A Body Falls, a Voice Echoes
The morning began with birdsong.
It ended with a corpse dropping from the sky into the Nexus Courtyard.
He was a cultivator—bare-chested, eyes rolled back, skin engraved with twisted glyphs that pulsed like veins of molten fear.
From his mouth spilled only one word, over and over:
> "Hush… hush… hush…"
Lady Aria's guards moved instantly. So did Nihila's. But the moment they neared, the corpse screamed.
> Not audibly.
But in reverse soul frequency—a psychic detonation that shattered the inner ear, twisted thought, and made even high-level immortals weep like lost children.
Aria's melody barriers ruptured.
Nihila's silence fields flickered.
And Tianming descended from the Nexus throne above—wearing gold robes and a calm expression.
He reached for the sword strapped to his back.
---
The Echoing Silence Blade Awakens
> "So she's begun sending her children," Tianming murmured.
He drew the Echoing Silence Blade.
The very act of drawing it caused silence and sound to split the air in two—left and right, as if the world were a stage curtain being opened.
The cursed cultivator looked up—and laughed. His voice sounded like twenty screaming children singing their own funeral chants.
> "He carries her broken song!" the cursed man cackled. "The discord! The lie! The—"
Tianming stepped forward.
> "You're right."
> "Huh?"
> "This blade is a lie. So is your existence. So is mine."
He activated both modes.
The blade hummed on one side—pure resonance, pulsing in tune with Aria's lyre.
The other side vanished into shadow—an anti-sound, quenching even thought.
And then—he slashed.
---
The First Paradox Strike
The Harmonic Paradox Slash activated.
The cultivator didn't die.
He was erased.
There was no blood. No scream. No final curse.
He simply ceased to be—replaced by a trembling ripple in space-time that smelled faintly of burning incense and childhood memories.
A heartbeat later, half the courtyard forgot what they'd seen.
---
Aria and Nihila Respond
Aria was the first to recover. She rushed to Tianming.
> "That blade—why does it carry my song?! You took a piece of my soul!"
Nihila stepped in, voice like falling frost.
> "He took from me as well. You let him? Or did he steal in secret?"
> "Enough," Tianming said, blade still glowing.
He looked at them both—radiant with imperial charisma, but his eyes haunted.
> "I forged this weapon because we're at war… and you two are too proud to call it one."
Silence. Even from Nihila.
> "I didn't take from you to dominate you," he added. "I took from you so I could protect what neither of you can see anymore—the future."
Aria's hands trembled.
> "You used me…"
Nihila turned away.
> "You may have doomed yourself."
Tianming sheathed the blade. A musical sigh and a silent blink folded reality back into place.
---
Atop the Nexus: Watching Eyes
From high above, within a plane stitched into the corner of the sky, the Goddess of Unheard Screams laughed.
> "He's begun to play."
She raised her hand, and another cursed seed bloomed between her fingers—a fetus-shaped soul wrapped in barbed memory.
> "Next time, let's send him a song he can't harmonize with."
Her mouth opened into infinity.
And something answered.
---