Chapter 149
They moved before dawn.
The forest did not sleep, but it quieted, predators withdrawing into roots and hollows as the sky lightened from black to a bruised gray. Mist clung low to the ground, curling around ankles and broken stones like something alive.
Shenping followed without complaint.
Pain traveled with him, steady and insistent. His shoulder burned where flesh had been torn, and his internal pathways throbbed with instability. Wild cultivation did not settle after battle—it lingered, scraping against bone and nerve, demanding either refinement or release.
Qiao Mu noticed his breathing.
"You're leaking," she said without looking back.
"Leaking?" Shenping asked.
She gestured vaguely at his chest. "Energy. Like blood from a bad cut. If you don't learn to close it, something will drink it."
As if summoned by the words, a low growl echoed through the fog.
The group tightened formation. Spears lifted. Shenping felt the forest's attention sharpen, countless unseen eyes recalculating risk.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Depends," Qiao Mu replied. "Could be beasts. Could be cultivators who failed to stay human. Could be the land itself waking up angry."
The growl faded.
No attack came.
They continued.
After an hour, the trees thinned, opening into a shallow ravine where crude structures clung to stone walls like nests. Smoke rose from pits rather than chimneys. Ropes and bone charms marked boundaries instead of walls.
A settlement.
Children stopped what they were doing when they saw Shenping. Their eyes held curiosity first, fear second. Adults followed their gaze, hands drifting toward weapons.
Qiao Mu raised a fist. "He's with me."
That earned Shenping a few seconds of tolerance.
They brought the wounded villager to a low shelter where an old man waited, his body thin, spine curved, eyes sharp as flint. He pressed two fingers to the man's neck, then glanced at Shenping.
"You interfered," the old man said.
"Yes."
"You killed," the man continued.
"Yes."
The old man nodded once. "Then you're responsible."
He stepped aside. "If he lives, you stay. If he dies, you leave before nightfall."
Fair.
Shenping knelt beside the injured man. The wild energy within him surged eagerly, but he forced it down, compressing it inward. He remembered fragments from lost teachings, instincts buried under centuries of extinction.
Slow.
Intent before force.
He placed his hands carefully, guiding energy like a river redirected with bare palms. Pain flared as resistance met him—this era fought back against restraint.
The man screamed.
Then breathed.
Color returned to his face, shallow but steady. The twisted leg realigned with a wet crack that made several onlookers flinch.
Shenping withdrew, shaking.
The machine consciousness spoke, strained but functional. "Energy containment efficiency increased marginally."
"Learn faster," Shenping whispered.
The old man watched him closely. "You don't cultivate like anyone I've seen."
"I don't know how I cultivate at all," Shenping replied.
That earned him a thin smile. "Good. That means you're still alive."
Night came harshly.
No gradual dimming. No courtesy.
Darkness dropped like a blade.
Fires were lit. Guards doubled. The forest pressed closer, sounds multiplying—scratches, distant howls, something heavy moving far too quietly.
Shenping sat alone near the edge of the settlement, staring into the dark.
This era was cruel.
But it was honest.
No machines hid behind probability. No futures were trimmed without blood. Here, survival demanded presence, not prediction.
He felt it then—a shift, subtle but unmistakable.
Something ancient had noticed him.
Not hostile.
Interested.
Far away, beyond time's layered scars, systems continued their calculations.
Here, in a past that refused to be corrected, Shenping became part of the problem they would one day fear.
And the night leaned in to listen.