——New Order Established, Poisoned Shadows Draw Near, Standing Shoulder-to-Shoulder in the Afterglow of Heartfire
The snow ceased in the coldest hour before dawn.
This was not peace. It was suffocation.
Lu Wanning lifted the coarse hemp curtain of the medical tent. Her exhaled breath etched a fleeting scar into the dark air. Inside, only two oil lamps burned, their haloes a sickly yellow, like the eyelids of the dying. She walked to the innermost straw mat and knelt. A young soldier lay there. Dark red seeped through the linen on his left shoulder, but the wound wasn't the problem. It was his eyes.
"Name," Wanning said, her voice as precise as a needle finding its point.
The soldier's mouth opened. His throat worked. No sound came.
"What is your name?" she asked again, a Li-silver needle already poised between her fingertips.
"I…" His brow furrowed, searching a lost drawer of memory. "Wang… Wang Er? No… perhaps Li…"
The needle tip paused half an inch from his temple. Wanning's heterochromatic pupils contracted in the gloom.
The seventh one.
Since dawn, the seventh patient showing clean, surgical breaks in short-term memory. Not head trauma. Not blood loss. An eerie blankness, as if a fine eraser had swiped away the very strokes of self.
She picked up her brush. The tip scratched softly in the Resonance Symptom Notes, a sound like snow on frozen earth.
Her brush paused. She looked toward the main watchtower. There, Shen Yuzhu stood alone on the broken steps, his face lifted to the Crimson Heart Banner.
Gu Changfeng stood atop the ruined eastern wall.
Below, a mixed team—soldiers and herders—carried stones shoulder-to-shoulder. Steps disordered. Tempers flared.
"To the left! Deaf, are you?!"
"I moved this stone first!"
"You soldiers think you're so great? Without our fires last night, you'd be ice!"
Gu Changfeng breathed deep.
His wind domain unfolded. Not to suppress, but to resonate. He wove their footsteps, their breath, even the frantic beat of their hearts into the rhythm of the wind. The clamor died, like water off a boil.
Only then did he speak, his voice cutting clean through the wind.
"You argue louder than snow wolves. But a wolf pack knows one thing—to live, you fall in line."
Silence. Then, a few choked laughs.
A rough, new order took root in that laughter.
One-armed veteran Lao Chen blinked, then grinned, yellow teeth bared. "The General's right! Line up! All of you, damn it, line up!"
He bent, hefted a stone, set it steady on the foundation. The young herder scratched his head, then did the same. They fell into an odd, shared rhythm.
Gu Changfeng watched, the ghost of a smile at his lips.
Above them, the Crimson Heart Banner snapped, sharp and alive, in the morning light. The dark red patterns upon it—last night's "collective scars" from burning the Order-Net—now pulsed faintly. Like dormant veins stirring awake.
Shen Yuzhu stood on the broken steps, looking up.
His mirror patterns resonated with the banner's own. Not by choice. It was a violent empathy.
Countless fragmented images flooded his consciousness.
They struck like a tidal wave:
A soldier's last sight—snowflakes falling, each reflecting a different hearthfire from a home he'd never see again.
A mother's hand, ulcerated from cold, pushing half a piece of hardtack into her child's grasp.
Himself—younger, kneeling in snow. Shadowed figures in black surrounded him. A leader's voice, colder than the ice: "From today, you are 'Mirror Seven.' The Wolf Talon's sharpest eye."
(A memory. Sealed. Forbidden.)
His mirror patterns screamed. Not with heat, but with a cold, tearing agony. An ice blade scraping along the pathways of his mind.
He grunted. His hands seized the stone railing, knuckles bone-white.
Don't fall.
His mirror patterns spun, desperate to parse the memory-backlash. But the banner's patterns held the collective will of three hundred souls—fear, rage, hope, despair—a chaotic flood drowning his rational defenses.
"Cough—"
Dark blue blood hit the snow. It hissed, steaming.
He swayed. The world dimmed.
Footsteps, behind him.
Chu Hongying had just returned from the western wall. The blood lock on her arm still glowed faintly from its communion with the earth veins. She saw his stumbling form. Her pupils contracted—
Instinct.
She strode forward. As he pitched toward the edge, her arm hooked around his waist. Her other hand slammed against his shoulder, bracing him hard against the stone.
Crisp. Efficient. A battlefield extraction.
Their distance vanished.
He smelled wind, snow, and the rust-scent of old blood on her. He saw that speck of eternal crimson deep in her pupils, now terrifyingly close.
His breath hitched.
But what shook him more was the resonance—the exposed mirror patterns on his arm and the dark glow of her blood lock humming against each other. Like two wounded hearts, hearing the other's beat for the first time on the frozen plain.
"Steady." Her voice was low, hard. But the hand on his shoulder was firm.
Shen Yuzhu managed a nod. Words choked on blood.
"Don't talk." She saw it. Her arm tightened, pinning him securely between railing and body. "Breathe. First."
An order. The only one he could follow.
He closed his eyes. Icy air filled his lungs. He exhaled, slow. The searing pain in his patterns ebbed, just a fraction. Vision cleared. Only then did he realize her arm had never let go. A silent brace against his collapse.
"Can you walk?"
"Yes." His voice was a rasp.
She released him, but her hand stayed at his elbow, a guard against another fall. She turned. "Follow me."
He watched her back as she walked toward the medical tent. Something deep in his chest trembled.
It was a forgotten feeling. When you fall, someone doesn't ask why. They catch you first.
Inside the medical tent, Shen Yuzhu lay flat. His face was paper. The light in his mirror patterns flickered, cracks spiderwebbing toward his cheekbones.
Lu Wanning inserted a silver needle into his neck. The moment the tip entered, black cracks exploded along the shaft.
Her eyes turned cold. "Not Order-Net residue."
"What is it?" Chu Hongying stood nearby, voice calm. But the tendons stood out on the hand gripping her spear.
Wanning withdrew the needle. Its tip was coated with a faint, icy-blue fibre.
"Frost-poison," she said, each word precise. "But not of this world. 'Law-based frost-corrosion.' It specifically erodes the soul channels of mirror-seal bearers. Memory goes first. Then reason. Finally… an empty shell."
She looked at Shen Yuzhu. "Last night. The water source. Did your seal touch the Order-Net's core anchors?"
He closed his eyes. Nodded. "I parsed its definition structure."
"That's it." Wanning set the needle aside. "The Net planted 'anti-parsing poison seals' in those anchors. Every time you parse, the poison digs deeper."
A pause. Her voice dropped. "At this rate, three months. Your mirror channels will freeze, corrode. Turn into…"
"Into what?" Chu Hongying asked.
"Into a 'Mirror-Guard.' Consciousness wiped clean. Only an obedient body remains."
Silence filled the tent. Only Shen Yuzhu's ragged breath and the distant wind.
A long moment later, Chu Hongying walked to the mat and crouched.
She reached out—not for his pulse, but pressed the back of her hand to his forehead.
The touch was piercingly cold.
She frowned. "Can you move?"
Shen Yuzhu opened his eyes. His patterns flickered weakly. "Yes."
"Then sit up." Her tone was command, yet closer than ever. "If you fall, the order I've built these three days falls with you."
Soft words.
They fell like a red-hot stone into the frozen pond of his heart. Scalding ripples exploded.
He stared, throat tight. "General, you don't have to—"
"Shut up." She cut him off, unfastening her own water skin—the purified water from last night, untouched. She pulled the stopper, held it to his lips. "Drink."
No room for refusal.
He took it. Fingertips brushed. A shared tremor.
He drank. Warm water pushed back a sliver of the inner chill.
But warmer was her gaze upon him now. No longer a commander's appraisal. Something deeper. A fierce, stubborn "you are not allowed to die."
"Wanning," Chu Hongying turned. "A cure?"
"Time." Lu Wanning was silent a beat. "The poison is deep in his soul channels. Forced removal would shatter his foundation. I can only seal the main meridians. Slow the corrosion."
"How long?"
"Acupuncture every seven days. Herbal warmth. No strain." She looked at Shen Yuzhu. "You cannot use your mirror seal to parse the Net again. It accelerates the poison."
Shen Yuzhu smiled, bitter. "Then reconnaissance… prediction…"
"I'll do it." Simple. Final. "For these seven days, your only task is to stay alive."
He looked at her. Words stuck, tangled in his throat.
Finally, a whisper. "Alright."
Afternoon. The sky darkened again.
No snow. But the wind grew thick, strange—the air carried a faint scent of old ink and burnt herbs.
The first sign came from the western wall patrol.
Two soldiers walked, then stopped. Stared at each other. One spoke, blank. "We… why are we here?"
The other looked at his spear as if seeing it for the first time. "Is this… a weapon? Or a tool?"
Cognitive fracturing had begun.
Next, outside the medical tent:
A veteran polished his shattered breastplate, muttering, "Must be clean… for His Majesty's review…"
A young mother rocked a wooden pillar, humming a lullaby to the silent wood.
Cold Mountain disciples drew swords, forming ranks against empty snow, shrieking, "Demonic energy! It invades!"
No screams. No blood.
A more terrifying collapse—eyes open, yet reality severed from action.
Gu Changfeng's wind domain felt it first.
He tried to use wind resonance to wake them. Chaotic "thought fragments" in the air rebounded, striking his own mind.
He grunted, temples pounding. Images flashed—
(Chu Hongying advancing, blade in hand / Shen Yuzhu's patterns becoming a devouring black hole / Lu Wanning's needles flying toward his eyes…)
"Fake!" he roared. The Cloud-Edge Blade shrieked from its sheath, slashing empty air!
The blade-wind tore the snow, and briefly, the mental oppression.
Gasping, he shouted at the chaotic soldiers, "Look! I am here! The wind is real!"
The effect was slight. More sank into the "Rationality Illusion Poison."
Second floor, main tower. The temporary command post.
Chu Hongying. Shen Yuzhu. Lu Wanning. Gu Changfeng. All faces were grave.
"Not Order-Net residue," Shen Yuzhu braced against the table, his patterns straining to analyze the lingering poison frequencies. "A targeted mental attack. The structure is precise, clearly experimental in nature. They are testing our resistance."
"Who?" Gu Changfeng's teeth were gritted.
"The Night Crow Division." Lu Wanning's voice was ice. She held a needle just pulled from a victim's brow, its tip stained with a wisp of pitch-black mist. "Needle-sense confirms. The poison binds to the logic chains of consciousness. The method is insidious. It matches their 'Rationality Stripping' experiments."
Chu Hongying looked out the window. Chaos spread.
Three breaths of silence.
"Can it be broken?"
"Requires Four Poles Resonance," Shen Yuzhu looked up, patterns flowing with parsed data. "Wanning constructs a 'logic barrier' with her meridians to isolate the waves. Changfeng uses his wind domain to diffuse a purification frequency. I will parse the poison anchors in reverse. And you—"
His eyes met hers. "Use the blood lock. Be the emotional anchor. Stabilize everyone's sense of self."
"Cost?"
"Our four souls will be temporarily bound," Lu Wanning said, calm. "If one is wounded, all suffer backlash."
Chu Hongying didn't hesitate. "Begin."
Four Poles Resonance. The second time.
By the eastern water channel again. But their enemy was no longer physical pollution. It was an intangible "cognitive virus."
Lu Wanning's pale meridian patterns sealed the four directions like vines.
Gu Changfeng's wind domain expanded, weaving their energies into one cycle.
Shen Yuzhu's mirror seal blazed, azure light a net capturing the flowing poison bands.
Chu Hongying's blood lock ignited. Dark red light pulsed from her core—
Not power. A heavy, warm declaration of existence.
"I am Chu Hongying. This is the Crimson Heart Camp. The time is now."
"Your names are on the Soul Stele. Your lives are your own."
"Now—wake up!"
The sound wave, fused with her blood lock's resonance, crashed into the chaotic consciousness of the camp.
During the process, the illusion poison attacked them all:
Lu Wanning forgot her next needle point, fingers frozen.
Gu Changfeng saw Chu Hongying's blade coming for him, barely stopping his own strike.
Shen Yuzhu's patterns showed him being dragged away by the Night Crow, his breath seizing.
Chu Hongying heard voices roar in her skull: "You can't save them! You'll only get them killed!"
She clenched her teeth. The blood lock's light held, a furious anchor tethering their four minds together.
Ten breaths.
Twenty.
Thirty—
A faint, crystalline crack in the air.
The viscous poison-wave shattered. Dissipated.
Chaos in the camp subsided. People blinked, looking around as if waking from a nightmare.
A young soldier knelt, face in hands, shoulders shaking. In the illusion, he saw his mother buried by an avalanche. He had screamed, run for the walls.
Now lucid, he sat dazed. Then, sobs wracked him.
Chu Hongying walked over, crouched. She didn't speak. Just placed her own water skin beside him.
He looked up, tears streaking grime. "General… I…"
"It's over." Her voice was bedrock. "You're alive. That is real."
He stared. Then, a hard, desperate nod. He took the skin, drank. Warm water seemed to wash the icy illusion away with it.
The poison was broken. The crisis was not.
Bai Ji stepped before the crowd, his Cold Mountain disciples behind him. His white robes were immaculate, a glaring insult to the surrounding filth and exhaustion.
"People," his voice was clear, cold. "Do you understand the cause of today's madness?"
The crowd stilled.
His gaze swept over Chu Hongying and the others. "Last night's heartfire, burning the Order, has shaken the natural laws of heaven and earth. Today's 'rationality collapse' is but the first sign of heavenly retribution. If such heaven-defying power runs wild here, what comes next will not be mere illusions. It will be fissures in the earth. Avalanches. Glacial floods!"
He paused, driving each word home.
"When that day comes, the dead will not be cultivators. They will be every common person here."
The crowd stirred. Fear, newly banished, rekindled.
Herders whispered: "Is it true? Because of last night's fire?"
"The Cold Mountain Sect is righteous… they might be right…"
"Could the General… be using forbidden arts?"
Batu was silent. Lao Chen glared, about to roar—
Shen Yuzhu stepped forward first.
His face was still pale. Cracks still marred his skin. His steps were unsteady.
But step by step, he walked to Chu Hongying's side. Stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her.
Then he looked up at Bai Ji. His voice was calm, clear, and carried.
"Last night, if she had not lit that fire, every person here—including your fellow disciples—would already be a line of 'invalid data' erased by the Order-Net. Not even corpses would remain."
He paused, his gaze sweeping the wavering crowd.
"If you seek accountability, fine. But get the order right. First, ask why the Empire turns living people into tools. Then, ask why the Order-Net strips the names from the dead. And finally…"
He turned his head. Looked at Chu Hongying. The look was deep. Unflinching.
"…come ask her why she risked everything to give you the chance to stand here and question her at all."
Dead silence.
Wind whipped snow-dust, whispering.
Chu Hongying turned to look at him.
This was the first time Shen Yuzhu had stood before her, speaking for her. Not as a strategist, but from a place that was purely, fiercely personal.
She saw his pale profile. The unfaded cracks in the depths of his eyes. His tightly clenched, trembling fingers.
Her heart tightened. A brand from iron frozen in ice.
Not pain. A startling, scorching heat.
Bai Ji was silent for a long time. Finally, he closed his eyes, exhaled a long, white breath.
"…I will continue to observe." He turned. "Withdraw."
His disciples followed, a line of white retreating from the square.
The crowd dispersed. But a subtle shift had taken root. The wavering in their eyes had hardened into determination. Fearful whispers had curdled into suppressed anger.
They were beginning to understand. Here, no one would speak for them except themselves. And these four who did not fear death.
Dusk. The broken tower.
The Crimson Heart Banner snapped, furious, against the dying light. The dark red patterns on its surface now visibly spread.
Like growing veins. Like taking root. Like wounds healing into deeper scars.
Shen Yuzhu stood below, looking up.
His mirror patterns hummed with a faint resonance. He saw:
Within the banner's weave, today was being recorded:
Gu Changfeng building order from wind.
Lu Wanning's needles breaking the poison.
The people's struggle from chaos to clarity.
And… the moment her hand caught him. The resonance of their two seals.
Every scene. Every emotion. Every choice.
The banner remembered.
Footsteps behind him.
Chu Hongying walked up the platform, stopped at his side.
Shoulder-to-shoulder, they watched the banner in silence.
He spoke first.
"The Night Crow Division won't stop. Today was a test. Next… they will be harsher."
"I know." Her voice was calm.
"The frost-poison in me… I may lose control."
"I know."
"Then you still…" He turned to her.
She turned too.
Twilight gilded the line of her jaw. The speck of crimson in her pupils blazed in the dimness.
"Shen Yuzhu." His full name, for the first time. Her tone was flat, a law of nature. "The first military regulation of the Crimson Heart Army. I set it now—"
A pause. Each word a stamp.
"Do not abandon comrades. Do not let the banner fall. Do not die from a blow in the back."
"You are a comrade. The banner is here." She raised a hand, clenched a fist, thumped it lightly against her own chest. "And I… always face the enemy."
Shen Yuzhu stared.
Then, he smiled. A soft, quiet thing.
That smile shed all the aloofness, the fragmentation of the mirror seal. It left only a man in his twenties, struck helpless and warm by a certain, overbearing "not allowed to die."
"Alright," he said.
Chu Hongying looked at that smile, then quickly turned her face away.
She rarely saw it. His smiles were usually veiled, watchful through ice. Now, the ice had cracked. True warmth showed through.
"That regulation," Shen Yuzhu said. "Did you just think of it? Or earlier?"
"Just now," she answered, frank. "The moment you said, 'Had she not lit the heartfire last night.'"
He was taken aback. His smile deepened. "So I… midwifed the Crimson Heart Army's first law?"
"You could say that." She looked back at the banner. "But not just you. Changfeng, steadying hearts. Wanning, saving lives. Lao Chen at the wall. Batu digging the channel… Everyone midwifed this banner."
Her voice lowered.
"That is why it remembers."
He followed her gaze. The banner pulsed with dark red life. He knew it held traces of his seal, resonance of her lock, the fear and clarity and choices of three hundred souls today.
Things the Order-Net would have erased. Remembered by a tattered flag.
"Yuzhu."
"Hmm?"
"The frost-poison. Tell no one else. Changfeng and Wanning know. That's enough. Morale is fragile."
"I understand."
"Also." She turned, her look serious. "From tonight, come to me before you sleep."
"What for?"
"To check the poison." Matter-of-fact. "Wanning said seven days is too long. It needs daily watching. She is busy. I will do it."
"You don't know medicine—"
"But I know the blood lock." She raised her arm. The dark red tracery glowed faintly in the twilight. "It connects to the earth veins. It resonates with your seal. I will sense the changes within you."
He opened his mouth. To protest the impropriety, the burden.
He whispered, "Alright."
Because her decisions were not for discussion.
And because, in a place with no promise of tomorrow, someone willing to check if you're still alive each day… is a precious, desperate luxury.
Deep night. Snowy woods at the camp's edge.
Three figures stood on withered branches, dark as crows. They watched the scattered lights of the fortress.
The central one pinched a black crow feather. At its root, in fine cinnabar script:
Garrison-Seven Node. Four Poles Body. First Coordinated Anti-Poison Record.
Mirror-Seal Sample 'Shen Yuzhu': Parsing speed exceeds parameters. Poison resistance insufficient. Frost-poison implanted.
Blood-Anchor Sample 'Chu Hongying': Emotional anchoring stable. Shows marked protective tendency toward mirror-seal sample.
Recommendation: Commence Phase Two 'Emotion-Stripping Experiment.' Or retrieve high-risk sample directly.
He opened his fingers.
The feather drifted on the wind toward the fortress, tumbling like a Netherworld butterfly in the night snow.
And atop the tower, the dark red patterns of the Crimson Heart Banner continued their silent spread.
Like a heart, stubbornly beating in eternal night—
A human heart.
Inside his tent, Shen Yuzhu lay listening to the wind.
A faint sting lingered in his patterns. Better than the day.
He closed his eyes. Images surfaced, sharp and clear:
Her catching him. Her voice: "If you fall, the order I've built falls apart." The light in her eyes as she set the law.
So clear. Not memories. A brand.
He remembered Wanning's warning. The poison eats memory. Leaves an empty shell.
If that day comes… let these not be the last things to go.
Light footsteps. The flap lifted.
Chu Hongying entered, a bowl of steaming soup in her hands.
"Wanning made it. For the soul channels."
He pushed up, took the bowl. The heat felt good in his hands.
"You're not sleeping?"
"After the patrol." She sat at the tent's edge, gaze on the night outside. "Drink. Sleep. Work tomorrow."
He drank. Bitter herbs. A faint sweetness. Warmth spread, pushing back the deep cold.
He drank slowly. This might be the last warmth of the day.
She sat quietly. Did not rush him.
When he finished, she took the empty bowl. Stood to leave.
"Hongying."
She stopped. Turned.
He looked at her. In the dim light, her outline was blurred. But the crimson in her eyes was clear.
"Thank you."
A moment of silence. A slight, almost imperceptible nod.
She lifted the flap. Cold wind rushed in, then was shut out.
He lay back, listening to her footsteps fade into the wind and snow and night.
He closed his eyes. This time, sleep came quickly.
In the dream, there was no poison. No Mirror-Guards. No Night Crow Division.
Only a banner, snapping sharp on a snowy plain.
And beneath it, a person turning to look at him, the rising sun burning in their eyes.