### Chapter 3: Feathers of Annihilation
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#### **The Price of Mercy**
Princess Yanling's scream tore through the Vermilion Bird Pavilion as Ling's skeletal finger brushed her forehead. Chronos energy pulsed in jagged rhythms, peeling back layers of temporal static to reveal the truth beneath her soul—a fractured phoenix egg, its cracks oozing memories not her own.
"*Su Li's final cry... The smell of peach blossoms in our celestial garden...*" Yanling gasped, amber eyes bleeding into crimson. "Why do I remember *your* memories, gutter rat?"
Shi materialized as a distortion in the mural's flames, his form warping the painted phoenix into a three-headed monstrosity. "Because you're not the first vessel, little spark. Just the one that didn't explode."
Ling recoiled as temporal feedback struck—visions of twelve girls bursting into ash across alternate timelines flooded his mind. His left hand aged to parchment skin before reversing to infantile smoothness. The Chronos Tome fragment in his dantian pulsed like an infected heart.
"Stabilize her!" Shi commanded. "Unless you want this timeline to collapse into—"
The pavilion doors exploded inward.
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#### **Hounds of the Sect**
Headmaster Wu's shadow stretched across the phoenix murals, his ceremonial robes peeling away to reveal Void Zenith Sect's obsidian battle armor. Six Inquisitors flanked him, their faces hidden behind masks carved from the same void-ore as the Testing Obelisk.
"Princess Yanling has been compromised," Wu's voice echoed with unnatural harmonics. "Purge the contamination."
The Inquisitors moved as one—not through space, but by *erasing* the distance between moments. Ling recognized the technique: Void Step, a forbidden art that mortgaged fragments of the user's timeline.
"Pathetic imitation." Ling whispered in Ancient Celestial Tongue, the words warping reality. "*Kairos.*"
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Time fractured.
Six Inquisitors froze mid-lunge, their void-blades inches from Yanling's throat. Ling watched temporal threads snap—the Inquisitors' birth moments unraveling like rotten silk.
"*No!*" Shi's warning came too late.
The first Inquisitor aged to dust. The second regressed into a wailing infant. The third... *splintered*, each shard becoming a different version of herself across branching timelines.
Headmaster Wu's mask cracked. "Impossible! No mortal can wield—"
Yanling moved.
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#### **Phoenix Unleashed**
The princess's hair ignited into living flames as she tore off her jade pendant. The Vermilion Bird sigil melted, reforging into Su Li's twin-bladed *Fenghuang* spear from Ling's memories.
"*Lü Bǐng zhī nù!*" Her war cry shook the pavilion. "Taste the Frostfire!"
The spear's first strike froze Headmaster Wu's left side while burning his right to cinders. Ling stared—Yanling moved with Su Li's exact battle stances, yet her eyes held none of his lover's warmth.
"*Now you see,*" Shi murmured as time resumed. "*The phoenix always rises... but never the same.*"
Wu's surviving half-body collapsed, his dying shriek activating the academy's emergency wards. Sirens howled as spatial locks engaged—they had nine minutes before Void Zenith reinforcements arrived.
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#### **The Soulforge Revelation**
Yanling's spear tip pressed against Ling's throat. "Explain. Now."
"Your Phoenix Clan has been dead for three millennia," Ling said calmly. "What they revived in you is a taxidermied lie. But *her*..." He touched the spear's frostfire aura. "Su Li's soul shard in you is authentic."
The princess trembled, her weapon's flames reflecting tears she refused to shed. "Prove it."
"Lower your mental defenses."
When their foreheads touched, Ling unleashed a controlled burst of Chronos energy—not into Yanling, but into the spear itself. The *Fenghuang* dissolved into ash, reforming as Su Li's lost hairpin.
Yanling's scream shook reality.
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#### **Beneath the Academy**
The floor collapsed.
They fell through layers of illusionary foundations into the true Green Cloud Academy—a pulsating organic mass of soul conduits and screaming essence. Thousands of students hung suspended in glowing cocoons, their life force siphoned into a colossal replica of the Heaven's Mirror.
"Harvesting mortal qi to fuel Void Zenith's ascension rituals." Ling's immortal senses mapped the horror. "Your Phoenix Clan wasn't extinct—they were *farmed*."
Yanling's phoenix flames turned black. "How do we destroy it?"
"*We don't,*" Shi materialized fully, his form flickering between old man and young Ling. "We make it ours."
The Chronos Tome fragment tore free from Ling's dantian, slamming into the false Heaven's Mirror. Temporal tsunamis erupted as two divine artifacts clashed—and in the chaos, Ling glimpsed the true enemy.
Mirror-Ling stepped through the rift, his eyes twin black holes. "Hello, me."