Shadows in the Library and the Origin of the Dragon Daggers

The Xie Family Library was even more secluded and profound than imagined. The lights at the end of the stone steps were merely fireflies guiding the way; what truly illuminated this underground hall were the hundreds of luminous pearls embedded in the dome.

The pearls were arranged in some ancient formation, emitting a soft, steady glow that shrouded the entire library in a hazy silver radiance. The air was filled with the dry scent unique to aged paper, mixed with ink sticks, camphor, and an indescribable faint fishy sweetness resembling the bones of soul beasts.

Yun Zhiyu stood at the entrance. Before her stretched rows upon rows of bookshelves extending beyond the limits of her sight. They were crafted from some dark-purple wood, their surfaces carrying a metallic cold sheen. They had clearly undergone special soul-tool treatment and could withstand the erosion of time.

Each row of shelves stood three zhang tall, and one needed floating soul-tool ladders to reach the books on the top levels. The passages between the shelves were narrow enough for only two people to walk side by side, like a carefully designed maze.

The corner of her mouth twitched unconsciously.

"Patriarch Xie," she said, her voice stirring a faint echo through the empty hall, "you should go take care of whatever you need to do."

Xie Xuan paused slightly. A flicker of hesitation passed through his dark-green eyes. He clearly did not feel comfortable leaving an outsider—even one with an unfathomable background—alone in the Xie Family's core grounds.

"Just let Xie Xie come in and help me look for books," Yun Zhiyu added, her tone as calm as if she were stating an established fact.

"The matter of Martial Soul Evolution is extremely important, and it will take time to prepare."

She paused, her gaze sweeping over the rows of bookshelves. An imperceptible thought flashed through her eyes. End of term, vacation, two or three months—those points in time quietly linked together in her mind, forming an invisible schedule.

Wei Xiaofeng's Azure Shadow Serpent and Zhang Yangzi's Dark Illusion Demon Eagle both needed to complete their transformations then, while Xie Xie's Space-Time Dragon was the heaviest and most crucial entry on that schedule.

"It will probably be around the end of our term before I have time to arrange it," she said. Her voice was so soft it sounded like she was speaking to herself, yet it reached Xie Xuan's ears clearly.

Xie Xuan fell silent for a moment. His gaze shifted between her daughter-like petite figure and the endless shelves before finally settling on Yun Zhiyu's calm profile. Her dark-brown eyes glimmered warmly beneath the silver glow of the luminous pearls, revealing neither covetousness nor greed—only a nearly transparent, reassuring certainty.

"Fine!" He finally nodded, his voice carrying the solemnity of someone who believed, yet still harbored doubts.

"Xie Xie is waiting outside. I'll let him in."

He turned and left. His heavy footsteps gradually faded along the stone steps, finally disappearing amid the dull rumble of mechanisms turning. Yun Zhiyu did not watch him go. Instead, she walked directly to the nearest shelf, her fingertips gently brushing across the book spines as she sensed the faint Soul Power fluctuations emanating from the ancient pages.

"Martial Soul Evolution is my promise to you," her voice echoed through the emptiness, as though she were speaking to the air, or perhaps to some unseen witness. "Once it is done, I will provide the method for Martial Soul Evolution. After that, I will need the Xie Family to do some things for me, to make some arrangements... Don't worry. They won't be anything cruel or immoral."

She pulled out a yellowed handwritten record. On its title page, several words were engraved in ancient seal script: "An Examination of the Xie Clan's Martial Souls, Volume One." The ink had faded nearly beyond recognition, yet the brushwork still carried a sharp, forceful spirit.

"You can trust someone from Shrek Academy."

The mechanisms turned once more, and Xie Xie appeared at the end of the stone steps. His brown-gold hair gleamed warmly beneath the silver light of the luminous pearls, while impatient excitement burned in his dark-green eyes. He looked like a hunting dog finally permitted into a treasure chamber.

"Class President!" He nearly skipped through the passage. The Light Dragon Dagger and Shadow Dragon Dagger at his waist swayed and made faint metallic clinking sounds. "My father didn't give you trouble, did he?"

"He did." Without raising her head, Yun Zhiyu gently turned the pages of the handwritten record. "So I put him in his place."

Xie Xie's expression froze for a moment before he burst into suppressed laughter. The laughter echoed through the library, startling soul-tool fireflies that fed on paper in some distant corner. Dots of dim green light drifted up among the shelves like lanterns scattered by the wind.

"I knew it." He leaned closer, his nose nearly brushing the pages in Yun Zhiyu's hands. "With someone like my father, you have to be even more overbearing than he is."

"Enough nonsense!" Yun Zhiyu turned her head aside to avoid his overly close breath and stuffed the handwritten record into his hands.

"Find books. I need the complete histories of the Xie Family's previous generations of patriarchs, as well as the earliest records of the origins of the Light Dragon Dagger and Shadow Dragon Dagger martial souls. Focus on materials from the first through fifth generations, especially abnormal records during martial soul awakenings, cases of soul skill mutations, and any fragments related to 'space-time.'"

Xie Xie took the record, a trace of confusion flashing through his dark-green eyes. "Space-time?"

"Your martial souls are not merely light and shadow." Yun Zhiyu's gaze fell on a distant row of bookshelves marked with the character for "Forbidden," her voice as soft as though she were recounting an ancient prophecy.

"Light is the manifestation of time, and shadow is the fold of space. The Light Dragon Dagger and Shadow Dragon Dagger, one bright and one dark, one visible and one hidden, are two sides of the same space-time power. No one in your Xie Family has broken through in centuries not because you weren't hardworking enough, but because you were looking in the wrong direction."

Xie Xie's breathing abruptly quickened.

He lowered his head to look at the record in his hands. The ancient seal-script characters on the yellowed pages seemed to sway beneath the silver glow of the luminous pearls like ghosts on the verge of awakening. Space-time power—those four words exploded in his mind like lightning splitting the chaos apart, illuminating every detail of the mystery that had troubled him for years regarding his martial souls' rejection of one another.

"I-I'll go look!" His voice trembled faintly as he turned and rushed toward the nearest shelf, his brown-gold hair cutting a frantic arc through the air.

Yun Zhiyu did not watch him leave. Her gaze fell upon another row of shelves, and her fingertips tapped gently against the book spines as though conversing with some sleeping presence. Her Purple Demon Eyes quietly activated beneath her contact lenses. The violet-gold vertical pupils took in the Soul Power fluctuations of every book—some strong, some weak, some pure, some mixed—like countless invisible rivers converging and diverging in this underground hall before ultimately flowing into some unknown abyss.

She pulled out a copy of <Biographies of the Xie Clan's Forebears, First Collection> and sat on a stone bench beside the shelf. Antislip patterns were carved into the bench's surface. It felt cold and rough beneath her fingers, like the spine of some enormous beast. She opened the book and paused on the first line:

"The origin of the Xie Clan can be traced back twelve hundred years before the new era of the Doulou Calendar. The first patriarch, Xie Yuan, was originally a hunter on the frontier of the Star Luo Empire. One night, he observed the heavens and saw Twin Dragons Bearing the Pearl descend into his courtyard. The next day, he awakened Twin Martial Souls: one the Light Dragon Dagger, the other the Shadow Dragon Dagger..."

Yun Zhiyu's fingertips gently stroked the page.

Twin Dragons Bearing the Pearl—this was something even the original work had never mentioned. Yet now, a detailed account was unfolding before her. She continued reading, her gaze swiftly passing through the dense ancient seal script as she extracted and categorized every key piece of information, constructing an invisible network within her mind.

"Found it!" Xie Xie's voice came from afar, brimming with the excitement of discovering a new continent. He hurried through the narrow passage with an armful of yellowed handwritten records and scrolls. Several strands of spiderweb clung to his brown-gold hair, but he did not notice at all. "Materials from the first to fifth generations, and this—"

He slammed the topmost book onto the stone table, kicking up a faint ring of dust. It was a handbook bound in some kind of beast hide. The cover was so badly damaged that its original color could no longer be seen, and its edges bore worm-eaten traces. Yet the large words in the center remained clear: <On the Shared Origin of Light and Darkness, Handwritten by Xie Yuan>.

"This was written by my great-grandfather's great-grandfather... Anyway, an ancestor from a long time ago," Xie Xie said, panting. Expectation burned in his dark-green eyes. "It mentions 'space-time'!"

Yun Zhiyu accepted the beast-hide handbook, her fingertips sliding lightly across its rough surface. She opened the first page, her gaze moving swiftly over the yellowed paper. Her lips moved soundlessly, as if she were holding a conversation across time and space with a departed soul.

"Light is the exterior, shadow is the interior. Exterior and interior differ, yet share one origin and flow along different paths..." she read softly, her voice stirring a faint echo in the empty library.

"I exhausted my life's strength seeking to unite the two daggers, yet I never succeeded. On the verge of death, I watched a twin lunar eclipse and suddenly understood: light is not light, shadow is not shadow. The two are originally the two sides of space-time. Forcing them together is like making water and fire coexist; one will surely suffer backlash..."

Her voice gradually faded, and her gaze lingered on the page for a long time.

Xie Yuan's realization, Xie Yuan's regret, the sigh he never managed to utter before death—through these yellowed words, she seemed to see a white-haired old man sitting alone in a courtyard on the night of a twin lunar eclipse. He watched the bright moon slowly swallowed by shadow in the sky and finally realized that the direction he had pursued all his life had been wrong from the very beginning.

"He found the right direction," Yun Zhiyu finally said, her voice soft as a sigh. "But he used the wrong method."

"What does that mean?" Xie Xie leaned closer, his nose nearly brushing the edge of the beast-hide handbook.

"The Light Dragon Dagger and Shadow Dragon Dagger are not meant to be 'fused into one.'" Yun Zhiyu closed the handbook and looked toward the drifting soul-tool fireflies in the distance.

"They are meant to be 'returned to their rightful places.' Light is the flow of time, and shadow is the folding of space. They are two fragments split from space-time power. Your Xie Family's patriarchs have spent generations trying to fuse the two martial souls, like trying to force two branches of a river into a single stream—not that it cannot be done, but you must find their source."

She paused, gently tapping the cover of the beast-hide handbook. "The bloodline of the Space-Time Dragon is that source."

Xie Xie's pupils suddenly contracted.

Space-Time Dragon—those words exploded in his sea of consciousness like thunder. He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged, as though some invisible force had gripped his throat. Fragments of memory churned through his mind. That distant name, one that had existed only in legends, had now been spoken so casually by Yun Zhiyu, yet it carried a certainty that made his heart tremble.

"H-How do you know..." His voice was as hoarse as sandpaper scraping across wood.

"I know more than you think." Yun Zhiyu turned her head slightly, and the violet vertical pupils beneath her dark-brown contact lenses narrowed faintly. "But this is not the time for explanations. Keep looking. I need more records about lunar eclipses, twin-star phenomena, and accompanying abnormalities during martial soul awakenings."

The two buried themselves in the sea of books. Time lost all meaning in this underground hall. The light of the luminous pearls remained unchanged. There was no sunrise or sunset, no alternation between morning and dusk. There was only the rustle of turning pages, occasional quiet reading, and Xie Xie's suppressed cries whenever he found crucial information.

"Class President, look at this!" He rushed over holding a yellowed silk scroll, several more strands of spiderweb clinging to his brown-gold hair. "The third-generation patriarch, Xie Heng, awakened his martial souls during a twin lunar eclipse. The Light Dragon Dagger and Shadow Dragon Dagger appeared simultaneously, but... but he was severely injured by an opponent in a soul master tournament. His martial souls shattered. Though they were repaired afterward, he could never use both martial souls at the same time again!"

Yun Zhiyu took the silk scroll and swiftly scanned the dense ancient seal script. Xie Heng's case confirmed her suspicions—Twin Martial Souls awakened under a particular celestial phenomenon had a deeper connection to space-time power from the outset. The repair after the martial souls shattered was like forcefully gluing a broken mirror back together. It might regain its original appearance, but it could never again reflect a complete image.

"And this!" Xie Xie brought over another stack of handwritten records. "The fifth-generation patriarch, Xie Ting, tried to fuse the two martial souls using a secret method. His meridians ruptured, and he could never cultivate again for the rest of his life. He left behind final words saying, 'Light and darkness share one origin; force it, and you will surely face retribution...'"

"It wasn't retribution for forcing it." Yun Zhiyu interrupted him, her fingertip gently tapping a line in one of the records.

"The method was wrong. Your Xie Family's secret art follows the path of 'fusion,' attempting to combine the two martial souls into one. But light and shadow are not like water and milk. They are two sides of a coin, the front and back of a mirror, they are..."

She paused, as if searching for the most fitting analogy. "They are the inside and outside of a door. What you need to do is not tear down the door, but find the key that lets it open and close freely."

Xie Xie blinked blankly.

Yun Zhiyu sighed. She pulled out a blank sheet of paper and used the Soul Power gathered at her fingertip as a pen, drawing a simple diagram—a straight line with a dot at each end.

"This is the timeline." She pointed to the straight line. "The Light Dragon Dagger represents the 'present,' the illuminated point on the timeline."

She drew a curved line perpendicular to it, forming a cross. "This is the spatial axis. The Shadow Dragon Dagger represents 'here,' the folded point on the spatial axis."

"Space-time power." Her fingertip pressed heavily against the intersection of the cross. "It is not in the light, nor in the shadow, but at the convergence of light and shadow. Your Twin Martial Souls are two fragments split from space-time power. They do not need to fuse. They only need to—"

"Return?" Xie Xie blurted out.

"Exactly!" A faint curve appeared at the corner of Yun Zhiyu's lips.

"Return to the source and become one again, but not through forced merging. Instead, at the right opportunity, let them naturally recombine at the intersection of time and space."

She pushed the sheet of paper toward Xie Xie, her gaze lingering on a distant row of shelves marked "Celestial Phenomena." "I need more records about twin lunar eclipses, space-time rifts, and the awakening of dragon bloodlines. There should be some in the Xie Family Library. Go find them."

Xie Xie nodded heavily. His brown-gold hair swung in a brilliant arc beneath the silver glow of the luminous pearls. He turned and rushed toward the shelves in the celestial phenomena section, more eager than before, yet also far more orderly.

Yun Zhiyu lowered her head again, her gaze falling on another book titled Records of Xie Clan Martial Soul Mutations. Her fingertips gently turned the pages, taking in case after case, failure after failure, deathbed sigh after deathbed sigh, building an ever more complete network in her mind.

Time quietly passed. By the time Xie Xie returned with the final stack of materials, his brown-gold hair had turned completely gray-white—covered by the dust that had accumulated over countless years. Yet unprecedented excitement and clarity burned in his dark-green eyes.

"Class President," he said as he placed the materials on the stone table, his voice hoarse as if worn raw by sandpaper, "I found it. Three hundred years ago, an ancestor of the Xie Family vanished in a space-time rift in the Far North. Afterward, his martial soul mark lit up again on the family altar, but its form had changed completely. It was no longer the Light Dragon Dagger and Shadow Dragon Dagger, but..."

"But what?"

"But a transparent dagger, as though it had condensed from starlight." Xie Xie's voice trembled slightly. "The family records called it the Space-Time Trace. But that ancestor never appeared again, and the dagger vanished with him. Only one passage remained: 'Light and darkness return to their places, and the dragon's shadow first appears.'"

Yun Zhiyu's fingertips lightly tapped the stone table.

"Light and darkness return to their places, and the dragon's shadow first appears"—those words were like a key, linking every fragment in her mind into a complete picture. The awakening of the Space-Time Dragon required a specific celestial phenomenon, a specific bloodline concentration, and a specific... pain.

She thought of the Martial Soul Evolution Pill in the system space, and of the side effects when it catalyzed a martial soul transformation—the shattering pain of meridians being rebuilt, the extreme agony of the soul being torn apart. It was not something a nine-year-old child could endure. Though Xie Xie was more mature than others his age, he was still a boy under ten. Such pain could destroy his will and even leave behind an inner demon that would never heal.

After the end of term, during the vacation, in two or three months—she needed to complete Martial Soul Evolution for Wei Xiaofeng and Zhang Yangzi then and accumulate enough experience to ensure Xie Xie's transformation would be completely safe.

"Very good." She finally spoke, her voice returning to its usual indifference. "These materials are enough for today."

She sorted the beast-hide handbook, silk scrolls, and handwritten records one by one, stacking them neatly on the stone table. Xie Xie stood nearby, complicated emotions burning in his dark-green eyes—anticipation, unease, and the almost fragile relief of finally seeing hope.

"Class President," he said, his voice so quiet it was as though he feared disturbing something, "can I really... evolve?"

Yun Zhiyu's movements paused almost imperceptibly.

She turned to look at Xie Xie. The youth who was usually wild and unruly now looked like a child awaiting judgment. Dust covered his brown-gold hair, and the silver glow of the luminous pearls reflected in his dark-green eyes like a lake illuminated by moonlight, so clear one could see its bottom.

"You can," she said, her voice soft as a promise to some distant future. "But not now."

She paused, her gaze falling on the stack of yellowed records atop the stone table. "I need time to prepare, and you need time to build up your strength. After the end of term, during the vacation, I will arrange it for you. Before then—"

Her gaze met Xie Xie's briefly, and the violet vertical pupils beneath her dark-brown contact lenses narrowed faintly. "Do not tell anyone, including your father. Martial Soul Evolution is a matter of great importance. Anyone who leaks it will bear the consequences."

Xie Xie nodded heavily. His brown-gold hair swayed in a determined arc beneath the silver glow of the luminous pearls. "I understand, Class President. I trust you."

Yun Zhiyu did not respond to that trust. She merely turned and walked toward the stone steps. Her moon-white short coat glowed softly beneath the silver light of the luminous pearls, like a fish swimming against the current toward the depths of time.

Xie Xie followed behind her. The Light Dragon Dagger and Shadow Dragon Dagger gently swayed at his waist, making faint metallic clinks that sounded almost cheerful.

The lights of the library gradually went out behind them, like an eye slowly closing and locking all its secrets back into darkness.