The corridor suddenly trembled.
It was not the violent shaking of something about to collapse.
Instead, it felt as though the space itself had been torn open from within.
An invisible crack seemed to spread through the passage.
The stone walls on either side began to split without warning.
There was no explosion and no shower of debris, only a low, oppressive cracking sound that traveled slowly through the narrow corridor.
It scraped against the silence until even the air seemed to tighten around it.
The sound was not loud, yet it made Yu Jin’s chest feel strangely constricted.
The corridor ahead had originally stretched forward in a perfectly straight line.
Now it began to distort.
The light along the walls stretched unnaturally, while shadows shifted out of place.
One image overlapped another, then another, until the entire passage seemed to fold in on itself.
Distance became impossible to judge.
Near and far blurred together.
Even the ground beneath Yu Jin’s feet shifted slightly, as though the space supporting it had begun to slip from its original position.
Yu Jin’s breathing tightened.
She instinctively stepped backward.
The instant her foot came down, however, she stepped into nothing.
Her heart lurched.
Before she could regain her balance, everything around her vanished.
It did not shatter.
It did not collapse.
Nor was it swallowed by darkness.
It was simply— erased.
The stone walls disappeared first.
Then the corridor.
Then the echoes that had been chasing her footsteps moments earlier.
Even the sensation of space itself seemed to empty out in the same instant.
Everything was gone.
Yu Jin lost her balance.
Her body seemed to fall, yet there was no wind around her and no ground beneath her.
At the same time, something seized her consciousness.
The force came without warning.
Before Yu Jin could resist, her awareness was dragged violently downward, deeper and deeper into somewhere she could not see.
Her surroundings blurred.
Her senses scattered.
Then everything went dark.
When Yu Jin opened her eyes again, the first thing she felt was the wind.
A gentle breeze drifted through the depths of a bamboo forest, carrying the faint scent of grass, damp earth, and leaves.
It was light, so light that after the suffocating darkness of the corridor, it hardly felt real.
Yu Jin did not move.
Her breathing was still slightly uneven.
Beneath her feet was no longer cold stone, but soft earth covered in dry leaves.
As the breeze passed, several leaves lifted into the air before brushing lightly across the ground.
Rustle…
The sound was faint, almost too soft to hear.
Yu Jin slowly looked around.
The bamboo forest lay silent beneath the night sky.
Moonlight filtered through the dense leaves overhead, falling in broken patches across the ground.
A thin layer of mist drifted between the bamboo stalks, obscuring the deeper parts of the forest.
There were no footsteps.
No voices.
No sign of the black mist that had swallowed the two figures in the corridor.
Everything had changed too suddenly.
If anything, it made her even more uneasy.
The forest was too quiet.
Every small sound became unnaturally clear—the movement of the leaves, the whisper of the wind, even her own breathing.
Yu Jin remained where she was and allowed her vision to adjust.
The bamboo.
The moonlight.
The drifting mist.
The narrow spaces between the trees.
As the scene gradually became clearer, a strange feeling rose within her.
Her brows drew together.
Where is this?
She looked deeper into the bamboo forest.
For some reason, this place felt familiar.
Not simply because bamboo forests were common in Qingqiu.
This familiarity was far more specific.
The angle of the moonlight.
The silence between the trees.
Even the faint scent carried by the wind.
All of it touched something buried deep within her mind.
It felt as though she had been here before.
Yu Jin tried to remember, but nothing surfaced.
The familiarity remained, while the memory behind it stayed beyond her reach.
Then Yu Jin’s pupils suddenly contracted.
Her entire body went still.
Someone was standing ahead.
Beneath the moonlight, among the bamboo stalks, stood another figure.
At first, Yu Jin could see only a white silhouette through the thin mist.
But as the breeze shifted and the mist slowly drifted aside, the figure became clearer.
Yu Jin stared.
Her breathing stopped for a moment.
The person standing there was herself.
Another Yu Jin.
She stood quietly beneath the moonlight, dressed in robes as white as snow.
Her slender figure was partly veiled by the mist, while pale moonlight rested softly across her shoulders.
Between her brows, the Fire Phoenix Mark gave off a faint crimson glow.
It was not the brilliant golden-red light that had erupted on the Heavenly Seal Platform.
This light was quieter.
Dimmer.
Like a flame concealed beneath the surface, burning silently within the night.
The other Yu Jin’s expression was calm.
There was no confusion on her face.
No fear.
No surprise.
She simply stood there, and within her stillness was something that felt almost like waiting.
Yu Jin’s breathing tightened again.
A strange sensation slowly spread through her chest.
It was not merely the shock of seeing another version of herself.
There was something deeper within it, something she could not identify.
Something that seemed to have stirred awake the moment she saw that figure.
Yu Jin instinctively tried to move closer.
Her body did not respond.
She froze before trying again.
Nothing.
Her feet would not move.
Neither would her hands.
It was as though her consciousness had been completely separated from her body.
Yu Jin opened her mouth.
She wanted to call out, to ask who that person was and why she looked exactly like her.
Her throat was not blocked this time.
Rather, it felt as though she simply had no voice in this place.
Yu Jin could do nothing.
She could not approach.
Could not speak.
Could not interfere.
All she could do was remain where she was and watch.
Watch the other version of herself beneath the moonlight.
Watch as the scene before her continued to unfold.
At almost the same moment, inside the Tianyan Pavilion, the formation disk trembled.
The movement was extremely faint, subtle enough that an ordinary person might not have noticed.
But everyone standing around the formation sensed it immediately.
The golden patterns that had been flowing in stable, orderly cycles suddenly wavered.
The fluctuation lasted only an instant.
Then it appeared again.
Wang Shan’s fingers paused, and his brows immediately tightened.
“The formation’s aura is changing.”
His voice was low as he stared at the Recording Mirror.
The scene reflected within it had shifted from the corridor to the bamboo forest, but the new image was no longer stable.
The bamboo appeared clear one moment and blurred the next.
The moonlight distorted.
The mist flickered.
Even Yu Jin’s figure seemed to shift between clarity and shadow.
It was as though some unknown force were interfering with the illusion and disrupting the formation’s control over what should have been a perfectly contained trial.
Su Lin’s expression gradually grew more serious.
He did not step forward.
He simply watched, carefully following every fluctuation within the mirror.
After several moments, he spoke in a lowered voice.
“This isn’t a normal illusion projection.”
The atmosphere around the formation immediately grew heavier.
Song Yan did not answer.
From beginning to end, his attention had remained fixed on the Recording Mirror.
His expression was calm, but the concentration in his eyes had deepened.
He could see what the others had also begun to notice.
There were two Yu Jins in the mirror.
One stood beneath the moonlight within the bamboo forest.
She belonged to the scene itself.
She could move.
She could act.
She could speak.
Farther away, however, another Yu Jin stood motionless.
Watching.
She did not appear to belong to the scene.
It was as though her consciousness had been separated from everything unfolding before her, leaving her outside the memory while still forcing her to witness it.
One Yu Jin existed within the scene.
The other stood beyond it.
Both appeared inside the same illusion and were clearly visible in the Recording Mirror.
Yet their states were entirely different.
Song Yan’s gaze darkened.
This was not something the formation could create.
The trial could construct an illusion and reflect whatever appeared within it, but what they were witnessing had already moved beyond its original structure.
For several breaths, Song Yan said nothing.
His eyes remained fixed on the two identical figures within the mirror.
Then he finally spoke, his voice low and steady.
“It’s consciousness layering.”