Cold Lines Are Drawn

The Azure Cloud Sect did not announce its division. No decree was issued, and no banners were raised. Yet, by the third day after the “Meditation Glitch,” everyone knew exactly where they stood—or more accurately, who they stood against.

 

The sect was built on the philosophy of the Unstoppable Gale. For three thousand years, their doctrine was absolute: speed was grace, and grace was power. To be stagnant was to be dead. But now, that three-thousand-year-old foundation didn't just crack; it shattered into two silent, paranoid camps.

 

Beneath the usually clear Azure Cloud sky, the air felt thicker, as if the laws of physics were suffering from constipation. For a cultivator, speed was not merely a combat choice; it was spiritual currency. The faster your blade, the closer you were to the Will of Heaven. But now, that currency was undergoing a violent inflation because of Shin Yung.

 

He could feel the piercing stares from behind the jade pillars. They weren't the looks of admiration he used to receive as a genius disciple. They were the looks one gives to a crack in a dam—something you fear, yet cannot tear your eyes away from. Every "delayed" step Shin Yung took seemed to rip the fabric of reality that thousands here had spent their lives weaving.

 

Shin Yung became painfully aware of his own body in a way no cultivator ever should. The slight delay in his movements wasn’t something he could feel from the inside. To him, every step was intention followed by action, seamless and mundane. The stutter existed only in the eyes of others, like a reflection warped by flawed glass.

 

Yet that imperceptible gap—the microscopic pause between will and motion—had been seized upon like a divine revelation. His foot would lift, and before it touched the ground, a dozen interpretations had already bloomed around it. Some called it restraint. Others whispered of supreme control. A few, more honest in their fear, called it a wound in reality.

 

Shin Yung swallowed hard. He realized that if he were truly slow, this would be easier. Slowness could be trained, corrected, or condemned. But this was something worse. This was a discrepancy no one could locate inside him—only around him.

 

He was being judged not by what he was, but by what the world failed to process.

 

 

Shin Yung felt it the moment he stepped outside. The air itself seemed compartmentalized. Footsteps carried intent, echoing with a new, sharp allegiance.

 

The central training field, usually a symphony of rhythmic clashing metal, had transformed into an aural chaos. On the East side, the Accelerants practiced with an intensity that bordered on suicidal. They weren’t just swinging swords; they were trying to shatter time records until their muscles spasmed violently. Shin Yung saw a junior disciple collapse from sheer exhaustion, yet his peers didn't even glance back—they were too busy trying to be "faster than their own shadows."

 

Meanwhile, on the West side, the Conservatives created a more horrifying spectacle. They stood perfectly still in the Crane Formation, holding it for hours without blinking. They believed that by suppressing every impulse of motion, they could "patch" the hole in reality created by Shin Yung. The silence on the West side felt louder than the screams on the East; it was a silence filled with judgment and existential dread.

 

Training had collapsed into a silent, structural war.

 

Three millennia of recorded speed meant nothing now. The sect was calculating how much of its past it was willing to sacrifice just to ignore the anomaly standing in their halls.

 

Loud arguments could be dismissed as passion. Silence meant calculation. And the sect was calculating how much of its own past it was willing to sacrifice to keep moving forward without questioning the road beneath its feet.

 

Shin Yung witnessed the rupture at the central dining hall. Usually a place of rowdy chatter, it was now buried in a heavy, unnatural silence. On one side, the Accelerants ate with a mechanical, frantic speed that caused wood-on-wood cracks as sumpit snapped under the pressure of their haste. On the other, the Conservatives sat in absolute, unnerving stillness, refusing to speak a single word to maintain "inner synchronization," their eyes tracking every movement with hawk-like suspicion.

 

Shin Yung stared at his bowl of porridge, not daring to take a bite. At the opposite table, an Accelerant attempted to drink his tea with a movement so fast that the scalding water splashed across his own face, yet he didn't flinch. To him, pain was a negligible variable if he succeeded in shaving a single second off his drinking time.

 

On the other side, a Conservative was staring at a single pea as if it were the core of the universe. He was waiting for the "perfect moment" to chew, a process Shin Yung estimated would take half an Emperor's reign. This tension was no longer about cultivation; it was a mass nervous breakdown wrapped in spiritual jargon. The room smelled of cold sweat and suppressed desperation.

 

"This is a nightmare," a voice whispered beside him.

 

Shin Yung jumped, his own "lagged" reflexes making him stumble a second later. It was Su Yan. She looked like she hadn't slept since the Needle Trial. "They’re dismantling the curriculum, Shin Yung. Half the class refused to follow the count this morning. They said the rhythm was 'too linear' and disrespected the stutter of the universe."

 

"I never told them the universe stutters," Shin Yung hissed.

 

"It doesn't matter," Su Yan replied, pointing toward the weapon racks.

 

There sat Chen Ming. He wasn't participating in the madness, but he was holding a scroll, his brush moving in frantic strokes. "Even the rational ones are falling for it," Su Yan whispered. "They think if they can quantify your error, they can weaponize it. They’re calling it The Stillness of the Sovereign."

 

"They are trying to dissect you without a knife, Shin Yung," Su Yan continued, her voice nearly lost in the heavy silence of the hall. "The Elders at the Main Peak are beginning to question if the foundation of our Cloud Flow technique has been wrong all along. If you can surpass the Needle Trial by 'stopping,' then thousands of years of our history are viewed as a futile pursuit of shadows. You aren't just bothering them—you are insulting their ancestors simply by breathing."

 

Shin Yung turned his gaze toward Chen Ming. The youth was usually the most logical person in the sect, but now his eyes were bloodshot, filled with ruptured capillaries from lack of sleep. On his scrolls, Chen Ming had drawn strange diagrams—disconnected lines representing the "stutters" in Shin Yung's movements.

 

He's trying to invent mathematics for a computer bug, Shin Yung thought with horror. He’s searching for logic within a system failure.

 

As Shin Yung retreated through the high corridors, he ran into Wei Jun. The boy was carrying a stack of old, dusty scrolls and several "Reality Anchor" jade talismans. He looked torn—halfway between wanting to bow and wanting to run away.

 

"Senior... Shin..." Wei Jun started, then caught himself. He glanced at the chalk lines the guards had begun drawing on the floor to segregate training zones. "The Elders... they’re fighting. Elder Liu almost struck the Head Alchemist because they suggested your 'condition' might be contagious."

 

"Contagious?" Shin Yung felt a cold shiver.

 

"They’re calling it the Shin-Virus," Wei Jun whispered, his eyes wide with a terrifying kind of hope. "The Conservatives think reality is thinning around you. They wear these anchors to stay 'real.' But the others... they want to catch it. They’re trying to breathe the same air you breathe."

 

Shin Yung leaned against the wall, his head spinning. He wasn't a hero; he was a walking quarantine zone.

 

The ideological split turned physical by evening. A shove near the northern field, an accusation of "sabotaging progress," and suddenly three disciples were on the ground—one bleeding, another laughing hysterically as if he’d finally achieved desynchronization through pain.

 

The sect did not erupt into chaos. It recoiled into correction.

 

Shin Yung sat alone that night, staring at the faint red flicker of his system.

 

[ Reality Synchronization : 0.08% ] [ Status: Accelerating ] [ Anomaly Feedback: Local population is attempting to 'Hard-Code' the Error. ]

 

Shin Yung stared at the red flicker of his system. The Reality Synchronization Meter wasn’t responding to his actions; it was responding to the world’s belief. Every whisper labeling him a god, every scroll trying to quantify his lag, and every talisman worn in fear were acts of synchronization.

 

 Reality was no longer punishing him

—it was attempting to finalize a definition. Once the world reached a consensus on what he was, the ambiguity would vanish, and the system would "correct" him by erasing the error entirely.

 

And Shin Yung was running out of places where incoherence was allowed to exist.

 

The next morning, the sect bells rang with a cold, rhythmic precision.

 

That night, his pavilion felt like a jade prison. The Reality Synchronization Meter—now at 0.08%—pulsed like the heartbeat of a time bomb. He realized the sect was performing a 'Standardization of the Anomaly.' They would either destroy their bodies to achieve his 'Divine Art' or burn everything to eradicate his 'Virus.' He was a god created by accident, watching from the balcony of his own lies as the world prepared its first sacrifice to appease its collective fear.

 

Shin Yung stood at the back of the outer hall as a young disciple was brought forward. The boy’s posture was straight, his eyes bright with the innocent pride of a hard worker. His cultivation progress had been... noticeable. Too noticeable for a world now paralyzed by the fear of pace.

 

The charge was read with a terrifying, calm logic: "Your development rate is abnormal and destabilizing to sect harmony."

 

Shin Yung felt a sickening cold settle in his chest. This wasn't about forbidden arts. This was about the crime of being too fast—too "real"—in a sect that had lost its mind trying to imitate a glitch. The world was reorganizing itself around Shin Yung's lie, and it was crushing the innocent to do it.

 

He lowered his gaze, his heart tasting like ash. For the first time, a clear, bitter thought formed without hesitation.

 

If truth leads to this—then perhaps lying is the only moral option left.