The air in the city didn't just grow heavy; it stopped being air.
I was standing on the sidewalk with Old Man He when the traffic lights all turned a blinding, crystalline white at once. Every engine within a five-block radius died in a synchronized gasp of failing mechanics. The constant, irritating hum of the city—the static I had lived with for decades—was replaced by a silence so profound it felt like my ears were bleeding.
Then came the car.
It was a black sedan, long and sleek, moving without the sound of tires on asphalt. It stopped directly in front of Heavenly Brews. The door opened, and a man stepped out. He looked like the cover of a global finance magazine: a tailored charcoal suit that cost more than my apartment building, silver hair swept back with surgical precision, and a watch that didn't tell time, but seemed to track the rotation of the galaxies.
Old Man He dropped his erhu. The bow clattered on the pavement. "Sovereign," he whispered, his voice cracking. "That's not an immortal. That's... the Origin."
The man smiled, and for a second, I saw the reflection of a billion stars in his pupils. This was the Will of the Dao, the fundamental law of the universe, wearing a billionaire's skin.
"Chen Feng," he said. His voice didn't come from his throat; it resonated from the pavement, the air, and the marrow of my bones. "I am Director Zhou. I believe we have a merger to discuss."
"I don't sign contracts with entities that treat the world like a balance sheet," I said, my hand shifting toward the hidden hilt of a sword that existed only in the space between my thoughts.
"The Great Ebb was necessary," Zhou said, walking toward me. Each step he took left a faint, glowing footprint of golden grass that withered into ash a second later. "The system was crashing. I simply moved the data to a more secure server. But the Silos are leaking, and Yue Qin is... unstable. I want to offer you the position of Overseer. Help me manage the flow, and I will restore your palace. I will give you back the Radiant Peak."
I looked at him—at the cold, perfect logic in his eyes. He didn't care about the people in the coffee shop. He didn't care about the cats or the laundromats. To the Dao, we were just variables to be managed.
"You didn't come here to negotiate," I said, the "Chairman" in me rising to the surface. "You came here because the Reverse-Flow has already started, and you're afraid you can't stop the leak."
Zhou's smile didn't falter, but the temperature dropped forty degrees. "A variable that refuses to be solved is simply... deleted."
He raised a hand, and the world tilted.
The street didn't just explode; it dissolved.
Zhou didn't punch. He moved his fingers as if swiping a screen, and the gravity in the alleyway flipped ninety degrees. I was slammed against the brick wall, which was now the floor.
I didn't wait. I released the seal on my dantian. The green apron shredded as my Qi erupted—a silver, jagged aura that smelled of ancient forests and sharp steel. I manifested the Fallen Leaf Blade, a translucent sword made of compressed wind and old grudges.
We collided in mid-air, thirty feet above the dead traffic.
Our blades didn't make the sound of metal; they sounded like a mountain range grinding against the sky. Zhou moved with the terrifying efficiency of a law of nature. Every strike I made was diverted by a hair's breadth, as if the universe itself refused to let me hit him.
"You fight for a world that has forgotten you, Chen Feng!" Zhou roared, his suit jacket fluttering as he summoned a storm of golden equations that solidified into spears of light.
"I fight for a world that belongs to itself!" I countered. I swung the Fallen Leaf, a technique called The Autumn Gale.
A thousand blades of wind sliced through his golden spears, shattering them into dust.
We hit the ground simultaneously. The impact sent a shockwave that blew out every window on the street. I was breathing hard, the silver light of my aura flickering. Zhou stood ten feet away, his tie slightly loosened, a single drop of golden blood trickling down his cheek.
He looked at the blood on his finger with genuine curiosity.
"Intriguing," Zhou murmured. "You've integrated the mundane into your Dao. You aren't just an immortal; you're a virus in my code."
"The thing about viruses," I said, bracing my feet as the ground began to tremble, "is that we're very hard to get rid of."