"Hey."

The old woman let out a low, night-owl-like chuckle from her throat, her voice hoarse and grating, "Arrived right on time."

She raised a shriveled hand like a chicken claw and pointed at the bronze mirror.

"If this is a true-disciple heart-test, then save the empty formalities."

"Stand before the mirror."

Su Ming straightened, his gaze calmly sweeping across that bronze mirror.

The mirror still showed only chaos, nothing visible, but he could feel that deep within that chaos, an eye seemed to be slowly opening.

"Pupil obeys."

Su Ming stepped forward.

With each step he silently repeated that phrase in his heart.

Nine parts true, one part false.

He stopped in front of the mirror.

In that instant, the previously dim bronze mirror suddenly erupted with a blinding violet light, instantly enveloping Su Ming!

Su Ming felt his Consciousness Sea explode with a thunderous roar, as if someone had forcefully torn a wound open, countless fragments of past memories surging up uncontrollably.

The wind and snow of the Great Xing, the mud on the exile road, the blaze that killed his parents…

And that ring, shimmering faintly in the bird's nest.

It's coming.

.......

On the Heart-Questioning Platform, the violet halo that had been flowing moments ago had thickened into something like old pine resin that would not dissolve.

The light was no longer an airy mist; it had condensed into deep purple crystals, sealing Su Ming like an insect trapped in amber. The surrounding wind stopped, even the fine dust in the air hung motionless; the entire world seemed to have been paused, only the "Reverse Source Returning Light Mirror" continued to spin wildly.

The mirror surface was no longer solid. It writhed violently like boiling mercury, and what it reflected was no longer fragmented images but a turbid, viscous, roiling river.

That river was Su Ming's memories.

At that moment, time in that river was forcibly reversed.

The old woman's face, full of grooves, looked blurred in the purple light, but her murky yet keen eyes — like vultures circling over a corpse — fixed on the mirror. Her dry wooden staff hovered before her, and the gem at its head pulsed like a heart, continually emitting pure, domineering Nascent Soul spiritual power, forcefully steering that river upstream.

"Let me see where your roots truly take hold."

The old woman's hoarse voice echoed across the deathly silent platform, producing a teeth-grating rasp.

The images in the mirror sped backward.

The beacon fires at Iron Wall Pass turned to a wisp of blue smoke and dissipated; the northern snow retreated back into the clouds; the lone lamp in the Repair Hall in the dead of night extinguished; the nervous sweat during the entry exam flowed back into the pores…

Experiences that were engraved in a normal person's heart were, to Cui Yan, merely foam to be swept aside. Her aim was clear — to bypass all seemingly normal "effects" and strike directly at the inexplicable "cause."

The stream of light suddenly halted.

The image froze on a dilapidated ancient temple.

Outside Qingshi Town, the night was ink-black. A broken Buddha statue had half its face swallowed by shadow; a ghastly green ghost-fire flickered in the air like some unnamed breath.

The mirror revealed the pale, taut face of young Su Ming, with Zhao Rui trembling beside him. It was the instinctive terror and despair a mortal feels in the face of the supernatural.

"Ghost wall… Wailing Woman Lantern…"

Cui Yan's murky eyes shifted slightly, but her gaze did not linger on the terrifying female ghost. Instead, it hammered like a nail into the youth's chest.

In the memory, young Su Ming sensed the anomaly. He did not collapse like Zhao Rui; instead he forced himself calm and made a judgment at the edge of life and death.

"Mortal youth who meets a ghost and does not lose his nerve, that temperament is not bad. But temperament alone won't save a life."

Cui Yan moved her mind, and her dry wooden staff tapped lightly.

Hum!

The violet light on the Heart-Questioning Platform suddenly condensed, focusing entirely on this memory. She wanted to see clearly what Su Ming had relied on to break the situation at that time.

As she increased spiritual pressure, the image in the mirror began to distort subtly, as if trying to see through appearances to the essence.

In the scene, the young Su Ming held something at his chest — exactly where he now wore the Xuantian ring — a faint, almost illusory glimmer flashed and vanished.

Immediately after, the youth's face showed a flicker of pain and confusion, as if slipping into a brief faint or nightmare. When he opened his eyes again, there was a clarity in them that did not belong there before, and a fragmentary, obscure mnemonic seemed to have appeared in his mind.

Aura Concealment Art.

In reality, Su Ming's body shuddered violently, his teeth grinding until they creaked.

"Hiss… that old crone sure hits low."

Lin Yu's voice sounded deep within Su Ming's Consciousness Sea, laced with a few degrees of gritted annoyance, "She literally turned her divine sense into a hook and meddled in your brain juices. Disciple, hold on! This is the first hurdle, follow the script!"

Su Ming clenched through the soul-rending pain as if his spirit were being torn, remembering Lin Yu's instructions. He did not mobilize any divine sense to resist the force.

Resisting would betray insecurity.

Obedience was the best camouflage.

He deliberately loosened the "dike" around that part of the memory, yet the flowing water was a carefully prepared "mixture." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Under Su Ming's guidance, that memory subtly reconstructed itself: the ring's faint glow was rendered as a passive, weak protective reaction; the acquisition of the Aura Concealment Art was blurred into a fragmentary, intermittent instinctive infusion.

As for Lin Yu's clear teachings, systematic analysis, and that ever-sarcastic entertaining soul, Su Ming pressed them down into the deepest layer of his spirit. He activated the Like Water Art, liquefying this lethal truth, like dropping a dollop of dense ink into a bottomless icy pool, instantly diluting and dissolving it, leaving only a surface that appeared clear but was unfathomably deep.

"Broken inheritance? Protective spirit light?"

Cui Yan watched the blurred image in the mirror and let out a low laugh tinged with meaning, "Where in the world is there such a perfectly timed boon? Encounter a ghost and immediately gain an aura-concealment method? Too many coincidences; that's deliberate."

She did not believe it.

Or rather, as the authority on Punishment Peak, she never believed such cheap explanations.

Her staff jerked downward once more.

"Divide!"

With her low shout, the violet light that cloaked Su Ming split at once into several threadlike, razor-sharp purple filaments. They no longer contented themselves with skimming the scene; like probes, they drilled viciously into the deeper reaches of the memory river.

"If you claim it's a broken inheritance, then this old body wants to see exactly which scrap your exquisite formation skill was scraped out of!"

The memory river surged again, flowing upstream toward Su Ming's days at the Qingshi Town County School.