Aftermath and Recovery

Shen Moxin withdrew her finger, her expression grave. "The meridians are deeply torn, especially the Soul Power nodes. You must rest completely for seven days and cannot use your Soul Power."

Lu Yuan leaned back on the stone bed, his face pale, and nodded. His throat itched, and he coughed softly again.

"Don't speak." Shen Moxin pressed his shoulder and turned to the other side.

Yun Youzi sat cross-legged beside him, his breath weak but his eyes clear. "I'm fine, I'll recover in a few days." He looked at Lu Yuan, "This kid forcibly reversed the direction of the Source Seed's eruption, and he suffered the full backlash of his Soul Power. It's lucky he wasn't crippled on the spot."

Lin Xiao leaned against the door. "It's quiet outside now, all cleared out." He licked his canine teeth. "Too bad, didn't get a chance to sneak over and kill a few."

"Stay vigilant," Lu Yuan said in a hoarse voice. "Send two groups to take turns observing and confirm that it's a genuine retreat. Uncle Mo— "

Mo Chen poked his head in, his face covered in dust. "The rune circuit is broken in seventeen places, and the base has cracks. It will take two days to repair."

"Repair the defense and monitoring systems first," Lu Yuan said. "That anomalous Source Seed..."

Shen Moxin took out a metal box wrapped in thick velvet. She opened it, and the crystal with chaotic light spots lay quietly inside. Its light was dimmer than the night before, but the rice-grain-sized light spots were still slowly rotating.

"Three layers of isolation seals prevent energy leakage." She closed the lid, "But every hour, the brightness fluctuations of the light spot and the intensity of energy fluctuations fifty paces away from the crack... are completely synchronized."

The stone hall was quiet.

Yun Youzi frowned. "Synchronization? Has it become a sensor for the fissure? Or is it influencing the fissure?"

"I don't know." Lu Yuan closed his eyes. "We must assume the worst-case scenario—it has established a connection with something deep inside. Monitoring is encrypted, occurring every half hour. What about Su Yan?"

"Align the points on the other side of the crack."

"Tell him to absolutely not come within 100 meters."

*

For the next few days, a tense calm permeated the ruins.

Mo Chen led his men to repair the array, the clanging sounds and faint glows of Soul Power appearing intermittently. Lin Xiao confirmed three times—the forces of the Cloud Mist Sect and the Stone-Splitting Sect had indeed retreated to the edge of the mountain range and set up sentry posts to observe.

Internal defenses were reinforced, supplies were inventoried, and everything proceeded smoothly.

But everyone was on edge. The other end of that string was connected to the crack, to the crystal inside the box.

Lu Yuan was kept quiet for four days. On the morning of the fifth day, the stinging pain in his meridians had basically disappeared, and although his Soul Power was empty, it flowed freely. He got out of bed and walked to the stone table.

On the table lay Su Yan's monitoring data from the past few days. It was a thick stack of rough paper, with neat and rigid symbols.

Lu Yuan turned the pages one by one.

The data was chaotic for the first two days. Starting from the third day, a faint but steadily occurring "pulse" began to appear amidst the chaotic background fluctuations.

Like a heartbeat.

It was very slow, about once every three hundred breaths. The intensity was extremely low, almost like noise.

Lu Yuan stared at the marked peak pulse times for a long time.

Take a charcoal pencil and a blank sheet of paper, and begin the calculations.

Convert the time points to a uniform scale and calculate the intervals between adjacent intervals. Once, twice... ten times, twenty times.

The charcoal pencil made a soft scratching sound.

The pen stopped when I reached the thirtieth set of calculations.

Double-checked. It's correct.

The intervals between adjacent pulses are getting shorter.

Each interval shortens by less than one percent of a breath, but the trend is clear and continuous. With thirty pulses, the total interval has shortened by about three breaths.

Lu Yuan looked at the Source Seed light point brightness data that Shen Moxin had recorded on the edge of the paper, which was listed alongside the pulsation time.

The brightness of the light spot is also increasing very slowly.

The positive correlation is clear and unquestionable.

Lu Yuan remained silent for a quarter of an hour. The torches crackled, and the distant sound of runes hummed.

He got up and walked towards the passageway.

"Sir?" Su Yan stepped out of the shadows, his eyes were dark and his hand held a recorder.

"I'll go check. You keep recording, don't stop."

Mr. Shen said you can't yet...

I know what I'm doing.

My steps were steady and slow. I walked through the corridor under repair, down the stairs, and came back to the laboratory with the vertical fissure. I stopped at the observation point twenty steps outside the door.

Sit down, close your eyes, and gently spread your Soul Power perception.

Energy fluctuations rippled in the direction of the fissure like a chaotic tide. Ancient and heavy. Beneath the tide, that "pulse" truly existed.

Thump...

It was very faint, like a muffled sound from deep within the earth.

Silently counting my breaths.

Two hundred and ninety-seven, two hundred and ninety-eight, two hundred and ninety-nine...

Thump.

The next one will come.

The interval is slightly shorter than Su Yan's latest data from yesterday.

Open your eyes and write down the time and intensity on the board. Continue waiting and writing.

I sat at this observation point for the entire afternoon, recording seven complete intervals.

As darkness fell, Yun Youzi arrived. The old Soul Master looked somewhat better, holding the calculation paper that Lu Yuan had left on the table that afternoon.

"Kid, your data..." The voice was deep.

"You noticed." Lu Yuan didn't turn around.

"The intervals are shortening. Slowly, but continuously." Yun Youzi sat down, staring at the latest figures on the board. "Based on this trend..."

"If the rate of shortening remains constant," Lu Yuan continued, his voice eerily calm, "The pulsation interval will shorten to a critical value in about three to six months. I don't know what that critical value is. But scattered descriptions in ancient manuscripts suggest that when the frequency of a certain periodic fluctuation reaches a certain level, it often means..."

"The end of the stable state," Yun Youzi said slowly, "Could be the complete opening of the 'gate,' the energy eruption threshold, or perhaps... the slumbering thing has truly awakened."

The torchlight flickered on their faces.

After a long silence, Yun Youzi suddenly spoke, "Our speculations about the ' Gate of Finality ' may all be too one-sided. Among the fragments and incomplete texts I've collected over the years, some hints are subtle. Those ancient sages who built the 'gate' may not have been doing so merely for destruction or preservation. Some records suggest that it might have been... an ultimate 'reconstruction' experiment."

"Reconstruct?" Lu Yuan turned his head.

"Hmm. An attempt to reset some of the world's rules, to break certain deeply ingrained ' Shackles '." Yun Youzi's eyes were profound. "But the experiment failed, most likely because the process and scope of the reconstruction were uncontrollable. Energy went berserk, the rules collapsed, and the 'gate' became the source of destruction."

Lu Yuan processed these words. "So, what's deep within the rift might not be a simple destructive device, but rather... a runaway, unfinished 'reconstruction engine'?"

"It's just speculation," Yun Youzi with a wry smile. "But if that's the case, its 'awakening' will probably be more troublesome than simple destruction."

Lu Yuan looked down at the data he had recorded.

The slow but steady countdown is flowing silently across the paper.

"The external threats have temporarily receded," he said softly, as if talking to himself, yet also stating a cold, hard fact. "But within this, a more dangerous, and perhaps more crucial, 'countdown' has already begun."

Yun Youzi didn't speak, but took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

The two figures cast long shadows on the stone wall, flickering with the firelight, as if they too felt a chill at the approaching unknown tipping point.