What replaced it was an information torrent that could not be perceived through sight, hearing, or touch, but acted directly on the deepest reaches of Lin Yuan's soul!
It was neither an image nor a sound.
It was the "Dao"!
The true, supreme "Great Dao" that Lin Yuan had pursued bitterly for more than a decade, yet had never found a way to enter!
It was the ultimate answer to "eternity"!
It was the only path to "freedom"!
"Boom—!!!!!"
At that moment, Lin Yuan's Dao Heart, as solid as rock and still as a calm well, was smashed to pieces by this sudden, most absolute truth—ruthlessly and without mercy!
He had thought himself free of desire.
He had been wrong.
His desire was greater, greedier, and... purer than anyone else's in this world!
What he sought was not mundane family affection or wealth.
What he sought was the "Dao" itself!
And this mirror had actually... actually brought the most vast and abstract concept buried in the depths of his heart to life, revealing it in a form beyond the limits of his understanding!
It had let him see the destination!
For the first time, Lin Yuan's body began to tremble beyond his control.
His breathing grew hurried.
For the first time, a flame of near-madness, a flame called "possession," ignited in his usually placid eyes!
He rushed forward and pressed both hands hard against the cold mirror.
"Tell me... tell me more..."
His voice was hoarse and dry, carrying a hint of pleading he had never even noticed in himself.
But the mirror remained as cold as ever.
The boundless "Shadow of the Great Dao" had already vanished.
In the mirror, only an eleven-year-old boy remained, wearing a Hogwarts school uniform, with black hair and eyes, a pale face, and eyes filled with loss and madness.
A vast, abyssal sense of loss swallowed him in an instant.
It was the exquisite agony of... glimpsing heaven, only to be kicked back down to earth.
Lin Yuan leaned weakly against the frame and slid down to the floor.
He stared blankly at his hands, then at the cold mirror.
For a long, long while.
At last, he let out a bitter laugh at himself.
"So... I'm the most pathetic mortal of all, bound by obsession."
He had been wrong.
Terribly wrong.
The Mirror of Erised was not useless to him.
On the contrary...
It was the deadliest, most irresistible poison in the world to him.
Ever since that night, when he glimpsed the "Shadow of the Great Dao" reflected in the Mirror of Erised, Lin Yuan's life had, for the first time, lost the regularity of the stars in their courses.
His Dao Heart, the one he had been so proud of, certain he had long since tempered into a state of "pure and flawless glass, impervious to all forces," had developed a deep crack.
No, it wasn't a crack.
It was a seed. A seed called "ultimate longing" had been watered by the mirror's phantom that night, and had burst forth in the depths of his heart with brutal, unreasonable force, growing wildly.
By day, he remained the Gryffindor student seated in a corner of the library, his face calm as he appeared to read Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2.
But only he knew that his vast sea of consciousness was no longer calm.
Countless deductions and analyses revolved around that "Shadow of the Great Dao." He tried to use everything he had learned—from the theories of cultivation to magical runes and the formulas of physics—to reproduce and understand the supreme "truth" that had flashed through the mirror.
Yet every attempt ended in failure.
It was like an elementary-school student who knew only addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, trying to calculate the entropy of the universe by hand.
Powerless, and ridiculous.
And so, his nightly "pilgrimage" became his only solace.
It was an "indulgence" unlike anything he had ever experienced, mingling pain with ecstasy.
He became the most devout—and most secretive—"addict."
Whenever the midnight bell tolled, he would cloak himself in a layer of "shadow" woven from Soul Power, more perfect than any Invisibility Cloak, and silently make his way to the seventh-floor corridor with the tapestry depicting "Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach Trolls ballet."
He never went in first.
He would quietly merge with the shadows on the wall, still as a lifeless statue, and wait.
Wait for another "pilgrim" to arrive.
Before long, Harry Potter's slight figure would appear, sneaking around beneath his father's Invisibility Cloak.
Lin Yuan could clearly "see" Harry's face, filled with longing and sadness, beneath that legendary Deathly Hallow.
He watched Harry walk past the tapestry three times, watched the carved wooden door appear, and then watched Harry rush inside without hesitation, like a baby rushing into its mother's arms.
Lin Yuan's soul would envelop the entire room.
He could "hear" Harry's quiet, stifled sobs.
He could "sense" the turbulent emotional energy surging through Harry—a longing for family and an intense yearning for the warmth of a home.
In Lin Yuan's analytical model, Harry's behavior was categorized as "periodic fulfillment of low-level emotional needs." It was a simple, pure, and highly predictable behavioral pattern.
Harry became an unconscious "timer" for Lin Yuan before he entered that sanctum.
Usually, an hour later, Harry would leave, lost and weary, tear tracks still on his face.
When the door closed behind Harry and turned back into a cold stone wall,
Lin Yuan's "time" would truly begin.
He would repeat Harry's actions, silently thinking, "I need a place where I can see what I desire." Then the door would open for him once more.
The room beyond was empty. In its center stood only the Mirror of Erised, radiating a deadly allure.
Lin Yuan would walk toward it one step at a time, like a believer approaching an altar.
Then he would raise his head.
"Boom—"
In that instant, the real world faded and vanished.
His entire soul was swallowed once more by the indescribable "Shadow of the Great Dao."
He saw his reflection in the mirror, holding the Stars in his hand and treading across time and space.
The laws of the universe draped over him like a docile robe.
It was a state of... "union with the Dao"!
The ultimate form pursued by every seeker of the Dao throughout their life!
Lin Yuan's soul would rush toward that phantom without a thought for the consequences, like a drowning man reaching for a lifeline.
He frantically ran his "supercomputer," trying to parse even one ten-thousandth of the true information about the "Dao" from the phantom.
It was a process that consumed an immense amount of Soul Power.
Every "pilgrimage" was like a "suicide attack" on the level of the mind.
In just a few days of indulgence, nearly thirty percent of his Soul Power had been depleted.
By day, his face grew paler, and his mind grew faintly, almost imperceptibly, hazy.
But he didn't care.
Because amid that extreme expenditure, he had also gained a tiny, negligible reward.
Through repeatedly "glimpsing the Dao" and falling into despair, his shattered Dao Heart was being reforged.
It had become more resilient and more concentrated than before.
He began to understand that he could not rely solely on calm "analysis" and "deduction" to follow his Dao.
He also needed an almost-mad "obsession."
A resolve that said, "If I cannot attain the Dao, I would rather die."
This mirror was his poison, but it was also... his "whetstone."
Before you continue