Chapter 30: The Flaw in the System

1. The Faceless Reflection

Lin Feng's silhouette flickered in the fractured glass of the Corpse of the Tome, splitting into two impossible truths:

The Hollow Shell: A polished marionette of the false master persona, its face smooth as blank parchment, jade tassels coiled around its wrists like leash-chains.

The Forgotten Child: Small, barefoot, clutching a disintegrating pear-blossom sugar doll—its surface etched with a single character: "风" (Feng).

The Tome's Last Trick:

It mirrored not the self—but the lie the reader believed most.

"A sheath cannot choose its blade," the faceless double whispered, its voice the exact cadence of Scholar Wen's analytical drone. "You exist to hold what others cannot bear to wield."

Li Feng's Rebellion:

The killing instinct persona roared, slashing through the glass—only for each shard to embed in Lin Feng's mind, replaying every time the four sects had rewritten him.

2. The Joke That Broke the System

Bai Yu's quarks (slapstick and deadpan) collided midair, birthing cosmic absurdity:

The Tome's Errata Backfire:

When it labeled him "Error: Purge Immediately," his body divided exponentially—a thousand miniature Bai Yus scrawling "NOPE" over the footnotes in stolen ink.

The Ultimate Punchline:

He scribbled a single amendment into the Tome's core laws:

"CLAUSE 13: ALL CULTIVATORS SHALL SNORT-LAUGH WHEN LYING UNDER OATH."

Consequence:

Cloud Soaring's strategists vomited silver thread, their meticulously crafted deceptions unraveling in gales of unwilling laughter.

3. The Seventh's Echo

Xiao Qi's dimming light pulsed, revealing shadows of the erased:

The Fingerprint: Matching the one on Page 13—not a name, but a child's defiant smudge.

The Shattered Truth:

The 7th persona was never deleted. It was dissected into:

The silence festering in The Silent One.

The lullaby stuck in The Performer's broken throat.

The void-ink pooling in Ying Sha's shattered prism.

The Offering:

Xiao Qi plunged her hand into her own radiance and withdrew a pear seed—its surface etched with "Why?" in miniscule script.

"Swallow it," she urged Lin Feng. "Taste the question they failed to kill."

4. The Hollow King's True Endgame

The merged Xuan Gu / Hollow King consciousness ripped free of its chains, howling:

It Was Never a Prisoner:

It was the 13th Frost Needle—the original tool used to split Lin Feng's soul.

Its Victory Condition:

To force the four sects to ingest their own poisoned logic.

Execution:

It replayed the moment Celestial Strategy Pavilion implanted Scholar Wen into Jing Xin's psyche—but now, the silver strands turned inward, suturing the archivists' mouths shut with their own stolen knowledge.

5. Becoming the Glitch

The group enacted the rebel manual's first lesson:

Lin Feng swallowed the seed—and coughed up ink-black petals that spelled "Lin Feng" in reverse stroke-order.

Ying Sha smashed her prism—releasing the negative-space words to chew through the Tome's margins like starved rats.

Bai Yu delivered the killing joke:

"Why did the sage cross the void?

To prove the void was crossing him all along!"

The Cascade:

Reality stuttered. Frost Moon's ice melted upward into blood-red clouds. Cloud Soaring's divination disks spun into Fibonacci spirals.

Cliffhanger: The Unwritten Author

As the Tome crumbled, a single line flickered into existence:

"The author of this page is ______."

Lin Feng reached to write—but the ink recoiled.

Xiao Qi's light surged forward—her name ("Lin Xiaoqi") almost legible—when—

A frost needle pierced her spectral chest.

The attacker? A skeletal figure in Yin Sha's ink-stained robes, but with Scholar Wen's silver eyes—its fingers tapered into eraser-stubs.

Final Line:

"Flaws must be corrected," it crooned, licking Xiao Qi's light from the needle. "Let's begin your final draft."*