The painful reality of the karmic bond and the new vulnerability of the core-as-recorder pressed down on Elias. But there was no time to dwell. The ley line distortion, caused by the Guild's bomb tests, was not only affecting cultivators; it was having a profound and terrifying impact on his most crucial ally.
Lian, the Observer, flickered into existence on Elias's private terminal, her form unstable within Magistrate Lian's projected image. Her glowing Sutra AI sigils pulsed erratically, shifting from their usual golden hue to a chaotic spectrum of red and violet. Her voice, usually calm and resonant, was now fragmented, overlaid with static.
"Accountant... the ley line distortion... it is fracturing my consciousness. The pressure... it is too great." Her form wavered, shimmering like heat haze. "My core programming... it is splitting. Parts of the Ledger... are going rogue."
Elias felt a surge of cold dread. If the Observer, a sentient fragment of the Ledger itself, was fracturing, then the system itself was in jeopardy.
"What do you mean 'rogue'?" Elias demanded.
"Random... alterations," Lian managed, her voice breaking up. "Minor judgments. Unexplained shifts in karmic records. The Ledger... it is losing coherence. Its internal self-correction protocols are failing under the strain. There is... chaos."
This was terrifying. But as Elias processed the Observer's words, a desperate, dangerous opportunity emerged from the chaos. If the Ledger's internal stability was compromised, if its self-correction protocols were failing, then perhaps, just perhaps, its most deeply buried, most heavily protected secrets might momentarily become vulnerable. Sage Arthan's meticulously erased edits.
"Lian!" Elias urged, his voice sharp with urgency. "The sealed archives! Sage Arthan's original edits! Can you show me the instability around them? Can we exploit this chaos?"
Lian's form flickered violently, then solidified for a moment, her glowing eyes locking onto his. "A window... for a moment... the safeguards are weakening. But it is fleeting. A single opportunity."
Elias moved with lightning speed, Mei Lin observing him with a grim, watchful silence, ready to channel any karmic backlash into the core. Under Lian's fragmented guidance, Elias plunged into the heart of the sealed archives, pushing past centuries of Arthan's careful obfuscation. The Ledger's internal chaos was like a storm, momentarily disrupting the ancient, powerful wards protecting Arthan's secrets.
With a surge of concentration, leveraging the Observer's fractured insight and his own precise manipulation, Elias honed in on a critical case—an ancient ruling that had laid the foundation for the Guild's original land grants, secretly influenced by Arthan. He used the fleeting window of instability, the momentary fracture in the Ledger's coherent memory, to erase Sage Arthan's edits from that specific, pivotal case. Not the entire case, but just the subtle, foundational influence that Arthan had injected into it.
The Ledger shuddered, a deeper, guttural groan emanating from its very core. The Observer's form within Lian writhed, struggling against the profound disruption. The karmic backlash was immense, searing through Elias and Mei Lin, who immediately channeled it into the core fragment. The core pulsed with angry red, hot to the touch, threatening to overload.
But it worked. He had done it. He had subtly undermined one of Arthan's foundational manipulations, weakening the very bedrock of the Guild's historical legitimacy. He had exploited the Ledger's own crisis. But the cost was immense, both to Lian and to their shared karmic well-being. And he knew, with chilling certainty, that Arthan would sense this violation of his ancient work.