Chapter 29 – The Price of the Margin
Lin Ye took a while to realize he was breathing.
Not because he lacked air, but because every inhale hurt as if his lungs had forgotten how to do it. The world spun slowly, with an uneven cadence, like a badly adjusted clock. The ground beneath his cheek was cold and damp—rotting wood mixed with mud and something metallic that smelled like blood.
His blood.
He tried to move.
His body responded… late. Too late. As if every command had to cross an invisible border before it could reach his muscles.
"Okay…" he murmured, though he wasn't sure he'd made any sound at all. "Definitely… still alive."
The Fragmented Threshold Sutra rose in his awareness automatically—not as clear text, but as a set of sensations: zones of tension, dangerous voids, warnings that didn't use words. The fragmented clock beat with an erratic rhythm, marking not time, but cost.
"Critical use recorded."
"Severe physiological desynchronization."
"Warning: remaining margin is minimal."
Lin Ye squeezed his eyes shut.
"Yeah, yeah…" he thought. "I've noticed."
He tried to sit up and failed. His right arm didn't respond. His left trembled before giving out. A dry laugh escaped his throat, closer to a gasp than real humor.
"Great," he whispered. "I escaped total fixation just to die crushed by an alley."
Pain arrived late, like everything lately. First a dull pressure in his chest. Then a burning that spread through his meridians, as if someone had scraped the inside of his body with fine glass. Every heartbeat was a clear reminder that Step Between Heartbeats wasn't a technique meant to be repeated without paying something in return.
A memory tried to surface.
Something simple. Someone's name. An ordinary moment. But it dissolved before it could take shape, leaving only a hollow feeling—an absence without edges.
Lin Ye clenched his teeth.
"Another one," he thought. "That makes several."
He didn't know exactly what he'd lost this time, and that was the most unsettling part. It didn't hurt like a memory being ripped out. It hurt like an empty space you only notice when you try to fill it.
Several minutes passed—or maybe seconds; time didn't feel reliable—before he managed to roll onto his back. Huo'an's night sky seeped between rooftops, broken into irregular rectangles. No stars were visible from here, only a dim glow—the reflection of registration lamps that never fully went out.
"Friendly city…" he muttered. "They try to kill you politely."
A shadow moved at the end of the alley.
Lin Ye tensed what little energy he had left, instinctively calling up the Gray Threshold Slip… then stopped. There wasn't enough margin left. Forcing it now would mean collapse.
"Easy," he told himself. "Not everything that moves wants to finish you off."
The shadow approached with measured steps, deliberately audible. A familiar figure emerged from the dimness.
"You should stop doing that," He Lian said quietly. "Every time I find you, you're worse than the last."
Lin Ye let out a short laugh that ended in a cough.
"I'm building a personal brand," he replied. "'Lin Ye: always bleeding, but functional.'"
He Lian crouched beside him without touching him at first. Her eyes moved over his body with clinical precision, pausing a fraction too long at his chest, where the spiritual blade had passed far too close to his heart.
"If that strike had been a centimeter deeper…" she began.
"It wasn't," Lin Ye cut in. "And I'd like the world to stop insisting on reminding me."
She exhaled—relief and frustration mixed together.
"Qin Jue triggered a result fixation," she said. "That isn't something you use to capture. It's something you use to erase."
Lin Ye closed his eyes.
"Yeah," he said. "I noticed when the universe decided my ending was negotiable… but not optional."
He Lian didn't smile.
"What you did," she continued, "that movement… shifting inside a physiological process… that shouldn't be possible."
"I'm starting to notice a pattern," Lin Ye said. "Everything I do seems to annoy someone."
"Not someone," she corrected. "Something."
The silence that followed wasn't comfortable.
He Lian drew a small object from her sleeve: a registration tablet with no visible inscriptions. She set it near Lin Ye without touching him.
"It's not an official archive," she explained. "It's a marker. If anyone tries to redefine this event… we'll know where to start looking."
"Thanks," Lin Ye said, sincere. "I always wanted to be a troublesome footnote."
He Lian gave him a sideways look.
"Don't underestimate what just happened. Qin Jue didn't just attack you. He measured you."
Lin Ye opened his eyes.
"And what did he see?"
"That you're weak," she said bluntly. "But he also saw something more dangerous."
"Ah," Lin Ye said. "And what would that be?"
He Lian hesitated for a moment.
"That you learn in real time."
Lin Ye let the air out slowly.
"That's because they don't give me a choice."
He tried to sit up, and with He Lian's help he managed it halfway. The world wobbled again, but this time it didn't tip over. Something inside him had adjusted—barely enough not to collapse.
The fragmented clock steadied a little.
"Status confirmed: Unstable Threshold."
"Progress recorded: survival under fixation."
Lin Ye frowned.
"Is that… good?"
"Better than being dead," He Lian replied. "But not by much margin."
A distant sound ran through the city. Not footsteps or shouts. Something subtler—like several registration tablets being activated at the same time, in different parts of Huo'an.
He Lian went tense.
"They're watching us," she said.
"The Core?" Lin Ye asked.
"Not directly," she replied. "Something more… local. Curious. And well-funded."
Lin Ye rested his head against the wall, trying to ignore the painful pulse behind his eyes.
"Great," he muttered. "I survived the elegant killer just to catch the attention of the spectators."
He Lian helped him to his feet carefully.
"Move," she said. "Qin Jue won't follow you tonight. He already got what he wanted."
"What was that?"
She looked him straight in the eye.
"Confirmation."
Before Lin Ye could respond, a strange sensation ran down his back. It wasn't direct hostility. It was… recognition. As if something, somewhere in the city, had spoken his name without knowing exactly who he was.
Far away, in a silent room, a figure studied a set of incomplete records. It didn't belong to the official Council. Nor was it an ordinary archivist.
"So this is the margin they talk about…" the figure murmured, touching a tablet where Lin Ye's name appeared and vanished in alternation. "Interesting."
The figure smiled.
"If he survives a little longer… it might be worth intervening."
In the alley, Lin Ye felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the night's cold.
"He Lian," he said quietly. "Tell me something."
"What?"
"In this city…" He paused. "How many people are willing to kill for a good story?"
He Lian didn't answer immediately.
"Too many," she said at last. "And now, you're one of them."
Lin Ye closed his eyes for a moment—tired, aching… but aware.