The unlisted entrance lay behind a collapsed mural depicting a harvest festival.
Joy carved into stone.
Cracked.
The grey token warmed in Shen Yuan's palm as he pressed it into a shallow recess. There was no light, no sound—only a brief sensation of falling sideways.
Then the world reassembled.
He stood in a narrow ruin corridor, walls uneven and unfinished, as if abandoned mid-thought. The air was stale but not dead. A faint pressure clung to everything—not hostile, just… attentive.
This was not part of Azure Spine Hall.
This was something it had been built around.
Shen Yuan moved slowly.
No formations marked the floor. No warning plaques. Even the academy's habit of labeling danger had failed here.
Fragments lined the walls—broken murals, partial inscriptions, stone slabs that had been cut away from larger truths. Most radiated nothing.
One did.
It was small. No larger than a handspan.
A stone shard suspended in midair, rotating slowly, its surface etched with symbols that refused to stay still. Lines folded inward, then outward, rearranging themselves every few breaths.
The shard inside Shen Yuan screamed.
Not pain.
Recognition so intense it bordered on panic.
Shen Yuan froze.
He did not step closer.
The pressure increased—not pushing, not pulling—but asking.
What he was.
What he carried.
Shen Yuan exhaled and did something no cultivator would.
He withdrew his cultivation.
Let his dantian go quiet.
Let his presence shrink.
The pressure faltered.
The floating fragment slowed.
The symbols aligned—briefly—into something comprehensible.
Not a technique.
Not a cultivation method.
A diagram.
Layers of worlds stacked not vertically, but inward. Each layer fed the next, not with energy—but with discarded possibilities.
Waste.
Failure.
Things that did not fit.
Shen Yuan's scalp prickled.
This fragment was not about becoming strong.
It was about what happened to those who didn't.
The shard within him vibrated, then settled.
A thin thread extended—not toward the fragment—
But toward Shen Yuan's shadow.
His shadow bent.
Just slightly.
Shen Yuan staggered back, heart pounding.
The fragment reacted instantly.
The corridor trembled.
Cracks spread along the walls.
Shen Yuan turned and ran.
The exit spat him out behind the harvest mural just as the pressure collapsed inward with a sound like something swallowing its own scream.
Silence.
He leaned against the wall, breathing hard.
His hands were shaking.
Nothing had attacked him.
Nothing had harmed him.
And yet—
He knew.
That fragment had noticed him.
Not as prey.
Not as inheritor.
As something misplaced.
That night, Shen Yuan did not cultivate.
He slept.
And dreamed—not of power, not of ascension—
But of doors that led nowhere, and shadows that walked ahead of their owners.
Far above, in a chamber sealed by time and oath, the old man in the archives opened his eyes.
"…You went too deep," he whispered.