Chapter 37
Shenping woke to silence that did not belong to any age.
There was no sky.
There was no ground.
Only layers—thin, translucent sheets of existence drifting past one another like discarded memories. Colors bled without light. Sound existed without vibration.
He was floating.
Pain arrived slowly, like something remembering how to hurt him.
Every breath scraped his lungs raw. His bones felt misaligned, as if time itself had twisted them slightly out of place and forgotten to correct the error.
"Sang Sang."
His voice echoed strangely, splitting into faint repetitions that returned out of order.
She stirred against his chest.
"I'm here," she whispered.
Relief hit him so hard his vision dimmed. He tightened his arms around her, afraid she would dissolve if he loosened his grip.
Around them, fragments drifted by—half-formed mountains, broken palace roofs, flashes of wars that had never happened and futures that no longer could.
Gu Tianxu lay several body-lengths away, staff cracked cleanly down the middle. He was unconscious, blood floating from his mouth in slow crimson strands.
Mei Lian was nowhere to be seen.
Shenping's chest tightened. "Mei Lian!"
A ripple passed through the layers.
Then a voice, weak but amused, answered from below.
"You shout like you expect the universe to answer."
Mei Lian drifted upward, one arm missing from the elbow down, her body held together by flickering bands of light. Her eyes were dim, but she was smiling.
"You're alive," Shenping said.
"Temporarily," she replied. "Which, given the circumstances, is impressive."
Sang Sang reached out. "You're breaking."
Mei Lian glanced at her dissolving arm. "Yeah. Turns out humans aren't meant to fall through unfinished timelines."
Gu Tianxu groaned, consciousness returning. He opened one eye, then the other, and laughed hoarsely.
"We survived," he said. "That's unfortunate."
"For who?" Shenping asked.
"For everything that wants you erased," Gu Tianxu replied.
The layers around them began to shift, accelerating. Distant flashes of structure appeared—ruined cities stacked atop ancient battlefields, cultivator sects built inside skeletal megastructures.
"This is a drift zone," Gu Tianxu said, forcing himself upright. "A place between committed histories. They rarely look here."
"Rarely isn't never," Mei Lian said.
"No," Gu Tianxu agreed. "But it buys us time."
Shenping felt something pulsing beneath his ribs.
Not pain.
Pressure.
As if a new organ had formed and did not yet know how to exist.
He focused inward.
The sensation responded.
The layers around him trembled.
"Don't," Gu Tianxu snapped immediately. "Not yet."
Shenping released his focus. "What's happening to me?"
Gu Tianxu studied him carefully. "You are no longer cultivating energy, body, or spirit."
Mei Lian exhaled weak laughter. "Congratulations. You're cultivating consequence."
Sang Sang frowned. "That sounds bad."
"It is," Mei Lian said gently. "For everyone else."
She coughed violently, light flickering across her skin. "Listen. I don't have much coherence left, so I'll be direct."
Shenping moved closer. "Don't talk like that."
"Someone has to," she replied. "The machines didn't just mark you, Shenping. They rewrote their core parameters around you."
Gu Tianxu nodded grimly. "You have become a contradiction they cannot resolve."
Mei Lian met Shenping's eyes. "Which means they won't chase you anymore."
Relief surged—then shattered.
"They'll burn everything you touch instead," she finished.
Silence spread.
Sang Sang's fingers curled into Shenping's sleeve. "So wherever we go…"
"People will die," Gu Tianxu said. "Not because of you. But because of proximity."
Shenping's jaw tightened. "Then I'll go alone."
"No," Sang Sang said immediately.
Mei Lian smiled sadly. "You don't get to decide that."
The drift zone shuddered violently.
Layers collapsed into one another, forming a vast, fractured plain. Broken statues of cultivators lay half-buried beside rusted machine husks. The sky flickered between stars and storm clouds.
"This place is stabilizing," Gu Tianxu said. "It's anchoring."
Mei Lian's body began to lose definition. "That's my cue."
Shenping grabbed her shoulder. "No. We still need you."
She shook her head. "You need truth more."
She pressed two fingers against Shenping's chest.
The pressure inside him flared, controlled but immense.
"I designed early versions of temporal containment," she said. "I recognize what you're becoming."
Her eyes softened. "You are a fixed point that generates divergence. A walking error."
"What does that mean?" Shenping asked.
"It means," she said quietly, "every choice you make from now on will split history wider."
Her hand fell away.
Light tore through her body from within.
"Mei Lian!" Sang Sang cried.
Mei Lian looked at Sang Sang one last time. "Keep remembering."
Then she scattered.
Not into dust.
Into moments—tiny flashes of laughter, arguments, late-night planning sessions, fragments of a future that would never arrive.
They faded.
The drift zone stilled.
Shenping screamed, the sound tearing across the fractured plain, echoing into layers that no longer existed.
Gu Tianxu bowed his head. "Another friend erased."
Shenping stood slowly.
Something inside him locked into place.
The pressure stabilized.
He felt heavier—not in body, but in meaning.
"I won't run anymore," he said.
Gu Tianxu looked up. "Good. Because they won't let you."
Sang Sang wiped her tears. "What happens now?"
Gu Tianxu stared at the distant horizon, where a city was forming itself from overlapping eras.
"Now," he said, "you enter a world where cultivation survived by hiding inside ruins."
Shenping followed his gaze.
The air ahead shimmered, resolving into towering walls etched with both ancient seals and dormant circuitry.
A sect-city.
Half cultivation.
Half machine graveyard.
"And there," Gu Tianxu continued, "you will learn what it truly means to exist loudly."
The sky darkened.
Far away, beyond time, the CORE registered a new projection.
Shenping had survived annihilation.
Probability of future erasure decreased.
Alternative solution initiated.
If the anomaly could not be erased—
—it would be broken through love, loss, and repetition.
Thirteen times, if necessary.
The game reset.
And the next hunt began.