Jiang Nuan’s scalp prickled.
She felt as though she were no longer an individual with a physical body, but a soul stripped completely bare, exposed beneath that golden slit pupil.
From head to toe, inside and out, there was nowhere to hide.
Instinctively, she tried to draw in her mental power and build a defense.
At that moment, the darkness before her began to churn.
A tall, slender figure was sketched into existence from the void.
Shen Wu slowly stepped out against the radiance of that enormous slit pupil.
His face still held little expression.
But when he spoke, his voice was no longer a divine proclamation echoing from every direction. Instead, it emerged clearly from his lips, carrying the faintest hint of hoarseness.
“Looking at you with my eyes alone seems…”
He stopped only a step away from her and raised his gaze.
There was no longer any concealment in those pale eyes.
“Not quite enough.”
Within this absolute domain, one entirely under his control, he finally tore away his disguise.
His gaze was like a fine, intricate net, filled with the greed that had finally surfaced after years of restraint.
Yet Jiang Nuan did not retreat.
Because she recognized this power. Even stripped of every disguise, it had never once harmed her.
She remembered all of it—the golden threads that had once drifted across the surface of her mind, the restrained sensation of them withdrawing during that late-night training session.
Not only was she unafraid; instead, a strange pull tugged at her, urging her closer.
He walked up to her and lifted a hand.
That hand passed through her as though through a thin curtain of water. It touched no physical substance, yet somehow seemed to touch everything.
Something had been touched.
Jiang Nuan sucked in a sharp breath.
She could clearly sense Shen Wu’s presence entering the small river formed by her supernatural ability with an overwhelming force.
The sensation was far too vivid.
The river parted to make way for him, and her breathing quickened.
Shen Wu’s movement paused for a beat.
The river that flowed ceaselessly through her mental world, radiating a warm glow, underwent something wondrous the instant he touched it.
Countless specks of light rose from the water and wrapped themselves around Shen Wu’s fingers with affectionate familiarity. Like sea spirits chasing moonlight, they frolicked and circled between his long, slender fingers.
The warm radiance climbed along his knuckles, accepting him without reservation.
Shen Wu went completely still.
For the first time, his eyes—usually filled with absolute reason—held nothing but blankness and astonishment.
He had imagined ten thousand possible outcomes: rejection, struggle, resistance, even reluctant acceptance.
But he had never imagined this.
He had witnessed all the world’s decay and hypocrisy. Long ago, he had grown accustomed to standing in the shadows, dissecting this rotten world with extreme rationality.
His mental domain was a wasteland, bleak and dead.
But now…
A warmth he had never experienced before was slowly spreading along his fingers.
It was pure, vibrant energy, free of all impurities.
Tenderly, it flowed through the mental world that had long been accustomed to nothing but desolation and darkness.
Shen Wu’s Adam’s apple moved with difficulty.
A ridiculous thought suddenly surfaced: if he allowed this river to keep growing, perhaps it could contain all the energy in the world.
Jiang Nuan felt it too.
It was a profound resonance that words could not describe, as though her heartbeat had fallen perfectly into step with another.
Shen Wu’s mental power, cool as a mountain stream, forcefully merged into her warm river of light.
The cold undercurrent collided with the warm river, yet instead of the violent clash she had expected, the two streams seemed to have found one another’s source. They intertwined and spiraled together naturally until neither could be distinguished from the other.
This sensation of fusion… was strangely similar to the instant energy flowed back during purification.
As if every previous purification had been one such interweaving and spiral.
She could clearly feel his astonishment and the momentary lapse of his senses—and beneath that lapse, a longing so fierce it nearly threatened to devour her.
Meanwhile, her mental power was doing something entirely instinctive.
The river of light was actively drawing closer to him. Layer upon layer of its surging warmth wrapped around his cold tendrils of mental power, as though it wanted to melt his entire being into itself.
Deep within Jiang Nuan’s consciousness, a faint voice whispered: No, this is too close.
But her soul did not listen.
Shen Wu closed his eyes.
He allowed his consciousness to follow the current of the river of light, slowly sinking downward.
He wanted to see what scenery lay hidden within this river that he had watched grow from a feeble stream into what it was now.
His consciousness continued to descend.
The water was warm and clear, enveloping every one of his mental tendrils… pressed tightly against him, leaving not the slightest gap.
Then he saw it.
In the most secret corner at the heart of the river of light, a perfect, tiny golden slit pupil lay quietly.
It was the mark he had secretly left at the deepest level of her mind several months ago, during the first lesson he had given her in mental defense.
That had been his selfish desire.
And now…
This mark that belonged to him was being washed and nourished day and night by her warm river.
A gentle halo flowed across its entire surface.
It had not been rejected or erased.
It had merged perfectly with the river of light, as though it had taken root there from the very beginning.
It had become a part of her.
It was an outcome he had never anticipated—one he had never even dared to hope for.
He took another step toward her.
The river of light surged beneath his feet. Countless motes of radiance climbed over him, and the energy that belonged to Jiang Nuan did not resist. Instead, it wrapped around him gently.
His fingers trembled faintly as they brushed across the surface of the river.
“I told you,” he murmured, his voice low as a whisper. “True defense means learning to distinguish what belongs to you from what has invaded from outside.”
“But your mental domain never regarded me as an invader.”
The golden slit pupil shone piercingly bright in the endless darkness.
The boundary between light and shadow disappeared.
The shadow untouched by moonlight had finally crossed the line.
And in the real world, on the sofa beneath the moonlight, Jiang Nuan’s lashes trembled faintly as her eyes remained closed.
Beside her, the patch of shadow belonging to Shen Wu was denser than the cold moonlight, silently tightening around her.
