Lin Ye woke before dawn.
Not because of a sound or a sense of danger, but because the silence inside the Tower of Relegation was too complete. There was none of the usual murmur of the world adjusting itself, none of the faint friction of probabilities settling along the edges of consciousness. It was an active silence, as if reality itself had decided not to intervene within those walls.
He sat up slowly and surveyed the room. It was simple: gray stone walls, a small table, an unlit lamp. There were no visible formations, yet the air carried a strange density, as if the laws here were thicker—less flexible.
The fragmented clock remained still.
That, more than reassuring him, kept him alert.
When he left the room, Mu Qian was already waiting on the upper level of the tower. In the early light of day, she looked even more ordinary—almost impossible to remember precisely once one stopped looking at her.
"I thought you'd sleep longer," she said.
"I thought the world would wake me," Lin Ye replied. "It didn't."
Mu Qian nodded.
"Here, it doesn't have full jurisdiction."
She walked toward the center of the upper hall, where a stone circle was embedded in the floor. It wasn't an active formation, but an ancient mark, worn smooth by time.
"The Towers of Relegation don't seal," she explained. "They postpone. They are places where decisions are archived."
"Decisions made by whom?" Lin Ye asked.
"By the world," she replied without hesitation. "And, in certain eras, by those who believed they could speak in its name."
She knelt and placed her palm on the circle. The stone responded with a faint glow—not energetic, but conceptual. The air rippled slightly, and before Lin Ye's eyes, the space within the circle began to reveal itself.
It wasn't a clear vision, nor an illusion. It was more like an exposure of layers: overlapping scenes, fragmented, incomplete.
He saw people.
Not heroic figures or monsters. Ordinary people—low-level cultivators, children, elders. They all shared something: each was surrounded by a mild anomaly, noticeable enough to be flagged, but not dangerous enough to justify immediate elimination.
"They were relegated," Mu Qian said. "Not physically imprisoned here. Classified. Marked as pending."
The scenes shifted.
He saw some of them grow old without incident, living quiet lives marked by small oddities no one fully understood. He saw others vanish, swallowed by local collapses when the world finally decided they were no longer tolerable. And he saw a few… adapt.
"The Empire," Mu Qian continued, "only inherited the visible part of the system. Surveillance. Containment. But it doesn't understand the original reason."
The circle showed another image.
A colossal structure, far larger than the current tower, surrounded by impossible symbols. Dozens of figures stood around it, arguing, pointing, deciding.
"Before the empires," she said, "there were Flow Administrators. They were not gods. Nor were they ordinary mortals. They were… intermediaries."
Lin Ye felt a shiver run through him.
"And they failed?" he asked.
Mu Qian withdrew her hand from the circle. The images dissolved.
"Not entirely," she replied. "But they discovered something that doomed them."
She turned toward him.
"The world does not want to be perfectly stable. It only wants not to break too quickly."
The fragmented clock vibrated softly, as if acknowledging the statement.
"The Administrators tried to eliminate all anomalies," she continued. "And they nearly succeeded. But in doing so, they accelerated a greater collapse."
Lin Ye understood.
"Anomalies… are buffers."
"Exactly," Mu Qian nodded. "Small faults that prevent total failure."
A heavy silence settled.
"Then why is everything worsening now?" Lin Ye asked. "Why are echoes traveling, containers failing, time bleeding?"
Mu Qian looked at him seriously.
"Because someone is removing buffers on a massive scale."
A chill ran down Lin Ye's spine.
"The Empire?"
"Not only," she replied. "Aureon is involved—knowingly or not. The hidden houses as well. Even some ancient entities that fear losing relevance in an unstable world."
She moved to a side table and picked up an object covered by a dark cloth. She uncovered it carefully.
It was an irregular crystal fragment, very similar to the resonator used by the House of Ashes… but older. Much older.
"This," she said, "is part of a Correction Core."
The fragmented clock reacted with a sharp vibration.
"When enough fragments are assembled," Mu Qian continued, "they can force the world to choose. To close possibilities. To erase what doesn't fit."
"And what will happen to the Released?" Lin Ye asked.
Mu Qian didn't answer immediately.
"Some will be corrected," she said at last. "Others… will cease to have ever existed."
The silence fell like a weight.
"That's why Yan Shi measured you," she added. "And why you're here. Not as a prisoner. As a variable."
Lin Ye exhaled slowly.
"That word again."
Mu Qian smiled, tiredly.
"Because it's the only one no one has claimed yet."
She stepped closer.
"Lin Ye, you don't stabilize by negating. You stabilize by coexisting with error. That makes you dangerous to those who believe the world must be clean."
The fragmented clock beat once, deep and resonant.
"What do you want me to do?" Lin Ye asked.
Mu Qian met his gaze.
"Nothing… yet."
"Then what?"
"Wait," she replied. "Learn. And when the moment comes…"
She turned toward a wall where ancient symbols were carved, barely visible.
"Choose whether you want to be a buffer… or an irreversible precedent."
The weight of those words settled in Lin Ye's chest.
Far away, outside the tower, the sky trembled slightly, as if something elsewhere in the world had been adjusted with too much force.
The fragmented clock vibrated with a clear warning.
Not of immediate danger.
Of a countdown.
The Tower of Relegation had spoken.
And now, the world was waiting to see how much longer it could afford not to decide what to do with Lin Ye.