The Cracked Sky
The night sky over the Harmonic Equilibrium Nexus rippled.
Not from storm.
Not from music.
From a tear in space—a fracture of soul and time.
Inside it, something moved. Screamed. Laughed. Fell silent.
The tear closed just as quickly.
But the damage was done: across the empire, sensitive cultivators wept in their sleep. Children awoke screaming with no voice. One elder ascended spontaneously—then exploded into ash.
And within the Nexus, Aria's strings snapped mid-hymn.
---
An Enemy Announced
In the Council Hall, the tension was suffocating.
> "What force could twist soul qi so deeply?" Aria asked, examining her broken instrument. "Even divine resonance cannot shield against that."
Nihila was still, her eyes narrowed.
> "It is her," she finally said.
> "Who?"
> "The one you both ignored. The one who existed before music… and after silence. The goddess of Unheard Screams."
A beat.
Tianming's cup froze halfway to his lips. "...We sealed her beyond time."
> "And she's unsealing herself," Nihila said flatly. "Drawn by this Nexus. By us."
---
Xu Lanyue's First Trial
Meanwhile, in the Soul Refinement Labyrinth, Xu Lanyue, the Harmony Knight trainee, faced her first real test.
The trial room spun between extremes: one moment, she was flooded with unbearable joy and heartbreak, musical storms crashing through her soul. The next—total numbness, as if she were a statue in a void of eternal apathy.
She staggered, panting, half-mad.
> "Balance," she muttered. "Balance, my tailbone…"
She reached into her sleeve—and pulled out a secret weapon:
A pair of spirit-infused cymbals made from shattered Nexus fragments.
> "If the test won't let me win peacefully—"
She struck them together.
> "—then I'll beat the lesson out of the Dao itself!"
The room shattered. The music and silence recoiled. And Lanyue stood victorious.
> "Now… where's my snack?"
---
Sabotage in the Nexus
That night, an explosion rocked the Neutral Thread walkway.
One of the leyline conduits, responsible for synchronizing emotional qi and void flux, had been reversed.
Spiritual resonance spiraled wildly, infecting guards with irrational love and suicidal inspiration. The silent side responded by muting entire corridors, freezing people in existential paralysis.
Aria and Nihila both arrived.
They didn't speak to each other.
Instead, they issued orders to their own units—countering each other at every turn.
Tianming stepped in between, again.
> "Enough! We're not under attack from each other. The enemy is watching, waiting—for the moment you two break the balance you swore to uphold."
> "Then let me kill her first and rebuild the balance!" Aria snapped, emotional qi flaring.
> "Let me erase this folly entirely and rebuild it in truth!" Nihila countered.
Tianming stepped forward, eyes glowing gold.
> "Then let me show you both what balance truly looks like."
And he summoned something no one expected:
> The Echoing Silence Blade—a weapon of both sound and void, forged secretly from both Aria's music and Nihila's emptiness.
---
Closing: Screams Waiting to Sing
Far beyond the empire, the Goddess of Unheard Screams opened her eyes in full.
> "Oh Tianming… you made a weapon from silence and music?"
She laughed, a sound that didn't exist.
> "Perfect. That means when I destroy it… I won't be interrupting anything."
Her shadow slithered across the stars… headed toward the Nexus.
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