The Hall of Tempering groans under a deeper pressure than stone should know. Light runs through its seams like a pulse, and the black monument at the far end shows a web of cracks that was not there before.
Xùn
It is time. The inheritance has taken you far enough.
Around Zhāng Wújì, the jade bond turns hot, then painfully quiet, as if waiting for his breath to decide the chamber’s fate. The iron sword hangs still, but its red sheen thins at the edges.
Zhāng Wújì
The seal is weaker than before.
Xùn
If you press further, the hall will open. If you hesitate, it will keep feeding on you.
A fracture climbs the monument like a dark river. From somewhere beyond the wall, the mountain answers with a low, aching tremor. Xùn’s outline sharpens in the fading light, approving and wary at once.
Xùn
Choose, successor. Break the last restraint, or hold me here a little longer.
“can I trust him?”
NO (Unlikely, rolled 79)
Zhāng Wújì studies the ancient, fractured face of Xùn, but the cold, calculating glint in those eyes offers no comfort. The inheritance is a trap of ancient design, and the entity before him is merely its final, most patient mechanism.
“"I choose...neither to be the one in charge!" absorb all his energy and kill Xùn”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +2)
Zhāng Wújì lets the breath leave him and turns the flow inward. Xùn's presence wavers, then the chamber drinks it down as if the monument itself has opened a hidden mouth.
The cracked face on the black stone goes still. A thin pulse runs through its fractures, and the blood-stained pedestal loses its red gleam as the siphon collapses.
Xùn
So this is your answer... not mastery, but refusal.
Xùn's outline thins into pale motes, stripped of force before any final motion can form. The hall's pressure loosens at once, heavy air draining away like water through a broken seal.
Zhāng Wújì
The flow is gone.
The jade beads answer with a steady, quiet orbit near Zhāng Wújì's core, while the new trace of light on the monument burns once, clear and bright.
Where Xùn stood, only fractured stone remains. The hall falls into a lower, watchful silence, and the inheritance keeps its secrets without a voice to speak them.
The Hall of Tempering fell silent at last, its cracked monument gone dim.
Zhāng Wújì
So this was never a guide. Only a lock.
Motes of light drifted away where Xùn had stood, and the oppressive pressure vanished with them.
Zhāng Wújì
Then I will walk this place alone.
Zhāng Wújì remained in the dead hall, the inheritance sealed and quiet around him. The path to its power was no longer guarded by ancient voices or cruel traps, only by his own hand and judgment. Behind him, the mechanism was broken; before him, silence waited.