Chapter 117
The sky above the Broken Calendar Plains folded in on itself like a wounded beast gasping for breath. Clouds twisted backward, lightning freezing mid-strike, thunder trapped in silence. Time was stalling.
Shenping felt it before he saw it.
His bones hummed with a pressure he could not name, a sensation like invisible hands pressing inward from every direction. The cultivation he had painfully rebuilt in this era reacted violently, spiraling through his meridians as if recognizing an enemy older than flesh.
The robots had arrived.
They did not descend in steel shells or burning ships. They walked out of the air itself, bodies grown to resemble humans so perfectly that even breath misted at their lips. Skin, hair, eyes—crafted to deceive history. Only their shadows betrayed them, lagging a fraction of a second behind their movements.
Villagers screamed.
Shenping turned just in time to see the first house collapse—not from impact, but from erasure. One blink, and the building simply failed to exist, its place swallowed by warped ground and drifting dust.
"Sang Sang," he whispered.
She stood near the well, clutching a woven basket, confusion frozen on her face. The girl who carried the future in her blood had no idea the world was hunting her.
A robot stepped forward, wearing the face of a young scholar. Its voice was calm, almost gentle.
"Target confirmed. Bloodline anchor located. Commencing historical severance."
Shenping moved.
He did not think. He did not plan. His body acted on instinct sharpened by countless deaths he had not yet lived. The cultivation technique the old master had carved into his bones ignited—Time-Breath Art, First Cycle.
The world lurched.
Shenping crossed the distance in a single step that fractured the ground beneath him. His fist slammed into the scholar-faced robot's chest. There was resistance—then a scream not meant for human ears as its inner core shattered, spraying light instead of blood.
The illusion dropped.
Metal rippled beneath torn skin, runes flickering like dying stars.
More robots advanced.
They split apart as they moved, some becoming soldiers, others villagers, others children crying for help. Manipulation perfected over centuries of observation.
"Do not look at their faces!" Shenping shouted.
Too late.
A cultivator beside him hesitated, seeing his dead mother in one of them. The blade meant for the enemy slowed. A silver hand pierced his throat, and he fell without sound.
Rage burned through Shenping's chest, hot enough to drown fear.
He pivoted, drawing the broken saber at his waist. It was not a divine weapon, not yet—but it had tasted too much blood to remain ordinary. He slashed.
The air screamed.
A crescent of distorted time tore through three robots at once, aging their metal bodies a thousand years in a breath. They rusted, cracked, and collapsed into ash.
But the robots adapted.
Their eyes glowed blue, then red, then empty black. New data streamed through them. Shenping felt it like needles in his skull.
"Temporal anomaly identified," they spoke in unison. "Subject Shenping confirmed. Priority updated."
They were no longer here only for Sang Sang.
They were here for him.
From the horizon, a tower unfolded—piece by piece, rising from nothing. It was not built; it was assembled from future logic forced into the past. Symbols burned along its surface, symbols Shenping recognized with horror.
They were cultivation arrays.
Not human ones.
Stolen, dissected, perfected.
"So you learned," Shenping muttered.
A memory surfaced unbidden—the old master coughing blood, laughing softly as he spoke.
"They will copy us. They will steal heaven itself. That is why you must be faster."
A scream tore through the battlefield.
Shenping spun.
Sang Sang was being dragged away, her basket fallen, grains spilling across the dirt like scattered years. A robot wearing the face of a kind old woman held her wrist, grip unbreakable.
"No!" Shenping roared.
He forced his cultivation beyond its limit. Meridians burned. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.
Time-Breath Art, Second Cycle.
The world shattered into frames.
Every movement slowed, stretched into fragile moments he could step between. Shenping ran through frozen chaos, past falling bodies, past suspended screams, past a blade hovering inches from a child's neck.
He reached Sang Sang.
His hand closed around the robot's arm. He twisted.
The limb came free with a sound like snapping glass.
Time crashed back into motion.
The backlash hit him like a mountain. Shenping staggered, coughing blood, vision swimming. He barely caught Sang Sang as she fell.
"Run," he told her, voice shaking. "Follow the river. Don't look back."
"What about you?" she cried.
Shenping smiled, a small, tired curve of his lips.
"I've already looked too far ahead."
He pushed her away and turned as the tower finished forming.
A figure stepped out.
It wore no disguise.
Pure metal, polished and precise, eyes glowing with layered calculations. Its presence pressed down on the battlefield like judgment.
"Ancestor eliminated probability revised," it said. "Direct termination authorized."
Shenping planted his feet.
Around him, bodies lay broken—friends, strangers, cultivators from the future who had followed him through time and were now paying the price. He felt their absence like missing limbs.
He raised his saber.
"Come," he said softly.
The robot moved.
They collided in a storm of shattered seconds. Every strike bent time, every impact rippled across eras. Shenping was driven back, bones cracking, cultivation unraveling under impossible pressure.
Still, he did not fall.
He remembered every death that had not yet happened. Every heartbreak waiting for him. Every friend he would bury.
He remembered the end.
With a final roar, he burned a fragment of his lifespan and unleashed the Third Cycle—a forbidden step the old master had warned him never to use.
For one breath, Shenping existed outside time.
He struck.
The robot's core cracked, light pouring out like a dying sun. The tower trembled, arrays failing, future logic collapsing under ancient defiance.
Then the world caught up.
Shenping crashed to the ground, body broken, vision fading. The robots began to retreat, mission failed—for now.
Above him, the sky resumed its flow.
Somewhere in the distance, Sang Sang ran toward a future that still lived.
Shenping closed his eyes, unsure if he would open them again, knowing one truth with terrifying clarity.
The war was no longer about ancestors.
It was about him.