16.The Hollow Without Time

Time does not die it merely hides between silences no mortal can touch.

And there, in the heart of Rongxu Jing, Zhenyu stoodwhere silence echoed like fate,and fate whispered back in fragments of shadow.

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Silence is not the absence of sound.

Within the Rongxu Jing, silence is an echo reverberating from unseen edges,repeating, swelling,until it shatters into shards of shadow.

Zhenyu opened her eyes or felt as if she did but saw nothing.

No floor.

No sky.

Not even her own body.

Only a drifting grayness,land countless reflections of herself suspended in void,like the remnants of a dream set ablaze.

No breath reached her ears.

No weight anchored her form.

But her mind that alone still burned.

She knew she was not dreaming.

This was not the world.

This was not hell.

This was... something else.

"You came alone…"

A voice rose behind her.

Zhenyu turned,but no one was there.

Then it came again this time, lfrom inside her chest.

"…or perhaps,not entirely."

The shadows at the edge of her vision began to move,curling slowly like mist that had just realized it existed.

They were not spirits.

Not dreams.

They were fragments of memory rejected by the waking world.

Rongxu Jing was a hollow of time,a vessel where all things denied grudges,regrets, deaths that refused to finish gathered like wounds that refused to heal.

And then,she appeared.

Helian Qingyin.

But not the version that had been dwelling inside her.

This one stood tall,frail,dressed in a tattered silver robe as if she had just walked out of a sacred cremation rite.

Her hair was wild,her eyes hollow not for lack of emotion,

but for containing too many at once :

love that had died, vengeance left to rot, and hope that had long since broken.

"I died because of memory," Qingyin said, her lips unmoving."And now you've come to the place where memory never truly dies."

Zhenyu wished to reply,but her tongue had drowned.

The Rongxu Jing did not know physical voices.

Only the soul could speak.

You're still alive inside me, she tried to utter through intent alone.

The space trembled. Qingyin lifted her face, staring at Zhenyu like a mirror on the verge of shattering.

"Not because you wanted me there. But because you couldn't cast me out."

Around them, shadows spun like ink dropped in water. Each spiral bore a fragment: a hand holding a dagger wet with its own blood, a mother's vacant eyes in her final breath, a king's praise steeped in deceit.

"Rongxu Jing is not where answers live," Qingyin whispered. "It's where the questions you buried rise to devour you."

Zhenyu tried to retreat, but her body was one with the dark. Every thought echoed. Every fear took shape. And from behind the shadows, another figure emerged... a young girl.

She wore a tattered dress, her hair braided in two, and in her hand—half a shattered wooden doll. The girl's eyes were Zhenyu's own—when she had still been fully human.

"Why did you leave me?" the child whispered. "You chose to become her… not me."

Tears that didn't exist fell from a face without form. The Rongxu Jing began to fracture. Her past self. Her present self. The self possessed by a spirit. Each tearing at the other.

Elsewhere in the Rongxu Jing, Yuwen Jinhai fell into a river of darkness. But the river carried no water—only writing. Ancient characters crawled and coiled like snakes embracing the current.

He knew this place. More than that—he knew who had summoned him.

In the distance, a boy stood atop the water. His skin pale as midnight, his eyes the faint blue of glass about to crack.

"Kaelun," the boy said.

Jinhai froze. That name… his former name. The name before he became a guardian. The name before he was cursed to become a shadow of shadows.

"You came for her," the boy said. "But you'll remain for yourself."

Jinhai tried to move, but the river of script rejected him. The letters slithered up his legs, seeped into his pores, crept along his bones, unearthing secrets he had buried for centuries.

Do not reject who you truly are. For here, rejection is what devours you.

He fell. Qingyin's voice echoed among the characters, merging with the voice of Zhenyu's soul. Two voices. Two curses. Two shattered loves.

Meanwhile, in the Tianxu Palace, Meilan awoke with ragged breath. The night air carried something unfamiliar. Bai Rouxi had not returned. Zhenyu… was gone from her bed. No sign of entrance. No sound of departure. But upon the wall, the golden-handled mirror used by consorts to adorn themselves—was cracked.

From that fracture, something oozed—not blood, but a purplish-black fluid. Like decaying memory.

Meilan held her breath. The world was breaking. And she knew: when the mirror shatters, time no longer flows the way it should.

Back in the Rongxu Jing, the space trembled harder. Qingyin stood at the heart of the swirling shadows. Her right hand raised, and around her, faces from the past emerged—kings long dead, brothers who betrayed her, women who laughed as she burned.

"If you want to leave, Zhenyu," she said, "you must face my face. Not the one you borrowed. But my true face—the one that was tortured, stabbed, buried alive."

Zhenyu didn't move. But slowly, she stepped forward.

And for the first time, she saw not only Qingyin's face—but her own, beneath the curse's layers. As though their souls had gnawed at each other, consumed each other, and now bled into the same wound.

Then everything exploded.

White light cracked like thunder tearing the sky. The faces burned. The river of words evaporated. Child-shadows cried out before vanishing. And in the silence that followed, a single sentence resounded—whether from Qingyin, or from Langyao Xian, none could tell:

"What rises tonight… is not one soul. But two wounds that chose to survive."

Then, darkness. But not emptiness.

Rather, a beginning—for a curse not yet finished.

And in the darkness that was not truly dark, came a first beat. Not a heartbeat, but something more primal. Like the earth's pulse at the birth of the first human. Like wind whispering through a crack in time.

Zhenyu lay—or floated—within the void. Yet the void now carried weight. Something was waiting. Something was rebuilding the edge.

The Rongxu Jing was changing.

The shadows that once tore her apart now formed lines. The fractured fragments of soul reassembled into silhouettes—not the old self, but a spirit modified by suffering. And at the center stood Helian Qingyin, her body glowing like the last ember on a funeral altar.

"We can never return to what we were," Qingyin said, her voice gentler than before. "But perhaps… we can choose who will rise this time."

Zhenyu gazed at her. No more fear. Only exhaustion—and a desire to understand.

You want me to bring you out? Zhenyu whispered.

No. I want you to understand that whoever leaves this place… will never again be only one person. Qingyin answered.

And when she raised her hand—the blinding light that had once exploded now shrank, becoming a doorway. But the door did not open outward.

It opened inward.

Zhenyu felt her body split into thousands of lines. But for the first time, she did not try to hold them together. She let the pieces form a new face—not Zhenyu, not Qingyin—but something that had never existed before: a soul that remembered everything.

Elsewhere in the Rongxu Jing, Yuwen Jinhai walked through an unnamed forest grown from buried wounds.

The leaves rustled—not from wind, but from sound. A woman's voice—not Qingyin, not Zhenyu—but someone from a long-forgotten past, calling him by the name he had murdered: Kaelun.

"If you want to save her," the voice said, "you must sacrifice your emptiness."

Jinhai halted. Emptiness—the only thing that had kept him sane for centuries. He had erased emotion. Erased love. Forgotten even his own face. And now Rongxu Jing demanded he return it all.

"What happens… if I feel again?" he murmured.

The forest answered with laughter. Not cruel, but like a lost child's giggle.

Then, from the earth, something rose—a small mirror, cracked at the upper corner. A mirror that belonged to neither him nor Qingyin. A mirror of the future, belonging to a soul not yet fully formed.

Yuwen Jinhai saw his reflection there. Not the shadow's guardian. But a young man, with a fresh wound in his gaze. And in the mirror's reflection—stood Zhenyu, walking closer, unaware of his presence.

Two worlds that should never meet were now colliding...

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Zhenyu's footsteps faded into the blurred edge of realms,yet the whisper of the Shadow Mirror lingered.

For within the hush of Rongxu Jing, it was not only spirits that echoed but a truth long buried beneath her borrowed flesh.