And most terrifyingly, these proofs... were becoming reality.

The speed of the dawn began to slow, not blocked by external forces, but because the ship's systems had autonomously calculated that the cost of proceeding outweighed the benefits.

Within Lu Duo's Emerald Network, the flow of life energy was becoming increasingly regular and efficient, yet it had lost the unpredictability inherent to life itself.

Yu Nian's Pure Heart Halo struggled to purify the Logic Pollution, but for every bit purified, more formulas flooded in.

Twelve high-ranking Observers hovered above the Rainbow Bridge. Beneath their hoods, the black singularities within the projected starscapes began to rotate.

With every rotation of the singularities, the erosion of the Silver Formulas accelerated.

The leader spoke again, his voice still devoid of emotion:

"Rational calculation shows that the 97.3% probability line is converging toward 100%.

Abandon your meaningless resistance. Hand over the oath of starlight, and you may retain your freedom of thought, witnessing the rational evolution of the sky island civilization as observation samples."

Bai Cheng closed her eyes.

Not in surrender, but to shut out the constant influx of logical proofs.

She recalled Elvia's words before she vanished:

"The real weapons are the bonds you forge on your journey, the emotions you awaken, and the light of free will proven through your repeated choices."

Bonds.

Emotions.

Free will.

Things classified in rational calculations as 'inefficient variables,' 'interference terms,' or'sources of error.'

Bai Cheng suddenly smiled. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

She opened her eyes, and the galaxy within her silver pupils no longer flowed; instead, it solidified into a deep night sky.

In that night sky, there were no stars, only a pure darkness undefined by any light.

"You've made a mistake." Bai Cheng's voice was soft, yet it pierced through the noise of all the Silver Formulas. "A mistake that rationality can never understand."

She raised her hand—not to attack, but to release her control over the authority of judgment.

The insignia of judgment on her forehead abruptly went dark.

Everyone on the bridge was stunned.

But a second later, in the place where the insignia had vanished, a brand-new mark emerged.

It wasn't a symbol of authority, but... a scar. A scar composed of countless tiny images:

On the Lei Hai Floating Island, the arc of blood frozen in the air when Blue Bird's shoulder was pierced by Sin Tentacles while shielding Leng Ningxue.

In the God Kingdom Ruins, the moment Zi Yuan, facing Thousand Faces Mirror Pupil's army of reflections, handed her long blade to Bai Cheng despite having a broken arm.

Before the gates of Shandora, the tearful smile shared between Lu Duo and Yu Nian as they stood back-to-back, sustaining their collapsing domains of life and pure heart.

Beneath the Emerald Sea star track, the weight and resolve in Garel's voice as he removed his eyepatch to reveal his lightning-filled right eye and said, 'I am the last direct descendant of Rego.'

And even earlier, those unrecorded, trivial fragments existing only in the depths of her companions' memories:

A pot of Cloud Tea shared after training, a meaningless joke while arguing over tactics during a night flight, the clumsy gestures of bandaging each other's wounds...

These images, these emotions, these moments deemed 'insignificant,' 'unimportant to the big picture,' or 'optimizable for deletion' in rational calculations—

They now surged from everyone's hearts, converging into the scar-like mark on Bai Cheng's forehead.

The mark began to glow.

Not with the light of authority, but... the light of life itself. A chaotic, contradictory light that was sometimes warm and sometimes painful, a light that could never be uniformly defined.

The crystal prisms of the twelve high-ranking Observers suddenly stalled simultaneously.

Because the things they were calculating—those human, unformulatable emotional resonances—exceeded the load limits of their logic processors.

Garbled code appeared on the surfaces of the prisms, and the rotation of the black singularities in the projected starscapes became unbalanced.

"Error... Undefinable... Unknown variable type..." For the first time, the leader's voice stuttered.

Bai Cheng took a step forward.

Just one step.

But the moment she took that step, the rules on the Rainbow Bridge were rewritten.

Not through authority, but through existence itself.

The chains of Silver Formulas entangling the dawn began to self-destruct upon touching the invisible halo of emotion surrounding Bai Cheng.

Not destroyed, but proven invalid.

Because the premise of the formulas—that all variables could be quantified and calculated—was falsified in this moment by a simple fact:

Some things cannot be calculated.

Just as you can never use a mathematical formula to derive why someone would sacrifice themselves for a stranger;

Why one would charge forward knowing victory is slim; why, in a desperate situation, a single smile can ignite hope.

"This is what you've lost." Bai Cheng's voice echoed across the Rainbow Bridge, the scar-like mark on her forehead glowing even brighter,

"Rationality should be a lighthouse, but it shouldn't be the only source of light.

When you delete emotions, beliefs, and bonds as errors, what you are deleting... is the very foundation of what makes a civilization a civilization."

She looked at the twelve high-ranking members, her silver eyes reflecting the collapsing starscapes beneath their hoods:

"The Lord of the Sky left the oath of starlight not for descendants to inherit some kind of power."

"But to remind every living being of the sky islands—"

"That the most brilliant sparks are always born... in the darkness that cannot be calculated."

The moment the words fell, the scar-like mark on Bai Cheng's forehead bloomed completely.

There was no energy impact, no collision of laws, only a silent ripple spreading outward.

Wherever the ripple passed, the Silver Formulas melted like snow under the sun, the crystal prisms shattered one after another, and the logic halos of the twelve high-ranking Observers crumbled inch by inch.

They stood there, uninjured, but the starscapes beneath their hoods had completely extinguished, revealing... bewildered, human faces.

Those were the faces of the twelve sages of the Sky Federation from two thousand years ago.

Old and weary, their eyes filled with the helplessness of facing what they had created for the first time after waking from a long slumber.

"We..." The leader—the former Chief Elder of Wisdom of the Federation, Norton, the Star Track Calculator—looked down at his trembling hands,

"We chose rationality back then to avoid a repetition of the War of ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) the Divine Kingdom... to prevent civilization from destroying itself through emotional impulses..."

For the first time, a human sob appeared in his voice.

"But we forgot... if rationality loses the constraint of warmth... it will itself become the coldest form of destruction."

Bai Cheng walked up to him and reached out her hand.

Not to attack, but to support him.

Norton stared blankly at the hand for a long time before slowly grasping it.

The moment they touched, the emotions frozen by rationality for two thousand years surged back like a bursting dam.

Guilt toward his companions, the pain of wrong choices, mourning for a lost civilization, and...

A faint but real hope of wanting to make amends.