Lin Ye didn't lose consciousness immediately.
First came the sound.
A low, constant hum, as if someone had set a giant bell directly on his skull. Then came the sensation of desynchronization—not pain, but the feeling of being slightly out of rhythm with the rest of the world. When he tried to breathe more deeply, the air arrived… late.
"Yanlin…" he murmured.
Su Yanlin caught him before his body fully gave in. She didn't shout his name. She didn't call for help. She simply held him, steady, as if she had already decided she wouldn't let go even if the world insisted otherwise.
"Yan Mo," she said tensely. "Now."
Yan Mo was already moving. He took out a tablet Lin Ye hadn't seen before, made of a dark material that absorbed light instead of reflecting it. He activated it without visible seals.
The effect was immediate.
The air in the warehouse stabilized. It healed nothing, but it prevented Lin Ye's coherence from continuing to unravel.
"Internal collapse state," Yan Mo said. "He's not unconscious… but he can't stay awake without breaking something else."
Lin Ye heard fragments, as if the voices were coming through thick water.
"How long?" Su Yanlin asked.
"Hours," Yan Mo replied. "Maybe days. Depends on how much the debt collects."
That was the last thing Lin Ye heard before the world went black.
It wasn't a dream.
It was a motionless space.
There was no up or down. No pain. Only a blurred boundary where time seemed to… wait. In that place, something watched him without eyes.
It didn't speak.
It didn't need to.
The heartbeat in his blood set the rhythm.
Meanwhile, in Huo'an, the effect of sealing House Lu was already spreading.
"It's official," said an elder of the Local Council, lightly striking the table. "The Upper District confirms total loss of cultivational capacity in House Lu."
"Responsible parties?" another asked.
"Unidentified," a third replied. "But the event is registered as 'Balance Compensation.'"
There were murmurs.
"That's only used when—" someone began.
"When an active variable causes an unresolved deviation," the elder finished, "and something must be closed to stabilize it."
A name was not spoken.
But everyone thought it.
In another, more discreet room, Shen Kuang listened to the report with a tight smile.
"So the boy is still alive," he said. "And now there are dead."
"Sealed," his counterpart corrected. "And that's worse."
Shen Kuang clicked his tongue.
"Then it's no longer just a local problem."
"No," replied the voice from the shadows. "That's why I've come."
A figure stepped into the light. He exerted no pressure, yet the space around him seemed to obey without needing orders. On his forehead, a symbol unlike any seen before remained hidden, as if it didn't wish to be recognized.
"I am Ji Ren," he said. "Bearer of the Eye of Permanence."
Shen Kuang straightened at once.
"Have you come to…?"
"To observe," Ji Ren replied. "And to make sure no one does something irreversible… yet."
Back at the warehouse, Su Yanlin watched Lin Ye unconscious, her brow furrowed.
"He shouldn't have gone that far," she murmured.
Yan Mo didn't answer.
He simply extended another tablet and activated it.
Somewhere in the Upper District, a sealed record opened for the first time in decades.
Name: Lin Ye
Classification: Threshold Variable – Initial Level
Status: Active / Unstable
Yan Mo closed the tablet.
"It's official now," he said. "The Empire has seen him."
Su Yanlin clenched her teeth.
"Then I'll break the agreement," she said.
Yan Mo looked at her.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes," she replied. "Because if I wait… there won't be anything left to protect."
Far away, a figure watched the warehouse from an impossible vantage point, a faint smile visible.
"Wake up," it whispered. "It's not time to die yet."
Lin Ye woke with the metallic taste of blood still clinging to his palate—and with an uncomfortable certainty: the refuge was no longer a refuge.
He didn't need to open his eyes to know it. The air was still in an unnatural way, as if someone had fixed the room in an intermediate state—neither absolute silence nor normal sound. The others' breathing arrived out of sync, like delayed echoes. That only happened when a Domain or a formation had imposed a rule.
He opened his eyes.
The stone ceiling was still there, but over it lay a dome of pale, translucent light, like an inverted bell. It wasn't a barred prison. It was an authorized containment zone, built so that within it the world would obey.
Along the rim of the dome, geometric lines of energy rotated slowly. Each turn seemed to say: this has already been decided.
Three figures were silhouetted against that light.
Shen Kuang, immaculate and trembling with pride.
An old man with a heavy aura, dressed as if austerity could hide violence.
And Ji Ren—calm, upright, with that gaze that didn't hate: it classified.
"Awake," a gentle voice said. "That saves time."
Lin Ye swallowed. His throat burned as if he had swallowed ash.
He tried to sit up.
The pain was immediate—clean, surgical: a white line cutting across his chest. The air left him as if his right to keep it had been revoked. He fell back onto the jade platform.
"You shouldn't move," Ji Ren said, without a trace of mockery. "Your current state is… ideal."
Lin Ye stared at him without blinking.
"Ideal for whom?" he rasped.
Shen Kuang stepped forward, wearing a smile too wide to be honest.
"For order," he replied. "So the 'accident' stops causing damage."
The old man cleared his throat and extended two fingers. The dome responded with a pulse: containment seals. Not brute force. A formal technique.
"Nine-Knot Seal," the old man murmured.
Nine strands of energy tightened in the air, invisible until they constricted. Lin Ye felt them in his meridians, as if cords had been threaded inside him and then calmly tied into knots.
Ji Ren raised his hand.
The world grew heavier.
Not crushing. Stable.
It felt like someone pressing on a wound to stop the bleeding… even though it hurt.
"Permanence," Lin Ye murmured.
Ji Ren didn't deny it. He merely inclined his head, as if granting the correct term.
"I fix states," he said. "And right now, you are a convenient state: alive, conscious… incapable of escape."
Lin Ye let out a laugh that scraped his throat.
"How efficient."
At the edge of the dome, a shadow moved.
Su Yanlin.
She didn't enter walking as before. She was dragged two steps and released. She fell to her knees, her mouth stained, her left arm bound by a pressure technique that made her own qi choke in her chest.
"No!" she spat, lifting her head. "That wasn't the deal!"
The old man flicked his wrist.
"Inverse Pulse Cage."
Su Yanlin's qi contracted inward and forced her to fold over, as if the air itself had stolen her space to breathe. It wasn't a spectacular technique. It was cruelly practical.
Shen Kuang looked at her with disdain.
"You broke agreements. You released assets. I thought you were smarter."
Su Yanlin lifted her gaze to Lin Ye, teeth clenched.
"Don't… do it…" she managed.
Lin Ye felt something dry inside his chest. It wasn't romantic emotion or empty heroics. It was something worse:
responsibility.
Ji Ren stepped forward.
"I didn't come to execute you," he said. "I came to measure your reaction when your options are taken away."
He made a slight gesture toward the old man.
"Proceed."
The old man smiled without smiling and brought his hands together in a seal.
"Meridian Severing Art: Palm of the Third Rupture."
It wasn't a strike meant to kill. It was a strike meant to invalidate.
The palm descended—not toward Lin Ye.
Toward Su Yanlin.
The world, inside the dome, accepted it as a correct outcome.
Lin Ye saw the blow the way one sees a sentence: already signed before it falls.
The Threshold, exhausted, did not respond.
His body, broken, could not move.
And yet… the heartbeat in his blood became solid. Not faster. More real.
As if something sleeping inside him opened an eye without fully opening it and said:
Not here.
The strike was a hand's breadth from Su Yanlin's face when the light changed.
Not bright.
White.
Not like fire, but like space when it stops allowing shadows.
The dome trembled.
The seals of the Nine-Knot Seal shrieked like metal under tension.
And Lin Ye… sat up.
Not because he had regained strength.
Because the world granted him, for an instant, borrowed authority.
A white halo was born around his body—slow, clean, like a mist deciding to be law. It didn't push the air: it ordered it. The blood in his mouth stopped falling by gravity; it floated for a second before staining the floor.
Above his head appeared a semi-transparent, fragmented crown made of incomplete symbols. It wasn't a jewel. It was a seal: an impossible promise.
Lin Ye inhaled… and the air came easily for the first time in weeks.
In his chest, a wordless voice spoke with mathematical clarity:
Five seconds of divine energy.
Ten seconds of semi-divine form.
One time only.
Ji Ren took half a step back.
"…What are you?"
Lin Ye raised his hand.
His voice came out different. Not deeper. More… exact.
"I'm nothing new," he said. "I'm just what the world uses when it no longer wants to negotiate."