The mortal world trembled.
Not from storm nor battle — but from remembrance.
Mountains that had long forgotten divinity shuddered in their roots, rivers flowed backward for seven breaths, and across ten thousand li, cultivators awoke from meditation screaming. Their cores convulsed, their qi turned on itself, and each saw the same image burned into their minds:
A man standing between Heaven and Abyss — holding both, yet belonging to neither.
Li Feng.
He had returned.
Beneath the fractured moon, he walked the quiet path between ruined peaks. His robes, once dark with blood and ash, now shimmered faintly with a silver-gold hue — the color of convergence. His eyes no longer glowed; they absorbed light, bending the world inward.
The system had fallen silent since his return, yet its remnants still flickered in his perception, like broken stars whispering unfinished equations.
[Origin Data: Stabilizing...]
[Host Condition: Undefined State — Beyond System Authority]
[Warning: You are outside Heavenly Registry Parameters.]
Li Feng exhaled. Each breath carried faint motes of dao-light that wove symbols across the ground before fading. The world no longer rejected him, yet neither did it accept him.
"I am neither Heaven's will… nor Abyss's mistake," he murmured. "Then what am I?"
The answer came not from within — but from the sky.
A golden eye opened above the clouds. No pupil, no iris — only endless judgment.
Far above the mortal layer, in the Celestial Archive, the Heavenly Tribunal convened. The air was woven from scripture; every breath a law.
Nine Judges knelt before the Divine Mirror, their forms obscured by light. At the center stood the Heavenly Envoy — her gaze cold, her hands clasped behind her back.
"The Collector has escaped the system's measure," one Judge intoned. "He now walks as an independent origin."
"Impossible," said another. "No vessel can sustain both Heaven's Light and Abyssal Core."
"Yet he lives," the Envoy said quietly. "Which means the Path of Balance, forbidden since the First Era, breathes again."
The chamber darkened. Even divine constructs feared that phrase.
The Path of Balance — the way that nullified Heaven itself.
The Envoy turned, her eyes reflecting the mortal world below. "Prepare the Mirror of Silence. Let the world itself testify against him."
Back in the lower realm, Li Feng reached the valley where his mortal sect once stood — Azure Mist Sanctuary. It was a graveyard now. Charred talismans hung like black leaves, and broken spirit stones pulsed with dying light.
At the center of the ruins lay a single surviving stele.
The Sect's Oath Stone.
Li Feng knelt before it. His shadow stretched unnaturally long, curling around the stone's base.
"Master," he said softly, "you told me Heaven cannot be defied… only understood."
He placed his palm upon the stele.
"But Heaven wrote my understanding into exile."
The stone cracked.
The moment his essence touched it, forgotten memories surged — not his, but from every disciple who had ever knelt here. Their fears, their hopes, their final screams during the sect's fall. They all poured into him.
And within that sea of memory, he saw her.
Lian Yue.
Her figure, wrapped in white flame, facing the sky as divine lightning consumed her. Her lips formed a single word before vanishing into light.
"Live."
Li Feng's heart clenched. His body trembled — not from grief, but from realization.
The Heavenly Tribulation that destroyed Azure Mist had not been random. It had been summoned. Heaven had known his birthmark — the dual pattern hidden beneath his dantian — and erased everyone around him to contain its awakening.
The system's voice flickered again:
[Memory Integration Complete.]
[Truth Fragment: The Sect's Destruction was Authorized by the Ninth Tribunal.]
Silence stretched. Then — a faint laugh escaped his lips. Not joy, but the laughter of a storm breaking through chains.
"So that's it…" he whispered. "Heaven feared me before I was born."
The sky thundered in answer.
The clouds above split apart, revealing a single mirror descending from the heavens. It was vast — larger than mountains — and its surface shimmered with every event ever recorded by the Dao. Its name resounded across planes.
The Mirror of Silence.
Every living being who gazed upon it fell to their knees, their souls trembling. The mirror was the judgment of existence itself — it did not attack; it revealed.
Li Feng stood unmoved as the shadow of the mirror enveloped him.
A voice, neither male nor female, echoed from within:
"Li Feng. You have absorbed forbidden attributes. You have devoured the Divine Script of Balance. You are hereby summoned to recite your origin before Heaven."
He smiled faintly. "And if Heaven cannot define me?"
"Then you shall be erased from the registry of all realities."
The air trembled. Threads of fate unraveled, trying to locate his existence. But where his name should have been, there was only a void. The mirror's runes flickered — confusion, then agitation.
Li Feng's voice broke the silence.
"Mirror of Silence," he said softly, "you show truth, not essence. Tell me — can you reflect what lies beyond reflection?"
He raised his hand.
The mirror's surface rippled — and a second reflection appeared. Not of Li Feng, but of another him. One darker, one lighter, both smiling at each other.
He had split his origin.
The system roared back to life.
[Warning: Host is generating a Secondary Entity.]
[Designation: Shadow Origin – "Unbound Core"]
[Synchronization — 47% … 63% … 89% … Complete.]
The two figures moved in unison — one stepped forward, the other backward. The Mirror of Silence shattered.
From its fragments poured divine radiance, laws, and voices of the heavenly judges screaming as their instrument of truth failed for the first time in history.
In the higher realm, the Envoy's composure cracked. "He shattered the Mirror?!"
Another Judge trembled. "That's not possible — the Mirror was bound to Heaven's own name!"
The Envoy's eyes narrowed. "No… Heaven's name no longer binds him."
Below, dust drifted in slow motion. The broken pieces of the Mirror hung in the air, each reflecting a different version of Li Feng's life — the mortal, the rebel, the vessel, the void.
He walked through them silently. Each step left an imprint of light that refused to fade.
"Every truth is a cage," he whispered. "And every cage is a mirror."
Behind him, his shadow laughed — deep, ancient, infinite. Then both merged once more.
The valley calmed.
Only the cracked stele remained, glowing faintly with scripture that now formed a single new line:
"When Heaven fears a man, that man becomes its replacement."
Li Feng looked up at the bleeding sky. His tone was quiet, but his words carried to the farthest realm.
"Then let Heaven fear me."
Far in the Divine Realm, the Envoy turned to her judges.
"Prepare the First Descent," she said. "Heaven will step into the mortal plane itself."
Her final words echoed like a divine decree:
"The Heavenly Attribute Collector must not ascend."