08. Echoes of Heaven’s Will

Headquarters M, hidden beneath one of the most densely populated cities in the world, was cloaked in a multidimensional barrier. an illusion to both human satellites and mystic senses. Only those with a marked soul or Heaven-sanctioned permission could enter.

Inside, Aiyu stepped into the high-command chamber, his aura calm yet deeply unnerving, like still water that could drown. His long black coat dusted the floor as he walked, etched with ancient Sanskrit and protective symbols known only to his hidden mountain tribe.

At the round table sat Joseph, his advisor in this realm, and Jivan, a quiet observer, once Aiyu's childhood training brother, now a long-standing Grandmaster who had not broken through in over a century.

Joseph stood, holding a crystal screen etched with glowing runes.

"The balance between the human and spirit realms is collapsing," he began. "We've identified over thirty-six individuals harboring foreign souls. Possession is no longer subtle. These people aren't just influenced, they're inhabited."

Aiyu's gaze darkened. The screen revealed blurred X-rays and soul scans, images of humans whose spiritual cores had been influenced by evil power, their aura twisted with black-red energy.

"The contracts," Joseph continued, "are increasing. People are selling their souls for wealth, for fame. And these dark entities… they're responding. The number of sacrificial deaths disguised as accidents is rising every week."

Jivan's voice was quiet but firm.

"If this continues, humanity will lose its place in the human realm. There will be no souls left to reincarnate. Just shells monsters wearing human skin."

A heavy silence fell.

Aiyu closed his eyes briefly. In his mind, he heard the old scripture of his tribe:

"When the weight of the human ego tips the balance of realms, the Sacred Order shall burn from within."

He opened his eyes. Ice-cold.

"Prepare a flight to Country I," he ordered. "I need to return to the Sacred Mountains. To the Scripture Hall. There are warnings buried in the ice that no modern government can comprehend. And…"

He paused, choosing his words.

"...The Master is waking. After a hundred years in seclusion."

Joseph raised a brow. "Inside the Ice Cave of Stillness? He hasn't spoken since he sealed himself there. You think he's broken through Enlightenment?"

"He wouldn't emerge otherwise," Aiyu said flatly.

Joseph smirked, but his eyes glinted with deep respect.

"Just because you broke through at twenty-eight doesn't mean everyone can. Not all of us survived two hundred years of Heaven's Punishment Formation."

Jivan stayed silent, but something flickered in his chest: bitterness, awe, pride, and also perhaps envy.

He looked outside, at the grey skies that once shimmered with natural light but now seemed... artificially dull. Even nature was reacting to the spiritual manipulation. Animals migrating erratically, plants blooming out of season, stars flickering out.

"The will of Heaven is changing," Jivan murmured. "We used to be guardians. Now, we're just trying to slow the fall."

Aiyu didn't argue. Instead, he turned to Joseph.

"The cave I sealed… did you get any readings after I left?"

Joseph shook his head. "Nothing concrete. But our seers reported a strange energy pattern in the air. As if someone was watching you seal it."

Aiyu's expression tightened.

He hadn't told them everything.

In that final moment before the cave door was closed by sacred symbols, a tiny blue spirit had appeared, one he recognized as belonging to Yuzi, the mysterious woman who had saved his life during his last battle in the Mystic Forest. She hadn't spoken. She hadn't intervened. Just watched… as if ensuring something.

Who are you really, Yuzi?

Far from Headquarters in A Forbidden Place,

Beneath the canopy of a dead forest, shrouded in eternal fog, stood a villa long erased from maps. No birds. No insects. No footsteps dared reach this place. It existed between realms, hidden from Heaven's gaze.

Inside a cold study, lit only by the glow of soul lanterns, a woman sat, her face veiled, her aura immeasurable.

A spy, cloaked in spirit suppression sigils, knelt before her, presenting the only light that came from a flickering hologram projected above a marble desk. A digital image, grainy but unmistakable of Aiyu stepping out of the sealed cave, his face unreadable, his aura subdued.

She stared at it, her lips curling with amusement.

"So... he's still alive. Even after Heaven sealed him once."

She picked up the projection with one hand, studying Aiyu's image as though admiring an old acquaintance… or an unfinished masterpiece.

Her smile curled like poison.

She ran a finger across the image as if savoring a memory.

"The game is about to begin."

The spy lowered his head. "Shall we activate Phase Three?"

"Not yet," she said, standing. Her robes shimmered like oil in water, almost unreal.

"Let him gather his clues. Let him believe he's ahead. That makes the fall more delicious."

She turned to the black window, staring into the fog-choked forest.

"They think they're protecting the human realm. They forget..." she whispered, almost affectionately, "...that Heaven itself can bleed."

Back at Headquarters M...

Joseph handed over the final sealed scroll to Aiyu.

"The flight leaves at dawn. We've arranged for local surveillance near the Sacred Mountains. They know not to interfere."

Aiyu accepted it without a word.

Jivan looked up. "Yuzi. That woman in the forest… You think she's connected to all this?"

Aiyu paused, his expression unreadable.

"No. She's something else entirely."

He turned, footsteps echoing in the quiet hall.

"But I don't believe in coincidence."

As the steel doors opened and Aiyu stepped into the hallway of starlit tiles, Jivan looked once more out the window. The moon was red tonight. an omen.

And high in the sky, a star blinked out....

The cabin of the jet was wrapped in silence, save for the low hum of energy cloaking the aircraft. Aiyu sat cross-legged in the meditation chamber at the back, veiled in soft golden light. His breathing was steady, but his mind was submerged beneath layers of stillness until something stirred.

It wasn't a voice. It wasn't a thought. It was a thread.

A golden pulse. His eyes snapped open.

"The token is gone…" he muttered under his breath, staring at his wrist. "She's used it."

The one he had given to her during that chaotic battle in the forest, a divine seal forged with the remnants of his master's golden life pearl. It was never meant to last forever, only to stabilize the shattered strands of her soul when she dared to use a formation that hadn't existed in this realm for thousands of years.

But he hadn't realized…

It was still linked to him.

Years ago, in the bitter isolation of the sacred mountains, he had cultivated with that pearl under glacial cliffs, using its resonance to suppress the inner madness that came with his early Enlightenment. Now, as the pearl burned faintly within the web of his consciousness, he understood Yuzi hadn't severed it.

The connection still pulsed, weakened, distant, but undeniably alive.

"Why would she leave it tethered?" he thought.

Then, like lightning splitting the meditative stillness, an image struck his mind.

A temple.

Sacred and ancient. The edges of its structure blurred as if hidden by mist, but he recognized it instantly: the Sculpture Hall of Country M, a forbidden ground where the oldest formations of Divine Will were carved into existence by those who first understood soul energy.

It was shaking. Crumbling.

A shadowy figure moved within the vision, arms raised, speaking in a fractured tongue older than the language of light. Someone was trying to unseal the ancient inscriptions carved into the very earth beneath that temple. In every thread of energy, Aiyu saw: violence, anger, and a blood bath.

"Not again…" he whispered.

This wasn't the first time he had seen something like this. Two hundred decades ago, he had faced a cult attempting to disrupt one of the Five Sacred Points, he had stopped them. But this… this was different.

Now, he couldn't return.He was above the sky, halfway between realms, heading toward the sacred lands of Country I. The very air around him shimmered with the restriction of altitude and spiritual passage.

His hand closed into a fist.

Aiyu stood abruptly, drawing the attention of Joseph and Jivan.

"Someone is trying to break the ancient formation in Country M."

Joseph blinked, stunned. "Now? But we just left. You sealed it two moons ago."

"That's the problem," Aiyu said, his voice low and sharp. "This is the second time I've felt it. Someone's not just looking for power, they're reversing the formation runes. Unweaving the spiritual bindings."

Jivan's brow furrowed, tension tightening his jaw.

"Is it someone from our side?"

Aiyu didn't answer. His eyes were elsewhere, fixed on the horizon, yet seeing beyond it.

That golden thread inside him quivered. The faint pulse of her qi mixed with echoes of celestial light… and something darker. Fog. Mists of memory long forgotten, now beginning to rise.

Jivan, sitting in the far corner, looked up from the scroll he'd been reading. "You believe someone's trying to destroy the balance from within the sacred nations?"

"No," Aiyu replied, his voice now edged with iron. "I believe someone is trying to awaken something buried beneath them."

He looked back out the window, eyes scanning the thinning clouds as they descended slowly into the mountain mists of Country I. Her name carried too much weight. Not because of affection, he had no space for sentiment, but because she shouldn't be linked to the sacred formations of Country M. Not unless...

No. It couldn't be.

"Her soul shouldn't carry memories of that place."

Not unless she was involved in its past. Not unless she had once stood on that land, centuries ago, under a different name.

But Yuzi, this Yuzi, he remembered nothing. Yet the disturbances… the break in the formations… the pulse in his pearl…

They all aligned.

He turned back to the team, his face returning to its stone-cold calm.

"Joseph, prepare a report. I want a full sweep of spiritual activity near the ancient ruins. And find out if anyone… or anything… crossed into that site in the last moon cycle."

"What if it's from the inside?" Joseph asked quietly. "What if someone from the Mystic Realm triggered it?"

"Then it's already too late," Aiyu replied.

He didn't say it aloud, but a thought pierced him: If the seal is breaking… and she's the key...

What was truly sealed?

Meanwhile... Somewhere Beyond the Known Realms

In a crumbling temple, drowned in fog and roots, Yuzi stood alone, her breath faintly visible in the cold. The blue spirit floated beside her shoulder, silent for once.

She tilted her head, eyes narrowing, distant and unreadable. A blurred face flashed in front of her eyes!!

"Why do I keep seeing him again…" she whispered, fingers touching her temple. A flash of pain. Then an image she couldn't place.

A battlefield… burning sky… a voice calling her…

"Yuzi?" The blue spirit turned quickly. Her eyes glazed for a moment before returning to herself.

"It's nothing."

But the mirror cracked further. And somewhere beneath the ruins of her sealed memory, a voice whispered in a forgotten tongue:

"The debt must be paid… and the game has begun."