranteed.
They would evolve.
All six of them.
He looked at Seren—the quiet boy with the symbol concept, the first one he'd tested his theory on.
"Yours didn't take this long, right?"
Seren nodded, his refined features carrying that strange depth he'd gained since evolving.
"The Insight Chamber might have an added effect," he said.
The words were simple. The implication was not.
Chen Yè considered it. If the chamber itself contributed something beyond mere environment—if it actively influenced the comprehension process—then what would that mean for the six inside? Would they emerge stronger than expected? Different? Would the combined pressure of six simultaneous evolutions create something he hadn't anticipated?
He filed the question away for later.
Once they emerged, his next plan would begin.
But something else demanded his attention now.
---
Chen Yè had learned to read the lines.
On the streets, survival meant noticing what others missed. The subtle shift in a merchant's posture before they called the guards. The way crowds flowed around certain corners where predators waited. The almost-invisible signals that separated safe ground from dangerous territory.
Those instincts hadn't faded.
If anything, they'd sharpened.
And right now, they were telling him something was wrong.
The guards moved differently. Not obviously—nothing that would attract attention from someone who wasn't watching. But their patrol patterns had tightened. Their clustering had increased. Groups of two had become groups of three. Casual conversations had become hushed exchanges.
The maids were the same. Fewer of them visible, and those who appeared moved with purpose rather than routine. Less gossip. More glances toward doors and corridors.
Even the elders.
Chen Yè had caught glimpses of them in the past few days—figures who normally remained distant, uninvolved, appearing in places they shouldn't be. Watching. Waiting.
Something was going on.
Or something was about to happen.
He couldn't tell which. Couldn't identify the source of the tension, the reason for the shift. Everyone maintained their composure outwardly. No panic. No alarm. Just that subtle tightening, that almost-invisible preparation for something unnamed.
Chen Yè kept his observations to himself.
Raising suspicions wouldn't help. Asking questions would only reveal that he'd noticed—and if whatever was happening was dangerous, being noticed could be fatal.
But he couldn't ignore it either.
I need to speed up my plans.
The thought crystallized with uncomfortable clarity.
Whatever was coming, he needed to be prepared. Needed his group evolved and functional. Needed his position secured before circumstances shifted in ways he couldn't control.
The six in the Insight Chamber would emerge soon.
When they did, the next phase would begin.
And Chen Yè would be ready.
---