Skill [Calamity Radar ω] has been activated!
Danger level: Amber
Imdiate reaction recomnded!
The warning sound hit first; fear a half-second later.
Eathan dropped the sleeve before his brain fully understood what his hand had touched and dropped backward just as a wire hissed through the air where his throat had been, drilling into the mirror behind him with a dry, glassy shriek.
He twisted, boots skidding on glass dust, then turned to the figure in front of him.
Sapphire eyes with no pupils. The skin on its face looked drawn too smooth over threadwork, seams glinting faintly at the jaw, wrists, the corners of the mouth.
"Hello, Lin," it said again.
The lips moved half a beat too late.
Eathan took another step back on instinct. "Nope."
Another wire snapped toward him.
He threw himself sideways. The line took a chunk out of the prism wall where his ribs had just been, slicing through crystal like thread through wet paper.
His shoulder slamd the floor. Pain flared briefly up his arm. Eathan shoved himself upright and imdiately had to duck another shot.
"Paladin i," he called into the maze, breathing hard. "Sending puppets to handle dirty work now? Seems beneath a Platinum Paladin representing the Heavenly Court."
He rembered clearly now—the face matched one of the Paladins he'd encountered at Midnight Hotel.
He had t enough nonsense lately to know when sothing was wrong beyond ordinary wrong. This wasn't i Yuling. It was an extension of her—so construct of a remote body, a puppet threaded through the Sanctum by soone who wanted to keep their distance but still get the job done.
Which, he supposed, did sound like the working habits of Heaven's employees.
The puppet did not answer. The next volley ca faster.
He pivoted, let one thread scrape the floor instead of him, and used the opening to snap [Receipt Printer] into his hand. Paper tore free in a hot strip.
Eathan's fingers flexed.
The familiar current of qi answered at once.
He could feel his channels respond before he consciously reached for them. The current rose under his skin, obedient in a way it had not been in the wider Realm of Passing. The White Tiger's proximity had done that simply by existing nearby. Not close enough to touch, maybe, but sowhere in the sa rotting crystal logic of this place, the reconstituted core had reopened him like a dead circuit forced back online.
Illegal hotspot, he thought wildly. My boss is a divine Wi-Fi router.
Not the ti.
The puppet's hand lifted, and five new lines ford between its fingers. The next mont it was already lunging forward, fatal wires spiralling toward his chest.
The Sanctum's broken prism shards littered the floor around him, reflecting fragnts of neon light. In a split-second decision, he scooped up two broken chunks of prism from the floor and shoved qi into them before his common sense could complain.
Skill [Major Reconstitution] has been activated!
60 Qi Tokens have been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (8099 → 8039)
The fragnts fused in his grip, edges running soft and then hardening again into a single curved plate. It was crude and ugly, but sturdy enough to catch the first volley.
The puppet's sniping thread ricocheted off the solidified prism just as he raised it to his face. The impact rang through his bones, and second line skated off the shield and carved his sleeve instead.
The puppet kept advancing, every step placed with the care of soone sewing a hem.
"Paladin i," Eathan called into the maze again, because there was no way this thing was operating alone. "If this counts as a professional introduction, your standards are disturbing."
He kicked off the floor and drove forward instead of back. The shield slamd into its chest. The construct staggered for the first ti, threads along its collar flaring where the blow had disrupted them.
There.
A weak point.
He snapped his scanner into his palm.
[Karmic Insight] was still on cooldown, which ant he couldn't cheat the board by reading intent. But that was fine. He'd just do it the old-fashioned way.
Skill [Receipt Printer (Lv. 7) - Burst Mode] has been activated!
50 Qi Tokens have been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (8039 → 7989)
He pivoted, let one thread scrape the floor instead of him, and used the opening to snap [Receipt Printer] into his hand. Paper tore free in a hot strip.
Three talismans—[Corrosive Gluestick: Bind], [Bleach Wipe: Purify], and [Joss Paper: Destabilize]— spat out almost at once. He slapped them onto the puppet's shoulder, throat, and sternum in one motion and jumped clear.
The effect was imdiate.
White fire crawled under stitched skin. The threads holding its neck together glowed, tightened, then snapped apart. The puppet's head ca free at an angle no human spine could survive, though its mouth kept moving anyway.
"Lin," it said.
Then the body ca apart.
The whole construct collapsed into a spray of stringlike fragnts. The head tipped, the jaw split, the torso caved inward as threads burned out in bright little snaps. Pieces hit the floor and dissolved into light before they fully landed.
Sowhere far above and to the left, he heard a muffled hiss of pain.
Eathan straightened slowly, chest heaving.
"Yeah," he said under his breath. "That pain got your attention."
A voice answered from behind him.
"More annoyance than pain."
He spun.
The real i Yuling stood three mirrors away, one hand resting lightly against the wall, the other at her side.
She looked exactly like herself in the hotel suite—short silver hair, pale skin, that expression of permanent low-grade disappointnt. The only sign she'd taken backlash at all was the faintest line between her brows.
Eathan did not lower the scanner.
"Glad you decided to join us in person."
Yuling's gaze slid over the shattered puppet remains, then to the scanner in his hand. "You're more troubleso up close than your files suggested."
"That makes two of us."
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
There was no files, but she didn't seem to care about his words anyway. Her fingers moved instead.
One second she was leaning against the mirror; the next she was in his space, fingers cutting through the air in a fine arc.
He barely got the shield up in ti.
A burst of sapphire struck him square in the chest.
He went backward hard enough to skid.
The breath left him in a rough sound. He rolled before the follow-up could pin him, shards of prism cracking under his shoulder.
When he got back up, Yuling was already standing where he had landed, gaze moving over him in calm appraisal. He took on her gaze in full weight and shot back a snarky grin.
"I'm starting to see why your team sends you to do the subtle murder."
Yuiling looked at him with a brow twitch. Another filant flicked toward him the next second. Eathan threw himself sideways, caught the next wire on the shield, and drove forward with a dozen talismans forming a circle around the mouth and shooting forward like arrows on fla.
i Yuling gave no pause. She manipulated the Sanctum's prism mirrors, lifting and rearranging them with more qi threads the size of tal wires. The wires then folded themselves into denser forms, taking on the flaming talismans like shields.
Fire against tal—the cavern was montarily filled with exploding sparks of light. The prism walls collapsed on themselves, creating countless pieces of glass on the ground.
Eathan swore.
That, at least, got the faintest shift at the corner of her mouth.
i Yuling lifted her arm once more, and this ti the qi threads lashing from her palm imbued onto the scattered prism shards on the floor. Before he knew it, the real i Yuling had vanished again; instead, dozens of reflections of herself burst into existence simultaneously, spreading through the shards like a plague.
Eathan imdiately stopped trying to chase the real one. He'd lose. Instead, he kept forcing the room to choose—barriers here, shattered angles there, little bursts of reconstituted cover that cut sightlines and made her re-place herself. He burned through another strip of receipts. A [Lucky Joss] paper forced one reflection to flare brighter than the rest. A bleach seal deadened another. Not enough to identify her cleanly, but enough to keep from being picked apart.
The Paladin answered with rciless neatness.
Threads skimd around his guards instead of through them. A burst of sapphire qi caught him across the ribs when he overcommitted to the wrong reflection.
[HP] has decreased by 17%! (85% → 68%)
Eathan slamd into a prism pillar hard enough to make his teeth click.
By the ti he got his feet under him again, he realized with dread his vision had started to blur at the edges. The effects of the Sanctum were intensifying.
Reflections around him deepened, and his stomach rolled. One corridor seed to tilt uphill while the floor beneath him insisted it was flat. The mirrored i Yulings multiplied again, now with those tiny delays and shifts that made his head hurt to track.
Eathan drove a hand into the nearest wall to steady himself. It didn't help. He could feel the nausea twisting in his gut, threatening to strip his consciousness amidst the disorienting mirrors.
His Humanity flickered at the edge of his HUD.
[Humanity] destabilizing… 32% → 31%
Ah shit.
The room felt too bright, then too dim, then both at once. The mirrors started catching things they hadn't a mont before—COZMART's counter, rain on a roof, Luke's stupid expression when he lied, the white edge of a funeral flower. His head throbbed.
i Yuling's voice ca from sowhere to his right, or maybe not. "You should stop before the Sanctum finishes chewing through your concentration."
He didn't respond. he ducked under another wire, ca up wrong, nearly slipped.
…Not good.
He forced himself to think, the effort itself exhausting. If i Yuling was already here, then Chen Mo and the rest of the Elite Force likely weren't far behind. In fact, chances were that they were currently in this very sanctum. The thought of that crazy guy, Chen Mo, reaching Bai Hu sent urgent chills down his spine. He had to find the rest of his team before the Paladins did.
He yanked open the [SYSTEM] with his free hand and hit the one skill that was supposed to exist for exactly this kind of disaster.
Skill [Soul Anchor] has been activated!
1000 Karma have been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (7280 → 6280)
The prompt opened like a cut in his vision.
Select Anchor mory:
– Dormancy Day 76: What does "you" an, right now?
– Westpoint Library – ugly green chair
– COZMART counter – "boss, I'm back"
The skill activated, and mories hit him in one clean wave. He curled forward in a dry heave. Three seconds later, the maze's pressure loosened like a hand unclenching.
[Humanity] restored to anchor baseline: 40%
Stability Lock: Active
Air returned to his lungs.
The mirrors stopped screaming quite so loudly. He could still feel the Sanctum pressing at him, but it no longer had both hands inside his skull. The difference was imdiate and almost embarrassing.
One of the Yulings flickered.
He saw it now—the real one wasn't brighter, or darker, or more magical. She moved with weight. The reflections perford stillness. She inhabited it.
Eathan smiled despite himself. "There you are."
i Yuling stepped out of the nearest false panel and regarded him properly for the first ti. Her eyes narrowed a fraction.
"You're not what I expected."
"That's almost flattering."
She didn't answer, but this ti when she attacked, she ca in close.
No more puppet. No more room-wide sniping. She t him within arm's reach, one thread wrapped around her forearm like a blade, the other hand free to guide or redirect.
He caught the first strike on the prism shield. It shattered. He let it shatter, snapped his wrist, and turned the fragnts into a spray of new cover between them. She cut through two pieces and took the third on the shoulder because dodging all three would've exposed her flank.
Better.
This was better.
He could work with this.
They moved around each other in the broken light, neither landing what they wanted, neither getting fully clear. He rebuilt the sa chunk of prism twice just to force her to waste a line severing it. She anchored threads into the floor so his footing slid half an inch every ti he planted wrong. Once he nearly tagged her sleeve with a binding strip; once she nearly put a wire through his hand and ruined the scanner.
"You improved fast," she said between exchanges.
"Hostile work environnt."
He drove a talisman into the floor at her feet. The burst of salt and purifying light forced her back three steps, not because it hurt but because she had the good sense not to stand inside unknown arrays.
She glanced at the sigils, then at him.
"How persistent."
Just as Eathan was ready to enter another volley, a chirp suddenly interrupted their exchange. i Yuling stilled. The chirp was from the comm at her ear.
Eathan strained to listen, but the details of the Paladin's communicator were indecipherable. After a brief silence, i Yuling's voice returned—professional, detached again.
"Your commander is elsewhere."
Eathan didn't lower the scanner, only narrowed his eyes. "With who?"
She ignored the question. "We're converging on a different target."
"We?"
"The team."
"Which team."
That got him a look so flat it almost counted as charitable. "Do keep up."
Then she stepped aside.
Not dramatically. Just enough that he had a clear line through the next corridor.
Eathan did not move.
"You're letting go?" he asked.
"I'm redirecting a problem."
He frowned at her. "Doesn't it bother you to speak in circles all the ti?"
Yuling looked around at the mirrors, the broken glass, her dead puppet on the floor, then back at him. "Lin Eathan," she said, "many things bother . I prioritize."
That was so tired, so dry, so absurdly understandable that it almost made him like her on a personal level.
Almost.
Before he could respond, the mirrors shifted abruptly, shuffling reality around him. i Yuling's reflections vanished simultaneously, leaving only echoes behind.
No ti to care about that.
Eathan pushed off the wall and ran.
[Ledger Tap (Lv. 2)] has been activated!
30 Qi Tokens have been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (7989 → 7959)
He invoked [Ledger Tap], overlaying a translucent map of the Sanctum's structure, matching reconstructed threads to their true paths. The room spun slightly, nausea edging into his vision again, but he forced it aside and kept going.
The corridor bent left, then down, then through a wide chamber where the mirrors had given up on pretending to be walls and simply hung in the air like broken doors. He felt the pull of [Calamity Radar] before he heard anything—an amber pressure resolving into noise.
A voice first. Chewie's.
Then a crack like sothing had hit crystal with enough force to make the whole Sanctum tremble.
He ca around the last turn too fast and had to skid to avoid running straight into the scene.
Chewie stood at the edge of a broad circular chamber, one hand out, the red headphones now hanging lopsided around her neck. Across from her, Ji Renshu and Yang Mingze held a tight line. Chen Mo had edged farther forward than the rest, of course he had, and was staring at the figure in the center with sothing unhealthily bright in his eyes.
Three Elite Paladins against one, and they were obviously struggling. The current White Tiger shouldn't be capable of all that.
Prisms arched overhead like frozen ribs. At the center of the chamber, surrounded by fractured mirror-light, stood Bai Hu.
No.
Eathan knew it before his mind caught up.
This wasn't the Bai Hu he'd dragged out of the hotel wrapped in an onigiri blanket and emotional instability. This one held himself differently. Shoulders loose, eyes cold, chin angled down just slightly to asure the room in a way that put everyone else more on edge.
Eathan's skin went cold.
"What the hell," he whispered.
Chewie turned at the sound of his voice, relief flashing across her face for a split second before hardening again.
"You took your ti."
He brought up [Calamity Radar] and let it cut through the room.
[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION:
Skill [Calamity Radar ω: Deep-Scan Mode] has been activated!
30 Qi Tokens have been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (7959 → 7929)
Imdiately, the prism silhouette flared crimson.
The figure in the center did not register as Bai Hu proper. It burned in the scan as an autonomous fragnt signature—crimson-black, bladed, complete enough in itself to hold form without the rest.
Divine fragnt signature confird!
His HUD resolved the label one letter at a ti.
Fragnt signature:
RUTHLESS
For one suspended mont, no one in the room moved.
The Ruthless Shard turned its head.
It looked at Eathan with the White Tiger's face and none of the rcy.
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