The First Cracked Mask
The silence inside the Main Hall did not break when the doors sealed.
It thickened.
Layers of formation light settled into the stone like invisible frost, each array activating in sequence—containment, verification, suppression, observation. None of them were aggressive. None of them needed to be. This was a place designed not to punish, but to decide.
Shin Yung stood alone at the center of the hall.
Around him, the Council of Elders sat in a wide arc, their seats elevated just enough to enforce perspective without overt dominance. Every chair was occupied. Even those who rarely attended disciplinary hearings were present now, their expressions carefully neutral, their spiritual senses restrained but alert.
At the very center of the ritual platform lay a slender object.
The Truth-Sealing Needle.
It rested atop a shallow dish of clear water, supported by an intricate lattice of runes etched directly into the stone floor. No aura radiated from it. No pressure emanated outward. It looked, to any untrained eye, like a relic long past its relevance.
Shin Yung knew better.
He did not need the system to tell him what it was.
The needle was not a weapon.
It was a question sharpened to a point.
“Proceed,” Sect Master Luo said calmly.
Elder Song stepped forward.
He moved without haste, his posture straight, his expression unreadable. If there was tension in him, it did not show in his hands. If there was doubt, it did not touch his stride.
“This examination will not harm you,” Elder Song said, voice steady, carrying easily through the hall. “Unless there is something within you that cannot withstand being known.”
Shin Yung met his gaze.
For a brief moment, something passed between them—not hostility, not challenge.
Recognition.
“You may begin,” Shin Yung replied.
The Truth-Sealing Needle lifted from its dish.
Not by force, but by permission of the formation beneath it.
The moment it moved, the system reacted.
Not with sound.
Not with instruction.
A translucent panel flickered into existence at the edge of Shin Yung’s vision.
Red.
No text.
No prompts.
No corrective suggestions.
Just a single, pulsing indicator—unstable, erratic, as though struggling to resolve something that refused to settle into defined parameters.
Shin Yung’s breath slowed.
So that’s it, he thought.
This isn’t a misunderstanding.
This was execution, dressed in procedure.
If the needle confirmed he was false, the verdict would be swift. If it could not define him, the risk alone would be enough. Either way, the sect would protect itself.
He did not resent them for it.
He understood them.
Elder Song raised one hand.
The needle descended.
Think.
Not later. Not after.
Now.
The word echoed too loudly in the hollow space of his skull, colliding with the frantic, uneven drumbeat of his own heart. For the first time since entering this hall, Shin Yung felt the unmistakable betrayal of his body.
The air had thickened—no, not thickened. It had grown heavy, as if the space itself had turned into molten lead. Each breath scraped its way into his lungs, shallow and insufficient, forcing him to consciously will the next inhale before panic seized control.
Cold sweat gathered beneath the heavy silk of his sleeves. His fingers trembled—not violently, but enough that he curled them slowly into his palms, nails biting into skin, anchoring himself through pain. He could hear his pulse now, a dull roar in his ears that drowned out everything except the soft hum of the formation and the distant, patient silence of the elders.
He didn’t just feel watched.
He felt measured.
Dissected.
The red flicker of the System hovered at the edge of his vision, pulsing like a warning beacon with no instructions attached. A countdown without numbers. A verdict waiting for a definition.
This was not a test he could fail safely.
This was not a mistake he could apologize for.
If he was wrong here, there would be no second attempt.
Shin Yung did not reach for strength. He did not brace his body or gather qi. He did not attempt to shield himself from the artifact’s probing intent.
Because that would have been a mistake.
The system’s limits were already clear to him.
It could not create force from nothing.
It could not override physical law outright.
It could not erase an object simply because it wished to.
But it could frame reality.
It could bend perception, priority, context.
It could make something appear more true than it was.
Or less.
I don’t need to stop the needle, Shin Yung realized.
I just need to make its answer unusable.
The Truth-Sealing Needle did not seek power.
It sought coherence.
Consistency.
A definition that could be aligned with cause and effect.
So Shin Yung gave it the opposite.
He did not flood it with strength.
He flooded it with misalignment.
He allowed the system to do what it did best—overlay, synchronize, contextualize—but he fed it an existence that refused to stabilize.
A presence that was not hidden.
Not disguised.
Just… wrong.
I don’t need to win, he thought calmly.
I only need to be incorrect.
The needle touched the medium.
There was no flash.
No explosion.
No surge of hostile energy.
The needle pierced the ritual interface—and then stopped.
Not because it met resistance.
Because it met nothing it could agree with.
The water beneath it rippled.
Then flowed upward.
Not violently. Not dramatically.
It simply… reversed.
A thin stream lifted from the dish, curling into the air like a ribbon caught in an unseen current. It rose, slowed, and then froze—suspended in space without turning to ice.
Around it, condensation formed, but did not fall.
It hovered.
The needle trembled once.
Then went completely still.
Outside the hall, a bird in mid-flight halted.
Not hovering. Not gliding.
Paused.
Its wings locked in place, feathers unmoving, body suspended as though pinned to a frame of invisible glass.
One heartbeat passed.
Two.
Then the bird dropped.
Not fluttering.
Not struggling.
It fell like an object released from a hand, striking the stone path below with a dull, final sound.
Inside the hall, several elders stepped back instinctively.
Elder Qiao’s vision swam.
His Divine Sense—refined over two centuries to read fluctuations of qi like breath—returned nothing. Not turbulence. Not concealment. Just a blank absence where Shin Yung stood. The sensation made his stomach lurch, nausea rising sharp and unexpected, as if his spiritual awareness had stepped off solid ground and found no floor beneath it.
Elder Ren fared no better. The moment he attempted to anchor his perception, a dull pressure bloomed behind his eyes. His inner sea rippled violently, reacting to an input it could not classify. His senses insisted there was an object before him, yet every interpretive layer screamed the same verdict—zero. An error state his cultivation had never prepared him to experience.
The Main Hall itself seemed to register the inconsistency. Along the stone walls, the shadows cast by the oil lamps began to drift out of sync with their flames. One shadow stretched while its flame remained still. Another shuddered, lagging a heartbeat behind its source.
The silence deepened—not into emptiness, but weight. It pressed inward, heavy enough that Elder Song became acutely aware of his own blood rushing through his ears, the sound indecently loud in the stillness.
Nothing resisted.
Nothing corrected the anomaly.
Reality did not object.
And that, more than any hostile reaction, unsettled them.
Not in fear.
In disorientation.
This was not an attack.
This was not a technique.
It was an error.
Elder Song stared at the needle.
Then at the suspended water.
Then at his own hands.
Three hundred years of doctrine, theory, and lived understanding cracked—not shattered, but warped beyond immediate repair.
“This…” he whispered.
The needle did not glow.
It did not scream.
It did not accuse.
It did nothing.
Because it could not answer the question it was designed to ask.
“H-How is this possible…” one elder murmured.
“This is not illusion,” another said sharply, forcing calm into his voice. “The formations—”
“Are functioning,” Elder Song finished hollowly.
He took a step forward.
Then another.
The Truth-Sealing Needle lay dead.
Not broken.
Not damaged.
Just… irrelevant.
“I have studied causality for three centuries,” Elder Song said slowly. “I have seen false heavens collapse and true demons revealed.”
His voice trembled—not with fear, but with something worse.
Humiliation.
“And yet,” he said, staring at Shin Yung, “the chain of cause and effect I rely upon… has just been insulted.”
The word hung heavy in the air.
Not violated.
Not destroyed.
Insulted.
Sect Master Luo rose from his seat.
The movement was small, but it carried authority.
“That is enough,” he said.
The formations dimmed.
The suspended water fell, splashing harmlessly back into the dish.
Time resumed.
The hall exhaled.
The hearing ended without verdict.
No accusations were read.
No apologies were offered.
Elder Song did not protest.
He stood where he was, staring at the needle as if it might speak if he waited long enough.
Sect Master Luo dismissed the council with a single gesture.
“Return to your duties,” he said evenly. “This matter is… unresolved.”
As the elders filed out, they did not look at Shin Yung with awe.
They looked at him with caution.
With distance.
With the uncomfortable awareness that something fundamental had shifted—and they did not yet know how to respond.
Shin Yung bowed once.
Not deeply.
Not deferentially.
Just enough.
Sect Master Luo met his gaze.
There was no admiration there.
Only wariness.
Yet beneath that wariness, something else stirred—something Luo had not allowed himself to acknowledge during the hearing.
It was not the fear of a hidden enemy.
Nor the suspicion of a disguised monster.
It was the unsettling intuition that he had not invited a blade into the sect…
…but a void.
A presence that did not push against the world, nor dominate it—only existed with such quiet insistence that everything else was forced to define itself in relation to it. Like standing too close to a cliff and realizing the danger was not the fall, but the way the ground itself seemed eager to slope downward.
For the first time since assuming the title of Sect Master, Luo wondered if authority alone was sufficient to contain something that did not seek power—only alignment.
The thought passed quickly.
He buried it.
But it did not leave.
“Until further notice,” Luo said quietly, “you will remain an honored guest.”
The word honored carried weight.
And threat.
Shin Yung turned and left the hall.
The doors opened.
A breath of cold air slipped out into the outer courtyard, subtle but unmistakable. The guards stationed nearby straightened instinctively, fingers tightening around their weapons as the temperature dipped just enough to prickle exposed skin. They had heard nothing from within—no clash, no raised voices—yet something intangible brushed past them as the doors parted.
Shin Yung emerged alone.
His steps were steady. His posture unchanged. To the watching disciples, he appeared composed, untouched by whatever trial had taken place beyond the sealed stone.
Su Yan looked up sharply. Her eyes searched his face for confirmation—for relief, for triumph, for any sign that the hearing had ended in his favor.
Their gazes met.
What she found made her breath catch.
There was no victory there. No reassurance. Only a strange hollowness behind his eyes, as if his focus lay several steps behind the present moment. Shin Yung looked past her more than at her, already fighting to keep his balance.
He broke eye contact first.
The doors closed behind him, sealing the hall once more.
The pavilion felt different when he returned.
Quieter.
Not empty—wrong.
As though the world had stepped back, uncertain how to engage with him now.
Shin Yung barely made it to the table before the dizziness hit.
The world tilted.
His vision darkened.
Pain followed a heartbeat later.
Not a dull ache, but a sharp intrusion—like needles driving outward from the center of his skull, piercing through thought itself. Shin Yung’s vision fractured, the world splintering into jagged panes of light and shadow, each shard misaligned with the next.
He reached for the system out of reflex—and found only static.
The last image burned behind his eyes before everything collapsed reminded him, absurdly, of a screen shattering after too many errors.
I used to play games filled with bugs, he thought dimly, the irony bitter even through the pain.
Now, I am the bug.
For several seconds, there was nothing.
No system interface.
No indicators.
No reassuring presence at the edge of his perception.
Just silence.
Then, faintly—
[System: Reality Synchronized (0.01%)]
[Note: Be careful what you pretend to be.]
Shin Yung closed his eyes.
For the first time since arriving in this world, he was not certain the system was on his side.
And somewhere, deep beneath layers of stone and doctrine, reality itself seemed to hesitate—wondering what, exactly, it had just allowed to exist.
