By then, Yu Jin had already entered the Tianyan Pavilion.
The moment she crossed the threshold, it felt as though she had passed through an invisible boundary.
The mountain wind disappeared, along with the scent of grass, trees, and damp earth.
Everything belonging to the outside world was cut off in an instant.
In its place was a cold, orderly space that seemed unnaturally controlled.
Even the spiritual energy here was different.
Instead of flowing gently through the air, it seemed compressed and divided into distinct layers, arranged according to some unseen law.
Every breath Yu Jin took felt clearer.
Heavier.
She paused briefly.
The flame within her, which had remained quiet until now, stirred faintly.
It did not erupt or spread beyond her body.
It merely shifted once, almost as though it were testing this unfamiliar space while the Tianyan Pavilion tested her in return.
Several Inner Pavilion disciples were already standing ahead.
Their auras were restrained and their expressions composed, yet the way they stood formed an invisible line across the hall.
A boundary.
The attendant leading Yu Jin forward offered no explanation.
“Before entering the pavilion, you must first pass a trial,” he said indifferently.
Yu Jin had barely registered the words when the formation beneath her feet lit up.
One rune after another awakened.
Light spread outward along the patterns in widening circles, rippling across the floor like water.
Beautiful.
Silent.
Cold.
Yu Jin’s eyes sharpened.
She had not even been given the chance to speak.
In the next instant, the formation pulled her in.
Her gaze darkened.
So that was how it was.
They had never intended to give her a choice.
The formation activated.
The world around her twisted without warning.
Light folded in upon itself.
The space before her seemed to compress and stretch at the same time, pulling everything out of shape.
Yu Jin’s vision blurred.
For one brief instant, she lost all sense of direction.
Then her sight cleared again.
The ground vanished beneath her feet, and she was dragged completely into the formation.
The next moment, she was running.
Wind tore past her ears, carrying a biting chill.
Her breathing came fast and uneven.
A long, narrow corridor stretched beneath her feet, swallowed in darkness.
The stone walls pressed close on either side, making the passage feel suffocatingly cramped.
Every footstep echoed through the corridor.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The sound struck the walls and rushed back toward her, like another set of footsteps chasing the frantic rhythm of her heart.
Yu Jin did not know why she was running.
She had no time to think.
Her body had already reacted before her mind could catch up.
All she could do was keep moving.
Forward.
Faster.
“Quick!”
A voice suddenly came from ahead.
Yu Jin looked up.
The moment she saw what was in front of her, her entire body froze.
A boy and a girl were running desperately through the corridor.
Their clothes whipped behind them as they stumbled forward, their footsteps frantic and uneven.
Yu Jin stared at them.
Something inside her tightened painfully.
She knew this scene.
She had seen them before.
In that dream.
Before she could react—
BOOM—!
A violent explosion erupted behind her.
The heavy stone door she had just passed through shattered apart.
Fragments burst outward with terrifying force, slamming into the walls on both sides.
Bang!
Bang—!
Deep impacts echoed through the narrow corridor, colliding and overlapping until the entire passage seemed to tremble beneath their weight.
Then the force of the blast reached her.
A freezing, oppressive current surged forward from behind.
It was not merely wind.
It carried a crushing weight that rushed toward Yu Jin’s back, closing the distance almost instantly.
It was so close that she could feel it pressing against her breath.
Yu Jin’s breathing stopped for half a beat.
She could not stop running.
She did not dare.
Because in that instant, she knew with terrifying certainty that it had followed them inside.
“Xiao Yu, run!
Don’t stop!”
The girl ahead suddenly looked back.
Fear filled her eyes.
She was clearly terrified, yet she gritted her teeth and continued running.
Yu Jin opened her mouth.
She wanted to answer, but nothing came out.
Her throat felt locked.
No matter how hard she tried, she could not make a sound.
All she could do was follow them.
Keep running.
Her legs grew heavier, and her breathing became increasingly ragged.
“It’s coming…”
The boy’s voice was hoarse, nearly breaking.
Then the air began to tremble.
Not because of the wind.
The space itself was distorting.
Something seemed to be forcing its way in from somewhere deeper.
It did not belong here, yet it was tearing its way through all the same.
A voice slowly emerged from the darkness of the corridor.
Low.
Heavy.
Rough, as though it had once been torn apart and crudely pieced back together.
Beneath its final syllables lay a growl that could barely be restrained.
“You can’t escape—”
Yu Jin’s pupils contracted.
She knew that voice.
She had heard it before.
In the dream.
The thought had barely formed when the darkness at the far end of the corridor suddenly surged.
It was not a shadow.
It was something truly black.
A mass of darkness squeezed itself through a crack in space, churning violently as it swept forward.
Fast.
Far too fast.
Yu Jin’s eyes widened.
She tried to warn them.
Her lips parted, but her voice remained trapped in her throat.
No sound came out.
The darkness was already upon them.
It had no shape, no face, and no visible body, yet the pressure it carried felt horrifyingly real.
In the next instant, it swallowed the boy and girl ahead.
There was no struggle.
No time for them to turn around.
They did not even manage another scream.
Yu Jin watched as the darkness consumed them piece by piece.
The edges of their clothes disappeared first.
Then their arms.
Their bodies.
Their silhouettes.
Until nothing remained.
It was as though they had never existed at all.
It happened too close to her.
Too clearly.
Almost as if someone wanted to make certain that she saw everything.
Yu Jin’s heart jolted violently.
Fire.
Running.
Collapse.
Screams.
Fragments of images and sounds crashed together in a single instant.
Everything overlapped.
Everything returned at once.
She could no longer suppress it.
Her voice finally tore free from her throat.
Yu Jin stepped forward instinctively, reaching desperately toward the place where the two figures had vanished.
“Don’t!”
Then two names burst from her lips.
“A-Ci!”
“A-Ning!”
Yu Jin froze.
The names had escaped before she could think, before she could remember, before she could even understand how she knew them.
They had been dragged from somewhere deeper than memory, as though they had always been buried within her soul.
But there was no answer.
Only the darkness remained.
Yu Jin’s hand was still suspended in the air, her fingers slowly tightening as though reaching a little farther might allow her to catch them.
At that same moment, inside the Tianyan Pavilion, the Recording Mirror suddenly trembled.
Buzz—!
The light flowing steadily across its surface rippled without warning.
The image shook violently.
Within the mirror, black mist churned and twisted as though it were trying to break through the surface and force its way into the real world.
Song Yan’s expression darkened instantly.
He stood beside the formation, his attention fixed on the scene reflected in the mirror.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
His voice remained low and steady, but the gravity beneath it could no longer be concealed.
“No.”
Wang Shan had already stepped forward.
His sleeve snapped sharply with the movement, and his expression turned cold.
“What did she trigger?”
The image inside the mirror shook again.
The distorted corridor flickered.
The black mist surged.
Then something happened that should never have been possible.
The illusion was supposed to be sealed.
Everything within it should have existed only according to the rules of the trial.
Yet at that moment, an echo appeared where no echo should have existed.
Su Lin’s eyes narrowed.
Unlike Wang Shan, he did not step forward.
He remained where he was and studied the mirror more carefully than anyone else.
Then he spoke.
“She called out their names.”
His voice was quiet, but the atmosphere in the pavilion changed the instant those words fell.
“That wasn’t a reaction to the illusion,” Su Lin continued, his gaze fixed on Yu Jin’s reflection.
“It was her memory awakening.”
A heavy silence settled over the hall.
Wang Shan’s expression changed.
“Impossible.”
There was an unmistakable edge in his voice.
“The trial only reflects an illusory realm.
She shouldn’t recognize—”
“But she did,” Song Yan interrupted.
His voice was calm, yet those three words carried more weight than Wang Shan’s denial.
No one spoke.
Inside the Recording Mirror, the darkness continued to churn.
Yu Jin stood before it, her figure unnaturally clear against the endless black—almost too distinct within the distorted illusion.
It was as though the darkness had locked onto her.
Su Lin studied the image for several breaths, his expression gradually growing more solemn.
“She didn’t merely see it,” he said at last.
He paused briefly.
“She changed the illusion.”
Wang Shan gave a cold laugh, but this time, none of his earlier composure remained behind it.
“Then we have even less reason to leave this alone.”
His gaze sharpened.
“She has already crossed the boundary.”
As he spoke, spiritual energy began to gather between his fingers.
The movement was subtle.