The world did not wait for them to recover.
It never did.
1. The Silence Before Everything Breaks
For a brief moment, there was nothing.
No pressure.
No pursuit.
No movement in the fractured sky.
That silence was wrong in a way Qin Mian had never felt before. Not relief. Not safety.
Suspension.
Like the world itself was holding its breath.
Yin Lie felt it too.
His body was barely functioning now. Ice no longer flowed smoothly—it stuttered, flickered, reacted late. Every breath dragged pain across his chest like broken glass.
"…They're not gone," he said quietly.
Qin Mian lay half-conscious against him, eyes unfocused, blood drying on her lips.
"I know," she whispered.
"They're waiting for permission."
2. Permission Comes From Somewhere Else
The fractured sky trembled.
Not violently.
Deliberately.
Lines of distortion aligned across vast distances, forming something that looked uncomfortably like structure.
The scavengers did not move.
They received.
Qin Mian's Anchor screamed.
Not warning.
Recognition.
"…Lie," she gasped.
"This isn't them."
Yin Lie's blood ran cold.
"…No," he said.
"It's higher."
3. The World Makes a Decision
Pressure slammed down without transition.
No ramp-up.
No delay.
Just full force.
Qin Mian screamed as the Anchor detonated inside her chest, calculations tearing apart faster than they could reform.
Yin Lie roared as ice shattered violently through his ribs, internal structure collapsing under the sudden load.
The ground cracked.
The sky split.
The environment didn't try to herd them anymore.
It tried to erase them.
4. Scavengers Become Executors
They came all at once.
Not circling.
Not flanking.
Direct.
Relentless.
Eight—no, more—slid out of fractures simultaneously, overlapping, ignoring clean approach vectors.
They weren't hunting now.
They were enforcing.
Qin Mian felt it instantly.
"They're not optimizing," she screamed.
"They're overriding!"
Yin Lie forced himself upright, vision swimming.
"Then this is it," he rasped.
"No more margins."
5. Qin Mian Breaks First — On Purpose
She stood.
The world crushed down harder immediately, pressure snapping across her spine, forcing blood from her lungs.
She screamed—and pushed back.
Not at the scavengers.
Not at the environment.
At the decision.
The Anchor flared beyond safe parameters.
Equations shattered.
Stability failed catastrophically.
The fractured world screamed in protest.
6. The Anchor Goes Off-Script
Qin Mian felt something tear loose inside her.
Not power.
Constraint.
Her Anchor stopped trying to stabilize reality.
Instead—
it reflected it.
Every contradiction.
Every inconsistency.
Every forced rule.
The environment convulsed violently.
Scavengers screamed—not in pain, but in desynchronization.
Yin Lie stared in horror.
"…Qin Mian—stop—!"
She turned to him, eyes glowing faintly with fractured light.
"I can't," she said calmly.
"That thing just tried to decide for me."
7. The World Pushes Back Harder
The response was immediate.
The sky cracked open completely.
Not fractures.
A collapse layer.
A crushing field descended, flattening space into a killing zone.
Yin Lie felt his body give way.
Ice failed entirely.
Bones cracked.
He collapsed to one knee, coughing blood violently.
"…I can't shield you," he gasped.
Qin Mian didn't hesitate.
She stepped in front of him.
8. Qin Mian Becomes the Focal Point
The pressure converged on her.
The Anchor screamed one last time—
and then went silent.
Terrifyingly silent.
The world froze for half a second.
Then everything detonated outward.
A shockwave of pure contradiction ripped through the space, tearing scavengers apart mid-formation.
Three collapsed instantly.
Two fled uncontrollably.
The rest scattered, coordination obliterated.
The ground shattered into impossible geometry.
The sky tore open wider.
9. Yin Lie Sees the Cost
Qin Mian collapsed.
Hard.
Yin Lie screamed her name, dragging himself forward despite the agony tearing his body apart.
He caught her just before she hit the ground.
Her breathing was shallow.
Erratic.
The Anchor inside her felt… wrong.
"…Qin Mian," he whispered desperately.
"…Answer me."
Her eyes fluttered open briefly.
"…It hurts," she whispered.
"But it worked."
Blood pooled beneath her.
The world around them continued to shake.
10. The Hunt Breaks Apart
The scavengers did not regroup.
They retreated in chaos.
Some fled upward into collapsing fractures.
Others tore themselves apart trying to escape conflicting pressure zones.
A few simply froze, trapped in broken geometry, unable to move or dissolve.
The hunt had lost cohesion.
Not defeated.
Shattered.
11. The System Panics
The vibration returned.
Louder.
Angrier.
The system beneath the hunt attempted to reassert control.
Containment layers slammed down repeatedly—failed.
Pressure recalibration—failed.
Consensus enforcement—failed.
Qin Mian's action had poisoned the algorithm itself.
Yin Lie felt it clearly now.
"…They didn't plan for this," he whispered.
12. Yin Lie Makes His Choice
He looked down at Qin Mian.
At the blood.
At the stillness.
At the Anchor that no longer screamed.
Something inside him snapped—not violently, but decisively.
He placed his trembling hand on the ground.
Ice surged.
Not outward.
Inward.
He anchored her.
Not the world.
Her.
13. A Forbidden Stabilization
The ice wrapped around Qin Mian's body delicately, ignoring all rules it once followed.
Not freezing.
Preserving.
Shielding her from the collapsing environment at the cost of everything else.
Yin Lie screamed as the backlash tore through him.
Ice burned.
Nerves shredded.
His vision went white.
"…Stay with me," he begged.
"…Please."
14. The World Recoils
The system hesitated.
Not because it failed—
but because it could not calculate the outcome anymore.
The environment began collapsing outward instead of inward, fractures ripping open uncontrollably.
Permanent damage spread.
The hunt was no longer contained.
15. After the Explosion
When the shaking finally stopped, the world was… wrong.
Large sections of space no longer responded.
Fractures hung open, unmoving.
The scavengers were gone.
Not retreating.
Gone.
Qin Mian lay unconscious, breathing faint but steady within Yin Lie's ice.
Yin Lie lay beside her, barely conscious, body destroyed.
They were alive.
But the cost echoed everywhere.
End of the Chapter
The hunt had exploded.
Not into victory.
Not into defeat.
Into collapse.
The world had tried to enforce its will—and paid with its own structure.
Qin Mian's Anchor was silent, damaged in ways no one understood yet.
Yin Lie's body was broken beyond any safe threshold.
And somewhere far beyond the fractured sky, something vast and unseen finally reacted.
Not with anger.
With attention.
Because for the first time, this was no longer a hunt.
It was a problem.
And problems like this were never allowed to exist for long.