The tunnel screamed the moment Shan Wei turned the nail.
It was not a human scream. It was the sound of rules being forced to bend. The bells above him shook without swinging, like they were afraid to move the wrong way. The pale light around the platform flickered, and for a breath, the air smelled like cold metal and old dust—like an ancient room opening after ten thousand years.
Shan Wei did not step back.
His hand stayed on the bell nail.
The name carved into it—XUAN CHI—glowed softly, then flashed brighter, as if the lock was trying to warn him: Touch this again and she will bleed.
Shan Wei's face did not change, but his eyes sharpened. He could still feel her pain through the connection, like a thin ice needle pulling at his chest.
The monk's voice came from the white walls, calm again, like the tunnel wanted to sound kind while it tried to kill him.
"Turn it," the monk said. "Break her. Save yourself."
Shan Wei's voice stayed low and steady.
"I will save both," he said.
He tapped the nail lightly—one time.
Dong.
He waited one breath.
Then he tapped twice.
Dong-dong.
The release rhythm.
The tunnel froze for a heartbeat, like a beast blinking in surprise. Shan Wei used that heartbeat to draw a prismatic ring around the nail. The ring was thin and clean, like glass. It did not smash the lock. It guided the pressure, pushing it into the stacked layers instead of dumping it into Xuan Chi's thread.
The nail turned a little more.
A sharp frost pulse snapped through the connection.
Shan Wei stopped instantly, not because he feared the tunnel, but because he refused to hurt her.
He closed his eyes for half a breath and listened.
Not with ears.
With his formation sense.
He felt the lock structure again:
MOON LOCK: FROST NODE.THREAD LOCK: CONSORT BONDS.TIME LOCK: RETURN CYCLE.
The monk's voice turned impatient.
"You will hesitate until you lose everything," it said.
Shan Wei opened his eyes.
"I do not hesitate," he replied. "I calculate."
Then the tunnel changed again.
White text appeared in the air above the nail, like a page made of light. It was not written in normal words at first—more like bell script, old and tight. But Shan Wei's prismatic comprehension pulled meaning out of it, piece by piece.
A Silent Bell Rule Page.
It floated in front of him like a judge showing evidence.
Three lines brightened.
Three methods.
CONTROL OF A FROST NODE — THREE PATHS:
NAME PIN — Erase the person's true name and replace it with a bell name.
MEMORY LOOP — Trap the person inside repeating "truth scenes" until they accept a lie.
OATH BRAND — Force an oath that binds the node to the Monastery's order, making disobedience impossible.
Shan Wei stared at the page.
His fingers tightened slightly.
So that was the plan for Xuan Chi.
They didn't just want to use her as a node.
They wanted to own her.
The monk's voice softened, almost pleased.
"Choose," it said. "If you loosen the lock, she must be controlled by one path. That is the rule."
Shan Wei's eyes turned colder than the nail.
"So even release has poison," he said.
The rule page hovered, waiting like a knife held in a smiling hand.
Shan Wei did not accept it.
He read it again, deeper.
Because rules always hide a fourth line.
And there it was—faint, almost invisible under the three methods.
A small line that said:
EXCEPTION: NODE TRANSFER (TEMPORARY) — IF A GREATER ANCHOR ACCEPTS THE LOAD.
Shan Wei's gaze sharpened.
A greater anchor.
Someone with a stronger fate weight.
Someone who could carry the pressure for a short time.
The monk's voice snapped the moment it felt Shan Wei understand.
"No," it hissed. "You cannot."
Shan Wei's voice stayed calm.
"I can," he said. "Because you already tried to label me."
He lifted his free hand and drew a second formation ring—this one around his own chest, right over the sealed Heart. The ring was thicker, layered, and full of prismatic glyphs that pulsed like breathing lights.
He was not breaking the lock.
He was making himself a temporary anchor.
The monk's voice rose in anger.
"You will tear your own destiny!"
Shan Wei's eyes burned gold.
"My destiny is mine," he said. "Not your bell."
He tapped the nail again.
Dong.Pause.Dong-dong.
And at the same time, he pressed his prismatic chest ring inward, accepting the load.
The nail turned.
The tunnel shook so hard the platform cracked.
Time rings screamed around Shan Wei's wrist and tried to clamp down. The floor lines glowed, and time blades began to rise again, thin and sharp, aiming for his legs.
Shan Wei did not jump.
He used Heavenstep Flash—seven micro-steps—moving like a calm shadow of light. He did not flee far. He only shifted enough to avoid the worst cuts, then returned to the nail again.
Because letting go would reset the lock.
He kept the rhythm.
Dong.Pause.Dong-dong.
The prismatic chest ring brightened.
Shan Wei felt the Moon Lock pressure slam into him.
It was heavy.
It was cold.
It felt like a giant hand trying to push him to his knees.
He did not bend.
His shoulders stayed straight.
His breath stayed steady.
But inside his chest, the sealed Heart throbbed like a drum that hated being held back.
Shan Wei whispered into the connection, not loudly, not like a hero shouting.
Just a simple message, like a vow sent through ice.
"Xuan Chi… breathe. I'm carrying it."
Far outside, on the moving fortress-lane, Xuan Chi's body jerked.
She had been slipping again, her moon shaking, her arms weak. But suddenly the pain on her mind loosened—like a rope pulled away from her throat.
She gasped and sucked in air like a drowning person reaching the surface.
Her half-moon behind her flickered… then steadied.
Not fully.
Not safe.
But stable enough to hold for a little longer.
Yuerin tightened her hold on Xuan Chi's shoulder.
"You felt it," Yuerin said.
Xuan Chi's eyes widened.
"He…" she whispered, voice shaking. "He took it."
Yuerin's gaze turned sharp, full of cold respect.
"Of course he did," she said. "That's who he is."
A scream of metal hit the air.
Because the "kill without karmic debt" squad had finally breached the lane.
They did not break through the front.
They slipped in from a side seam, using a contract clause like a key. Three assassins landed inside the moving fortress-road, blades already swinging for Xuan Chi's throat.
Yuerin moved first.
Her shadow cloak snapped outward and wrapped around Xuan Chi like a protective skin.
The assassin's blade hit shadow—then tried to ignore it, because the clause was meant to bypass consequences.
But the moment the clause touched the shadow barrier, a weak prismatic flame line flickered.
Drakonix's breath.
The clause word burned.
Not the assassin's weapon.
The rule behind it.
The assassin's blade suddenly became normal again, and the shadow barrier held it back.
Yuerin's eyes went colder.
"You came in with a cheat," she said. "So I'll take your cheat away."
She twisted her fingers, and her shadow wrapped around the assassin's mask.
Not crushing.
Not tearing.
Just tightening like a hand around a throat.
The assassin struggled, eyes wide.
Yuerin leaned close and spoke one quiet line.
"Tell your Pavilion this," she whispered. "I remember faces, even behind masks."
The assassin's eyes rolled, and they collapsed.
The other two assassins rushed.
Zhen moved.
He did not panic. He did not roar. He simply adjusted.
His voice came like a blunt hammer.
"SHIELD GATES: DEPLOY."
The third layer of the Imperial Shield Matrix shifted. The moving fortress-lane became a maze. Plates slid into place like giant doors. Two assassins were trapped inside a short corridor between gates—sealed in with no exit.
They slammed the walls.
They tried to whisper new clauses.
But the walls were now coated in thin prismatic burn marks—Drakonix's weak flame leaving law-scorched lines.
The clause words touched the burn marks.
They turned to ash.
Zhen's voice followed, overly serious.
"ASSASSINS CONTAINED."
Then he added, as if this needed to be said out loud:
"CONTAINED IS GOOD."
Yuerin snapped her head at him.
"Yes," she said. "Contained is good."
Zhen replied with perfect logic.
"CONFIRMED."
Then the Pavilion leader laughed softly behind their mask, even while chained.
"You're learning," the leader said. "But you are still running on someone else's road."
Yuerin's eyes narrowed.
"The vault road," she said. "The Conclave entrance."
The leader tilted their head.
"You want it? Then keep me alive."
Yuerin pulled the chain tighter.
"I was going to," she said. "But now I'm going to do it angrily."
Xuan Chi swallowed, forcing herself to stand again.
Above them, the sky "eye" cracked at the edge.
Her moon flared weakly.
"I can hold it… a bit," she whispered.
Yuerin's hand stayed on her shoulder.
"Then hold it," she said. "Because he's fighting alone in that tunnel."
Drakonix stirred in the center of the moving fortress-lane. His eyes opened for a breath. His wing trembled.
A black Court word floated above the lane like a stamp—something placed by the Court watchers far away.
The word was simple.
EXECUTE.
It was not written on paper.
It was written on reality.
Drakonix's weak flame flickered.
He breathed once.
A thin prismatic ember touched the word.
The word burned.
It did not explode.
It did not flare.
It simply… failed.
Like a command that the world suddenly refused to obey.
The word turned to ash and drifted away.
Yuerin's eyes widened slightly.
Zhen's voice came, blunt and amazed.
"COURT WORD DESTROYED."
He paused, then added like a child stating a fact.
"DRAKONIX CAN BURN RULES."
Drakonix's eyes closed again, exhausted.
But the message was clear.
Back inside the Silent Bell tunnel, Shan Wei felt the pressure spike as the Monastery noticed what happened outside.
The tunnel grew colder.
The bells above him shook.
The monk's voice came like a blade.
"You are spreading corruption," it hissed. "You are destabilizing order."
Shan Wei's reply was simple.
"Your order is theft," he said.
He kept the release rhythm steady.
Dong.Pause.Dong-dong.
The nail turned further.
A crack ran through the platform like lightning.
The Moon Lock trembled.
And something happened that Shan Wei had been waiting for.
A thin thread—almost invisible—twitched in the air beside the nail.
It was not Xuan Chi's frost node thread.
It was older.
Deeper.
A consort thread.
For one breath, Shan Wei felt a familiar cold moon presence far away, like a sword resting in snow.
His eyes sharpened.
The thread moved again, weakly, like a sleeping thing opening one eye.
Then the tunnel wrote a name in pale light above it, as if the lock had been forced to reveal what it was connected to.
LING XUEYAO.
Shan Wei's heart slammed once.
Not in panic.
In fierce focus.
So one thread was not dead.
It was pinned.
It was sleeping.
And now it was waking.
The monk's voice turned sharp with real alarm for the first time.
"Stop," it ordered.
Time blades rose again, a storm of white edges slicing toward Shan Wei's arms to force him off the nail.
Shan Wei did not release it.
He raised his Fate Severance and cut the incoming blades' paths—not destroying them, but splitting their timing so they arrived too early and too late, missing him by a breath.
He took one small cut on his shoulder.
His robe aged at the edge.
But he held.
Because now he had proof.
Proof that the Monastery lied.
Proof that the consort bonds were not "lost."
They were stolen and nailed.
Shan Wei's eyes burned like forged gold.
He turned the bell nail one more time.
And the sleeping thread of Ling Xueyao trembled harder—like it was trying to pull itself free.
To be Continued
© Kishtika., 2025
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