Deduction Blocked, Train of Thought Stalled

Chen Wuya's fingertips were still trembling. His lips were cracked and dry, and a streak of blood slid from his nostril, gathering into a dark red clot at his chin. He did not wipe it away. He merely tilted his head back slightly, trying to steady his breathing. The three oil lamps still burned, their flames flickering against his tightly shut eyelids.

Bai Zhi stared at the bead of blood about to fall but did not reach out to support him. She knew that touching him might disrupt whatever was circulating within him—that indescribable, chaotic rhythm that tugged at every meridian in his body.

"Wrong..." he suddenly said, his voice seeming to squeeze out from the depths of his throat. "It's not afraid of us. The more we try to see through it, the stronger it becomes."

Bai Zhi frowned. "You mean the act of deducing it is feeding it?"

"Yes." He slowly exhaled, the veins at his temples throbbing. "It doesn't live on fear. It lives on 'being known.' Every step we draw closer gives it another measure of strength."

The charcoal fire in the tent gave a soft crackle, scattering sparks.

He raised a hand, palm upward, his five fingers opening and closing as if grasping at some invisible track. The Misaligned Practice Connects to Spirit system was still running, but it was no longer a smooth stream of information. It was like a riverbed choked to death by mudslides; every attempt to dredge it open brought fiercer backflow.

He began changing his strategy.

He stopped asking about its structure and stopped tracing its origins. He deliberately distorted the known information: calling the drag marks sand shifted by the wind, attributing the Earth Tremor to hidden underground currents, even explaining the sapphire's heat as lingering warmth from the