At the exact moment those words fell, a hair-thin crack quietly appeared across the formation disk.
It was so fine that it was almost invisible.
Yet it was there.
Inside the illusion, the bamboo forest remained silent beneath the moonlight.
At some point, mist had begun to rise.
It drifted slowly between the bamboo stalks, spreading little by little and swallowing the surrounding forest one layer at a time.
The farther it spread, the quieter everything became.
Even the wind seemed to slow, its faint whisper muffled beneath an invisible weight.
Yu Jin stood where she was, unable to move.
Then something changed.
A presence was approaching from somewhere beyond the mist.
Yu Jin’s heart jolted.
She knew it.
The certainty came so suddenly that she had no time to question it.
She recognized this presence, yet she could not remember where she had encountered it before.
No matter how deeply she searched her memories, she found nothing.
No face.
No name.
No clear image.
Nothing she could hold on to.
But the familiarity remained.
Deep.
Instinctive.
Almost painful.
It felt as though this presence had been buried somewhere within her for an impossibly long time—not merely hidden in her memories, but rooted somewhere even earlier than memory itself.
Yu Jin’s breathing tightened.
Who is coming?
Why do I recognize this presence?
More importantly, why did an inexplicable ache rise in her chest the moment she felt it?
Why did she suddenly feel like crying?
Yu Jin did not understand.
The emotion came without warning.
There was no memory attached to it and no reason she could identify, yet it was so real that her chest ached beneath its weight.
She wanted to move.
She wanted to go closer, to see who was coming and understand why her body had reacted before her mind could recognize anything.
But she could not.
Her body still refused to respond.
She could not take a single step, raise her hand, or call out.
All she could do was remain where she was and watch the other Yu Jin standing beneath the moonlight.
The Yu Jin within the scene did not turn around.
She simply stood there, looking quietly ahead as though she already knew someone was coming.
Step.
A brief silence followed.
Step.
Another.
The steps were neither hurried nor hesitant.
They slowly drew closer, one after another.
The mist shifted.
Before long, a figure emerged from within it.
A young man.
He wore white robes, and his hair was neatly tied back.
A wooden sword hung at his waist.
There was nothing hurried about the way he approached.
He simply walked through the mist until he stopped in front of the Yu Jin beneath the moonlight.
Then his gaze fell upon the Fire Phoenix Mark between her brows.
He studied it quietly.
That single glance did not carry the curiosity of someone seeing it for the first time.
There was no surprise or confusion.
It felt more like confirmation.
As though he were looking at the answer to a question he had known for a very long time.
Almost at the exact moment his gaze settled on the Fire Phoenix Mark, Wang Shan’s expression changed outside the illusion.
His pupils contracted sharply.
For a fraction of a second, even his breathing seemed to stop.
The hand that had been forming a technique froze in midair, his fingers remaining suspended as the unfinished spell quietly dispersed.
Wang Shan stared at the Recording Mirror.
The cold decisiveness he had maintained until now was gone.
His gaze darkened little by little.
It seemed that he was trying to confirm what he was seeing, while some part of him still refused to believe it.
His lips moved.
A single word escaped in a voice barely louder than a whisper.
“…Impossible.”
Su Lin had already stepped forward.
His eyes locked onto the white-robed young man reflected in the Recording Mirror.
For the first time since the trial began, his composure disappeared completely.
His expression changed, and even his fingers tightened unconsciously inside his sleeves.
The other elders reacted almost at the same time.
No one spoke.
No one needed to ask who the young man was.
They had recognized him the moment they saw him.
There had been no hesitation or uncertainty.
The recognition had come far too quickly and directly to be mistaken.
The formation disk trembled again.
Buzz—
Its light dimmed briefly before returning.
The formation continued to operate, but it was no longer as stable as before.
The hair-thin crack remained across its surface.
Wang Shan’s hand was still suspended in the air.
For the first time, his loss of composure was clearly visible.
His gaze remained fixed on the Recording Mirror, unwilling to move away even for an instant.
His throat shifted slightly.
When he finally spoke, his voice was extremely low, yet the shock beneath it could no longer be concealed.
“How could he…”
Wang Shan stopped, his eyes still fixed on the figure in white.
“…appear here?”
Silence answered him.
No one knew.
No one could explain why a person they all recognized had appeared inside Yu Jin’s illusion.
Within the bamboo forest, however, none of their shock existed.
The young man knew nothing of the elders standing beyond the Recording Mirror.
He knew nothing of Wang Shan’s disbelief, Su Lin’s sudden loss of composure, or the silence that had fallen over the Tianyan Pavilion.
He simply stood there, calm and unhurried.
There was even a faint trace of undisguised confidence in his expression.
When his gaze returned to the Yu Jin before him, that confidence softened slightly, carrying with it an almost imperceptible sense of ease.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then the young man finally broke the silence.
“You finally came.”
His voice was soft.
Only a few simple words.
Yet they sounded as though they had been held back for a very long time, waiting until this exact moment to be spoken.
The Yu Jin beneath the moonlight looked at him.
Her expression did not change.
There was no surprise or confusion in her eyes, as though his appearance had never been unexpected.
She answered just as calmly.
“And you finally decided to show yourself.”
The bamboo forest fell silent again.
Their exchange had been brief and simple, yet there was not the slightest trace of unfamiliarity between them.
There was no introduction.
No question of identity.
No hesitation.
It was as though, across the distance of time, they had both been waiting for this moment to arrive.