The moment Qin Yu stepped into the rift, the Void Abyss Forbidden Domain behind him seemed to be suddenly closed by an invisible hand. All the dark blue aura and death star showers vanished together, replaced by a kind of "clarity" that pierced to the bone—a clarity so clear that it was suffocating.
There was no wind, yet countless tiny "click, click" sounds spontaneously echoed in the void, as if some vast glass world was slowly turning gears. When he landed, he didn't step on rock, but on a semi-transparent mirror. The mirror didn't reflect his current figure, but the moment his toes touched it, ripples spread out like water.
Each ripple flashes with a folded image: his childhood self looking up in the darkness, his teenage fist clenching in the wind, his post-fame gaze back amidst bloodshed, and many forks in the road that never happened yet "seemed to have"—
In one possibility, he is shackled; in another, he kneels in the dust; in yet another, he has never set foot here. The mirrors stretch forward into an endless corridor, the walls, the dome, even the air itself composed of mirrors. These mirrors are not flat, but rather like fragments twisted and broken by countless forces, pieced together to form a labyrinth, with cold silver lines shimmering at the folds.
Fine, purplish-black cracks meandered within the silver threads, like dimensions breathing within a mirror. Each mirror reflected a different "him," with different postures, different gazes, different breathing rhythms, and even different weights of existence—some gazes were as calm as the deep sea, some as fiery as fire, and some as empty as if they had never awakened.
As soon as he took his second step forward, the entire corridor suddenly seemed to be struck by an invisible giant hammer. All the mirrors emitted a loud buzzing sound at the same time. The buzzing sound was not a sound, but a resonance produced when a "self" was ripped away.
The "him" figures in the mirror all looked up, their lips opening and closing simultaneously, but no words came out. Only a cold pressure came from all directions—it wasn't murderous intent, but something far more bizarre: like someone trying to pull "who you are" out of your body.
Then, the mirror began to "open." Not crack, but rather, faces stepped out of the mirror, the surface like soft mercury passing through them, their heels landing with shards of light and glass dust. First to emerge was a small figure, eyes stubborn yet instinctively wary; followed by a boy, sharp and piercing, his hand seemingly still clutching a nascent, unformed obsession.
Then came him at this moment—exactly like him, yet standing opposite, reflecting his image with the same calm gaze; finally, a weary silhouette emerged, his back heavy, as if burdened by too many "what ifs."
These mirror images did not fight individually; they approached each other in the center of the corridor, like tides flowing into the sea. In the instant they drew together, their bodies twisted, fused, and overlapped, skin upon skin creating multiple layers of transparent texture, bones upon bones intertwining into impossible structures. Countless faces floated and sank on the surface of a chaotic humanoid figure.
His arms sometimes resembled the slender joints of a boy, sometimes the steady muscles of an adult, and sometimes the withered emaciated form of a woman in her twilight years. His entire body was like a monster shaped from "all of you." With each breath, the corridor trembled, and spiderweb-like cracks appeared on the mirrored walls.
The Thousand-Faced Self Aggregate raised its head, and all its faces simultaneously showed a "familiar" expression to Qin Yu. In that instant, a chill ran down Qin Yu's spine—familiarity was not scary, what was scary was that it was so familiar that even the slightest habit of his grip on the sword was exactly the same.
The moment it raised its hand, countless tiny rays of light appeared in the air, like the trajectory of a drawn martial arts technique. It didn't need to gather momentum; it simply took a step forward and unleashed its first strike with the same angle, speed, and rhythm as when it had previously used its sword.
Qin Yu instinctively turned to the side, the Silent Origin Stainless Sword already appearing in his palm. As soon as the sword was drawn, the mirrored surface of the corridor seemed to be sliced by some sharper "reality," the cracks instantly spreading far and wide. He didn't immediately press down with his sword technique.
Because in that instant he understood: this was not a simple matter of victory or defeat; any instinct to "destroy the mirror" could become a weapon against himself—with each mirror destroyed, that memory would be stripped from his mind. If he used his inertia to forcefully cut through the maze, what would ultimately be stripped away was his own continuity.
The aggregated sword shadows clashed with his sword's edge in mid-air. The sparks weren't red, but rather shattered silver dust. As the dust rose, it transformed into flashbacks of unfamiliar memories that pierced his vision: he saw a pair of hands that weren't his own holding a strange knife, he saw a strange name being called, he saw himself looking back in another world—
The images flashed by, leaving a glassy mark on his skin. There was no pain at the mark, only a more deadly sense of alienation creeping up from his bones: This is not my hand. The next second, he hesitated slightly when raising his sword, as if he were manipulating a puppet that was separated from him by a veil.
The aggregate sensed that slight hesitation, and the "arrogant face" appeared on its body. The corners of its mouth turned up, and its movements suddenly accelerated. It unleashed three consecutive sword strikes, each carrying a strange "cognitive poison." The sword wind grazed Qin Yu's shoulder, only tearing the hem of his clothes, yet it instantly gave Qin Yu a strong illusion—that piece of flesh felt like it wasn't his own, like it was borrowed, like it could be taken back by someone else at any moment.
Qin Yu's breathing became slightly heavy as he forcibly suppressed the fleeting illusion. However, the mirrored walls of the corridor suddenly lit up simultaneously, and he emerged from dozens of mirrors as reflected in the "Mirror of Inferiority." These mirrors did not attack but instead erected identical defensive postures in various corners, turning the corridor into a constantly rebounding cage. At the same time, he fled from a greater distance as reflected in the "Mirror of Fear," his footsteps hurried and disordered, as if deliberately luring him into pursuit and coaxing him away from his original position, giving the aggregate a perfect opportunity for "Existence Inversion."
Qin Yu didn't chase after him. The more he chased, the more he felt like he was being led around; the more he tried to "correct" him, the more he would fall into the logical trap of "having to prove who I am." Instead, he paused for a moment, allowing himself to stand firmly in the center of the corridor, his gaze sweeping over his surroundings—those mirrors didn't reflect the outside world, but rather the reflections of all the possibilities within him.
He suddenly realized: the maze here is not a spatial maze, but a maze of "self-continuity". If you try to deduce the route with "I have always been myself", you will be trapped in an infinite loop; if you try to clear the way by "destroying the mirror", you will peel away your own self; if you try to suppress it with power, the aggregate will use the power you are most familiar with to backfire on you.
So he began to do the opposite. He no longer pursued "continuity" but acknowledged "discontinuity". He no longer tried to prove "this is my body" but allowed that sense of unfamiliarity to exist - unfamiliarity or fragmentation, it was all part of him.
As this thought arose, the aggregate seemed to sense danger, all faces contorted simultaneously, and a ring-shaped crack suddenly collapsed in the center of the corridor, from which gray-black air currents surged, flowing from the ground to the sky like an inverted tide. The runic light on the mirror wall burned in reverse, as if all the "selves" were having their weights exchanged.
Ultimate Technique: Existence Inversion, activated.
Qin Yu's vision suddenly shifted, the world seemed to be inverted into two overlapping images. He saw "himself now" standing in a mirror opposite him, while the one truly standing in the center of the corridor had become a "possibility that had never existed"—that version of himself had colder eyes, lighter breathing, as if he had never cared about anyone. Even more devastatingly, the moment Qin Yu swung his sword, the sensation his body gave him became—"I am cutting myself."
Each time the sword approached the aggregate, his consciousness felt a stinging pain, as if the sword would slice "himself" in two. But when the aggregate retaliated, the pain was replaced by numbness, as if he were the one hurting others instead of being hurt. This inversion was not a simple misalignment, but an exchange of "existential weights," causing him to have a self-destructive impulse when attacking and a detached indifference when defending. Any one of these illusions could amplify and completely shatter the cognition of "continuous self."
The aggregate took a step forward, and all the faces roared in unison, a silent scream. Its swordsmanship was exactly the same as Qin Yu's, yet each strike instilled the message "You are not you" into Qin Yu's very bones. The glass-like marks on the back of Qin Yu's hand began to spread, and more and more memories flashed back within those marks.
Even fragments he shouldn't have known appeared: someone from another era calling out a name he had no connection with, someone plunging a sword into the heart of a city, someone saying to the darkness, "You shouldn't exist." These fragments were like poison, seeping into his breath, causing his knuckles holding the sword to tremble uncontrollably, as if the illusion of "manipulating a puppet" was becoming a reality.
At this very moment, the crucial point of the battle arrives— at the Existence Inversion, there is only one way to break the deadlock: actively embrace that moment and completely believe that "I am that mirror image."
Qin Yu did not choose to resist, nor did he choose to refute. He did something more dangerous: he let go of the obsession that "I must be the original me". He took all the feelings - unfamiliarity, misalignment, fragmentation, and even the alienation of "this is not my body" - into his heart, neither expelling them nor denying them.
He looked up, staring at the mirror reflecting "unprecedented possibilities," his gaze as calm as the emptiness before surrendering himself to darkness. In his heart, he wasn't reciting a name, nor an identity.
Rather, it's a more primal affirmation: the one standing here right now is also me. Not a replacement, not an imposter, but a branch of the same origin. Acknowledge it, and you will no longer be dragged down by it; embrace it, and you will no longer be torn apart by its inversion.
In that instant, the entire Ten Thousand Mirrors Corridor seemed to be muted. All the mirrors trembled simultaneously, and the "Mirror of Inferiority," "Mirrors of Mirror of Fear," and "Mirror of Arrogance" on their surfaces stopped moving, as if they had lost the hooks that pulled the trial participants.
At that moment, the aggregate launched its most violent counterattack, realizing that its perception of "continuous self" was being Annihilation by Qin Yu himself—as long as Qin Yu did not cling to continuity, it would lose the foundation for killing him with "rupture".
The aggregate's chest split open, revealing a core of light composed of countless mirrored faces. Within the core, an extremely thin line flickered. It was not a line of power, but a chain of cognition asking "Who am I?" It was attempting, in a final act, to nail this chain back onto Qin Yu, recreating his obsession.
Qin Yu didn't use any outward-expanding destruction to bombard the enemy, because that would only cause more mirrors to shatter and memories to peel away; nor did he rush to use extreme erasure to end the conflict in one move, because this wasn't an enemy, but himself. He chose the most stable, the coldest, and the least obstinate method—
He made the Silent Origin Stainless Sword slowly trace a line along the ground. The sword's edge did not cut the mirror or break the wall, but only drew an extremely round arc in the center of the corridor. Where the arc passed, the mirror did not shatter, but became "clean" as if it had been washed away from the dust. It was so clean that there was no reflection at all, as if that small area had been stripped away from the rule of "reflecting oneself" and became a blank space that no longer reflected anything.
The aggregate lunged into the circle of emptiness, trying to re-dye it into a mirror, to reflect Qin Yu's obsession once more. But the instant it stepped in, Qin Yu took a step forward in the opposite direction. His figure briefly overlapped with the aggregate's shadow, and the aftershocks of the Existence Inversion struck him again, causing him the stinging pain of "I am hurting myself." But he no longer dodged or retreated; instead, he took that pain as a confirmation—a confirmation that it was indeed a part of "me."
He raised his sword, not to strike the aggregate's shell, but to sever the shimmering chain of cognition. At the closest possible distance, with the most emotionless decisiveness, he cut the obsession with the "continuous self" at its root.
There was no explosion, no roar, only a very soft "ding," like an invisible string snapping.
All the faces of the aggregate lost their expressions at the same time, and its body, as if stripped of its cohesion, began to peel away in layers: the face of childhood turned into a wisp of gray, the face of adolescence turned into a wisp of gray, the face of old age turned into a wisp of gray, and countless possibilities that never came to pass also turned into gray.
The ashes didn't scatter; instead, they were absorbed by the corridor. As they were absorbed, Qin Yu's memory timeline seemed to be torn to pieces by hand, many images in his mind beginning to fragment into unrelated fragments.
He remembered a certain breath, but couldn't recall whose breath it was; he remembered a murderous intent, but couldn't recall why he killed; he remembered the temperature of a pair of eyes, but couldn't recall their names. He even opened his mouth for a moment, only to find that he couldn't answer "Who am I?" with a complete sentence, as if language itself had lost some of its anchor.
At the same time, an even more terrifying and powerful intuition was born within him—he seemed to be standing in multiple moments simultaneously, the vigilance of childhood, the sharpness of youth, the calmness of the present, and the insight of old age all converging in the same instant into a fighting instinct that required no thought.
He no longer relies on a single "self," but freely switches between fragmented selves, like breathing simultaneously across multiple timelines.
The Ten Thousand Mirrors Corridor began to collapse. Not shatter, but all the mirrors simultaneously lost their reflective meaning, their surfaces gradually transforming into the same image: the darkness before birth. It was a formless, soundless, emotionless blackness, as black as if the world had not yet been named.
The mirrors turned black one after another, the darkness merging into one, until the entire corridor was finally left with only one unified reflection—the darkness of Beginningless. Just as the last mirror also returned to that same image, the voice of Silent Origin Caihuang echoed in the void once more, lower and closer than before, as if speaking right at the edge of Qin Yu's presence.
"Sixth level, passed."
Qin Yu stood in the shadows, his knuckles still gripping the Silent Origin Stainless Sword. The glass stains on the back of his hand had not completely disappeared, but they were no longer spreading. His breathing was steady, but he could feel that his "self" was no longer a straight line, but rather like a star map that had been shattered and rearranged—the gaps were still there, but the star positions were sharper.