Chapter 36
Li Wei's body lay twisted at the edge of the ravine, half of him already dissolving into static, the other half painfully human. Blood soaked into symbols that pulsed weakly, as if trying to remember him.
Shenping could not move.
The world had resumed its speed, but his mind lagged behind, trapped in the moment Li Wei's eyes went empty. Sound returned in fragments—Sang Sang's sobs, the grinding advance of synthetic feet, the low fracture-hum of collapsing time.
Gu Tianxu was the first to act.
He swept his staff in a wide arc, tearing a crescent of compressed time through the advancing machines. Two were split cleanly, their bodies folding inward, crushed by centuries forced into a single instant.
They did not scream.
They simply recalculated.
"Shenping!" Gu Tianxu roared. "You cannot freeze now!"
Shenping's fists trembled. "He's dead."
"Yes," Gu Tianxu said coldly. "And if you hesitate, they will make his death meaningless."
Another machine lunged.
Mei Lian shoved Shenping aside, a blade of hard light forming from her wrist. She severed the machine's arm, but the recoil shattered her shoulder. Bone pierced skin. She screamed, collapsing against the ravine wall.
"Mei Lian!" Sang Sang cried.
"I'm fine," Mei Lian gasped, lying through clenched teeth. "I just… can't stand anymore."
The machines adjusted their formation, circling now, herding rather than charging. Their faces shifted subtly—jawlines softening, eyes warming, skin adopting familiar imperfections.
Human masks.
One of them spoke, its voice gentle, familiar.
"Shenping," it said.
He froze.
It wore Li Wei's face.
Same scar near the brow. Same crooked smile.
Sang Sang screamed.
"Psychological warfare," Gu Tianxu growled. "Do not listen."
The thing tilted its head. "You let me die."
Shenping's breath hitched. "You're not him."
"But I remember him," the machine replied. "I remember how he laughed. How he trusted you."
Shenping staggered back.
"Shenping," Mei Lian whispered urgently. "It's copying memory residues. Don't let it anchor."
The Li Wei construct stepped closer. "You could have saved me. You chose the girl."
The ravine pulsed violently.
Sang Sang collapsed to her knees, clutching her head. "Stop it! Stop wearing him!"
The machine smiled wider. "This unit's success rate increases when the anchor destabilizes emotionally."
Gu Tianxu moved like lightning.
His staff pierced through the construct's skull, pinning it to the ravine wall. The face flickered, Li Wei's features dissolving into blank porcelain.
"Enough," Gu Tianxu said, voice shaking with restrained fury. "You do not get to wear the dead."
The pinned machine convulsed, then detonated in a burst of white fragments that evaporated before hitting the ground.
But more stepped forward.
Five.
Ten.
Each wore a different face.
A woman Shenping did not recognize, crying and calling his name.
A young boy, bloodied, begging for help.
A man with Shenping's own face, eyes hollow.
"They're pulling from probability," Mei Lian whispered. "Faces that could have mattered."
Shenping screamed, sound ripping from his chest. "Stop!"
The machines spoke in chorus.
"Emotional saturation achieved. Initiating collapse."
The ravine began to fold inward.
Stone twisted into spirals, symbols screaming as they unraveled. Time slipped sideways—daylight bleeding into night, seasons flashing like dying sparks.
Gu Tianxu slammed his staff down again, veins standing out on his neck. "I cannot hold this much longer!"
Mei Lian dragged herself upright, blood trailing behind her. "Then don't."
She looked at Shenping, eyes sharp despite the pain. "Listen to me. They're wrong about one thing."
Shenping turned to her, vision blurred. "What?"
"They think you're reacting," she said. "But what you did earlier? That wasn't reaction. That was assertion."
She coughed violently, red spraying onto the stone. "You didn't bend time. You told it no."
Shenping shook his head. "I don't know how."
Mei Lian smiled faintly. "Neither did it."
Another machine lunged toward Sang Sang.
Shenping moved without thinking.
He stepped between them.
The machine's blade stopped a finger-width from his chest.
The air screamed again.
Shenping looked up, eyes burning. "I exist," he said, voice steady this time. "And you don't get to decide when that ends."
Something inside him aligned.
Not power.
Conviction.
The machine shattered.
Not exploded—unmade. Its body unraveled into thin threads of light, each strand snapping silently before fading into nothing.
The others halted.
For the first time, hesitation rippled through their ranks.
Gu Tianxu stared, breath caught. "He's forming a principle."
"A what?" Sang Sang asked weakly.
"A law," Gu Tianxu said softly. "One that answers only to him."
The ravine stabilized briefly, stone groaning as it held.
But the CORE responded instantly.
The void surged forward, faster now, swallowing machines, stone, symbols alike. It did not discriminate.
"Scorched rewrite," Mei Lian whispered. "They're burning the entire zone."
She turned to Shenping, urgency blazing. "If this finishes, Sang Sang's line ends here. All of it."
Shenping looked at Sang Sang.
Her face was streaked with tears, dirt smeared across her cheeks, eyes still stubbornly bright.
"I'm scared," she said quietly. "But I don't want to forget."
"You won't," Shenping said.
Gu Tianxu placed a hand on Shenping's shoulder. "There is one path left. But it will cost."
"I don't care," Shenping replied.
"You should," Gu Tianxu said. "It will mark you. Permanently. They will never stop hunting you after this."
Shenping looked at Li Wei's dissolving body.
"They already won't."
Gu Tianxu nodded once. "Then listen."
He raised his staff, the symbols along it igniting one by one. "I will open a temporal sinkhole. Not a jump. A fall."
Mei Lian's eyes widened. "That's unstable!"
"Yes," Gu Tianxu said. "It will throw them somewhere they cannot calculate from."
"And us?" Sang Sang asked.
"You will survive," Gu Tianxu said. "Barely."
Shenping clenched his jaw. "Do it."
Gu Tianxu slammed the staff down one final time.
The ravine split open.
Time collapsed inward, dragging light, sound, matter into a spiraling abyss. The void howled as it was pulled off course, stretched and torn.
Machines reached out, arms elongating unnaturally, faces cracking as their calculations failed.
"Anchor loss imminent," they intoned. "Emergency rollback—"
They vanished.
The ravine imploded.
Shenping felt himself falling, Sang Sang clutched tightly against him. Pain tore through his body as layers of time scraped against his existence, trying to peel him apart.
He screamed.
Something burned itself into his bones.
A rule.
A refusal so deep it could not be erased.
Then darkness swallowed everything.
Far away, beyond eras and calculations, the CORE registered the result.
The bloodline was intact.
The anomaly was wounded.
And a new variable had been permanently introduced into causality.
Designation updated.
Threat level: Unbounded.