Azure Spine Hall kept spirit-crested crows along its upper terraces—scavengers trained to clean failed pills, broken artifacts, and bodies when necessary. They were loud creatures, territorial and aggressive.
That morning, they were silent.
Shen Yuan noticed as he crossed the Lower Courtyard. Dozens of crows perched along the stone balustrades, feathers puffed, heads tilted—not watching people, but watching space.
Watching gaps.
As he passed beneath them, every head turned.
Not sharply.
Not aggressively.
As if following a misaligned thread.
Shen Yuan kept walking.
His injuries had mostly healed. The lingering ache in his ribs had faded to a dull pressure, like weather waiting to change. His cultivation remained stagnant—but stable, unnaturally so. The microfracture in his channel no longer bled energy.
It redirected it.
At the task board, something else felt wrong.
Assignments shifted as he read them.
Not physically—but meaningfully.
Routes that had been marked safe felt… thin. Locations labeled "low risk" pressed faintly against his perception like stretched skin.
He stepped back.
A Tier Two disciple scoffed nearby. "What, can't read?"
Shen Yuan said nothing.
He took a task no one wanted:
Eastern Slope – Rotten Root Clearing
Hazard Level: Minor
Reward: Negligible
The disciple laughed. "Suit yourself."
On the slope, the reason became clear.
The Rotten Root zone was a forest of dead, half-sentient trees—low-tier plant monsters that fed on decay. Normally docile. Predictable.
They were neither.
As Shen Yuan stepped into the clearing, roots withdrew from his path.
Leaves rustled without wind.
A tree—one that should not have had a face—turned its bark-scarred trunk toward him.
It did not attack.
It listened.
Shen Yuan felt the same pressure as in the unlisted fragment corridor—not focused, not invasive, just… aware.
Slowly, carefully, he backed away.
The roots followed—stopping when he stopped.
When he left the clearing, the forest exhaled.
Later, in the Ruin Archives, the old man was waiting.
Not asleep.
Not smiling.
"You were seen," he said.
Shen Yuan bowed. "I didn't take anything."
"That was never the danger," the old man replied. "You were categorized."
He tapped the grey token. It had changed.
The hollow square was no longer empty.
A faint line now divided it diagonally.
"That fragment doesn't grant techniques," the old man continued. "It sorts mistakes. Failed paths. Discarded variables."
He looked at Shen Yuan sharply. "And it couldn't place you."
Shen Yuan felt a chill crawl up his spine.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
The old man shrugged. "For now? Animals hesitate. Arrays misfire. Tasks feel wrong."
He leaned in. "Later? People will start making poor decisions around you."
Shen Yuan did not like that.
Far above the academy, Elder Han reviewed reports.
– Rotten Root monsters unresponsive
– Array fluctuation in outer grounds
– Spirit-beasts refusing approach
He frowned.
Deviation was expected.
Patterns were not.
He added a third character beneath Shen Yuan's name.
"Distorts."
Beyond the mountain, beyond the monster forests, beyond even the sealed ruins—
Something alien adjusted again.
Not a correction.
A containment.
Several futures quietly closed.
One remained.
And in that narrowing corridor of possibility, Shen Yuan walked on—unaware that the world had begun to step aside for him, not out of respect…
…but uncertainty.