The Mirror Heart throbbed violently, each pulse sending ripples through the void. Lin Che walked barefoot across the floating shards of Xing Sha, memories embedded in flesh awakening—he saw the scene of himself gouging out his own eyes in the one hundred twentieth reincarnation, and the moment he plunged the Xuan Qiong Mirror into Ling Shuang's chest in the two hundred forty-fifth life. The karmic threads of three hundred lifetimes tangled like a spider's web within his veins, nearly tearing apart this mortal body.
"The shattered mirror becomes whole, and the observer becomes the observed."
The remains of the Primordial Divine Phoenix floated in the chaos, golden blood droplets seeping from the proverbs etched into its wing bones. Lin Che reached out to touch those boiling blood beads, and fine mirror-like cracks immediately appeared on his fingertips. Behind him, the Observation Silver Light controlled by Icefield Baby had already consumed half of the sky, countless bronze gears grinding together in the clouds, producing a painfully grating metallic sound.
In the final battle, karma was incinerated.
"You are ultimately just a puppet of Jing Yuan." Icefield Baby's voice resonated mechanically, as its exposed gear-heart shot forth thousands of silver threads. Those threads pierced through time and space, pinning three hundred phantoms of "Lin Che" onto a void chessboard.
Lin Che suddenly laughed. He grasped the shard of Xuan Qiong Mirror embedded in the eye socket of the First Generation Divine Remains; as the mirror edge cut into his palm, dark golden blood began to trace a complete Star Map on the surface of the remains. The Mirror Heart erupted with an abyssal black light, and those tainted mirrors opened their massive mouths like living creatures, beginning to devour Observation Silver Light in reverse.
"Are you insane?!" The mechanical Pupil of Icefield Baby trembled violently, its gear-heart emitting a piercing grinding noise. "This will plunge three thousand small worlds back into chaos!"
In the blinding light, Lin Che's physical form began to vaporize. He looked down at his gradually transparent fingertips and allowed Xing Sha to surge from his seven orifices: "We are but phantoms in a mirror..." The last thing to fade was the serene smile at the corner of his lips. "It's time to awaken."
As Ling Shuang's bone wings pierced her chest, she heard her sister's soft laughter before death. The heart that had been removed floated in midair, resonating with the Mirror Heart from years past within the Bronze Lantern, casting a blood-red Star Trail in the void. Golden-red blood automatically coalesced into ancient characters of the Burning Mirror Technique; with each spell that fell, a Jing Yuan rift ignited with the flames of rebirth.
"A Che, this time it's my turn..." She gazed towards Feng Qi Valley, where her burning Pupil reflected the blood-soaked blossoms of the Stardust Crystal Tree. In those dew-kissed flower stamens lay dormant souls from Feng Qi Valley that had been erased.
As the last bone wing turned to ash, countless fiery feathers illuminated Eternal Night. Wherever those burning feathers touched, green shoots sprouted from Observer's bronze gears, and Icefield Baby's mechanical right arm blossomed into real flesh.
The Mirror Sea became clear as a new era began to cry out.
Suddenly, silver waterfalls poured from the eye sockets of First Generation Divine Remains, washing over every mirror surface with liquid Xing Sha. Icefield Baby let out a genuine cry; its gear-heart softened in the morning light and began to beat anew as vibrant organs. Within its palm-burning observation silver book, three hundred erased timelines were being reborn—Ling Shuang from the one hundred seventy-third life smiled while holding a baby, and Lin Zhentian from the two hundredth life wiped a broken sword beneath a peach tree...
In the void where Lin Che dissipated, Xing Sha coalesced in the palm of the First Generation Divine Remains. The surface of the stele reflected a shocking scene: three hundred Lin Ches raised their hands simultaneously, and Xing Sha's sword pierced through each of their respective Jing Yuan worlds. When the last mirror shattered, a sigh from the Primordial Divine Phoenix echoed deep within Guixu Sea Eye.
In the teahouse beneath the eaves of Han Ya City, the storyteller gently traced the cracks on the waking wood with his fingertips. "On that day, when heaven and earth fell silent like a shattered glass lamp, suddenly, we heard an infant's cry at dawn..." He deliberately lowered his voice, "Guess what? All the copper mirrors in the Eastern Continent Thirty-Six Cities exploded into Xing Sha powder!"
Behind the counter, the Plain Robed Woman paused as she poured tea. The steaming brew spread across the pearwood table like a Star Map, and her Silver Moon Birthmark on the back of her neck began to warm. On a fragment of copper mirror that slipped from her sleeve, the unsuspecting tea guests were reflected—slowly becoming transparent, their hair tips crystallizing with Stardust Crystal.
Deep within the Extreme North Icefield, the Snow Wolf King let out a long howl towards the unmarked stele. At its base, Xing Sha spontaneously reformed, gradually revealing the Blood Oath:
"I am but a calamity"—as the wind and snow swept by, the words transformed into Lin Che's smile before her dissipation;
"This heart is a mirror"—tremors resonated from beneath the ice layer where the First Generation Divine Phoenix Remains lay;
"All Things Are Permitted"—the sun rose simultaneously over three hundred newborn worlds.
When the first real snowflake fell upon the stele's peak, a faint heartbeat echoed from deep within the ice layer. The figure within the Star Sand Cocoon trembled its eyelashes; in the ice crystals forming at its fingertips, a fiery phoenix was breaking through the mirror's surface. In the storm stirred by its wings, one could faintly see the teahouse woman carrying an infant towards Feng Qi Valley, and within her child's Pupil shone a familiar Double Moon Seal.
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