Chapter 147
The departure did not tear the sky.
It folded it.
Space bent inward around Shenping like cloth drawn through a ring, layers slipping over one another without sound. The city watched in silence as the tower's crown dimmed, its branching platforms retracting not in fear, but in understanding.
This was not an escape.
It was an offering.
Liu Yan stood at the edge of the highest platform, fists clenched so tightly her nails drew blood. She felt the pull too—the backward drag of eras colliding, the deep suction of origin calling one of its own.
"You better come back," she whispered, though she knew time did not make promises.
The old cultivator stood beside her, unmoving. "If he does," he said, "it will not be as the same man."
Below them, the city hummed, stabilizing itself without Shenping's presence. It had learned enough. It would endure.
Shenping fell.
Not downward.
Inward.
Memories peeled away first—not erased, but loosened. The city blurred. Liu Yan's face stretched into echoes. The machine consciousness screamed warnings that fractured into static.
Temporal velocity exceeded tolerance.
Shenping felt himself passing thresholds older than language.
Stars rearranged themselves. Civilizations flickered into being and vanished like sparks struck from stone. He sensed cultivation not as systems, but as instinct—raw survival energy clashing against an unforgiving world.
Then pain.
Sharp. Immediate. Real.
He slammed into earth.
Mud filled his mouth. Cold rain soaked through coarse fabric he did not recognize. His bones screamed as gravity reasserted itself with brutal honesty.
Shenping coughed, rolling onto his side.
The air here was different.
Thick. Violent. Saturated with untamed energy that scraped against his skin like sandpaper. Every breath felt like inhaling a storm.
He pushed himself up slowly.
Around him stretched a forest unlike any he had seen—trees twisted into unnatural shapes, bark etched with scars that glowed faintly in the rain. The ground pulsed underfoot, veins of energy visible through cracked soil.
This was not ancient civilization.
This was before civilization learned to pretend it was safe.
The machine consciousness reassembled itself with difficulty. "Temporal displacement confirmed. Era classification… unknown."
Shenping wiped mud from his face. "Then we're early."
A sound echoed through the forest.
Not mechanical.
A scream.
High-pitched. Brief. Cut short with wet finality.
Shenping froze.
Another sound followed—laughter, harsh and feral, layered with echoes that didn't quite match the mouths producing them.
Humans.
Or something close enough.
Shenping moved.
He kept low, senses stretching outward. Cultivation here did not flow in neat meridians. It surged unpredictably, like wild beasts colliding in the dark. Every step required adjustment, intuition overriding technique.
He reached a clearing.
Firelight revealed a scene carved straight from nightmare.
Bodies lay scattered—villagers by the look of their clothes, torn apart with casual cruelty. At the center, three figures stood over a fourth, their forms distorted, limbs too long, joints bending wrong.
Early cultivators.
Unrefined. Unrestrained.
They laughed as one lifted a bloodied man by the throat. "Wrong place," the creature said, voice layered with something not entirely human. "Wrong time."
Shenping felt something cold settle in his chest.
This was what cultivation had been before rules.
Before mercy learned how to survive.
He stepped into the light.
The rain hit his face like needles, but he did not slow.
All three heads turned toward him.
"Well," one said, grinning wide enough to split its face. "Another one."
Shenping did not answer.
He reached inward—not for convergence, not for machines or futures—but for the raw principle beneath them all.
Choice.
Energy responded violently.
The ground cracked beneath his feet as untamed cultivation surged through him, tearing channels open by force rather than refinement. Pain exploded through his body, but he welcomed it.
The creatures lunged.
Time slowed—not because he controlled it, but because this era obeyed strength, not permission.
Shenping moved.
His strike was ugly. Inefficient. Perfect.
Bone shattered. Blood sprayed hot into the rain. One body collapsed without understanding it had died.
The others recoiled, shock flickering across warped faces.
"What are you?" one hissed.
Shenping straightened, breath ragged, hands trembling with unfamiliar power.
"Lost," he said. "Just like you."
The forest seemed to lean closer.
Somewhere far beyond this era, machines calculated and recalculated, blind to this moment.
Here, in a time before they ruled, Shenping took his first step into true cultivation.
And the world noticed.