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In those hurried days, there was no time for deeper thought. Looking back now... In the calamity of the fallin…

In those hurried days, there was no time for deeper thought. Looking back now... In the calamity of the falling city, I made three grave mistakes. First: I was trapped inside the maze array and could not face this disaster alongside my fellow disciples... Never mind whether it was Heaven's will or man's design... there must have been signs long before... yet I fixated only on the matter of accusation and punishment... first inviting the elders to bear witness... Then... there was that appointment... one thing after another... and in the end I noticed nothing... Second: I broke faith with those dearest to me... and brought this calamity upon Swallow and Falcon... I kept watch by Swallow's side for only a single day, then left before he woke, without a word... Those two children are so clever. How could they have met such a fate? And what wrong had all our fellow disciples in the city ever done... Third: when I heard the city had caught fire again, I rushed there at once and left not a single word behind... Only when I reached the Chamber of Derivation did I learn that ███ had in fact been connected to the array's central workings... I still do not know who sealed it inside an iron casing... though it bought us a little time, the blaze soon surged skyward again... After a hundred years of calculation and projection, the array stood on the brink of collapse... worse still, there was the danger of an explosion that could destroy the mountain... There was no choice but to use my own body as a bridge... to guide qi through my inner meridian... and redirect... the array's central mechanism... ... I can only hope that by the time you read this letter... I will already have spent myself utterly, and the work will be complete... Then the labor of generations will not have been wasted after all... The calculation array may yet be set in motion again... and the dream of flight... may yet live on...