Lin Ye did not look back as he moved away from the caravan. He knew—with a certainty born not of fear, but of experience—that staring at an event for too long was a way of binding it to oneself. He had already touched the echo. That was enough. The rest had to be left to the world… or to its inability to decide.
The terrain began to slope gently downward, transforming into an uneven plain scattered with eroded stones and remnants of ancient routes. Here, the domains' control was even more diffuse. No one patrolled regularly. No one claimed real authority. It was a gray strip—not because of temporal distortion, but because of politics: land where conflicts were postponed because resolving them cost more than they were worth.
Lin Ye walked until the sun began to sink. Only then did he allow himself to stop.
He sat on a low rock and let out a long breath. He wasn't injured. He hadn't spent a dead instant. Even so, he felt the weight of what had happened as if he had been carrying something invisible for miles.
"Interrupting without resolving…" he murmured. "I do that more and more."
He closed his eyes.
The fragmented clock appeared immediately. It no longer manifested as an external object, but as a natural extension of his consciousness. The cracks were still there, but the whole was more coherent than before. Three passive foundations sustained its stability: the Still Fire dampening collapses, the Silent Thunder cutting impositions, and Spatial Memory allowing movement without forcing trajectories.
But something new floated around the central gear.
A residue.
It wasn't a fragment of stolen time, nor a lost possibility. It was the imprint of the echo he had touched within the wagon. A faint, constant pulse that didn't ask to be used… only to be acknowledged.
"Unrequested connection registered."
The inner voice resonated, clearer than before.
"Echo-bearing object classified as: Phase-Displacement Container."
Lin Ye frowned.
"Displacement of what?"
There was no direct answer. Instead, a conceptual impression slowly formed: it wasn't energy, nor an entity, nor a conventional artifact. It was a memory that did not belong to a single place, compressed and transported against the natural will of space.
"That's why the seal was failing…" he whispered. "It wasn't designed to remember while moving."
He opened his eyes.
The sky had taken on a deep reddish hue. It wasn't a normal sunset; the light seemed to retreat with difficulty, as if something in the upper layers of the world were delaying its withdrawal. Lin Ye felt a chill.
It wasn't an immediate threat.
It was a symptom.
He continued on until he found a natural rock formation that offered shelter. He lit a small, ordinary fire—no spiritual energy—and allowed himself to rest. As he ate dry rations, he listened to the world.
And the world… murmured.
Not in clear voices, but in repeating patterns. Places where time took a little longer to settle. Regions where paths seemed to "prefer" certain directions. Local stories of travelers who arrived before they had departed.
It wasn't chaos.
It was accumulation.
At dawn, Lin Ye resumed his journey. He avoided main routes. He didn't venture into fully wild territory either. He moved through an intermediate band, where civilization still left traces, but didn't impose constant corrections.
That was where it happened.
The fragmented clock vibrated with a new intensity—not violent, but profoundly clear.
Convergence confirmed.
Lin Ye stopped.
Ahead of him, on the path, stood another person.
They weren't an ostentatious cultivator, nor an ordinary traveler. They wore a simple dark robe, without emblems. Their presence was… difficult to fix. Every time Lin Ye tried to measure it, his perception slid slightly, as if the person occupied a perfectly valid point in the world—without insisting on it.
The stranger spoke first.
"I thought it would take you longer to touch a mobile echo."
The voice was young, but stripped of lightness.
Lin Ye didn't take a defensive stance. Nor did he relax.
"Are you following me?"
"No," the other replied. "We're walking toward the same point. That's different."
Lin Ye studied him carefully.
"Who are you?"
The stranger inclined his head slightly.
"Someone who was also released."
The fragmented clock vibrated with caution.
"By the Empire?" Lin Ye asked.
"By something older," the other answered. "The Empire only administers the remnants."
Silence.
The wind passed between them, but neither moved.
"You touched a Phase-Displacement Container," the stranger continued. "You didn't activate it. You didn't seal it. You simply made it… hesitate."
"I didn't have another option."
"There are always options," the other said. "Some turn you into a solution. Others turn you into a precedent."
Lin Ye frowned.
"Are you here to warn me?"
"No," the other replied. "I came to measure whether you were real."
The stranger took a step forward.
In that instant, Lin Ye felt something different. Not hostility. Not imposition. It was a perfect zone of neutrality. The Silent Thunder didn't react. The Still Fire remained still. Spatial Memory offered no alternate paths.
That was unsettling.
"My name is Yan Shi," he said at last. "And you, Lin Ye, have just entered a category that doesn't yet have an official name."
"And what does that mean?"
Yan Shi looked at him directly.
"It means that when this gets worse," he said, "you won't be sent to the front."
"You'll be sent to the origin."
The fragmented clock vibrated once.
Not with pain.
With recognition.
Yan Shi turned and began to walk away, not waiting for a response.
"If you survive long enough," he added without looking back, "we'll meet again."
Lin Ye remained where he was, watching his figure recede until space itself seemed to accept him and stop remembering him insistently.
Only then did he take a deep breath.
"Released…" he murmured. "But not free."
The world continued to tighten.
The echoes were already traveling.
And now, Lin Ye knew something more dangerous than any pursuit:
He was not alone among the anomalies.
And that meant the end of this story would not be decided by a single error…
but by which kind of precedents surviveD