The forest had returned to silence, but it was no longer the same silence Xu Tianyin had known before. It was heavier now—charged, like a sky holding its breath before thunder.
Tianyin sat at the base of an ancient tree, shirt torn, skin marked by bruises and blood. His limbs ached, his shoulder throbbed, and his vision swam in and out of focus. He had barely survived.
And yet, he felt alive.
Not victorious, but real—as though every pain and cut proved his defiance against the heavens.
Bai Yeming crouched beside him, her voice low. "What you did just now—most cultivators won't understand it."
"They won't need to," Tianyin muttered.
Yeming nodded slowly. "But they'll fear it."
Her fingers brushed his pulse point. Not to heal—she couldn't. His body didn't respond to healing arts. But she was checking if he was still whole.
"You don't need to prove anything to me," she said softly. "But I need to know—do you want to continue?"
He looked up. "There's no going back."
"Then we have to leave this forest." She rose, eyes scanning the darkening canopy. "You've exposed yourself too early. Others will come."
Tianyin pulled himself to his feet, leaning slightly on the tree. "Let them."
"No," Yeming said. "Let us choose the battlefield next time."
She didn't wait for his agreement. With practiced ease, she slipped through the shadows, barely leaving a trace. He followed, slower but steady.
The trees thinned. The terrain changed.
For three days they traveled. Mountains loomed, streams curved through rocky paths, and birds scattered at their approach. They passed no villages, saw no people. But the presence of civilization began to hum faintly in the distance.
On the fourth morning, they reached the edge of a ruin—an ancient shrine long devoured by moss and silence.
Yeming halted.
Tianyin frowned. "Where are we?"
She turned to face him. "A place I've kept hidden. From the sects, from the clans. From the heavens."
She stepped through the half-cracked archway. He followed.
The ruins were quiet, but something deeper stirred beneath the soil—old inscriptions etched into broken stones, symbols like the ones on the tablet that had first awakened his void.
He felt it again. That subtle pull.
"I came here long ago," Yeming said, her voice echoing faintly. "When I first realized I could not walk the same path as others. This place… it responded to me."
She knelt before a broken pillar and placed her hand against it. The markings lit up, not with light, but with emptiness—a soft unraveling of presence, as though the stone itself stopped existing.
Tianyin's breath caught.
"It's the same," he whispered. "It's like what I felt when I awakened the void."
Yeming looked over her shoulder. "Because this place was built by those like us."
Tianyin stepped forward. "You mean there were others?"
"There always have been." She rose slowly. "But they either hid, or were erased. This path… the Fate-Scarring Void Path… has always been forbidden. Not because it is evil—"
"—but because it can't be controlled," Tianyin finished.
Yeming nodded.
And then she held out her hand.
"We build it together," she said. "From nothing. No stages. No realms. No heavens to guide or condemn us. Only the bond between what we are."
Tianyin looked at her hand for a long time.
Then he placed his hand in hers.
Their fingers interlaced.
And the void stirred. Not violently. Not hungrily.
But in acknowledgment.
Not as separate entities.
But as one.