The vast emptiness between Heaven's fractured domains stretched like an infinite sea of dust and starlight. This was the edge of known existence—the Whispering Void. Here, silence had weight. Here, even the light dared not linger.
As Xian Ren stepped beyond the broken celestial walls of the Ninth Heaven, the last remnants of the Divine Realm flickered behind him. His robes—once pristine white lined with starlight threads—were torn and darkened with the ash of fallen gods. Each step forward left behind a faint trail of flickering soul energy, unstable and wavering. His breath was heavy, not from exhaustion, but from the divine poison that still slithered unseen through the deepest layers of his soul.
Before him loomed a monolithic archway—a gateway carved from the bones of forgotten universes. The Library of Echoes.
It hovered in the void without foundation. A cathedral that defied gravity, time, and reason. Its spires reached upward into spiraling galaxies, piercing nebula clouds that bled streams of violet light. Each tower hummed with the murmurs of voices long dead, and etched along the curved bridge leading to it were golden runes older than memory.
Each step Xian Ren took across the sky-bridge echoed with a soundless thud. Beneath the translucent floor, fragments of reality drifted—floating islands of time long lost, memories unclaimed, and worlds that had never been born. Faces occasionally flickered in the mist below—some innocent, some monstrous—all watching.
His soul flared in resistance. The Divine Mana Poison pulsed, reacting to the density of ancient knowledge. A jagged line of silver-black light cracked across his right eye—an external sign of internal damage. Still, he pressed on.
Inside the archway, the light changed. It was no longer divine. It was soft, warm, almost... nostalgic. Lanterns floated through the air, held up by drifting quills made of phoenix feathers. Scrolls unraveled themselves mid-air and rewound, like breathing beings. Entire bookshelves walked along shifting floors, rearranging themselves. The very air smelled of old parchment and crushed lotus petals.
But silence remained king.
At the heart of the chamber, atop a spiral of floating stairs that moved with Xian Ren's heartbeat, sat a singular throne grown from starlight vines. And in it—a woman.
She was draped in robes of silk that shimmered with multiversal threadwork. Her hair flowed across the floor like a pool of liquid night, yet her skin was pale as marble. But most striking of all were her eyes: they were entirely golden, like the last light of a dying sun, and they did not blink.
Xian Ren stopped at the base of the spiral and spoke, his voice strained but firm.
"Goddess Ming Hua."
Her head tilted, voice a whisper wrapped in bells. "The god who broke Heaven stands in my archive, and he dares speak my name."
Xian Ren ascended slowly, each step echoing louder than the last. "I was told you know the paths between worlds."
She watched him, eyes narrowing—not in hatred, but in curiosity.
"Your soul... it is damaged. You reek of collapse," she said, inhaling as if tasting the air. "You should not exist here. And yet... here you are."
Xian Ren's jaw clenched. "Tell me where she is."
Ming Hua smiled faintly. "Ah, love. The oldest lie and the newest war."
A flick of her finger summoned a floating tome. It opened mid-air, revealing a single glowing sigil—a spinning fractal that morphed constantly, never holding form.
"You seek a soul. But she is not yours to reclaim."
"She is my wife!" he barked. "Her soul was stolen—bartered away as if she were currency!"
Ming Hua nodded slowly. "Yes, Because she is." She tapped the sigil with one long, crystalline nail. "Her soul bears the Eternal Spirit Constitution. Do you know what that means in the architecture of the multiverse?"
He frowned. "She is a keystone."
"Exactly a thread that holds realms from crumbling. Without her, the world she was sent to would have fallen into voidfire. Your love... became another world's salvation."
Xian Ren stepped closer, fists trembling. "Then I will tear down that world."
The air turned sharp. The lanterns dimmed.
"No," she said softly, firmly. "You won't."
She rose from her throne, floating slightly above the stairs, eyes boring into his soul. The entire Library stilled.
"You don't understand the truth of the Multiverse Law."
A flick of her hand opened the walls of the Library, revealing swirling orbs—each representing a realm. Some were bright, some cracked, others burning at the edges. Between them, tiny threads shimmered—connections of mana.
She pointed at one orb pulsing dimly in the distance.
"That is the world she was sent to Veylanth. A realm with its own native mana."
Xian Ren's soul flickered. "Then show me the path—"
"No," she interrupted. "Because you do not belong."
She swept her hand again, and one of the threads connecting two worlds snapped with a quiet pop. "Each realm's mana is unique. Living beings are born attuned to it. Even gods—especially gods—are molded by their world's source."
Her voice was a song of finality:
"If a soul formed in Heaven enters a world built on foreign mana, the soul will dissolve and unmake itself. Your essence would shatter upon entry."
The words struck like thunder. For a heartbeat, Xian Ren stood frozen.
"And Ling'er?" he asked hoarsely.
"She would never know you came. Your soulprint would vanish before your presence could even register. There will be no memory, nor reunion that will be just... erasure."
The silence that followed was unbearable.
Xian Ren dropped to one knee, not out of submission—but because his body could no longer keep up with the weight in his chest. His soul wavered again, images of Yue Ling'er flashing before his mind's eye: her laughter, her tears, her final breath.
He looked up, desperate. "There must be a way."
Ming Hua stepped closer, almost mournful now. "Even your love cannot rewrite what binds worlds together."
Her hand reached for his shoulder—but stopped just short.
"Leave before your soul fully collapses within these walls."
But he didn't move.
He whispered instead, "Then I will find another law. One not written in this Library."
Ming Hua paused. Her golden eyes softened—for just a second. Then she turned away, returning to her throne.
"The void whispers... louder for those who defy it."
As Xian Ren staggered back down the spiraling steps, the Library shifted behind him—books closing, lanterns dimming, the floating orbs of the multiverse swirling in solemn silence.
When he reached the exit, he looked back once. Ming Hua remained seated, but a small tear traced down her pale cheek.
For the first time in a thousand years, the Whispering Void echoed with a heartbeat.
And far away, across impossible distance, a dying world pulsed faintly—as if it heard.
To be continued…