1. The Osmanthus Trail
Lin Wufeng's serum-heightened senses followed the cloying sweetness to:
A decoy shipment of "compliance cakes" (stuffed with tracking talismans)
A butcher's ledger listing child test subjects as "expendable ingredients"
Most damning: Pear blossom petals embedded in the flour sacks—his own childhood tears, preserved as binding agents
The trail ended at a ghost kitchen where faceless cooks pureed memories into filling.
2. Fake Commandments, Real Consequences
Bai Yu's scar-carved graffiti sparked chaos:
Wall 1: "Thou shalt grade thyself mercilessly" → Caused grading talismans to self-destruct
Wall 2: "The best answer is another question" → Turned exam scrolls into endless loops
Wall 3: A crude doodle of Instructor Mu → Made statues weep ink where their eyes should be
But the fourth wall (the Celestial Pavilion's western facade) fought back:
Its mortar contained pulverized cheat sheets
Its bricks were stamped with failed students' fingerprints
It absorbed Bai Yu's jokes and regurgitated them as punishment riddles
3. Reflection Warfare
Ying Sha's prism-eye tactic had an unintended effect:
Every reflected image of the tapestry's chair now showed a different candidate:
Lin Wufeng's reflection: A boy stitching his own mouth shut
Bai Yu's: A skeleton lecturing to empty desks
Her own: A woman in Instructor Mu's robes holding a frost needle
The real horror? The reflections were learning to blink independently
4. The Furnace Gambit
The trio infiltrated the grading furnace's core:
Lin Wufeng: Used leaden threads to fake a "failed" evaluation aura
Bai Yu: Let his corrupted bones emit comedy qi (disguised as "academic misconduct")
Ying Sha: Projected prismatic illusions of perfect obedience
But the furnace's true purpose chilled them:
It wasn't burning failed papers—it was distilling them into:
Ink (for rewriting history)
Smoke (to cloud dissenters' minds)
Ash (fertilizer for the Pavilion's pear orchards)
5. The Heart's Revelation
Beneath the furnace lay Instructor Mu's still-beating heart:
Encased in a jade lattice pulsing with stolen meridian energy
Tattooed with the original recipe's title: "On the Culinary Refinement of Prodigies"
Fed by twelve golden tubes—each siphoning a different emotion from test subjects
When Lin Wufeng touched it:
The heart remembered him ("Specimen 13: Partial Success")
His serum-flooded veins replied automatically: "Awaiting further instructions"
The Hollow King's voice warned: "It eats through your fingertips first"
6. The Needle in Time
Ying Sha spotted it—a single frost needle hovering where the tapestry's first stitch should be:
Its eye held a frozen moment: Her father plunging it into the first version of the Tome
Its tip dripped liquid paradox: Both poison and antidote
Most terrifying: It was identical to the ones in Lin Wufeng's spine
7. The Protocol Begins
The furnace flared crimson—the Pavilion had detected their sabotage:
Phase 1: Hall monitors manifested from burning exam papers
Phase 2: The silver strands bifurcated again—one side aiding them, the other grading their rebellion
Final Warning: The heart extruded a contract offering:
Lin Wufeng: His mother's resurrection (in exchange for his voice)
Bai Yu: Painless existence (for his humor)
Ying Sha: Her father's freedom (for her prism eye)
8. The Serum's Counterattack
Lin Wufeng's veins turned against him as the heart issued silent commands:
Stage 1 Compliance:
His golden threads stitched his lips when he tried to warn others
His feet moved toward the furnace's feeding chute against his will
Worst of all—his hands recognized the heart's lattice pattern from muscle memory
Stage 2 Assimilation:
Pear blossoms grew from his ears, their roots digging for memories
His left eye's black hole contracted, straining against serum-induced blindness
A foreign voice (his own, but younger) whispered: "Specimen 13 reporting for duty"
The Hollow King's remnant energy reacted violently—flaying his forearm to expose:
A barcode tattoo (faded but readable: "Batch 7, Yield 42%")
Subdermal ink spelling "WARNING: PRONE TO SELF-AWARENESS"
9. Comedy Tribulation
Bai Yu's corruption reached critical mass:
Physical Changes:
His ribs cracked into stand-up microphone shapes
Kidney scars formed a laugh track audience silhouette
His spine became a scroll of forbidden punchlines
Cultivation Deviation:
Every exhale released satirical qi that turned:
Hall monitors into improv comedians
Exam papers into roast battle challenges
The furnace's flames laughing so hard they turned blue
But the cost was dire—his golden core now pulsed to joke rhythms:
Good jokes = temporary power surges
Bad jokes = meridians tying themselves in knots
Silence = physical disintegration
10. The Prism's Paradox
Ying Sha's eye-reflections developed autonomy:
Mirror 1 (Lin Wufeng's Boy-With-Stitched-Mouth):
Began unpicking its threads with teeth
Each removed stitch revealed a different childhood memory
The last thread held a note: "They made you do it to us first"
Mirror 2 (Bai Yu's Skeleton Lecturer):
Started teaching actual useful cultivation
Its students? The hall monitors' stolen potential
Textbook title: "How to Fail Successfully"
Mirror 3 (Ying Sha as Instructor):
Plunged the frost needle into her own eye
The prism didn't shatter—it multiplied
New reflection: Her father holding an identical needle toward her past self
11. The Heart's Bargain
The contract's fine print emerged under Bai Yu's joke-qi:
Lin Wufeng's Offer:
His mother would return as a fellow test subject
Her first words: "Why did you save me?"
Bai Yu's Offer:
Painless existence meant becoming a hall monitor
His first duty: Grading Lin Wufeng's suffering
Ying Sha's Offer:
Her father's freedom required taking his place in the heart's cage
His final act: Inserting the frost needle into her eye himself
12. The Needle's Secret
Ying Sha grabbed the floating frost needle—and remembered its creation:
Material: Tempered from the first student's broken bones
Purpose: Not to split minds, but to stitch time
Critical Flaw: It only worked if inserted by the hand of someone you love
Her father's last words echoed:
"It's not a weapon...
...it's a time-traveling suture...
...find where the tapestry really begins..."