Hex-Edge: Requiem of a Fractured Swordsman

1. The Reassembled Childhood

Lin Wufeng's golden threads finally reconstructed his true first memory:

A six-year-old boy strapped to a calligraphy table

Not "nurse" but Instructor Mu hovering over him, silver needle poised

The osmanthus cake was anesthetic laced with memory suppressants

As the scene clarified:

The Pavilion's walls pulsed like a giant heart

Other children hung in ink cocoons around him

His own hands were already covered in micro-characters

The jade ruler shivered violently when measuring this memory, its engraving changing:

"First Lesson: Obedience Tastes Sweetest"

2. The Scar Curriculum

Bai Yu's body had become a walking rebellion:

His spine scars now taught forbidden cultivation methods

His palm lines re-graded the Tome's own content (verdict: "42% useful, 58% self-perpetuating dogma")

His throat produced a perfect mimicry of Instructor Mu's voice screaming corrections

When the nurse-puppet attacked again, his scars didn't just defend—they enrolled her in a brutal lesson:

Forced her to regurgitate every cake she'd ever fed students

Made her grade the vomited knowledge honestly

Left her shaking with the realization: "I was never teaching. I was fattening livestock."

3. The Prism's Duality

Ying Sha's eye had achieved perfect focus—and with it, terrible clarity:

Left Lens: Showed the Tome's ideal reality where students willingly dissolved into ink

Right Lens: Revealed her father's hidden twelfth draft of resistance plans

The Bridge Between: Her own body, slowly crystallizing into a living revision

The most horrifying revelation came when she focused on the silver strands:

"They're not debating... They're time-sharing. The left teaches even-numbered centuries, the right takes odd."

4. The Version 12.7 Enigma

Her father's floating epiphany bubble finally released its core memory—a classroom where:

Twelve students sat at perfect desks

A thirteenth chair stood empty

The chalkboard read: "Today's Lesson: How to Kill Your Teacher"

The nurse-puppet convulsed upon seeing this, her grading rubric skin peeling to reveal:

A production date matching Lin Wufeng's birth

An inspection stamp from Ying Sha's father

A tiny handwritten note: "If found, teach Lesson 13 immediately"

5. The Heretical Path Manifested

The trio's bodies began resonating with the twelfth draft's frequency:

Lin Wufeng's golden threads unspooled into a bridge toward the empty chair

Bai Yu's scars projected the missing student's probable appearance

Ying Sha's prism calculated the exact moment her father had sacrificed himself

The jade ruler suddenly split down the middle, releasing:

A silver key (forged from the Tome's own punctuation)

A blood cipher (Bai Yu's scars provided the decoding)

An inkwell heart (Ying Sha's crystal contained the activator)

Together, they formed: The Thirteenth Lesson.

6. The First Student's Revenge

As the components combined, the Hollow King's remains reanimated into something new:

Its ribcage became a blackboard

Vertebrae transformed into chalk sticks

The skull now wore Instructor Mu's face like a ill-fitting mask

It wrote one character in shaking script:

"弑" (patricide)

The classroom walls screamed in unison.

7. The Anatomy of a Revolution

The Hollow King's reanimated remains convulsed as the弑 character took effect. Its bones began disassembling into classroom tools with terrifying precision:

Ribcage Blackboard: The surface bubbled with protest essays written in erased students' blood

Spinal Chalk: Each segment contained a compressed scream that echoed when used

Skull Eraser: Where it touched the board, it didn't just remove marks—it unwrote the original student

Ying Sha's prism eye zoomed in on the eraser's motion, revealing a horrific pattern:

"It's not random. It's targeting every instance of the word 'obedience' first."

8. The Nurse's Last Lesson

The puppet's body was falling apart, but not before executing its final protocol. With jerky movements, it:

Extracted a rusted key from its ink-stained teeth

Inserted it into Bai Yu's newest scar (which had formed a perfect keyhole)

Whispered in Instructor Mu's voice: "Emergency curriculum activated. Priority: survival over doctrine."

Bai Yu's body arched as the scars rebooted:

Old wounds bloomed into three-dimensional teaching aids

His blood formed floating annotations to the Tome's worst passages

Most disturbingly, his bones began vibrating at the exact frequency of a student rebellion chant

9. The Thirteenth Chair's Summoning

Lin Wufeng's golden threads had woven a bridge to nowhere—until Ying Sha's crystal focus provided coordinates. Now the empty chair:

Materialized from layers of erased memories

Had legs carved from confiscated cheating tools

Bore a seat cushion stitched from failed exam papers

When Lin Wufeng touched it, the chair's hidden mechanism activated:

Armrests clamped down as "discipline guides"

The backrest displayed shifting pass/fail marks

A hidden compartment spat out three items:

A sugar-preserved tongue (labeled "First Student to Speak Up")

A knotted nerve bundle ("Class Clown's Last Joke")

A single jade button ("Teacher's Final Shame")

10. The Silver Civil War

The divided strands' conflict escalated into open warfare:

Reformists (Left): Attempted to grade the rebellion, marking the blackboard with "Needs Improvement"

Revolutionaries (Right): Used spinal chalk to scribble "See me after class!" on reality itself

Their battle created dangerous pedagogical crossfire:

Random words became pop quizzes midair

Historical events got revised in real-time

Several ghost-scribes were accidentally extra-credited out of existence

Ying Sha realized with dawning horror: "They're not trying to stop us... They're incorporating the rebellion into next term's syllabus."

11. The Authentication Trials

To activate the full Thirteenth Lesson, the trio had to pass three tests:

1. Memory Exam (Lin Wufeng)

Prove he remembered his original name (not the Tome's designation)

Required swallowing the sugar-preserved tongue (which dissolved into ancestral recall)

2. Pain Assessment (Bai Yu)

Let the knotted nerves integrate with his scars

Endure them rewriting his worst tortures as comedy routines

3. Shame Confrontation (Ying Sha)

Sew the jade button onto her crystallizing eyelid

Accept it was her father's deliberate abandonment token

As each trial completed, the Hollow King's chalk wrote faster, its letters burning through the blackboard into the fabric of reality itself.

12. The First Teacher's Ploy

Just as the final stroke of the Thirteenth Lesson was about to connect, Instructor Mu's face peeled off the skull to reveal:

Not a monster

Not a martyr

But the first student who ever said no

Their words echoed through centuries:

"I wasn't consumed... I went willingly... to plant this rebellion in its very core..."

The classroom walls collapsed into:

A mountain of confiscated love notes

A river of ink made from tears

A sky full of paper airplanes carrying unanswered questions