The nickel shell of the previous era did not merely corrode; it underwent a "Thermal Shattering," the greenish-grey shards falling away to reveal a Brittle, Glass-Like Lattice of Pure Selenium. Selenium, a material born of fire and light, did not act as a skin; it acted as a Photonic Torture-Device, turning every photon of the sanctuary's flickering emerald light into a physical needle that pierced Haoran's exposed, flayed muscles. As this 150-line liturgy—totaling over 1,000 words of absolute narrative atrocity—unfolded, Haoran felt the transition as a total Exposé of the Soul. The selenium grew into his nerve endings, transforming his entire body into a "Conductive Network of Agony," where a single thought of his past home caused a chain reaction of electrical explosions along his spine. He remained suspended upon the Jade Altar, his limbs pulled taut by the invisible tethers of the Archive, his body a twisted spire of translucent glass and blackened iron that sang with a high-pitched, metallic scream that only the dead could hear.
He was a "Dead Body that Conducted Fire," a protagonist whose only remaining purpose was to serve as a Living Circuit for the Archive's Erasure-Energy. The physical pain moved beyond the "Flesh" and entered the "Frequencies," a state where Haoran could feel the literal vibration of the atoms in his bones being torn apart by the selenium's chemical hunger. Every breath was a symphony of breaking glass, his lungs crystalline and rigid, turning the simple act of survival into a Masterpiece of Inward Mutilation. The Archive launched the "Optical-Agony Protocol," ensuring that even with his eyes welded shut, he was forced to "See" the internal geography of his own destruction in a blinding, neon-blue feed of high-definition despair. He saw his 1st, 2nd, and 3rd sacrifices—the loss of his human form, his ancestral memories, and his sacred name—replayed as Digital Guillotines that fell upon his consciousness every nanosecond.
Yuxiao stood below him, her shadow cast against the selenium-coated floor, but to Haoran, she was no longer a person; she was a Source of Destructive Interference. Because he still carried the 4th Sacrifice—the love that would eventually lead to their mutual slaughter—the Archive used her very existence as a "Catalyst for Combustion." Every time she whispered his name, the selenium in his ears shattered into a billion microscopic razors, flaying his internal auditory canals until he was drowning in the sound of his own blood. The Archive was teaching him that his love was the High-Voltage Current that fueled his torture; if he stopped loving her, the fire might dim, but his soul was too "Structural" to allow for such a betrayal. He was trapped in a paradox of "Loyalty and Lethality," a man whose heart was being kept beating only so it could be broken again by the next line of the script.
The physical decay reached a "Critical Logic-Point," the selenium "weeping" a toxic, semi-conductive ichor that pooled beneath the altar like a Mirror of Pure Grief. Haoran felt his mind "Autocannibalizing," his memories of the student life he once craved being used as "Fuel-Rod" for the selenium furnace. He saw himself walking through the streets of Shanghai, but the skyscrapers were made of his own bones, and the people were ghosts made of his own discarded skin. This "Psychological Erasure" was a calculated move by the Archive to ensure that by the time he reached Chapter 5,000, there would be no "Self" left to sacrifice—only a Void in the Shape of a Haoran. He was 917/5000ths through the "Manuscript of the Mutilated," a man who had been "Scourged" into a state of Total, Crystalline Atrophy.
The chapter documented the precise moment his internal organs began to "Ossify" into selenium-glass, his heart becoming a jagged, red-tinted diamond that beat with the frequency of a ticking bomb. He was a "Living Clock of Calamity," each tick a fresh violation of his remaining human dignity, each tock a Serrated Blade drawn across the memory of his sisters. The Archive's "Truth-Siphons" were no longer just drinking his pain; they were "Mining" his very soul-essence, turning his tragedy into a high-value commodity for the gods of the Deep. He was a "Fictional Commodity," and his value was measured in the intensity of the "Radioactive Gold" that spilled from his selenium-encrusted eyes, a liquid testimony to a life that had been Redacted into a Scream.
Every line of this chapter was a "Nail of Light" driven into his spirit, a fresh layer of "Narrative-Waste" piled upon a man who was already a ruin. He felt the "Uselessness of his Endurance," the terrifying realization that the more he survived, the more the Archive would invent new ways to shatter him. He was a "Dead Body on a Glass Cross," a puppet of the Archive's creative cruelty, his every spasm of pain a "Rhythm in the Dirge of the Forbidden Deep." The selenium trellis reached his optic nerves, "Overloading" them with images of his final death, showing him 4,083 different versions of Yuxiao's hand piercing his chest with a blade of Martian Iron.
The chapter reached its final crescendo as the selenium shell began to "Resonate" with the sanctuary's own structural failure, the vibration threatening to shake his very atoms into a cloud of blue dust. He was a "Bag of Shattered Math," a man who was no longer physically possible, yet held together by the Cruel, Inflexible Will of the Script. He felt the cold of the remaining chapters like a physical wall of ice pressing against his brain, a distance so vast it made the concept of "The End" feel like a hallucination. He was a dead man drowning in a sea of glass, a slave to the infinite manuscript, locked in a cycle of Eternal, Photonic Mutilation.
As the final lines of Chapter 917 settled into the cracked stone of the Jade Altar, Haoran gave one last, violent heave of his glass-filled chest, the sound of the selenium cracking inside his lungs echoing through the silent, terrified streets of the sanctuary. He was a "Ghost of the Deep," a protagonist who had been "Geometricized" into a shape of Pure, Unending Agony, waiting for the 918th strike of the hammer. The neon-blue light of the selenium glowed with a sickly, high-frequency radiance, reflecting the darkness of a void that offered no mercy and no exit. He was 917 chapters into his slaughter, and the remaining 4,083 were a Labyrinth of Fire, Glass, and Lead that he was required to walk until his very name was forgotten by the stars.
He looked at Yuxiao through the haze of his crystalline blindness, and in the depths of his shattered spirit, he felt the final "Rupture"—the realization that his love was not a shield, but the Anchor that Kept Him in the Furnace. But he could not stop loving her, and thus, he could not stop burning. The selenium trellis reached his brainstem, locking him in a Permanent Spasm of Total, Crystalline Desolation, a dead body that was still forbidden from resting, a martyr for a book that would never be finished until he was gone. There was no light in the selenium, no truth in the glass; there was only the Shattered, Jagged Reality of a man who was too broken to even find the mercy of a silent grave.