Wen Xuan finished reinforcing the sagging shelf, his movements mechanical, his mind still echoing with the crushing stillness of fossilized time. The experience with the petrified pillar hadn't faded like a dream; it lingered, a heavy, cold weight in his consciousness. He felt older, somehow, burdened by the memory of geological epochs that weren't his own. He kept glancing back at the inert grey pillar, half-expecting it to shift or whisper, but it remained just a rock, oblivious.

  He tried to rationalize it. Damp air, poor light, fatigue, the oppressive atmosphere of the Repository – surely these could combine to create strange sensations, even vivid hallucinations? He clung to that thought, needing it to be true. The alternative, that he could somehow absorb the history of unliving things through touch, was too bizarre, too dangerous to contemplate fully. His Inferior Grade 9 roots were a curse, a mark of mediocrity; such an ability felt like a cosmic joke, a power utterly disconnected from the established paths of cultivation.

  Yet, the feeling persisted – the phantom weight, the memory of molecular replacement, the cold endurance. It was unsettlingly real.

  He needed to distract himself, to return to the familiar rhythm of his duties. Returning to the area where he'd been sorting the crate from the West Wall collapse, he forced his attention back to the pile of discarded objects. Rusted metal, pottery shards, unidentifiable debris. Mundane. Safe.

  His gaze fell upon the 'Unidentified – Potentially Interesting' pile he’d started earlier. Sitting near the top was the dark, heavy wooden box he’d discovered just before Hao Jie’s interruption, the one containing the broken training dummy core. He’d barely registered it then, his focus fractured by the search for the inkstone and the looming presence of the other disciple. Now, remembering the oddity of such a fine box holding mere refuse, he felt a flicker of the same curiosity that had drawn him to the fossilized pillar.

  He hesitated. Part of him screamed to leave it alone, to avoid anything that felt even remotely strange after the pillar incident. The memory of that crushing stillness was suffocating. But another part, the quiet observer within him, the part that noticed wear patterns and lingering scents, was intrigued. What was the story behind this object? Why the careful boxing? Was it related to the dummy core’s breaking?

  Just clean it, label it 'Broken Dummy Core in Wooden Box,' and put it away, he told himself firmly. No prolonged contact. No unnecessary focus.

  He picked up the box, the dark wood smooth and cool beneath his dusty fingers. He carried it over to his small, rickety worktable near one of the grimy windows, setting it down with deliberate care. He opened the lid. The fragment lay nestled in the decaying silk, dark and glassy, its fractured surface sharp and clean. It truly looked like nothing more than a piece of broken equipment.

  He reached in, intending to lift it out quickly, wipe it down, and be done with it. His fingers closed around the fragment. It was heavier than it looked, its surface surprisingly smooth despite the fracture. He lifted it clear of the box.

  In that brief moment, his attention snagged. Not on a memory, but on the material itself. It wasn’t stone, wasn't metal, wasn't ordinary wood. What was it made of? He turned it slightly in his hand, holding it up to the weak sunlight filtering through the window, trying to catch a glint, understand its composition. His grip tightened instinctively as he focused, his thumb rubbing absently against the smooth, cool surface.

  The world shattered.

  It wasn't the slow compression of the fossilized wood. This was instantaneous, violent sensory assault. He was slammed, not physically, but psychically, with the full, unadulterated force of the dummy core’s existence and destruction.

  CRACK! The sound exploded in his mind, deafening, visceral, the shriek of stressed material giving way.

  Simultaneously, he felt it – not just saw, but embodied. The relentless, jarring impacts, over and over and over. Blows landing with brutal force. Fists wrapped in Qi, kicks driven by straining muscles, the occasional impact of a practice weapon. A thousand, ten thousand impacts, absorbed, resisted. He felt the dull thud travel through the core's structure, the vibrations shuddering deep within.

  He felt the monotony. The endless cycle of being struck, absorbing the force, standing firm. Day after day, year after year. The same courtyard, the same routines, the changing faces of disciples – hopeful, frustrated, determined, clumsy – all delivering their blows. There was no thought, no pain in the human sense, just a profound, grinding resistance, an inherent stubbornness built into its very substance. It existed to endure.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  He perceived flashes of sight – distorted, peripheral glimpses from the core’s fixed perspective. The worn earth of the training ground. Feet stamping, robes swirling. The determined grimace on a young disciple’s face as they poured their meagre Qi into a strike. The bored expression of an instructor observing from the sidelines. Sunlight, rain, snow, the cycling seasons blurring together in an endless montage of impact.

  He felt the struggle – not its own, but that of the disciples striking it. The frustration of weak Qi, the burning ache of strained muscles, the desperation to improve, to break through, projected onto it with every blow. The core absorbed not just the physical force, but the faint psychic residue of their exertion, their hopes, their failures.

  And then, the final blow. Different from the others. A surge of unusually potent, perhaps unstable Qi. A different angle, a precise, resonant frequency hit just right. He felt the internal structure scream under the stress, micro-fractures racing through its substance like lightning. The inherent resilience met its absolute limit. The surprise wasn't an emotion, but a physical reality – the moment when endurance failed. The final, shattering CRACK that wasn't just sound, but the feeling of its very being coming undone. Oblivion.

  The flood of raw sensation – sound, impact, emotion, fractured visuals, the sheer weight of monotonous endurance culminating in violent destruction – poured into Wen Xuan’s mind in a chaotic, overwhelming torrent. It was too much, too fast, too alien. His own consciousness, his sense of self, fragile at the best of times, was utterly submerged, drowned in the borrowed, broken history of the dummy core.

  His mind couldn't process the input. The sensory pathways overloaded, short-circuited. The Repository, the window, the worktable – they dissolved into meaningless noise. A sharp, piercing agony lanced through his head, far worse than any headache he’d ever known. His vision bleached white, then plunged into absolute darkness. The roar of the final crack echoed, swallowing all other sound. His control over his body vanished.

  Wen Xuan collapsed.

  He didn't crumple; he fell like a puppet with its strings cut, limbs loose, hitting the dusty floorboards with a heavy thud that barely registered through the internal cacophony. The broken dummy core fragment slipped from his nerveless fingers, skittering away into the shadows beneath the table.

  He lay there, sprawled on the floor, gasping, though no air seemed to reach his lungs. His mind was a maelstrom of disconnected sensations – the sting of impact, the grit of the courtyard earth, the cold finality of shattering. He felt profoundly, terrifyingly disoriented, adrift in a sea of someone else's defunct existence. Was he Wen Xuan? Or was he the broken core? The boundary blurred, threatening to dissolve entirely. Nausea surged, hot and acrid, and the world spun violently behind his closed eyelids.

  Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the overwhelming tide began to recede. The roaring in his ears subsided, replaced by the frantic pounding of his own heart. The blinding light/darkness gave way to blurry, swimming shapes as he forced his eyes open. The sharp pain in his head dulled to a deep, throbbing ache. He could feel the rough, dusty floorboards beneath his cheek, the coolness of the stone against his outstretched hand.

  He pushed himself up onto trembling arms, his muscles weak and unresponsive. The Repository swam into focus, distorted and wavering, like a reflection on disturbed water. Dust motes danced mockingly in the air. He coughed, a dry, racking sound that scraped his raw throat. The taste of dust and something metallic, like old blood, filled his mouth.

  He remained on his hands and knees for a long moment, head bowed, just breathing. The world felt fragile, unstable. The profound stillness after the fossilized wood incident had been unnerving; this sensory violence was terrifying. It had completely overwhelmed him, physically incapacitating him.

  This was no hallucination. This was no trick of the light or air. This was real. This ability, this involuntary immersion into the echoes held within objects, was undeniably real. And utterly, terrifyingly dangerous.

  He finally managed to push himself into a sitting position, leaning heavily against the leg of the worktable. His body felt bruised, shaken, as if he himself had endured those thousands of blows. He looked towards the shadows under the table where the fragment had fallen. He felt no urge to retrieve it, only a deep, primal fear of touching it again.

  The Repository seemed different yet again. The faint whispers he’d noticed earlier now felt like potential shouts. The attentive silence felt predatory. Every object – every scroll, shard, tool, and stone – suddenly seemed menacing, potentially loaded with overwhelming experiences waiting to ambush him.

  He had stumbled upon something profound, something outside the known paths of cultivation, something intrinsically linked to the history saturating this neglected hall. But it wasn't a gift. It felt like a vulnerability, a flaw in his soul that left him open to being drowned by the past.

  He needed to understand. He needed to control it. Or, failing that, he needed to ensure no one ever found out. His life, already precarious, now felt balanced on the edge of an abyss, with the echoes of bone and wood whispering from the depths.