I will burn books and slay gods.

Three days after the cafeteria incident, Chen Ye finally understood what Lao Li meant by "karma is a sword hanging over one's head".

He lay in the hospital bed with an ice pack on his forehead.

In my mind, philosophical concepts were no longer whispers, but had become a cacophony of arguments in a parliamentary hall.

Kant's "thing-in-itself" and Descartes' "I think" are fiercely debating the starting point of epistemology. Hegel's dialectics attempts to mediate but only makes the situation more chaotic, while Wittgenstein observes coldly, occasionally throwing out a few sarcastic remarks such as "what cannot be said should be kept silent."

These voices were so real that he answered to the air several times: "No, innate synthetic judgments are not entirely a priori..."

"Are you chatting with the philosopher in your head again?"

Lin Su pushed open the ward door and walked in, carrying a bowl of steaming white porridge.

She was wearing a plain white T-shirt and jeans today—it wasn't mission time, and they were allowed to change into casual clothes, which made her look more like a cool college student than a Night's Watcher who wields fire.

"They were arguing even more fiercely than during the last parliamentary debate."

Chen Ye sat up with a wry smile and took the bowl of porridge.

When their fingertips touched, he noticed that Lin Su had a thin silver chain on her wrist, with a small flame pendant hanging from it.

"Typical symptoms of cognitive karma."

Lin Su sat down on the chair by the bed, crossing her legs. "Wang Xiaoming said that what you did was mild. He met a senior whose ability was 'Historical Echoes,' who couldn't tell whether he was in the Tang Dynasty or the modern era. He spent a month writing memorials with a brush in his hospital room."

Chen Ye scooped up a spoonful of porridge and put it in his mouth. The warm porridge made him feel a little better: "Does the price have to be so heavy?"

"This is balance."

Lin Su looked out the window, her eyes turning deep and unfathomable. "Nightmares originate from irrational fears, and we must use the power of reason to fight them. But what is the ultimate form of pure reason? It is cold logic, ruthless calculation, and absolute objectivity stripped of all emotion. If we go too far, we will become another kind of 'monster'."

She paused, then turned to look at Chen Ye: "Karma is humanity's way of holding us back. Pain, chaos, consequences... these remind us that we are still 'human.'"

Chen Ye silently drank his porridge, digesting these words.

At this moment, the ward door was pushed open again, and Wang Xiaoming poked half his body in. His presence was so faint that Chen Ye had to concentrate to see his outline clearly.

"Old Li... told us to go to... the archives."

Wang Xiaoming's speech also became intermittent, like a radio with a poor signal, "There's a new discovery... about last night's 'Eternal Clock Hand'."

The archives of Morningstar Hospital are located on the third basement level, requiring passage through three heavy blast doors.

There are no windows here, only constant, cold white light and tall bookshelves reaching to the ceiling.

The air was filled with the distinctive smell of old paper and electronic storage media.

Old Li wasn't wearing a hospital gown, but rather a worn-out dark blue work uniform, and was standing in front of a projector.

The screen displays complex waveforms and dense annotations.

"They're all here?"

Old Li didn't even turn his head. "Close the door. Young man, stand somewhere in a brighter spot; I can't see you clearly."

Wang Xiaoming silently walked to the beam of light from the projector, and his figure became slightly clearer under the strong light.

"There was a problem with last night's 'Eternal Clock'."

Old Li cut straight to the point, pulling up another set of data: "A normal level two Nightmare's energy radiation is diffuse, like a cloud of fog. But this one... its energy spectrum is focused, with a clear core resonance frequency."

Chen Ye looked at the peaks and troughs on the screen. Although he didn't understand their specific meaning, he could see the differences: "What does this mean?"

"This means it may not have been born naturally."

Lin Su suddenly spoke, her voice icy, "Someone 'guided' its formation, or amplified it."

Old Li gave her an approving look: "Lin girl, you've hit the nail on the head. Naturally occurring nightmares are a random overflow of the collective subconscious, they're chaotic. But these nightmares with clear 'fingerprints'..." He tapped the screen, "...are more like man-made 'works'."

The archives fell into a brief silence.

Nightmares are already difficult to fight, but if they also have intelligence and ulterior motives behind them...

"Are there any suspects?" Chen Ye asked.

Old Li pulled up the third set of documents, which was a yellowed scanned file with a twisted swirl symbol on the cover and a line of Latin text below it: AD Adyssum.

"The Guixu Cult".

Old Li's voice deepened, "An ancient and secretive organization believes that the real world is a cage, and only by returning to 'nothingness'—the ultimate state of the Nightmare Realm—can life be truly liberated. Most of their members are Night Watchers who failed to awaken, or... theorists who actively embrace madness."

The archives record historical events such as the "Logic Collapse Incident" in Vienna in 1913, where the physical rules of an entire street failed for three days; and the "Erasing of Existence" in a Japanese village in 1978, where more than 300 people and all traces of their lives vanished into thin air, with only the surrounding villagers vaguely remembering that "there seemed to have been a village there"...

"The cult's activity cycle is not fixed, but each time it occurs, it signifies a large-scale disaster."

Old Li turned off the projector. "If last night's events were indeed their doing, then it wasn't a coincidence, but a test, or... a declaration."

"What do they want to do?" Wang Xiao asked, his voice almost disappearing into the air.

"Open a 'door'," Lin Su replied, her fingers unconsciously tracing the flame pendant on her wrist. "A door that allows the inner world to completely devour the outer world. They believe that is 'purification'."

Chen Ye felt a chill.

If the surface world is the reality upon which most people depend for survival, then what does its destruction mean? Hundreds of millions of lives will perish in madness, and civilization will collapse like a sandcastle.

"Then what should we do?" he asked.

Old Li walked to a bookshelf and pulled out a thick, heavy book—"The Night Watch Chronicles: A Study of Karmic Obstacles".

The book's cover is made of some kind of dark leather, and it feels cold to the touch.

"First, intensify training. Your teamwork was good last night, but it's still far from enough. Second…"

He opened the book, pointing to a page with a complex star-shaped pattern. "Understand the nature of karma. Karma is not just a price; it is also the 'anchor' connecting us to this world. The reason why members of the Order can guide Nightmare is that they have become purely irrational vessels. We need to take a different path—finding that balance between reason and madness."

Chen Ye looked at the star map page. The pattern was composed of countless tiny dots and lines, with a rotating vortex at the center.

The annotations were written in some ancient language, but he could vaguely understand their meaning—it seemed to describe the correspondence between the structure of the soul and the dimensions of reality.

"What is this?" he asked.

"The deeper map of the lamplight realm."

Old Li said, "Ignite the knowledge of the realm. When your soul fire is bright enough, you will begin to 'see' another layer of the world's structure—the lines of rules, the web of concepts, and... the source of karma."

He closed the book and glanced at the three men: "There will be a field mission in a week. The old library in the west of the city has shown signs of the 'Mist of Foolishness,' and three citizens have already fallen into deep intellectual degeneration. Your mission is to assist the main force in completing the purification. Until then..."

Old Li pulled three small, pocket-watch-like metal devices from his pocket: "Wear these. 'Karma Detector,' which can display your accumulated karma and soul fire status in real time. Green means safe, yellow a warning, red... immediately stop using the ability, otherwise you will bear the consequences."

Chen Ye took the instrument. The dial was transparent, with no pointers inside, only a cluster of floating, faintly glowing flame phantoms.

The flames are currently a stable pale blue, surrounded by a very fine gray mist—that should be the manifestation of karmic obstacles.

Lin Su's flames were a blazing white, and the surrounding mist was even thicker.

Wang Xiaoming's... his flames were almost transparent, but the mist was so thick it seemed to engulf the flames themselves.

"Kid, use your abilities less in your next mission."

Old Li said seriously, "Your existence is fading faster than expected. If this continues, you'll disappear from everyone's memory before Nightmare even makes a move."

Wang Xiaoming lowered his head and said softly, "I understand."

The following week was filled with intensive training.

The training ground is located deeper underground in the hospital; it is a huge space with walls covered with special energy-absorbing materials.

Here, they can practice their control and coordination skills relatively safely.

Chen Ye's main research topic is "precision".

Previously, his use of his abilities was more like a large-scale conceptual bombardment, which was inefficient and caused severe karmic backlash.

Now, he needs to achieve the greatest effect with the least amount of "knowledge" by coordinating Lin Su's fire attack and Wang Xiaoming's causal interference.

Imagine your abilities as a scalpel, not a hammer.

The training instructor was a serious middle-aged woman, codenamed "Ruler." Her ability seemed to be spatial mapping. "You need to remove the diseased part, not smash the whole organ."

During a training session simulating combat against the "Sensory Weaver," Chen Ye tried a new method.

Instead of directly confronting the hallucination, he opened a book on cognitive psychology and selected the "closing principle" from the "Gestalt principle"—the human brain automatically completes incomplete figures.

When Lin Su burned the boundaries of the illusion with flames, and Wang Xiaoming pointed out the weakest "information gap," Chen Ye manifested the "law of closure" as a tiny silver light that shot into that gap.

In an instant, the illusionary structure collapsed due to the forced "completion" of the erroneous logic, dissipating five times faster than before, while the whispers in Chen Ye's mind only lasted a few minutes.

"good."

The instructor nodded, a rare occurrence. "Control has improved by 40%, and karmic obstacles have decreased by 60%. Keep this in mind."

After training ended, Lin Su walked over to Chen Ye and handed him a bottle of water: "You learn very quickly."

"It's because you and Wang Xiaoming cooperated well," Chen Ye said honestly.

Without Lin Su's precise flame cutting and Wang Xiaoming's keen perception of "critical nodes," he could not have located the attack point so accurately.

Lin Su looked at Wang Xiaoming, who was practicing "presence enhancement" alone at the other end of the training session—he was trying to keep himself visible in the mirror for more than ten seconds—and said softly, "We are a team. We can't do without anyone."

Chen Ye noticed the flame pendant on her wrist glowing faintly under the training ground lights: "What's that pendant?"

Lin Su subconsciously touched the pendant: "It's my mother's keepsake. She... was also a Night Watcher. During the mission to fight against the 'Mother of the Void' once again, she chose to ignite all her soulfire to seal an expanding void rift."

Chen Ye fell silent.

He then realized where Lin Su's almost instinctive protective instincts and the resolute determination she often displayed came from.

"Did she succeed?" he asked softly.

"It was successful. The rift was sealed for seven years, until another Night's Watchman permanently reinforced it with a more perfect method."

Lin Su raised her head, her expression devoid of sadness, only a resolute calm. "The time and data she gained with her life saved many more lives that might have been lost. That was her choice."

She turned to Chen Ye: "In this world, we all have to make choices. When to fight, when to retreat, when... to pay the price. The karma detector can tell us the data, but it can't tell us the answer. The answer is here."

She tapped her heart with her finger.

That night, Chen Ye lay on his side in the hospital bed, looking at the cluster of pale blue flames burning steadily in the detector in his hand.

There were no stars in the night sky outside the window, only that eternal, flowing gray film.

He recalled Lin Su's mother's choice, the grateful looks in the eyes of the medical staff who had been rescued in the cafeteria, and Old Li's words about "the balance point."

Reason told him that this was a path with an extremely high mortality rate, a heavy price to pay, and an uncertain future.

But something deeper—perhaps a sense of responsibility, perhaps an instinct to protect, or perhaps simply a refusal to passively accept fate—made him grip the detector tightly.

It suddenly burned steadily in his hand, like an inextinguishable glimmer of light in the darkness.