Lin Ye reappeared in silence.
There was no sensation of displacement—no rupture, no vertigo. Simply… the world resumed existence around him under a different order. The ground beneath his feet was solid, ancient, covered in cracks sealed by the passage of time. The air smelled of dampness and oxidized metal. In the distance, colossal structures rose like the skeletons of a civilization abandoned without ceremony.
The fragmented clock hovered within his awareness, turning with an irregular cadence.
It was not damaged.
But something had changed in its function.
"Deviation executed."
The internal voice sounded more neutral than ever.
"Result: displacement outside the active correction model."
Lin Ye exhaled slowly.
"So this is what it means to fall outside the calculation…"
He studied the surroundings carefully. He did not recognize the place, yet the space felt strangely familiar—not through personal memory, but through repeated use. It was a point that had been crossed, forgotten, reused, and forgotten again too many times to be erased entirely.
A structural residue of the world.
He took a few steps and immediately felt the difference: the Silent Thunder was calm, the Still Fire barely perceptible, but Spatial Memory was… active. Not chaotically, but in an organized way—like a library of ancient trajectories offering themselves without insistence.
"They're not deciding here," he murmured. "They decided long ago… and abandoned the result."
That explained why the Core had not been able to follow him immediately. This region did not belong to the world's current operational present. It was a historical leftover.
He walked among the ruins for hours without encountering any sign of life. No animals. No recent echoes. No surveillance. Only stone, corroded metal, and worn symbols that matched no known imperial script.
Until he heard footsteps.
Not behind him.
Ahead.
Lin Ye stopped and raised his gaze.
A figure emerged from within a half-collapsed structure. Tall, slender, clad in ancient armor made of irregular plates, each marked with different symbols. It did not emanate conventional cultivator aura. Its presence was… closed—like a completed circuit that allowed no external interference.
"So it didn't fail," the figure said in a deep voice. "It deviated."
Lin Ye did not take a defensive stance.
"Were you waiting for me?"
"For centuries," it replied without hesitation. "Not for you. For someone like you."
The fragmented clock vibrated with caution.
"Who are you?" Lin Ye asked.
The figure inclined its head slightly.
"I was called Arkhavel," it said. "Custodian of a Canceled Protocol."
Lin Ye frowned.
"Canceled by whom?"
"By the world," Arkhavel replied. "When it decided it no longer needed intermediaries… nor guardians who remembered too much."
It turned and began walking without waiting for Lin Ye to follow.
"Come," it said. "If the Core has recalculated you once, it will do so again. This place won't be safe for long."
Lin Ye followed.
As they moved deeper among the ruins, Arkhavel spoke.
"The Correction Core is not a conscious entity," it explained. "It is an aggregation of past consensuses, crystallized into a mechanism that believes it optimizes stability."
"But it doesn't understand context," Lin Ye said.
"Exactly," Arkhavel nodded. "It only recognizes repeated patterns. And you…"
It stopped and looked at him.
"You do not repeat."
The fragmented clock beat once.
"What was your protocol?" Lin Ye asked.
Arkhavel placed a hand on a wall covered in symbols.
"Controlled derivation," it replied. "When an anomaly could not be corrected without causing greater harm, I moved it out of the active flow. I did not erase it. I did not integrate it. I preserved it."
Lin Ye understood immediately.
"Towers of Relegation," he said.
Arkhavel nodded.
"A remnant," it said. "A degraded version. Mu Qian guards the archives. I guarded the exits."
"Then why did you disappear?"
Arkhavel let out a dry laugh.
"Because the world decided that preserving errors was more dangerous than eliminating them."
Silence fell between them.
"But now the world is wrong," Arkhavel added. "And you are the proof."
They stopped before a circular structure, half-buried. At its center stood a platform of black stone, covered in runes nearly erased.
"This place," Arkhavel said, "is a Major Derivation Point. One of the last."
The fragmented clock vibrated intensely.
"What does it do?" Lin Ye asked.
"It does not create domains," Arkhavel replied. "It does not grant power. It does something more dangerous."
Arkhavel turned to face him.
"It allows someone to exist outside consensus for a limited time."
A chill ran through Lin Ye.
"How long?"
"That depends on how much you're willing to pay afterward."
A wind that did not exist swept through the ruins, lifting ancient dust.
"If you activate this," Arkhavel continued, "the Core will lose your trail completely… but when you reappear, you will do so as something that has already survived correction."
The fragmented clock beat, heavy.
"And then?" Lin Ye asked.
Arkhavel looked at him with an expression that was neither hope nor warning.
"Then you will stop being a variable," it said. "And become an absolute precedent."
Lin Ye closed his eyes.
He remembered the girl in the village.The erased city.The echoes traveling in wagons.Decisions accelerating.
He opened his eyes.
"If the world is going to choose…" he said,"then first it will learn that not all choices are forgotten."
He stepped onto the platform.
Very far away, in the deep layers of the correction system, a silent alert propagated.
It did not signal an error.
It signaled something worse.
A case with no prior resolution.