Chapter 230: The Sudden Glow of Talismans: A Turning Point in the Maze

Shen Yan’s fingers dug into the edge of the shattered mirror, the tip of his finger cut, blood mixing with sweat as it dripped down. He had just survived an assault from three forged residual consciousnesses, his mind still buzzing as if hundreds of lines of error reporting code were running in a loop inside his skull.

But he couldn’t stop.

He knew that what he had just seen of Yu Xiaotang wasn’t fake. She wanted to speak—her eyes weren’t empty, and the rhythm of her lips moving was off—it was a struggle, not control.

He pushed himself up, the wound on his shoulder throbbing with pain. His phone had only a sliver of battery left, the screen cracked like a spiderweb, but the system was still functional. He tapped at the air, and the terminal interface in his mind popped up:

【Low-Power Scan Mode Initiated】

Green text scrolled line by line across his vision as he stared at the ancient mirror ahead, which had suddenly lit up with talisman light. The mirror’s surface glowed yellow, and seven talismans materialized out of thin air, arranged in a fan shape—fire snakes, thunder nets, and wind blades all locked onto him simultaneously.

It was Yu Xiaotang’s talisman array.

But this attack was too orderly, unlike her style. Her talismans were always crooked, and she loved adding little animal patterns. These seven talismans were unnaturally clean, as if they had been recompiled by someone.

Shen Yan didn’t dodge.

He leaned against the tilted mirror wall, his right hand trembling as he typed code in the void.

“Lock onto the anomaly point in the talisman array’s energy flow.”

The program finished running, and a stream of green code flashed.

His pupils contracted.

Inside the third fire snake talisman was an extremely faint data loop, its frequency suppressed so low that he would never have noticed if he hadn’t pushed the scan precision to its limit.

The signal was intermittent but unmistakable:

“Save me… not an enemy… find the door…”

Shen Yan’s breath hitched.

So that was it.

Yu Xiaotang’s residual consciousness had been controlled and couldn’t call for help directly. She could only use the talisman array as a carrier, hiding the message within the structure of the spell. These talismans looked like attacks, but they were the only way she could think of to send a message.

He grinned, almost laughing out loud.

This girl, still so clever.

He immediately rewrote the command: “Terminate attack response protocol, switch to rune refactoring mode.”

His fingers flew across the virtual keyboard, reversing the output of the “firewall spell” originally used for defense and injecting it into the cracks of the talisman array. The seven talisman papers froze instantly, as if paused, then flipped over one by one, backs facing outward.

On the back of each talisman paper was the same pattern—a crooked little chicken, flapping its wings.

It was the “running talisman chicken” she had taught him to draw before.

Warmth surged in Shen Yan’s heart.

The talisman papers began to move, automatically piecing together until they formed a glowing map pointing to an unbroken mirror core deep within the Mirror Realm. There, a blurry halo of light seemed to mark the exit coordinates.

Just then, Yu Xiaotang’s residual consciousness stood within the mirror, her lips moving slightly.

A fragmented voice reached him: “Hurry… it’s about to close…”

Before she could finish, her figure flickered like a projection with poor signal and vanished.

All that remained was a single, burnt-out talisman ash, drifting gently down to land in his palm.

Shen Yan clenched the remaining embers, feeling their lingering heat. He glanced down at his phone—the battery bar had turned completely red, the last 1% blinking.

He had no time to hesitate.

Leaning on the shattered mirror, he moved forward, each step crunching on the collapsing shards beneath his feet. The surrounding mirrors continued to crack, fragments floating upward like snowflakes as the space began to distort. In some places, even repeated temporal images appeared—he saw himself walking through the same spot he had just passed.

This was a dimensional misalignment. If he didn’t leave soon, he’d be trapped in an infinite loop.

Suddenly, the space above him trembled.

The talisman ash spontaneously ignited, transforming into a golden streak that shot upward. Shen Yan looked up to see a fine crack splitting the previously sealed mirror dome, a beam of light descending as if connecting to another world.

The entrance to the real world.

He had just taken a step when the mirror beneath his feet suddenly lit up with talisman patterns, spreading in concentric circles and rapidly reassembling into a Restriction Seal formation. Red light surged skyward as the ground revealed the simplified structure of the Four Symbols Spirit-Sealing Formation. Eight talisman pillars rose from the ground, locking down his path of movement.

Shen Yan sneered.

“Trying to trap me with her talismans?”

He knew who had set this formation—not Yu Xiaotang, but the ones controlling her. They had deliberately left a vulnerability, allowing him to break the talisman array and find the exit, only to lay a trap using her methods, waiting for him to walk right into it.

But they had forgotten.

Between him and Yu Xiaotang, it wasn’t just about talismans.

There was also a secret code only they knew.

He raised his hand, his phone entering its ultimate emergency mode, drawing out the last bit of battery power. The System Interface popped up with a warning:

【Insufficient Emotional Key. Requires simulated voice signature to execute override command.】

Shen Yan closed his eyes for a moment, recalling that day when she was munching on candied hawthorn while teaching him how to draw talismans. Casually, she had said, “Remember, the true incantation isn’t ‘urgently as the law commands’—it’s ‘only after finishing the candied hawthorn can the talisman be drawn successfully!’”

At the time, he had thought it absurd, but now he smiled.

Facing the air, he softly recited the phrase: “Only after finishing the candied hawthorn can the talisman be drawn successfully.”

As the words fell, the Restriction Seal patterns trembled violently.

The red light flickered a few times before suddenly shifting to cyan.

The eight talisman pillars collapsed with a roar, the formation splitting open to reveal a path leading directly to the descending beam of light.

A Notification Tone sounded, so long unheard it felt like a lifetime ago:

【Reality Dimension coordinates detected. Teleportation Protocol loaded.】

Enveloped by the light beam, Shen Yan felt his body begin to lighten, his consciousness growing slightly hazy. He took one last look back at the shattered Mirror Realm and whispered, “This time, I heard you.”

The phone screen went completely dark.

The Star-Shattering Token burned hot against his chest.

He stepped into the light beam, his body gradually wrapped in radiance, his feet lifting off the ground as if slowly pulled upward by some force.

Just as he was about to fully enter the passage, an extremely faint sound suddenly reached his ears.

Like the crisp clink of copper coins colliding.

He whipped his head around.

Outside the light beam, in a mirror that was on the verge of shattering but not yet broken, Yu Xiaotang’s figure flashed past.

She wasn’t wearing her goose-yellow ruqun but was draped in a black cloak, and she held no candied hawthorn in her hand.

She raised her hand and drew a talisman on the mirror’s surface.

It wasn’t a fire snake or a thunder net.

It was a little chick, waving its wing at him.

Then she smiled.

Shen Yan opened his mouth, wanting to call her name.

But before his voice could emerge, he was completely swallowed by the light beam.

In the final second, he felt the talisman ash in his palm turn completely to powder, scattering with the wind.

His body hung suspended in midair, surrounded by flowing bands of light, like a Data Torrent rushing past. His consciousness gradually blurred, but his fingers still tightly clutched his phone.

He knew he was leaving the Mirror Realm.

But he also knew the real world would not wait calmly for his return.

At the end of the light beam lay the unknown.

His eyelashes fluttered, his lips moved, as if he were saying something.

But no one heard.

(End of Chapter)