There are rituals that mend wounds.
There are rituals that summon power.
And then there are rituals that hold existence together.
Qin Wumian stood at the center of the latter.
The sky above the Upper Realm was split open, not by war, but by instability.
Cracks in the fabric of causality bled pale light into the void. Entire eras were overlapping. Past and future grinding against each other like misaligned gears. If the fracture expanded further, timelines would collapse into paradox, and existence would begin to devour itself.
At the center of the fracture stood Qin Wumian.
The Time-Space Sovereign.
Master of the River of Time. Guardian of intervals. Last descendant of the Thirteenth Clan.
Beneath his feet, an ancient formation rotated — thirteen interlocking rings of light, each representing a law of continuity. The ritual was not an attack.
It was a stitch.
He was stitching reality closed.
And once begun, it could not be interrupted.
Not paused. Not reversed. Not abandoned.
If he broke concentration for even a breath —
The fracture would widen.
Worlds would overlap. Civilizations would vanish. Children would be born into moments that no longer existed.
He had calculated every possible outcome.
There were none where he stepped away.
And so he stood.
Eyes closed.
Hands steady.
Holding the River in place.
--------
He did not see the betrayal unfold behind him.
He sensed it.
A ripple wrong in rhythm. A hesitation too deliberate. A silence that did not belong.
But he could not turn.
The ritual demanded everything.
His mind was split across centuries, guiding timelines back into alignment, sealing fractures with threads of causality drawn from his own Dao.
The first strike came not from enemies.
It came from kin.
A spatial lock descended, invisible and precise, aimed not at his body — but at his sovereignty.
They were not trying to kill him.
They were trying to cage him.
To seize his Dao.
To redistribute time itself among bloodline clans who had long resented that the strongest power in existence did not belong to them.
And when that failed —
They enacted the backup plan.
A Heaven-sanctioned erasure.
A decree of absolute deletion.
The target:
Qin Wumian.
- - -
Mu Lian felt it before Qin Wumian did.
She stood outside the formation's outer ring, powerless in comparison to the forces gathering.
She's a normal person.
Born mortal. Cultivated through sheer will. Never destined for immortality.
She had no bloodline.
No divine inheritance.
Just stubbornness.
And love.
She looked at him — suspended in radiance, unmoving, unshakable — and she understood something instantly.
He would not stop the ritual.
Not for pain. Not for betrayal.
Because if he did —
Everyone would pay any many innocent life would cease to exists.
And so Mu Lian stepped forward.
The erasure decree descended like a blade of white law.
It did not burn.
It did not explode.
It simply corrected existence.
Mu Lian moved into its path.
There was no grand scream.
No slow-motion tragedy.
Just a soft intake of breath.
The decree struck.
And reality complied.
Her name detached first.
Then her record.
Then her thread.
She did not fall.
She unregistered.
The world forgot to remember her.
- - -
Inside the ritual, Qin Wumian felt it.
A void where something should be.
A subtraction in his internal archive.
He forced his awareness outward —
And saw Mu Lian...
Mid-step. Mid-breath.
Turning her head slightly toward him.
She was smiling.
Not afraid.
Not regretful.
Just proud.
"You're too stubborn, but that's what i like about you..." she whispered.
And then —
She was gone.
- - -
The ritual demanded continuation.
He could not break it.
If he stopped —
The fracture above would consume everything.
He screamed.
But only inside himself.
Because the River still needed him steady.
He finished the stitch.
He closed the fracture.
He sealed the timeline.
And the moment it stabilized —
He moved.
- - -
Time froze.
Space inverted.
The battlefield shattered into layered echoes.
His kinsmen were lifted from reality and slammed against the weight of their own causality.
He did not hesitate.
He did not question.
He retaliated.
A gesture.
And three clans lost a century of existence.
A step.
And spatial architects were folded into singularities.
A glance.
And Heaven's observers were forced to retreat.
He was unstoppable.
Unquestionable.
Absolute.
But it was too late.
He reached into the River of Time.
He searched Mu Lian's thread.
He searched her echo.
He searched her probability shadow.
but he found nothing.
The decree had not killed her.
It had prevented her from ever being.
There was no moment to rewind to.
No alternate branch to retrieve.
She was erased beyond intervention.
Even for him.. the Time Sovereign
- - -
That was when he understood.
The betrayal was never meant to kill him.
It was meant to break him.
If he had stopped the ritual —
Everything will collapses and many innocent people will cease to exists.
If he completed it —
Mu Lian dies.
There had never been a world where he saved both.
And Heaven knew it.
- - -
He stood alone on a stabilized sky.
Fragments of divine law falling like ash around him.
His enemies broken.
His power unmatched.
And the silence louder than war.
He could destroy Heaven.
He could unravel divine mandate.
He could end bloodline supremacy in one violent correction.
But what then?
More erasures. More sacrifices. More Mu Lians.
Revenge would not bring her back.
And dominance would not quiet the hunger that created this.
So instead —
He chose something worse.
He chose restraint.
- - -
He gathered the remnants of the Thirteenth Clan.
He erased their name from history at their request.
He sealed his Time and Space Dao.
He shattered his cultivation.
He blinded himself willingly.
He descended to the mortal realm.
Not as punishment.
As choice.
Because if the strongest power in existence refused to dominate —
Perhaps the world would learn.
Perhaps it would hesitate.
Perhaps no one else would be forced to step between a sovereign and a decree.
- - -
As he fell from the Upper Realm —
He whispered the only thing that remained of her.
"Mu Lian."
The River of Time did not answer.
It could not.
But it flowed.
And in the narrow space between seconds —
Sovereignty began again.
- - -