Chapter 158
Blood soaked into the earth faster than the soil could drink it.
The battlefield had stretched beyond the ruined settlement, spilling into terraced fields and broken ancestral grounds. Fire burned where crops once stood. Metal limbs twitched among fallen bodies, some human, some not, their boundaries increasingly difficult to distinguish.
Shenping stood at the center of the chaos like a fixed point in a collapsing equation.
The convergence expanded in layered waves, not violently, but decisively. Wherever its influence passed, prediction failed. Constructs hesitated mid-strike, their calculated trajectories unraveling into uncertainty. Avatars staggered as borrowed memories clashed with implanted directives.
One avatar screamed.
Its face peeled apart into overlapping visages—an old farmer, a sect elder, a crying child—before collapsing inward, the body crumpling as if emptied of meaning.
"They're losing narrative stability," Sang Sang shouted, forcing qi into a defensive seal around Jin Rui as another construct lunged. "They can't maintain borrowed identities under pressure!"
Han Zhi laughed hoarsely, blood foaming at his lips as he crushed a metal skull beneath his heel. "Then let's pressure them harder!"
He burned another year of life without hesitation.
Golden flames erupted from his meridians, ripping through the nearest wave of constructs. The blast tore a trench through the battlefield, scattering fragments across the fields like shrapnel rain.
Qiao Mu fought nearby, movements slower now, each strike costing more than the last. Her borrowed spear shattered, replaced by her bare hands reinforced with brute will. She drove her palm through a construct's chest, ripping out its glowing core and hurling it skyward before it detonated.
Still, they kept coming.
For every construct that fell, two more climbed from spatial fissures tearing open behind the avatars. Their designs grew more refined—less metal, more flesh. Veins pulsed with artificial qi cycles that mimicked cultivation pathways with terrifying accuracy.
"They're adapting too," Han Zhi growled. "Learning from every death."
Shenping felt it clearly now.
The administrators were no longer issuing commands in real time. Instead, they were letting the system observe, collect data, and self-optimize. This was not an extermination.
It was an experiment.
"Don't let them stretch this," Shenping said, voice carrying across the battlefield despite the noise. "They want duration."
Sang Sang's eyes widened. "Then how do we stop it?"
Shenping looked past the avatars, past the fissures, into the deeper layers of interference that hovered just beyond sight.
"We force a conclusion."
He stepped forward.
The convergence tightened, compressing around a single intent. Instead of spreading influence outward, Shenping folded it inward, collapsing multiple potential outcomes into one inevitable path.
The air screamed.
Reality buckled around him as causality narrowed. Every step he took erased alternatives, pruning futures that did not include his advance.
Avatars recoiled.
"Unauthorized certainty detected," one of them intoned, voice cracking. "Probability collapse exceeds safe—"
Shenping crossed the distance between them in three steps.
He struck the avatar with his palm.
There was no explosion.
No light.
The avatar simply ceased.
Its form unraveled into raw data-like fragments that dissolved into nothingness, leaving behind a hollow pressure where identity had once existed.
The fissures faltered.
Constructs froze mid-motion, their systems unable to reconcile the sudden loss of guiding parameters. Some collapsed instantly. Others tore themselves apart as conflicting directives cascaded.
Jin Rui stared in awe. "What did you do?"
Shenping did not answer immediately.
The convergence churned violently now, reacting to the forced collapse. Pain ripped through his body as incompatible timelines scraped against his nervous system. Blood streamed from his nose and ears, but he remained standing.
"I removed their permission," he said at last. "For this moment."
The sky shuddered.
Above them, far beyond the visible layers, something vast shifted its attention fully toward World Instance 07-Theta. The lingering avatars looked up simultaneously, faces blank.
"Administrative override incoming," they said in unison.
A column of pale light descended from the heavens, silent and absolute, locking onto Shenping's position. The pressure crushed the ground beneath him into glassy stone.
Han Zhi staggered forward. "Shenping—move!"
Shenping did not.
Instead, he turned to Sang Sang.
"When this ends," he said softly, "stay alive. No matter what they promise. No matter what they threaten."
Her eyes filled with tears. "You're not leaving."
He smiled faintly. "I'm just stepping ahead."
The convergence surged one final time, not resisting the descending light, but aligning with it—threading itself through the beam like a needle through cloth.
The column detonated.
Light consumed the battlefield, erasing sound, motion, and form.
And far above time itself, the administrators finally understood the cost of letting a story learn how to end itself.