If I, a death row inmate, am not to become a demon, am I to become a member of the Imperial Guard?

The ground beneath their feet shattered without warning.

Zhou Yang's vision blurred, and his body lost its support, plummeting rapidly. The assassin's terrified face, the flickering firelight at the edge of the ravine, and the distant drumbeats were all swallowed up by the endless darkness in an instant.

There was no scream. He simply tensed his muscles instinctively, bracing for the impact.

But the expected excruciating pain did not come.

The feeling of weightlessness suddenly disappeared, and his feet firmly touched solid ground. Zhou Yang immediately took a half step back, pressing his back against the cold wall, his eyes scanning his surroundings warily.

He was standing in a corridor.

A corridor that stretches as far as the eye can see.

The walls, ceiling, and floor of the corridor were all made of the same dark metal, smooth as a mirror, yet reflecting no light whatsoever. The light source came from the blades themselves. Every half a zhang (approximately 3.3 meters) along both sides of the corridor, a huge blade protruded from the wall. These blades varied in size and shape; some resembled crescent moons, some willow leaves, and some were thick, broadswords.

They are all rotating.

With a low hum, they spun in alternating directions and at different speeds. The edges of the blades gleamed with a ghostly blue light, casting an eerie glow throughout the corridor. The air was filled with the acrid smell of machine oil and rubbed steel.

Zhou Yang tried to reach out and approach the nearest rotating blade. A chilling wave of air rushed towards him, stinging his cheek. This thing was powerful enough to grind a person into mincemeat in an instant.

"A meat grinder..." The word popped into his mind.

He wasn't trapped; he was sent into a working machine. This was no simple illusion. The Cycle of Reincarnation lived up to its name.

He tried to connect with the black mist within his body. With a thought, wisps of black energy seeped from his palm. This black mist was the power he gained by burning his lifespan, and it was indestructible.

The black mist transformed into a hand, slowly reaching towards a spinning broadsword.

There was no earth-shattering collision.

The moment the black mist hand touched the blade, it was like a drop of water falling into boiling oil, making a slight "sizzle" sound before being completely absorbed. The eerie blue light of the broad-bladed sword seemed to brighten even slightly.

Zhou Yang's heart sank.

He immediately withdrew the black mist, but felt an unprecedented weakness. It wasn't physical exhaustion, but a depletion of his very life force. It was as if a part of him had been forcibly ripped out of his body.

He immediately looked inward at himself.

Lifespan!

His lifespan was slipping away at a slow but relentless pace. With each passing breath, he could clearly feel a section of his lifeline being severed. This feeling was completely different from when he actively burned his lifespan. Active burning was a controlled transaction. Now, however, he had become a leaky bucket, his life being slowly drained away by this space.

Zhou Yang's expression changed. He finally understood where the trap in this first illusion was.

It's not trying to kill you.

It will wear you down.

Force is useless here; on the contrary, it will only become a death warrant. His use of the black mist just now was like adding fuel to this machine, making it burn even brighter and accelerating the rate at which it drained his lifespan.

"Interesting." He forced himself to calm down.

Don't panic. The more desperate the situation, the more you need to stay calm. He began to move slowly down the corridor, carefully avoiding the spinning blades.

He walked for the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, passing by at least hundreds of blades, but the scene ahead remained unchanged. Still the dark metal walls, still the endless forest of blades shimmering with a ghostly blue light.

He stopped and turned around to look back.

The road we came from was just as unfathomable.

Space loop.

He was trapped in an endless, repetitive space. Whether he moved forward or backward, he was simply spinning in place. And with each cycle, his lifespan was consumed. There was no food, no water, only the ceaseless blades and the ever-flowing flow of life.

Most people would probably be in despair by now. Fear and helplessness would overwhelm reason like a tide, eventually draining them of their last drop of blood in madness and collapse.

Zhou Yang, however, sat down against the wall.

He found two blades with the safest spinning trajectory and the largest gap between them, leaned against the cold wall, and curled up. The coldness of the metal seeped through his clothes, but it only made his mind clearer.

Panic doesn't solve anything. Neither does anger.

Since force is useless, let's use our brains.

He closed his eyes, no longer looking at the road ahead or the destination, but immersing himself entirely in the sounds around him. The hum of the spinning blades, high and low, blended into a monotonous and oppressive symphony.

At first, the sounds were chaotic and disordered, like a swarm of annoying flies buzzing in his ears.

But gradually, he began to discern the differences.

The knife rotates three times per breath.

The handle next to it rotates two and a half times per breath.

Further away, a row of slender scalpels rotated at exactly the same speed, like a precise gear set.

Time passed slowly. His lifespan was also slipping away. His body grew weaker and weaker, and a weariness that seemed to originate from his very bones began to spread. Zhou Yang ignored it all. Like a highly focused craftsman, he listened intently to the sounds of every part of this enormous machine at work.

He was looking for patterns.

Every machine, as long as it's running, has its own patterns. And where there are patterns, there are flaws.

He began to count silently in his mind, using the fastest spinning knife as a reference to calculate the time it took for each rotation.

one two Three……

He didn't know how much time had passed; his consciousness was becoming hazy. Zhou Yang forced himself to stay awake and continued counting.

When he counted to the number "forty-nine", something unexpected happened!

"clang!"

A soft but clear cracking sound, as if an invisible giant hand had pressed the pause button.

The continuous buzzing sound disappeared completely in that instant.

All the spinning blades in the corridor, regardless of size or rotation speed, froze at the same moment. Those blades, shimmering with a ghostly blue light, now resembled exquisite works of art, frozen in mid-air.

The whole world fell into a deathly silence.

This deathly silence lasted only a moment.

"Buzz—"

The next moment, all the blades started spinning again, and the buzzing sound filled the entire space once more, as if nothing had happened.

But Zhou Yang's eyes suddenly opened in the darkness, flashing with a sharp light.

His pupils reflected the blades that had begun to spin again.

It rotates forty-nine times.

A period of stagnation.

The pause lasted for only one breath.

This is the pulse of this "meat grinder." A tiny, yet fatal flaw.

He found the key.