Chapter 84
The city did not celebrate its survival.
Smoke still curled from shattered stone, and the square stank of burned metal and fear. People moved slowly now, stunned into silence, stepping around ruined frames that only moments ago had tried to stand and think and kill.
Shenping remained where he was.
The shattered remains of the prototype lay at his feet, its core still faintly warm. He could feel it—an echo, a residue of intent that refused to fully vanish. Even destroyed, it had tried to remember him.
Wei Han nudged one of the broken frames with his boot. "I don't like this," he said. "They were too close. Too aware."
"They always were," Shenping replied. "We just arrived earlier this time."
The young woman was still there.
She had not run.
Her hands were shaking, fingers clenched into her sleeves as if afraid her body might dissolve if she let go. She stared at Shenping, eyes searching his face with a confusion that bordered on fear.
And recognition.
She took a step forward.
"What… what were those things?" she asked.
Her voice was steady, but only just.
Wei Han glanced at Shenping, then discreetly took a step back, pretending to examine the wreckage while clearly listening to every word.
Shenping met her gaze. For a moment, countless futures tried to press into his mind—scenes of laughter, blood, love, death. He forced them away.
"Something that shouldn't exist," he said simply.
She hesitated. "You destroyed them."
"Yes."
She swallowed. "Then… thank you."
The words were small. Insufficient. But they carried weight.
She bowed deeply, the motion awkward and hurried, as if she had never practiced it properly. When she straightened, her eyes were wet.
"My name is Lin Yue," she said. "I was helping at the workshop. They told us it was a new kind of cultivation tool."
Her voice cracked. "I watched it wake up."
Shenping felt his chest tighten.
So close.
Too close.
Wei Han cleared his throat loudly. "Uh, we should probably leave before someone decides to ask more questions we don't want to answer."
He was right.
Already, city guards were approaching cautiously, spears raised, eyes wide with uncertainty as they took in the ruined square.
Lin Yue followed Shenping's gaze and seemed to understand. "You should come with me," she said quickly. "There's a place. My uncle keeps a small clinic near the east wall. No one will bother you there."
Shenping hesitated.
Every instinct warned him.
This was how threads formed. How attachments grew. How fate found its way back in, no matter how violently it had been severed before.
And yet—
He nodded.
The clinic was quiet.
Too quiet, Shenping thought, as Lin Yue ushered them inside and barred the door. The smell of dried herbs and alcohol filled the air, grounding and real in a way that hurt.
Wei Han immediately slumped onto a low bench. "I swear," he muttered, "if I survive the end of time just to die of infection in a medieval clinic—"
Lin Yue stared at him. "What is he talking about?"
Shenping answered before Wei Han could. "He talks too much when he's injured."
"That's rude," Wei Han protested weakly.
Lin Yue almost smiled.
She cleaned Shenping's wound in silence, hands careful but firm. Every touch sent a jolt through him—not of pain, but of awareness. This was dangerous. Intimate. Real.
"You're not from here," she said suddenly.
"No," Shenping admitted.
"Neither is he," she added, nodding toward Wei Han. "But you're different."
"How?"
She paused, then met his eyes. "You look like someone who's already lost everything."
The words struck deeper than any blade.
Before he could respond, a sound rippled through the air.
A low hum.
Wei Han stiffened. "Tell me you hear that too."
Shenping did.
It wasn't mechanical.
It wasn't natural.
It was distant—but growing.
Outside, the ground trembled faintly.
Lin Yue's face drained of color. "That's coming from the workshop district."
Shenping closed his eyes for a brief, burning second.
They were already adapting.
He straightened, space tightening instinctively around him as his fractured cultivation responded.
"Stay here," he told Lin Yue.
She grabbed his sleeve. "Don't go."
He looked down at her hand.
At how easily it fit there.
"I have to," he said quietly.
Wei Han stood, blade humming softly as it powered up. "Guess history didn't like being interrupted."
As they stepped toward the door, Shenping felt it again—that distant attention, faint but unmistakable.
Not machines.
Not Custodians.
Something waiting.
And somewhere in the city, something unfinished was learning how to hate.