Free Web NovelPavela's attention was quickly no longer on that pale flower.
Because the ground had also begun to shake.
A rhythmic vibration, possessing a certain cadence, as steady as a heartbeat.
It traveled up from the soles of her feet, along her calves, knees, and thighs, climbing all the way to her spine.
Then Pavela saw light.
Golden light.
From at least eight directions around the Crossroads, eight pillars of golden light rose from between the distant buildings, piercing straight into the leaden sky.
The pillars weren't thick, about the diameter of an adult's arm, but their brightness was astonishing. In the swirling snow, they looked like eight giant lit candles, dyeing the surrounding snowflakes into flowing gold dust.
Then the pillars of light began to change.
Eight golden arcs of light met, intertwined, and wove together in mid-air.
Fine golden sparks burst from the intersection points between the lines, like molten iron splashing during welding, but there was no heat, only light.
A pattern was taking shape.
Pavela couldn't understand that pattern.
It was too complex; the direction of the lines violated every geometric law she knew. Every intersection seemed to be both a starting point and an ending point simultaneously, and every arc seemed to extend in two opposite directions at the same time.
It was like a giant palm pressing down from the sky, not onto her body, but onto something deeper and more essential.
Pressing onto The Way Back.
Pavela could still hear sounds.
The sound of doors being closed one by one.
The Way Back was being sealed off.
One path at a time.
One door at a time.
The Short Axe Man was the first to show an obvious reaction.
The eerie blue glow on the axe blade in his hand flickered violently twice, like a candle flame blown by the wind, and then suddenly dimmed.
It was as if someone had snuffed it out with a single squeeze.
The Short Axe Man's body suddenly stiffened, as if °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° his spine had been pulled out from behind.
His knees buckled, nearly bringing him to one knee; his hands gripped the axe handle tightly, knuckles turning white, and a layer of fine sweat instantly seeped from his forehead.
The Archer's reaction was even more intense.
The faint blue light on her right-hand finger guard extinguished the moment the golden pattern formed, clean and decisive, as if it had never existed.
The Archer stumbled back a step, her left hand suddenly clutching her chest, fingers gripping the fabric of her lapel. Her breathing became rapid and shallow, her pupils constricted violently, as if something was being forcibly extracted from her body.
She bent over and let out a dry heave.
The ten eerie blue stars on the Short Stature's ten fingertips went out one by one, like pinched match heads.
The tall, thin Cloaked Figure in the rear didn't kneel, but his originally very low center of gravity suddenly rose.
Four people, four reactions, but the essence was the same. freēwēbηovel.c૦m
The connection to The Way Back had been severed.
The connection between the Way of Strength and the primordial sea was twisted shut by that golden pattern like a faucet.
They had turned from hunters into ordinary people.
And Pavela—
She felt the ebbing of the Path of the Tower.
That burning, destructive impulse spreading from deep within her spine—one that could go out of control at any moment—began to recede the moment the golden pattern formed. frёeωebɳovel.com
It was like a tide hitting a dam, being forcibly cut off, blocked, and pushed back.
The power of the Path of the Tower began to withdraw from the extremities of her limbs, from her fingertips, from her toes, and from the capillaries under every inch of her skin, as if something was sucking away the ink that had soaked her entire body drop by drop.
The feeling was very strange.
It didn't hurt.
Or rather, it wasn't pain in the usual sense.
It was more like a 'deficiency'—something that had always existed in her body, something she had grown accustomed to, was being removed, and the resulting void caused her senses to experience a moment of dizziness.
Then the golden power arrived.
It seeped out from the voids left by the formation's suppression of the Path of the Tower.
Like groundwater naturally surging up to fill a vacuum after a rock layer has been emptied.
Pavela felt that golden power begin to spread from the middle of her spine.
First, a bit of warmth.
It was very faint, like someone had lit a match in the gaps of her vertebrae.
Then the warmth turned into a burn.
Not the violent, all-consuming burn of the Path of the Tower.
It was a more precise, more purposeful heat.
Like the precisely controlled fire in a blacksmith's forge, not a degree too much, not a degree too little, just enough to soften, deform, and reshape the metal.
That power climbed up her spine, pausing for a moment as it passed each vertebra, as if checking, measuring, and confirming whether the structure of this body could carry it.
Then it continued forward.
Diverging from the spine into the ribs, seeping from the ribs into the chest cavity, spreading from the chest cavity to the shoulder blades, and flowing from the shoulder blades to the arms.
Everywhere it passed, Pavela could feel the way that part perceived things changing.
The Path of the Tower allowed her to see cracks.
To see the weaknesses of things, fracture lines, paths that could be destroyed.
Under the perspective of the Path of the Tower, the world was a map covered in cracks, and everything was waiting to be shattered.
But now, those cracks were disappearing from her vision one by one.
They were replaced by something else.
She saw the masonry structure of the wall in front of her.
The mortar layers between bricks, the tiny bubbles in the mortar, the distribution pattern of the bubbles, and how this distribution pattern affected the load-bearing capacity of the entire wall.
She saw the crystal arrangement of the snow beneath her feet.
The way water molecules crystallized at low temperatures, the gaps between crystals, and how the air remaining in those gaps affected the density and thermal conductivity of the snow layer.
She saw the snowflakes falling in the air.
The hexagonal symmetrical structure of each snowflake, the growth direction of the ice crystals, and how temperature and humidity determined that this snowflake would grow into this shape instead of another.
The world hadn't changed.
But the way she perceived the world was being forcibly rewritten.
From 'how to destroy' to 'how to constitute'.
From cracks to structures.
From the end point to the process.
The golden power continued to climb.
Passing through the cervical vertebrae, entering the base of the skull, going up along the medulla oblongata, and reaching the brain.
Pavela's vision flickered.
It was as if someone was rapidly switching between two channels before her eyes.
One was the familiar, crack-filled gray world; the other was a strange golden world woven from countless precise structures.
The two channels flickered alternately several times.
Every switch was accompanied by a brief bout of dizziness and tinnitus, like two completely different operating systems fighting for control on the same machine.
Then the gray channel went out.
The perspective of the Path of the Tower was completely shut down.
Those cracks, those weaknesses, everything that the 'eyes that see the path of destruction' could capture—all of it disappeared.
It was as if someone had closed one window and then opened another beside it.
After completing the suppression of the Path of the Tower, the golden power did not leave.
It didn't recede like a tide, nor did it take its leave like a guest.
It stayed.
Pavela could feel it entrenched in her body, from her spine to her limbs, from her internal organs to her skin, from her bones to her blood—it was everywhere.
As if a liquid had been poured into a container of exactly the right shape, every depression was precisely filled, and every gap was properly sealed.
Then the power converged upward.
Gathering from all over her body, following the optic nerve, it reached her eyeballs.
A very thin golden halo slowly took shape along the outline of her pupils.
Flowing, slightly shimmering, it was as if a circle had been drawn in her eyes with molten gold.
--【Warning: External Return Power intrusion detected!】--
--【Path of the Tower connection strength dropping sharply...】--
--【Path of the Tower connection strength: 12%... 5%... 1%...】--
--【Path of the Tower has been completely suppressed.】--
--【Warning: The Way Back trajectory has shifted.】--
--【Analyzing shift direction...】--
--【Analysis complete.】--
--【Current Frequency: Path of the Magician / Converter.】--
--【Current sequence: III.】--
The whole process ended.
Pavela stood in the center of the Crossroads, the golden formation hovering overhead, snowflakes swirling and falling in the golden light.
Her body was still in that wretched state.
But her eyes had changed.
On the light gray-blue background, a flowing golden halo had been added to the edge of her pupils.
Pavela was stunned for a full two seconds.
Then she smiled.
She threw her head back and opened her mouth.
Laughter poured out of her throat—hoarse, broken, and interspersed with a few coughs and the taste of rust.
Yet it was a genuine, heartfelt laugh.
She had survived.
She had survived again.
She survived in the Punishment Camp, survived in Kaldburg, survived on the Permafrost Defense Line, survived in Victorian, survived in the void realm, and survived in the giant crater she had blasted out herself.
Now, in this pitch-black, snowy Old District alley filled with the scent of blood, just as she was being hunted to the brink of exhaustion by four madmen who traded their lives for a sequence—
She could survive again!
