Under the same night sky.
Only three days apart from that night in the North.
Moonlight seeped through the skylight of the Astrology Tower, falling on
Shen Yuzhu's left arm. That transparent arm had faded almost to
invisibility. Not disappearing. He was becoming — a place that could be
passed through.
Footsteps sounded in the shadows. Extremely light, like snow falling on
snow.
Helian Sha walked out. Half a degree fainter than the last time they met.
The transparent segment of his left arm had extended to the shoulder,
exactly the same position as Shen Yuzhu's. Not imitation. The same kind of
trace left by being used up.
Shen Yuzhu did not open his eyes.
"How much longer can you last?"
Helian Sha did not answer "how long."
He only sat down opposite him. His movements were extremely slow, like a
sheet of paper blown onto a chair by the wind — not that he was sitting,
but that his outline still remembered that position.
"Until the door no longer needs me."
Shen Yuzhu opened his eyes and looked at him.
That face had faded almost to transparency. Moonlight passed through his
outline, casting an extremely faint shadow on the stone wall behind him.
Not a shadow. The last evidence that "he is still here."
"What exactly is the door?"
Helian Sha was silent for a breath.
"The world remembers."
He raised that semi‑transparent hand, palm up. The palm lines were almost
invisible, only a few extremely faint lines remaining, like cart tracks
in snow, about to be covered.
"When the world learned to define itself, it grew a door. Not created by
anyone. Definition itself needed a mirror."
Shen Yuzhu did not press further. He only let that sentence stay in his
empty space.
Helian Sha's finger drew an arc in the air — the same arc as the
transparent boundary of Shen Yuzhu's left arm, and the edge of the seventh
petal of the ice crystal flower at East Three Sentry.
"A mirror used for a long time leaves marks."
"Those marks are the fragments."
Shen Yuzhu was silent for a breath.
He thought of the breathing between the three lead boxes beside the
Object Mound in the North.
They remembered they had once been the same door.
He did not say it aloud. But Helian Sha nodded, as if he had heard.
Shen Yuzhu asked: "And the 'ancient civilization'?"
Helian Sha looked at him.
That look was very faint, like looking at a child still asking "who is
right and who is wrong."
"There is no 'ancient civilization.'"
His voice had no inflection, as if the stone wall itself were speaking.
"Only — people who were used by the door."
"They stood before the door, thinking they were defining the world. But
the door was waiting for them to make errors."
"The errors they made, the door remembered. They themselves did not
remain."
Shen Yuzhu looked down at his own palm.
There, the character "North" carved by Chu Hongying was still there. Still
warm.
"Then what about your clan, the Gate Keepers?"
Helian Sha lowered his hand.
His voice was softer than usual, like reciting a letter no one would ever
receive.
"Our ancestors were 'left over' by the door. Not chosen, not given a
mission. Just — not defined in."
He said that the Gate Keeper clan once had many people. They guarded the
door, preventing it from being reopened. Because once the door fully
activated, it would perform a "final definition" — everything that could
not be defined would be completely erased. Not destroyed. Never existed.
"Then why do you guard it?"
Shen Yuzhu asked. "If the door becomes complete, wouldn't you disappear
with it?"
Helian Sha looked at him.
In those eyes, already so faint they were nearly invisible, there was not
a trace of fear.
"Because the door — is our only evidence of existence."
"The door remembers us. In the door's 'residual' list, our names are there.
If the door is destroyed, that layer of 'left over' record will also
disappear."
"We are not afraid of death. We are afraid — that no one will remember we
were once left over."
Shen Yuzhu was silent for a long time.
So long that the moonlight moved from one side of the skylight to the
other.
"What about your clan members?"
Helian Sha did not answer immediately.
He raised his head and looked at the moonlight outside the skylight. The
moonlight fell on his face, passed through his outline, and struck the
stone wall behind him — only a layer of extremely faint halo remained,
like someone using an extremely fine brush to draw a person's shape in the
air, then forgetting to fill it in.
"They are not dead."
His voice came from very far away.
"They were used up by the door."
He said that every generation of Gate Keepers grew fainter. Not illness,
not a curse. The door was slowly reclaiming them — not malice, the door's
way of folding back its remnants. Like tidying a room, clearing out what
is no longer needed. Not because you hate those things, but because the
room needs to be tidy.
"I am the last one."
"Not because all my clan members are dead. Because the door is about to no
longer need Gate Keepers — it is about to find another way to make itself
complete."
Shen Yuzhu: "What way?"
Helian Sha looked at him.
"You."
Shen Yuzhu did not shrink back.
He only continued breathing. Inhale — empty — exhale. In his empty space,
that "made‑way position" was still there.
Helian Sha said: "Through you, the door is learning."
"Learning what?"
"Learning not to need Gate Keepers."
Helian Sha's voice grew even softer, so soft it seemed the stone wall
itself was whispering.
"The door wants to learn — to keep itself in an incomplete state. No
need for us to guard it, no need for us to sacrifice, no need for us to
be used up."
He paused.
"So you will be used up faster than us. Because you are not just a Gate
Keeper. You are the one the door chose — a translator for error."
Shen Yuzhu: "Translating what?"
Helian Sha did not answer directly.
He looked down at his left hand — that already semi‑transparent hand, its
fingertips, at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye, merging bit by bit
into the air.
"Translating 'error.'"
"Letting the world learn that error is not a deviation needing correction.
Error is the condition for life to survive."
He raised his head and looked at Shen Yuzhu.
"What the Rectification Sect wants is a world without error. They are not
evil. They just — no longer dare to crack open."
Shen Yuzhu thought of the grey‑robed man.
That left hand hanging in his sleeve — that suppressed crack, and Helian
Sha's disappearing left arm, were the same kind of thing.
Only opposite in direction.
One cracking open. One pressing shut.
He did not say it aloud. But at the bottom of his empty space, that
pressed trace trembled lightly.
Helian Sha saw it.
"You have already met him."
Shen Yuzhu: "Met him."
"Is he still pressing?"
"Still pressing."
Helian Sha was silent for a breath. Then said: "Press to the end, the hand
will not recognize the body."
Shen Yuzhu did not respond.
But this sentence, in his empty space, pressed out a new trace.
Shen Yuzhu asked: "What about you? After you are used up by the door,
where will you go?"
Helian Sha did not answer "where."
He stood up. His movements were extremely slow, like a sheet of paper
blown off a chair by the wind — not that he was standing, but that his
outline still remembered that posture.
He walked to the edge of the shadows and stopped one step.
Did not look back.
"The world does not need civilization."
His voice came from the shadows, as if the stone wall were talking to
itself.
"Civilization is just the sound carried out — when the world breathes."
Then he spoke his last sentence.
"Shen Yuzhu."
This was the first time he had called his name.
"You will be used up earlier than me. Not because you are weaker. Because
you were always the one the door was waiting for — that error."
He paused.
His lips moved, as if he wanted to say something more.
But that sentence did not come out whole.
Not that he swallowed it back. The act of "finishing speaking" no longer
belonged to him.
Only a few characters, light as snow falling on snow:
"We are only — still —"
What followed, no sound.
Or the sound came out, but no one heard it.
Because he was no longer in that version.
He turned.
Footsteps. One step. One step. One step.
The last step, the echo did not come back.
Not that the corridor was too long. After he walked through, the corridor
forgot he had ever passed.
Where Helian Sha disappeared, nothing remained on the stone wall.
But a moment later, the moonlight moved — an extremely faint grain
appeared on the stone wall. Not carved. A trace of "having been passed
through."
Shen Yuzhu did not touch it. Because touching it would mean being
remembered.
He sat in place.
Moonlight seeped through the skylight, falling on his nearly invisible
left arm.
He closed his eyes.
In his empty space, those three word‑roots — choice, error, freedom —
scrambled again.
This time, the order became: error — choice — freedom.
It scrambled again. The same as last time.
Not that he had misremembered. The sentence was still growing.
At the bottom of his empty space, that pressed trace left by Helian Sha —
not a complete sentence, only fragments of a few characters — began to
breathe on its own.
"We are only — still —"
Still what?
Shen Yuzhu did not know.
But he did not fill it in.
Because filling it in would make it his words.
That was what Helian Sha had left unfinished.
Let it stay unfinished.
His left arm faded another half degree.
But he did not look down.
He only continued breathing.
Inhale — empty — exhale.
In that empty space, a person was becoming a trace.
A sentence was unfinished, and did not need to be finished.
Not sorrow.
How existence remains.
Breathing continued.
[CHAPTER 242 · END]