Chapter 153
The forest did not calm after the clans fled.
It held its breath.
Leaves trembled without wind. Roots creaked beneath the soil as if something far below had shifted its weight. The ground where Shenping had opened the convergence remained gray and brittle, life leeched clean out of it in a perfect circle.
Qiao Mu lowered him onto a stone, hands still gripping his arm as if he might vanish. "Close it," she ordered. "Now."
Shenping tried.
The convergence resisted.
It pulsed inside him like a second heart, greedy and overstimulated, tasting the residue of dozens of broken cultivations and wanting more. His vision blurred. The world felt thin, as if it could tear with a careless thought.
Han Zhi crouched in front of him and slammed two fingers into Shenping's chest, just above the sternum. "Listen to me," he said sharply. "Don't suppress it. Shape it."
Shenping laughed weakly. "That's… new advice."
"Because you're new," Han Zhi snapped. "Nothing like you should exist, but here you are. So act like it."
Shenping inhaled slowly.
He stopped thinking of the convergence as a wound.
He imagined it as a mouth.
And then he closed its teeth.
The pull weakened, not gone, but controlled. The screaming pressure eased into a low, constant ache. Shenping slumped back, breath shaking, sweat cold against his skin.
The forest exhaled.
Only then did the settlement dare to move again.
Elders emerged first, faces carved with lines of fear and awe. Guards followed, weapons still raised but hands uncertain. Children peeked from behind walls, eyes wide and unblinking.
They all looked at Shenping.
Not with gratitude.
With recalculation.
An elder stepped forward, leaning heavily on a staff. "You have brought calamity to our doorstep," he said. "And you have also driven it away. That is… a dangerous balance."
Shenping met the man's gaze. "I didn't come here to be safe."
Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
Han Zhi stood, turning slowly, letting them feel the weight of his presence. "The clans will return," he said calmly. "Not today. Not tomorrow. But they will come prepared. They always do."
Qiao Mu crossed her arms. "Then we prepare better."
The elder shook his head. "You cannot fight all of them."
Shenping pushed himself to his feet, legs unsteady but holding. "No," he said. "But I can make them afraid to stand too close together."
Silence followed.
That was worse than any boast.
Far from the settlement, deep beneath stone and root, something ancient fully awakened.
Eyes opened in the dark.
It felt the disturbance clearly now—not a ripple, not an accident, but a sustained wound in the order of things. Power that vanished instead of cycling. Energy that did not return.
An error.
A threat.
The ancient presence stretched its awareness outward, touching clan strongholds, forgotten ruins, sealed sects. Commands were not spoken. They were impressed directly into bloodlines and instincts.
Eliminate the anomaly.
Back in the settlement, Shenping suddenly stiffened.
His head snapped up, gaze unfocused, breath catching as the convergence trembled in warning. He felt it then—a vast attention brushing against him, cold and immense, like a shadow passing over the sun.
Han Zhi saw it immediately. "You felt that."
Shenping nodded slowly. "Yes."
Qiao Mu tightened her grip on her blade. "What was it?"
Shenping swallowed, forcing his heartbeat steady. "Something that noticed me."
The forest grew quiet again.
Not the quiet of fear.
The quiet of hunters preparing to move.
And for the first time since his awakening, Shenping understood one thing with perfect clarity.
He was no longer merely being chased.
He was being targeted.