Chapter 14: Mirror of the Soul… and the Deadly Beauty of Chaos
The quiet of Dewfall Residence was nothing but a thin veneer, concealing a storm of thoughts gnawing at Zhou Fan's mind.
When that girl appeared, it wasn't merely an intrusion into a private space—it was an intrusion into a reality Zhou Fan thought he had started to control.
He stopped breathing for a moment, his eyes widening as they traced the mysterious newcomer.
Ling'er stood at the edge of the window as if she were part of the moonlight itself. She wasn't just a beautiful girl; she embodied cold perfection.
Her face was an oval carved from rare marble, her skin so pale it radiated a faint inner glow under the darkness. Her eyebrows were like finely drawn lines, etched by a perfectionist obsessed with symmetry. And her eyes… ah, those eyes! They weren't ordinary human eyes; her irises were deep violet, and within them swirled golden particles—exactly like the matrices Zhou Fan saw in the Calculation Record.
Her gaze carried not hatred, but knowledge, the deadliest of all gazes.
She wore a long robe of celestial silk that flowed like water with every slight movement. The garment bore no typical Long Yuan insignia, but was embroidered with black threads forming patterns of broken mathematics and complex geometry, intelligible only to eyes fluent in the language of chaos.
Her waist was cinched by a thin leather belt, from which dangled a tiny bell that emitted no sound—it seemed to absorb sound instead of producing it.
A chill gripped Zhou Fan's heart. This wasn't "love at first sight"—it was the terror of recognition. He felt as if he were staring into a mirror reflecting a female, perfected version of himself.
"Beauty of chaos…" Zhou Fan muttered through a dry throat.
"You are not just an Accountant… you are a living algorithm."
Ling'er smiled—a smile like ice cracking: beautiful yet deadly. She stepped lightly across the wooden floor, making no sound as if walking on nothingness. She approached him, and he smelled the Withering Flower fragrance emanating from her—a funerary scent mingled with wild jasmine.
"Zhou Fan," she said, her voice ringing like the clash of razor blades.
"I see endless calculations in your eyes. You calculate the distance of your knees from the ground, the probability of a dagger in my sleeve, even your breathing rate to predict your attack. Stop that… I see your calculations as you see them."
She extended her long, slender fingers, black-painted nails, and lightly touched his forehead. In that instant, a wave of information flooded his mind. It wasn't an attack—it was a vision.
He saw thousands of people holding the same Record, rivers of blood flowing through deep valleys, and a colossal entity seated upon a throne of numbers, observing them like chess pieces.
"We are not siblings by blood," Ling'er continued, stepping back, her violet eyes glowing strangely.
"We are iterations of the same experiment. The third volume I possess teaches me how to calculate human souls, how to find flaws in their will before their bodies. You… you hold the first and second volumes—the material foundation. That is what makes you dangerous… and a delicious prey."
Anger surged within Zhou Fan, anger born from feeling powerless before her.
"Why tell me this? If you wish to kill me and take my Record, do it now."
Ling'er laughed softly, a sound that sent shivers down his spine.
"Killing you now? That would be a fatal miscalculation. You are still raw. I want you to mature in Broken Bones Valley. I want you to collect the remaining parts from the other Accountants before I take them from you with a single touch. I don't hunt bees… I wait for them to gather honey, then I take the hive."
She turned to leave, but before leaping from the window, she tossed a small metallic object toward him.
Zhou Fan caught it—it was a tiny gear that spun endlessly in his hand.
"This is a Chaos Gauge. It will alert you when another Accountant approaches. In the valley, there will be three of us. One possesses the Voice of Chaos, another the Touch of Nothing. Be ready… there, calculations won't be solved with pen and paper—they will be solved with corpses."
She leapt into the night's mist, vanishing as if she had never been there.
Zhou Fan stood in place for hours, the small gear still spinning in his palm. A deep cold ran through his extremities.
For the first time since beginning his journey, he truly felt the magnitude of the conspiracy he had become entangled in.
He was not the hero of his own story… he was merely data in a terrifying cosmic system.
He sat on his bed, examining the Codex of the Kings of Ash retrieved from the altar.
It was no ordinary book; its pages were made of ultra-thin human skin, and the writing was not ink—it was raised scars on the flesh.
"If Ling'er sees souls, then I must see the essence," Zhou Fan thought bitterly.
He began practicing a technique from the second volume he had never tried before: [Refining the Dark Soul Weapon].
He needed a weapon not reliant on physical strength, but on disassembling frequencies.
He placed the black dagger he had found in the mine before him and began channeling black ash energy from his pierced meridians into it.
Normally, a spiritual weapon absorbs energy to become sharper or glow. But this dagger began to devour Zhou Fan's energy with a frightening appetite. He felt his soul being pulled through his fingers.
"Calculations… must keep my pulse under 200… spiritual pressure must focus on the blade alone…"
Sweat poured down his face, and his eyes bled slightly from extreme concentration.
Suddenly, the dagger's form changed. It was no longer solid; it vibrated so rapidly that it appeared transparent.
It was no longer a weapon to cut flesh—it became a weapon that could sever molecular bonds.
Zhou Fan passed the vibrating dagger over a heavy wooden table.
No sound, no resistance. After a second, the table split perfectly in half, as if made of air.
He grinned, savage and triumphant.
"This is the Scalpel of Chaos. If Ling'er calculates souls… I will calculate how to slice those souls into irretrievable fragments."
He spent the rest of the night in grueling training, forcing himself to move through the room while tossing sheets of paper into the air, attempting to slice each into eight equal pieces before they hit the floor.
At first, his cuts were random, but by dawn, he had achieved a precision making the papers fall like shattered snow.
The next morning, Chang waited at the door with a basket of spirit fruits.
"Fan… you look pale. Did you train all night?"
Zhou Fan looked at Chang. He could see Chang's aura—simple, pure, weak. He felt the urge to tell Chang to flee, to escape far from this cursed mountain. But it was too late.
Chang had become a variable in his equation, and others would use him against Zhou Fan.
"Chang," Zhou Fan said, placing his hand on his friend's shoulder.
"From today, never leave this residence. I've placed a protective array around the room. If anyone tries to enter, don't resist… just press this stone."
He handed him a small black stone.
"This stone will explode the residence with everyone inside… including you. Understand?"
Chang's eyes widened in terror.
"Fan… is it really that dangerous?"
"More dangerous than you can imagine," Zhou Fan replied coldly.
"In our world, death is sometimes the gentlest option. Don't let them catch you alive."
Zhou Fan left the residence, heading to the Gathering Plaza where the exploration of Broken Bones Valley would begin.
He walked among his fellow core disciples, who looked at him with a mixture of envy and disgust.
But he did not see them… he saw only those violet eyes watching him from afar, and heard the tiny gear in his pocket spinning… spinning… heralding the approaching storm.