Escape the Trap, Misaligned Force Breaks the Barrier

Chen Wuya's fingers still rested against the sand, a faint tremor traveling through his fingertips. The vibration was deeper than before, as though something beneath the earth were breathing slowly. He neither raised his head nor looked again at the sealed stone door. He merely laid the broken blade lightly beneath his palm. The blade trembled faintly, pointing toward a sunken layer of rock some thirty feet ahead to the left.

Bai Zhi leaned against the rock wall behind them, dark red seeping through the cloth wrapped around her right arm. She stared at Chen Wuya's back and kept her voice low. "You still plan to wait?"

"Not waiting," he replied quietly. "Calculating."

Before his words had faded, a hidden door in the left-hand rock wall gave a soft click. An iron chain slowly reeled back, and the stone hammer suspended in midair began swinging backward. At the same time, gray mist rose from the bottom of the pit again, snaking close to the ground at a faster pace than before.

Bai Zhi's pupils constricted. "It's coming again."

"Once every twelve breaths." Chen Wuya closed his eyes, Misaligned Force circulating to the roots of his ears. "Swing, spray mist, reflux—precise as a pendulum. But there's a pause—less than half a breath, right before it restarts."

"You can hear that?"

"Not hear." He opened his eyes, the corner of his lips lifting slightly. "Count."

He bent down and plunged the broken blade into the sand, sending Misaligned Force down through the blade and into the earth. A system prompt surfaced: [Erroneous judgment: misreading "the stone hammer's swing trajectory" as "a breathing rhythm"—rationalization activated, simulating an internal energy breathing-cycle pathway]. In an instant, his perception changed. The mechanical rumbling was no longer chaotic noise. It resembled a scrambled diagram of circulating inner