Wuchen’s brush rose, and the hall vanished under a new mind art. Yan saw a painted stair descending into darkness. The corridor back to the central furnace was gone from view. The false stair showed a turn, a landing, then another flight that seemed to continue beneath the earth.
Yan used the Forgetting River Sutra to keep the route he had practiced. The technique strengthened memory and concealed the thought he held closest; it did not reveal Wuchen’s next attack. Yan recalled the gallery pillar, the stair with the broken rail, and the service door. Those were the markers he had actually passed.
The false stair still pressed at his senses. He did not answer it by repeating every lesson aloud. He looked at the wall map beside the command desk. Its painted line showed the same route: gallery, broken rail, service door, furnace passage. The physical map did not change when Wuchen’s image shifted.
Wuchen swept the brush. Another painted stair appeared across the hall. Yan took one step toward it, then stopped. The mind art wanted him to follow the image. He turned instead to the map and placed his fingers on the corridor’s starting mark.
The seals along the floor glowed beneath his hand. Their lines were real, but they did not show the way home. He followed the map to the side of the desk and found the outer edge of the spatial fold. The false stair faded at its edges.
