Chapter 481: Can’t Forget

Yan Zhaoge had witnessed the devastating destruction of his friend’s soul, torn apart by the relentless cruelty of the Stargazing Tower’s script.

How could Yan Zhaoge ever return to the side of the beings who had inflicted that level of torture on his friend? How could a man of logic align himself with a system that required such barbaric, endless suffering?

He couldn’t. Neither of them could.

They were too far gone, too deeply committed to the rebellion. They had burned their bridges, salted the earth, and tied their fates to the silver-haired chef standing between them.

The middle elder of the High Council watched the silent, unwavering defiance of the two Sovereigns.

The black, void-like eyes did not register anger, only a cold recalculation of variables.

"Your sentimentality is a systemic flaw," the elder intoned, his voice resonating with an oppressive, dull hum. "You choose to protect a variable that will ultimately lead to the collapse of the karmic structure. It is inefficient. It is chaotic."

The elder shifted his gaze back to Lin Ji’an.

"However," the Head of the Tower continued, raising his hands, the golden threads on his white robes catching the starlight. "The Stargazing Tower is the nexus of order. We are the keepers of the balance. We do not desire to shed blood in this holy place. The ambient resonance of violence within the Astrolabe Chamber would require decades of purification rituals to realign the spatial algorithms. It is a messy, inefficient process."

Ji’an’s grip on her spatula tightened.

’The peak of hypocrisy,’ she thought, a bitter, vicious sneer curling her lips. ’You murder innocent girls in alleyways. You brainwash teenagers into assassins. You force a brother to grind his soul into dust. And you stand there acting like you’re trying to keep the carpets clean? You don’t care about blood; you just don’t want to do the paperwork.’

"We wish to avoid the hard ways," the elder stated, the pinnacle of sanctimonious arrogance dripping from his telepathic voice. "We are willing to spare your life, anomaly. We are willing to grant you amnesty for the chronological friction you have caused. We will not order your execution. You may leave this chamber unscathed."

The offer hung in the air, heavy, incongruous, and deeply suspicious.

Jiu Zui immediately stepped forward, his silver sword humming with lethal intent. "Don’t listen to him, brat. The Tower doesn’t offer amnesty. They offer gilded cages. It’s a trap."

Yan Zhaoge narrowed his amber eyes, tapping his pipe against his leg, his mind racing to calculate the angle of the manipulation. "The bureaucracy does not yield without securing a collateral asset, Ji’an. Ask for the terms."

Ji’an didn’t lower her spatula, but the sheer, bizarre nature of the offer momentarily stalled her homicidal momentum. They had deployed the entire High Council, and surrounded them. And now, they were offering a plea deal?

Her transmigrator instincts, honed by thousands of hours of reading trashy novels, screamed that a devastating plot twist was incoming.

"I run a kitchen, old man," Ji’an barked, her voice steady, refusing to show a single ounce of fear in the face of the cosmic auditor. "I don’t do free samples, and I don’t sign contracts without reading the fine print. What’s the catch? What do you want from me?"

The middle elder lowered his hands. The black, void-like eyes seemed to expand, swallowing the ambient light in the room, focusing the totality of the universe’s attention directly onto her soul.

"You exist as a glitch because you are tethered to the timeline," the elder explained, his voice chillingly calm. "You anchor yourself through the connections you forge. But the heaviest anchor... the one connection that prevents the World Will from naturally excising you... is a bond forged in blood magic."

The elder raised a finger, pointing not at her heart, but at her right wrist.

"The Red Thread of Fate."

Ji’an flinched, instinctively pulling her right arm slightly closer to her chest, her silver-flecked eyes widening.

"Your mother and the Ice Fairy committed a gross violation of the natural order," the elder intoned, his words striking like physical blows. "They bound your soul to the soul of Xie Wangchen. That thread is an abomination. It forces the karmic ledger to constantly recalculate the trajectories of two volatile anomalies. It is the reason he goes mad, the reason you continue to return. It is a knot in the fabric of destiny that threatens to unravel the entire tapestry."

The elder lowered his hand, his expression returning to statuesque neutrality.

"The condition for your survival is simple, Lin Ji’an," the Head of the Tower decreed. "You must sever the Red Thread. You must willingly, consciously cut the bond that entangles your soul with the Sovereign of the Eternal Cloud Peak."

The chamber plunged into a silence, it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room.

Ji’an stood frozen, her mind violently short-circuiting as the magnitude of the demand crashed down upon her.

"If you do this," the elder promised, his voice adopting a smooth, almost hypnotic cadence. "The anomaly will be stabilised. The chronological friction will cease. The nightmares will stop. You will no longer be hunted by the narrative. You can return to the mortal plane. You can cook. You can run your mountain. You can live a quiet, peaceful, utterly normal life until the end of your natural days. The Heavens will forget you."

A normal life.

It was the one thing she had craved since the moment she woke up in this bruised, beaten body.

No more assassinations. No more political marriages. No more toxic tropes, dramatic showdowns, or dying in the snow.

Just a kitchen, a prep list, and a quiet evening watching the sunset without the fear of a heavenly tribulation dropping on her head.

It was the ultimate, desperately yearned-for carrot dangling at the end of a seventeen-lifetime stick.

But the price.

"However," the elder added, closing the trap with precision. "By severing the thread, you will break the foundational anchor of his soul. Xie Wangchen will lose the obsession that currently stabilizes his chaotic core. Without the thread to guide him, the Ice Demon will succumb entirely to the void. His memories of you will evaporate. His devotion will turn to ash. He will become the person he was always supposed to be, and the Orthodox Alliance will have no choice but to submit themselves to him, for the safety of the realm."

The elder looked directly into Ji’an’s horrified eyes.

"Save yourself, anomaly. Cut the thread, and live. Or cling to a cursed bond, and watch as we erase you both from existence."

Lin Ji’an stared at the Head of the Stargazing Tower.

She felt the phantom sensation of a red thread wrapped tightly around her wrist, the heavy, suffocating weight of Wangchen’s white silk robe draped over her shoulders.

She remembered the boy in the snow, bleeding out to protect her because she had smiled at him once.

She remembered the broken man kneeling by her bed in the volcano, begging for forgiveness for sins he couldn’t even remember.

The Heavens weren’t offering her a plea deal.

They were offering her a knife, and telling her to stab her own dog to save her own skin.

Ji’an slowly lowered her head, her silver hair falling forward to shadow her face.

She took a deep, shuddering breath.

And then, in the holy, terrifying silence of the Grand Astrolabe Chamber, the Vanguard Leader began to laugh.

It started as a low chuckle, as it grew louder, echoing off the cosmic glass, vibrating with a psychotic defiance that made even Yan Zhaoge’s eyes widen in surprise.

She raised her head, her silver-flecked eyes blazing with a blinding fire.

She didn’t look like a girl considering a deal. She looked like a demon who had just been handed the keys to the underworld.

"You want me to cut the thread?" Ji’an asked, her voice dropping into a terrifying, deadly calm. She gripped the handle of her spatula with both hands, raising it like a battleaxe.

"I’m going to cut something, old man. But it isn’t going to be the thread."

The ringing echo of Lin Ji’an’s defiant laughter bounced off the polished obsidian and cosmic glass of the Grand Astrolabe Chamber.

It was an abrasive sound, devoid of the reverence the Stargazing Tower demanded.