THE REAL PROTEGE

"He's a soul wound," Ling Li murmured privately to Shinsei. "But the pain makes him sensitive to falsity."

It came on the third night.

Just past midnight, as snow hushed the grounds, Master Jirou jolted awake, eyes wide, chest rattling. Not from cold — but from rupture. Something had tapped the boundary of the ancestral vault beneath the estate, not with brute force, but with mirrored memory.

He staggered from his shrine and ran through the torchlit halls.

Shi Min intercepted him halfway to the vault. "What did you sense?"

"A decoy," Master Jirou gasped. "Not Enchanted Dale. A fragment. A puppet built from corrupted ritual ash, shaped to resemble Lady Yue Qiren's aura signature."

Shi Min froze, lips parting in stunned disbelief.

They reached the vault's perimeter — sealed by flame-silk threads and dragonbone insignia. The seal glowed incorrectly, bending unnaturally inward as its skin stretched over its bone.

Ren and Shun, who were supposed to be in Beijing by now, wouldn't leave due to Ren's concern about the whole family being currently in. She was already there, sword drawn, eyebrows knotted.

Lily arrived shortly after.

Master Jirou stepped forward, eyes closed.

He reached toward the seal with shaking fingers.

It shivered.

Then cracked open — just slightly — enough to reveal the spiritual decoy inside: a hollow silhouette wearing Yue Qiren's face, eyes blank, emitting a corrupted version of her original aura.

Master Jirou recoiled instantly.

"He's baiting the guardians," he whispered. "Trying to fracture ancestral memory — make us doubt who is real."

Ling Li's Arrival: Flame and Clarity

From above, wind whipped through the vaulted atrium as Ling Li descended, her robes snapping in celestial resistance. Her aura flared wide — no warning, no patience.

She stepped directly toward the fractured vault and reached within.

The decoy trembled.

Ling Li spoke only once:

"You mimic our guardian's light, but you understand nothing of her silence."

Her hand ignited with windfire.

She released a single pulse.

The puppet evaporated — no scream, no resistance, just ash trailing into the air, whispering Enchanted Dale's name.

Ling Li turned to Master Jirou.

"Stay sharp. The next fragment may arrive wearing someone closer."

Master Jirou bowed low, sweat bleeding down his temple.

"I am watching."

The Path Beneath the Pines: Searching for the Puppet Forge

Snow fell lightly and thinly over the Russian forest, like ash stripped of its heat.

Just before dawn, Master Jirou stood outside the east-wing shrine, fingers trembling, his scorched prayer beads glowing faintly in response to a disturbance underground. He had spent the night meditating near an altar stone, sensing fragments of aura stitched with ancestral mimicry. The same residue that had lingered on the puppet bearing Yue Qiren's face was now moving — not toward the estate, but deeper into the ley lines beneath it.

He called Shi Min and Shinsei, their robes drawn tight against the cold, faces already grim.

"I found it," Master Jirou rasped. "The forge. It isn't far from the protective tunnels —just past the old burial vaults. He built it on top of spiritual faultlines."

Shi Min grunted. "That's how he hides the pulses —masking them with ancestral memory."

Sinsei's gaze sharpened, calm but fierce. "Lead us."

Master Jirou perform a hand gesture to activate an array.

Entry Into the Forge of Echoes

The three men arrived at the family's ancestral shrine; they descended through a concealed staircase behind the fire shrine, which had long been sealed by frost and overgrown with glyphs. As Master Jirou chanted the unlocking rite, each sigil cracked open with reluctance, revealing a pathway lined in black stone and spectral moss — a tunnel not dug, but shaped by cursed breath.

The air thickened as they entered the subterranean sanctum, where Enchanted Dale had once burned ancestral scrolls to mix their ash into puppet vessels.

At the center, an altar glowed.

Faint, unstable silhouettes swayed inside twisted glass tubes — unfinished soul puppets, each flickering with stolen strands. One bore a half-formed copy of Ling Li's childhood aura, while the other carried the disjointed essence of Shi Min's fire guardian.

Shinsei stepped forward, face grave. "This forge violates the Eightfold Lineage Law. It's not just mimicry —it's memory dissection."

Master Jirou knelt, tracing the symbols scrawled in blood beneath one of the tubes.

"He's blending truth and projection. That's why the puppet fooled the vault ward. These aren't clones. They're... convincing scars."

Shi Min shattered one tube with a gust of flame.

The liquid inside hissed — not boiling, but screaming.

"He was going to send these to shrine sites," Shinsei murmured. "Let them sit in sacred places and whisper corrupted memories until even the spirits turned against us."

Master Jirou placed his palm over the central runic hub — an embedded obsidian disc marked with Enchanted Dale's personal sigil, warped at its edges.

It trembled.

"This forge isn't dead yet. There's a heartbeat."

Dismantling the Curse: Shinsei's Judgment

Shinsei closed his eyes.

He began to chant — low, ancient, with rhythm drawn from the Temple of Threads, where spirit and shadow once coexisted without war. The pipes shivered. The tubes cracked. The corrupted altar recoiled.

Shi Min formed a flame barrier while Master Jirou fed purification ink into the disc.

As the forge started to collapse, a single voice echoed through the room — not Enchanted Dale's, but one of his early experiments, a puppet that mimicked Old Master Li's voice, whispering:

"SHE MUST NEVER KNOW WHAT SHE IS."

Shinsei's eyes snapped open.

"Too late."

He cast the final glyph.

The forge exploded — not violently, but quietly, like breath returning to lungs that had forgotten air.

Echoes Between Father and Daughter

The moon hung low over the snow-laced balcony of the Russian estate.

The air was hushed, save for the faint hum of protective wards threaded into the wind. Inside the temple alcove, Pharsa sat cross-legged on a woven mat, still cloaked in the silver-threaded robe from her re-inscription ritual. Steam curled from a nearby teacup, untouched.

Across from her, Shinsei lowered himself slowly, his ceremonial robes whispering against stone. His expression was thoughtful, lined with centuries of restraint.

Pharsa didn't look at him at first.

"Do you remember the prayer bells at the temple?" she asked, voice quiet. "The ones that never rang unless someone cried?"

Shinsei's brow twitched slightly.

"They rang the morning I found you."

Pharsa turned, eyes reflecting candlelight and exhaustion.

"The spirits knew I would cry later." A faint smile touched her lips — bitter, soft.

Shinsei exhaled, folding his hands.

"You were always meant to awaken. I only hoped it would be later — after joy, not during war."

A silence settled.

Then, Pharsa leaned forward.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Her voice cracked. "That's what I carried could invert fate. That it could burn not only enemies… but bonds."

Shinsei met her gaze directly.