At the exact moment those words fell, a hair-thin crack appeared across the formation disk.
It was so fine that it was almost invisible, but it was there.
Inside the illusion, the bamboo forest remained silent beneath the moonlight.
Mist had begun to rise, drifting between the bamboo stalks and gradually swallowing the forest one layer at a time.
The farther it spread, the quieter everything became.
Even the sound of the wind seemed to slow, muffled beneath an invisible weight.
Yu Jin stood motionless.
Then something changed.
A presence was approaching from somewhere beyond the mist.
Her 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.
There was no face, no name, and no clear image she could hold on to.
But the familiarity remained, deep and instinctive, almost painfully so.
It felt as though this presence had been buried within her for an impossibly long time—not merely hidden among 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 want to cry?
Yu Jin did not understand.
The emotion had come without warning.
There was no memory attached to it and no reason she could identify, yet it felt so real that her chest ached beneath its weight.
She wanted to move closer.
She wanted 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 looked ahead, as though she already knew someone was coming.
Then footsteps sounded from within the mist.
Step.
A brief silence followed. This story is hosted at g.com.
Step.
Another.
The steps were neither hurried nor hesitant.
They drew closer at a steady pace until the mist shifted and a figure emerged from within it.
It was a young man dressed in white.
His hair was neatly tied back, and a wooden sword hung at his waist.
He walked through the mist without haste and stopped in front of the Yu Jin beneath the moonlight.
His gaze fell upon the Fire Phoenix Mark between her brows.
He studied it quietly.
There was no curiosity in his eyes, nor any surprise or confusion.
He did not look like someone seeing the mark for the first time.
His expression carried something closer to confirmation, as though he were looking at the answer to a question he had known for a very long time.
Almost at the same moment, Wang Shan’s expression changed outside the illusion.
His pupils contracted sharply, and 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 remained suspended as the unfinished spell quietly dispersed.
Wang Shan stared at the Recording Mirror.
The cold decisiveness he had maintained until now was gone.
Disbelief slowly darkened his eyes as he tried to confirm what he was seeing, even while some part of him refused to accept it.
His lips moved.
“…Impossible.”
The word escaped in a voice barely louder than a whisper.
Su Lin had already stepped forward, his eyes fixed on 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 his fingers tightened unconsciously inside his sleeves.
The other elders reacted almost at the same time.
No one spoke, and no one needed to ask who the young man was.
They had recognized him the moment he appeared.
There had been no hesitation or uncertainty.
The recognition had come far too quickly and directly to be mistaken.
That was precisely what made the scene before them so difficult to understand.
Buzz—
Its light dimmed briefly before returning.
The formation continued to operate, but it was no longer stable.
The hair-thin crack remained across its surface, faint but unmistakable.
Wang Shan’s hand was still suspended in the air.
For the first time, his loss of composure was visible to everyone.
He kept his eyes fixed on the Recording Mirror, unwilling to look away even for an instant.
His throat shifted slightly.
“How could he…”
Wang Shan stopped, still staring at the figure in white.
“…appear here?”
Only silence answered him.
No one knew.
None of them 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 before Yu Jin, calm and unhurried.
There was a faint trace of undisguised confidence in his expression.
When his gaze returned to the Yu Jin before him, however, that confidence softened slightly, giving way to an almost imperceptible sense of ease.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then the young man broke the silence.
“You finally came.”
His voice was soft.
They were only a few simple words, yet they sounded as though they had been held back for a very long time, waiting for this exact moment to be spoken.
The Yu Jin beneath the moonlight looked at him without surprise or confusion, as though his appearance had never been unexpected.
She answered just as calmly.
“And you finally decided to show yourself.”
Silence returned to the bamboo forest.
Their exchange had been brief, yet there was not the slightest trace of unfamiliarity between them.
Neither asked for the other’s name.
Neither questioned the other’s identity.
There was no hesitation at all.
It was as though they had both spent a long time waiting for this moment to arrive.