The world hardened.
It wasn't a metaphor. The air inside the containment bubble stopped behaving like air. Every particle seemed to accept a single instruction: remain where you are. Lin Ye felt it first in his lungs. Drawing a breath was like trying to fill his chest with ground glass.
Qin Jue held two fingers raised, pressed against his left eye. The Eye of Permanence had completed its cycle.
"Total Fixation," he said calmly. "For three breaths, everything you are… stays exactly as it is."
Lin Ye tried to move his arm.
He couldn't.
It wasn't muscular paralysis. It was worse. The very concept of "movement" no longer applied to his body. He was defined. Anchored to a state the world recognized as correct.
The fragmented clock erupted with silent warnings.
There was no threshold.No transition.Nothing between "here" and "there."
"Three breaths," Qin Jue repeated. "Enough to break you without dirtying the city."
The two subordinates advanced. They weren't in a hurry. There was no need. One of them activated a thin spiritual blade, designed to pierce meridians without damaging vital organs. Clean. Silent.
He Lian took a step… and stopped.
Space gently repelled her.
"Don't intervene," Qin Jue said without looking at her. "This fixation includes the immediate surroundings. If you force your way in, you'll be trapped as well."
He Lian's eyes burned with restrained fury.
Lin Ye smiled.
It was a small, crooked smile, blood gathered at the corner of his mouth.
"I always wanted to try," he murmured with effort, "what it feels like to be a historical statue."
Qin Jue frowned.
"You still talk too much."
"It's a flaw," Lin Ye admitted. "But it has its advantages."
Within his consciousness, the Fragmented Threshold Sutra unfolded by reflex. It didn't seek energy. It didn't seek power. It sought… a minimal transition.
Not between places.
Between definitions.
If I'm fixed as "still"… what about what hasn't been fully defined yet?
The fragmented clock trembled with a microscopic possibility. Not a full dead instant. Something more dangerous.
A micro–physiological threshold.
The heartbeat.
The heart's beat hadn't been completely fixed. It wasn't external movement. It was an internal process. Qin Jue had fixed the bodily state… but he hadn't anchored every vital cycle.
"One breath," Qin Jue said.
The spiritual blade drew close to Lin Ye's chest.
The Silent Thunder stirred, but Lin Ye restrained it. If he used it to negate the fixation, the backlash would kill him instantly.
"Two," Qin Jue continued.
Lin Ye's heart beat.
Just once.
In that beat, Lin Ye activated the Eye of the Threshold.
Not to move.
But to shift within the beat.
The technique activated without a conscious name. The Sutra responded on its own.
Step Between Heartbeats.
There was no flash. No sound. To the world, Lin Ye was still exactly where he had been.
But within the microscopic interval between systole and diastole, his existence slid a centimeter out of the fixed state.
The spiritual blade pierced his chest—
—or rather, pierced where he had been.
The fixation collapsed incompletely.
"What…?" Qin Jue's eyes widened, surprised for the first time.
The containment bubble shuddered.
Lin Ye dropped to his knees, coughing blood. The price arrived like a hammer blow behind his eyes. Something from his past blurred. A face, perhaps. A voice. He couldn't hold on to it.
But he was alive.
"One," Lin Ye whispered. "I only needed one."
Qin Jue stepped back.
"That shouldn't be possible."
"Welcome to my life," Lin Ye replied with a hoarse laugh. "Nothing should be."
The second subordinate reacted instantly, slamming a restriction seal into the ground. Space tensed again, this time trying to redefine the entire environment. Qin Jue regained his composure and raised his fingers once more.
"Interesting," he said. "Very interesting. Then I won't fix you to a state."
The Eye of Permanence shone brighter.
"I'll fix you to a result."
The air froze again—but differently. It wasn't immobility. It was inevitability.
Lin Ye felt a terrible pressure in his chest, as if the world had already decided the ending and was now merely pushing events to reach it.
The fragmented clock vibrated in desperation.
There was no clear route.No sufficient dead instant.
Only one option remained.
One that didn't guarantee survival.
Lin Ye lifted his head and looked straight at Qin Jue.
"Hey," he said, with a tired smile. "Do you know the problem with fixing outcomes?"
Qin Jue didn't answer.
"There's always a tiny margin," Lin Ye continued, "…before the outcome actually happens."
The Eye of the Threshold burned.
Not with light.
With pain.
Lin Ye activated a second technique—still unstable, still dangerous—born purely of necessity.
Gray Threshold Slip.
His body became blurred, not vanishing, but losing definition. He wasn't escaping the result. He was falling toward the edge where the result hadn't yet fully taken shape.
The pressure increased.
Bones creaked.
The world tried to close the margin.
He Lian screamed his name.
And in that instant, something answered from deep within his blood.
It didn't awaken.Not yet.
But it resisted.
Enough.
The containment bubble fractured with a sharp crack.
Lin Ye was hurled backward, crashing through a wooden wall and vanishing into Huo'an's maze of alleyways, leaving behind a trail of blood and an uncomfortable distortion in reality.
Silence.
Qin Jue slowly lowered his hand.
His left eye throbbed with pain.
"He got away…" one of the subordinates murmured.
Qin Jue didn't look frustrated.
He looked… attentive.
"No," he corrected. "He learned."
He gazed in the direction Lin Ye had escaped.
"And now he knows he's weak."
Somewhere in the city, Lin Ye collapsed face-first onto the damp ground of an alley, breathing raggedly, his body trembling, the world spinning.
He was alive.