100: Chapter 100 The fragments were glued together into ice, but it was still too hot to handle.

In this lull at the tail end, a clearer sound rang out—the teeth-achingly sharp "clatter" of Shen Xiao clenching his teeth too tightly, his jaw roots grinding together.

His temples felt like they were being repeatedly hammered by two rusty awls, and static began to bloom at the edges of his vision.

The taste of rust in his throat could no longer be suppressed; with a soft "huff," a stream of warm liquid snaked down the corner of his mouth, dripping onto the drab fabric of his front lapel, soaking into a small, irregular dark circle.

But he didn't wipe it away.

He didn't even blink.

Amidst the fissures of excruciating pain, his thoughts were squeezed into abnormal clarity, like a piece of iron polished by a whetstone, flashing with a cold, sharp light.

Mirror feedback... So that's how it is.

Emotional stripping was never a one-way plunder.

While the operator strips away the emotions of others, their own residual, corresponding emotional foundation becomes a mirror, or even... a coordinate.

The fear of the Consciousness Entity, that Light Cocoon huddled like a quail, was likely not just fear of "contamination," but more so the fear of seeing its own long-broken, perhaps even nonexistent, "emotional reflection" during the stripping process.

It itself was likely the earliest, and most tragic, test subject of this theory.

A "tool" attempting to strip away the last remnants of "human" obsession necessary to become a "tool," only to end up stripping out a mirror that reflects its own eternal incompleteness.

Shen Xiao twitched the corner of his mouth; he didn't know if it was mockery or something else.

His gaze shifted from the completely sealed Light Cocoon, which resembled a dead, dark golden pebble, and fell back onto Xia Lengbai.

She was still clutching her chest, but the trembling of her body was subsiding at a visible rate.

That wasn't calming down; it was a deeper kind of freezing.

Her unfocused pupils struggled to refocus; upon that ice-blue foundation, the original calmness had shattered, and now something new was being poured—thicker, heavier, and more... dangerous.

It was like the cracked black glass shell formed after a volcano cools, with still-seething, molten lava surging with unknown substances beneath it.

The light of the Tomb Guardian Seal struggled a few times before finally fading out completely, as if it had exhausted its last ounce of strength, or had been forcibly cut off from resonating with that chaotic emotional field by its owner.

An opportunity.

It lay right in the fissure where the three parties were in the most chaos, the Consciousness Entity was in self-sealing defense, and Xia Lengbai's old cognition was collapsing.

Shen Xiao took a deep breath; the cold, turbid air stung his windpipe, but it also suppressed the metallic sweetness surging up his throat again.

He closed his eyes and forcibly sank his consciousness into his Dantian.

There, the Silver Pattern System was like a lamp with its oil exhausted, flickering unsteadily, almost on the verge of extinguishing.

"System!" He roared in his consciousness, every word carrying the taste of blood. "Squeeze out the last bit of functionality for me. Target: information fissure. Not plundering cultivation, not talent... grab those information fragments related to 'mirroring,' 'stripping feedback,' and 'emotional anchors'! Grab as many as you can!"

[Warning... Host's Mental Energy is on the verge of exhaustion... Forced operation will result in permanent damage...]

"Damn it!" Shen Xiao's conscious roar drowned out the warning.

The Silver Pattern flashed violently, not with normal light, but with a blinding white light akin to a final, pre-burst flare.

Immediately following, a silver thread, finer than a strand of hair, extended shakily from his Dantian, traveling in reverse along his nearly dried-up Meridians, and finally, with great difficulty, probed out from his fingertips.

The silver thread was dim, weak, and even somewhat intermittent, but its direction was clear, pointing straight at the tiny information fissure on the shell of the Light Cocoon that had failed to fully seal due to the impact of the mirror feedback and the Consciousness Entity's fearful enclosure.

Shen Xiao snapped his eyes open, a glint of silver flashing and vanishing deep within his pupils.

He didn't look at Xia Lengbai, nor did he look at the Light Cocoon; all his attention was focused on the trembling silver thread at his fingertips.

The excessive consumption of Mental Energy made the world wobble and fade in his eyes, but his hand remained terrifyingly steady.

Like the most cunning viper, the silver thread seized the moment when the information quagmire tended toward calm due to the Light Cocoon's closure and Xia Lengbai's chaos, and defenses were at their lowest, suddenly drilling into that nearly invisible fissure!

Not an attack, but a capture.

The tip of the silver thread churned, adhered to, and pulled frantically within the information stream.

Countless chaotic, fragmented images and shrill sounds instantly flooded into Shen Xiao's mind: the wails of test subjects, the cold back of the First Child, the light of runes on the altar, some kind of sharp stripping noise... None of these were what he needed; they were Impurities, they were trash!

He was like someone fishing for a needle in a storm-tossed sea; his will transformed into an invisible sieve, filtering out those fragments representing "content" that possessed strong emotions and imagery, capturing only those weaker information streams that were more abstract, more fundamental, and concerned with "rules," "mechanisms," and "reflection principles."

Found it!

A glimmer of light, mixed among countless chaotic fragments; it had no concrete form, only a cold sense of logic regarding "how to establish reflection," "emotional residue as a coordinate," and "resonance trigger conditions."

The silver thread wrapped around it violently and gave a fierce tug!

"Pfft!" Shen Xiao's body shuddered violently; he could no longer suppress it, and a large mouthful of blood sprayed out, spattering onto the cold ground in front of him.

His vision went completely black for a moment, and a loud buzzing filled his ears.

But he didn't let go.

At the last moment, the silver thread, tightly clutching that glimmer of light, pulled back from the fissure, retracted into his body like lightning, and submerged into the depths of the Silver Pattern in his Dantian.

The Silver Pattern flickered a few times, and its last bit of light completely faded, as if it had sealed itself—along with that strand of just-captured information—into some hidden corner.

It was done.

The price was the blackness before his eyes, a feeling of hollowness permeating his limbs and bones, as if his internal organs had all shifted out of place.

But in his heart, Shen Xiao felt as if ice water had been poured over his head, jolting him into clarity.

Captured unknown high-level information fragments... Temporarily sealed...

That was enough.

The information quagmire calmed down completely.

After the silver thread withdrew, that fissure sealed silently, as if it had never existed.

The Light Cocoon remained dead silent, like a stone on the roadside.

Xia Lengbai's hand finally lowered from her chest.

She raised her head.

The sense of fragmentation in her eyes was gone, replaced by a calmness that made Shen Xiao's back tighten slightly.

It wasn't recovery; it was reconstruction.

Just like a shattered mirror, the fragments were quickly and coldly swept together and re-glued with a stronger, unknown adhesive.

The mirror could still reflect people, but it was covered in cracks, and the images it reflected would inevitably be distorted.

Her gaze first fell on the uncleared bloodstain at the corner of Shen Xiao's mouth, paused for a moment, then shifted to the sealed Light Cocoon, and finally returned to Shen Xiao's pale face.

"Your 'experiment'," she began, her voice so calm that no emotion could be heard, even colder than before, every word like ice beads hitting the ground, "had quite the harvest."

Shen Xiao leaned against the broken stele, caught his breath twice, and then raised his hand, using his sleeve to wipe the blood from his chin indiscriminately.

The movement aggravated his internal injuries, causing another muffled groan with bared teeth.

"Your 'emotional blade'," his voice was severely hoarse, like a broken bellows, "has also been tested."

He paused, his gaze sweeping over the dead-silent Light Cocoon, then passing over Xia Lengbai's cold face with ambiguous meaning.

"The hilt is here, with it." He tilted his chin toward the Light Cocoon.

"And also in those things... that you 'should have originally had'."

The air solidified.

The sound of dripping water seemed to have disappeared as well.

The fragile bond of their alliance had completely snapped during that three-way chaos just now.

There was no trust, no cooperation, only blood, probing, plundering, and a cold, mutual appraisal.

A new balance was quietly gestating in this quagmire, composed of cognitive ruins and cold silence.