Chapter 150
The night did not attack.
That was worse.
Shenping remained seated at the settlement's edge long after the fires burned low. The darkness beyond the boundary markers shifted, sounds circling but never crossing. Whatever watched from the forest was patient—and patience, in this era, meant hunger refined by experience.
Qiao Mu approached silently and dropped beside him, back against a stone. She handed him a strip of dried meat without looking.
"You didn't sleep," she said.
"Neither did you."
She huffed softly. "Sleeping gets people killed."
They ate in silence.
After a while, she spoke again. "You fight like someone who doesn't care if he lives."
Shenping chewed slowly. "I care. I just don't expect mercy."
"That's the same thing," she replied.
A scream tore through the settlement.
Not distant.
Close.
Shenping was on his feet before the echo finished.
The guards shouted. Fires flared. People ran toward the sound—a shelter near the ravine wall, its bone charms shaking violently as something struck from within.
"It got inside," Qiao Mu snarled.
The charm snapped.
The wall exploded inward.
Something crawled out.
It had once been human. That much was clear. Its torso was twisted, spine elongated, limbs mismatched as if grown by different hands. Its mouth opened too wide, revealing rows of teeth that shifted positions as it breathed.
A failed cultivator.
One who had tried to force power instead of survive it.
The creature screamed again, sound vibrating through bone and air alike. Two guards rushed it, spears glowing unevenly.
They didn't reach it.
The thing moved in a blur, speed fueled by instability. One guard was torn in half. The other slammed into stone hard enough to fold.
Shenping stepped forward.
Pain surged through him as wild cultivation answered the threat eagerly, flooding his body without restraint. He felt old scars reopen, internal pathways tearing wider.
The machine consciousness screamed warnings, fragmented and incoherent.
Shenping ignored all of it.
He met the creature head-on.
Its claw raked his chest, tearing flesh. He caught the arm, muscles screaming as he forced it down. The creature's strength was monstrous, but unbalanced—power without anchor.
Shenping drove his forehead forward.
Bone met bone.
The impact cracked the air.
The creature reeled, stunned not by damage, but by resistance it did not expect. Shenping followed through, slamming it into the ground again and again, each strike shaking the ravine wall.
Still it writhed.
Still it screamed.
"This isn't enough," Qiao Mu shouted. "You have to end it!"
Shenping knew that.
But killing here was not simple.
If he struck blindly, the creature's unstable energy would explode outward, contaminating the settlement. He felt the pressure building, wild power spiraling out of control.
He changed tactics.
Instead of forcing energy outward, he pulled.
Not into himself.
Into emptiness.
The convergence flickered faintly—damaged, incomplete, but present. Shenping opened it just enough to give the excess somewhere to go.
The creature froze.
Its scream cut off mid-sound as energy was ripped from it, torn free and swallowed by a void that did not care where it came from.
The body collapsed.
Dead.
Silence followed.
Shenping dropped to one knee, coughing blood. His vision swam, edges darkening.
Hands caught him before he fell.
Qiao Mu's grip was iron. "You idiot," she breathed. "You nearly tore yourself apart."
"I know," Shenping said weakly.
The old man approached, eyes sharp with something like awe. He stared at the corpse, then at Shenping.
"That technique," he said slowly. "It shouldn't exist."
"It doesn't," Shenping replied. "Not yet."
The settlement buzzed with fearful whispers. People stared at Shenping differently now—not as a stranger, but as something dangerous that had chosen to stand between them and the dark.
The old man turned away. "He stays," he said loudly. "And tomorrow, we teach him properly."
Shenping exhaled, relief and exhaustion crashing together.
Above them, unseen, the night shifted.
Something ancient withdrew its attention.
For now.
And in the deep layers of time, equations failed to account for a past that had learned how to consume power without obeying its rules.