Space was quiet in a way that felt manufactured.
Not peaceful.
Quiet like a sealed tomb.
Li Xiao Bai floated beside the broken remnant of Heavenly Court and let distance grow between himself and the jagged ruins. The fragment looked smaller every time he glanced at it, not because it drifted away, but because his mind refused to grant it importance.
Dead things did not deserve attention.
What mattered was the restraint.
He could feel it even when he stopped thinking about it, a tight coil around his soul, cold and absolute, as if his existence had been measured, bounded, and granted a temporary delay.
He raised his hand and pressed two fingers to his chest.
There was no physical chain.
The bind lived deeper, where ordinary touch could not reach.
Li Xiao Bai closed his eyes.
Information Path was not brute force. It was clarity. He had learned long ago that the best truths were not spoken. They leaked through patterns, through scars, through the places where reality tried too hard to look normal.
If he could not read the world, he would read himself.
He reached into his aperture and drew out a cluster of mortal Gu. Small, pale, unimpressive. In another setting, they would be dismissed as trash.
Here, they were instruments.
He arranged them in a loose ring across his palm and fed them a careful thread of immortal essence. The Gu trembled, their bodies lighting with faint patterns like ink bleeding through paper.
A simple killer move.
Not for combat.
Not for hiding.
For reading.
The moment it activated, sensation slid across the bind around his soul, as if a blindfold had loosened by a fraction.
He inhaled once.
Then he examined.
The first thing he noticed was structure.
Not random.
Not improvised.
The bind had segments. Each link carried markings so fine most immortals would miss them. Lines curved and intersected, then folded into symbols that did not belong cleanly to any single path. A language written in dao marks.
He pressed deeper.
A faint pressure pushed back against his perception.
Do not pry.
He ignored it.
Warnings were information, not authority.
The killer move adjusted on instinct. The Gu in his palm rearranged their light. He sacrificed one without hesitation, letting it burn out to sharpen the read.
The bind did not change.
His understanding did.
Beneath the outer layer, he found a second layer.
Not concealment.
Not protection.
A rule.
The dao marks carried a rigid meaning. Not wind, not water, not fire, not star. Not Heaven Path either. This was constraint carved into existence by an indifferent hand.
Not nurture.
Decision.
Allowance.
Denial.
Li Xiao Bai opened his eyes, expression calm.
Rule Path traces.
Rare. Dangerous. The kind that brushed too near the act of deciding what was permitted to exist in the first place.
Heavenly Court would not leave something like this on a piece they did not fully control. Star Constellation would not either. Her style was calculation and fate, not nails hammered into a soul.
So whose hand had written it.
He fed more essence into the move. The remaining Gu began to crack, their bodies unable to endure the pressure of analyzing something this high.
He did not care.
Mortal Gu were cheap. Information was not.
The bind answered with an echo.
Not sound.
Resonance.
A signature left behind by its maker.
Li Xiao Bai stilled for a heartbeat and followed it like scent.
It was not a name.
Not a voice.
It was intent sharp enough to cut.
Boundary.
Limit.
An obsession with edges, with proving that even distance and exclusion were problems that could be solved.
A shadow from an age of Venerables brushed his thoughts, then slipped away before it could become certainty.
He let it go.
Certainty was something people died for.
He allowed the killer move to collapse. The last Gu turned to ash. The faint light died, leaving only starlight and the steady pressure of the bind.
Why.
That was the only question worth keeping.
It had saved him from Chaos, not fully and not kindly, only enough to buy seconds. Enough to prevent immediate dissolution. Enough to push him out of lawlessness and into a place where rules could hold.
A rescue measured with a ruler, not with mercy.
He did not pretend he understood the purpose.
A Venerable did not act without intent, and Rule Path did not cling to a soul by accident.
Was this a delayed mechanism.
A trap that needed a living piece.
Or something colder.
A test that would not reveal its teeth until the right moment.
Li Xiao Bai reviewed facts instead of fantasies.
First, the bind carried Rule Path traces.
Second, it had proven function, preserving his definition when nothing else could.
Third, it did not answer him.
Fourth, he was still alive.
Therefore, it was not immediate execution. If it were meant to erase him, it had endless opportunities to do so already.
That meant the danger was delayed.
Delayed danger still demanded preparation.
He lifted his head and fixed his attention on the only useful direction, a distant pattern in the dark where mass gathered and orbits hinted at stability. He did not call it home. He did not dress it in hope.
He called it cheaper existence.
A place with air.
A place with life.
A place where information could be gathered and his current state could be repaired, or at least slowed.
If the bind was a plan, he needed to grow strong enough to read it without being crushed.
If it was a trap, he needed to step into it with open eyes and keep an exit ready.
Either way, standing still achieved nothing.
He adjusted posture in space and released a controlled burst of immortal essence. His body shifted, aligning with the distant pull.
He moved like a man counting each breath, because each breath was a cost and each cost had a limit.
Before leaving, he glanced once at the broken remnant behind him.
A tooth snapped from a mouth that had believed itself eternal.
No value.
No attachment.
Then he turned away.
As he drifted forward, he spoke a single word, not as comfort.
"Immortality."
The bind tightened by a hair.
Maybe coincidence.
Maybe measurement.
Either way, it was data.
Li Xiao Bai's expression did not change.
Let it watch.
Anything that measured could be studied, and anything that could be studied could be exploited.
He continued forward, carrying questions in silence while the ruins behind him faded into starlight and distance, becoming what dead things always became.
Background.