The Empress’s words crashed down upon Ethan like a mountain collapsing, each syllable carrying the weight of absolute finality.
Serene Mirror Lake—the name alone sent chills through his entire being as the integrated memories revealed the horrifying truth about this place.
"Wait! Your Majesty, please listen to me!" Ethan’s voice cracked with desperation as he struggled to his feet, ignoring the proper protocol.
"There’s been a terrible misunderstanding! I never—"
But his protests fell on deaf ears.
The assembled elders and peak masters watched with a mixture of pity and relief—pity for his fate, relief that it wasn’t them facing such a punishment.
Serene Mirror Lake wasn’t just any ordinary punishment ground—it was essentially a death sentence disguised as imprisonment.
This was where the Azure Origin Sect sent disciples who had committed the gravest of crimes, knowing full well that few, if any, would ever return alive.
"Fifty years..." Ethan’s mind reeled at the implications.
While spiritual cultivators could live for centuries due to their enhanced lifespans, physical cultivators like himself were bound by mortal limitations unless they reached extraordinarily high realms.
At his current level, fifty years might as well be a lifetime—quite literally.
The lake itself was a cursed place where the most powerful ancestors of the Azure Origin Sect were entombed.
These ancient cultivators had been so mighty in life that even in death, their residual energy permeated the area. The extreme yin energy emanating from their burial grounds was so potent that it could drive any living person insane within days.
The bone-chilling cold wasn’t just uncomfortable—it was actively malevolent. The yin energy would seep into a person’s mind first, causing hallucinations and madness.
Then it would begin corroding their bones, eating away at flesh and organs, until finally consuming their entire body. Death would come slowly, painfully, inevitably.
"Please, Empress Lyralei!" Ethan’s voice grew more frantic as the full horror of his situation sank in.
"I was just ten years old at the time! It was an accident—I was chasing a rabbit demon and stumbled upon the springs by pure coincidence! I didn’t even know what I was seeing!"
The Empress remained unmoved, her starlike eyes showing no trace of sympathy.
Her decision had been made, and in her world, there was no room for appeals or second chances.
"Your Majesty, I’m begging you!" Ethan’s desperation reached a fever pitch.
"I’ve served this sect faithfully for seven years! I’ve never caused trouble, never violated any rules! This is all based on a misunderstanding from when I was a child!"
But Empress Lyralei simply waved her hand dismissively, as if swatting away an annoying insect. Her lazy expression hadn’t changed in the slightest—this was clearly just another mundane administrative decision to her.
Seeing that his pleas to the Empress were futile, Ethan’s desperation drove him to turn toward Saintess Seraphina. His eyes blazed with the fury of a man facing unjust condemnation.
"Saintess Seraphina!" he shouted, his voice echoing through the hall with raw emotion.
"I was a little boy at that time! What impure thoughts could an innocent young child possibly have? What could I have possibly done wrong?"
His voice cracked with the injustice of it all.
"I was ten years old! Ten! Do you understand what that means? I didn’t even understand what I was looking at, let alone have any perverted intentions! I was chasing a magical beast—doing my duty as a disciple—when I accidentally glimpsed something I shouldn’t have seen!"
The hall fell silent at his outburst. Several elders shifted uncomfortably, some perhaps remembering their own childhoods and innocent mistakes. But their sympathy meant nothing in the face of the Saintess’s accusation and the Empress’s judgment.
Seraphina turned to face him fully, her beautiful features twisted with unmistakable disgust and disdain. Her ice-blue eyes regarded him as if he were something vile she’d found stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
"Even if you were a young boy," she said, her voice carrying the chill of winter winds, "even if your intentions were supposedly innocent, I will never allow a mere outer sect disciple to become my protector."
Her words cut through him like frozen blades, each syllable dripping with contempt.
"Do you think the position of Saint Protector is something to be handed out carelessly? Do you believe that just because the Empress favors you, you’re automatically worthy of standing by my side?" Seraphina’s voice grew colder with each word.
"I am the future successor of this sect, the wielder of the ancient Ice Spirit Soul Body. My protectors must be beyond reproach—pure in both deed and reputation."
She took a step closer, her presence radiating an aura of untouchable superiority.
"Whether you were ten or twenty, whether it was an accident or intentional, the fact remains that you were present where you shouldn’t have been. A true disciple would have immediately fled without even the slightest glance. Your very presence in that location speaks to a fundamental flaw in your character."
Ethan felt his heart sink as her words demolished any hope he might have harbored.
The unfairness of it all was overwhelming—he was being condemned not for what he had done, but for what others assumed he had done.
"Furthermore," Seraphina continued remorselessly, "even setting aside this incident entirely, what qualifications do you possess? You have no Dantian, no spiritual roots, no prestigious background. You’re nothing more than a physical cultivator from the outer sect—barely above a common mortal in terms of potential." Official source is novel~fire~net
Her final words were delivered like executioner’s blows:
"I would rather have no fourth protector at all than accept someone so fundamentally beneath my station. Your very suggestion is an insult to both myself and the sacred position you dare to covet."
The assembled crowd murmured their agreement, nodding at the Saintess’s harsh but seemingly logical reasoning. In their eyes, Ethan was indeed reaching far above his station—a mere outer sect disciple daring to aspire to serve directly under their beloved Saintess.
Ethan stood there, trembling with a mixture of rage, desperation, and crushing despair.
Every avenue of appeal had been closed to him, every plea ignored or dismissed. The cold reality of his situation settled over him like a funeral shroud.
Fifty years at Serene Mirror Lake. Fifty years of slowly losing his mind to the yin energy. Fifty years of watching his body decay bit by bit until death finally claimed him.
All because of one innocent mistake made by a frightened ten-year-old boy who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"Guards," Empress Lyralei’s voice rang out with casual authority, as if she were ordering tea rather than sealing a man’s fate.
"Escort the former outer sect disciple to Serene Mirror Lake immediately. See that he has basic provisions for the journey, but nothing more. He is to begin his sentence at once."
As heavily armed cultivators moved toward him, Ethan felt the last vestiges of hope drain from his body.
The magnificent hall, which had briefly promised elevation and honor, now felt like a tomb—a fitting preview of what awaited him at his final destination.
The injustice burned in his chest like molten metal, but there was nothing left to do but face whatever fate awaited him in that cursed, frozen wasteland where the sect sent its condemned to die.