Chapter 93: When the Immortals Stir
The wind stopped.
The ancient road lay beneath a motionless sky, its cracked stones stretching between the scattered corpses and the distant mountains. For a moment, the world seemed suspended between two breaths.
Han Feng stood at the center of the road, one hand hovering near his storage ring.
Across from him, the red-eyed man stared at the ground.
His body was trembling.
Not from fear.
From restraint.
Black fissures spread beneath his skin, branching from his neck toward his jaw. Each time one of them widened, a thin strand of dark smoke escaped before being dragged back into his flesh.
Han Feng could feel the contamination even from several meters away.
It was not ordinary primordial essence.
Nor was it demonic Qi.
The energy resembled neither of the cultivation systems he understood. It was something that had crossed a boundary it should never have touched, leaving its foreign nature embedded in the man's body.
The Celestial Diagram stirred inside Han Feng's consciousness.
Its golden lines flickered uneasily.
It recognizes the corruption.
Han Feng narrowed his eyes.
Or it recognizes whatever is using the corruption to reach this world.
Behind him, Shen Lian struggled to steady her breathing. She clutched her injured side, her face pale beneath the dust and blood.
"Han Feng..." she whispered. "We should leave."
"I know."
"Then why are you still standing here?"
"Because he won't let us."
The red-eyed man slowly lifted his head.
His lips twisted into a smile.
"You can hear it too, can't you?"
His voice sounded distant, as though it had traveled through deep water before reaching them.
Han Feng gave him no answer.
The man pressed both hands against his temples.
"They never stop talking."
His fingers dug into his scalp.
"They whisper when I sleep. They whisper when I wake. They whisper through the stones, through the sky, through the spaces between—"
He suddenly laughed.
The sound was weak at first.
Then it grew louder, breaking into irregular bursts that echoed along the road.
"THE SKY IS OPENING!"
Shen Lian flinched.
The man's laughter stopped.
His red eyes fixed on Han Feng.
"You don't understand."
A crack appeared behind his shoulder.
It lasted less than a heartbeat.
Then it vanished.
Han Feng felt the disturbance travel through the road beneath his feet.
His expression changed.
The fissure had not opened because the man had deliberately performed a technique.
It had appeared in response to the energy leaking from his body.
The corruption was damaging the boundary simply by existing in this world.
That made the man more dangerous than a cultivator who could consciously manipulate spatial energy.
A technique had a beginning.
A technique had an end.
But if the man's existence itself was the source of the disturbance, then every moment spent near him carried a risk.
Han Feng shifted his weight.
He was already injured. The previous encounter in Gray Ghost Valley had left his meridians damaged, and the remaining primordial essence inside his body was nowhere near enough for a prolonged battle.
A direct confrontation would be foolish.
Unfortunately, the man had stopped behaving like someone capable of negotiation.
His shoulders jerked.
Black fragments rose beneath his skin.
Then the energy around him erupted.
BOOOOM!
The ancient road split apart.
Stone fragments shot into the air as dark smoke poured from the man's pores. The corpses scattered across the ground began to shrivel. Their remaining vitality vanished in seconds, leaving behind dry skin and brittle bones.
Han Feng seized Shen Lian by the arm and pulled her backward.
"Get behind the broken pillar!"
She stumbled but obeyed.
A wave of distorted energy swept over the road.
For an instant, Han Feng saw two versions of the same scene.
In one, the red-eyed man stood several meters away.
In the other, he was almost directly in front of him.
The images overlapped.
Han Feng's instincts screamed.
He threw himself sideways.
BOOM!
The man's fist struck the ground where he had stood. The impact cratered the stone, and a shock wave threw Han Feng against the remains of a roadside monument.
Pain burst through his chest.
He tasted blood.
Too fast.
The man straightened.
His arm hung at an unnatural angle, but the fractured bones shifted beneath his skin. Black threads wrapped around them, pulling the limb back into place.
The damage was healing.
Not through conventional recovery.
The corruption was forcing the body to continue functioning, regardless of what that body could naturally endure.
Han Feng pushed himself upright.
His injured meridians protested as he circulated Qi.
I can't afford to exchange blows with him.
The red-eyed man tilted his head.
"You carry a door."
Han Feng froze for a fraction of a second.
The man smiled wider.
"A small one. Sealed. But the things beyond the boundary can smell it."
His gaze dropped briefly toward Han Feng's chest.
Toward the golden seal beneath his skin.
Han Feng's expression did not change, but coldness settled in his stomach.
The seal had been given to him by the gray-robed survivor to regulate the foreign energy that threatened to overwhelm him. It had never felt entirely trustworthy.
Now, even this half-corrupted stranger could apparently sense something about it.
"Who told you that?" Han Feng asked.
The man blinked.
For one brief moment, his expression became almost human.
"I..."
His lips trembled.
"I don't remember."
Then something moved behind his eyes.
The brief clarity disappeared.
"They remember for me."
Three fissures tore open behind him.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
They were small, irregular tears in space, each surrounded by a faint distortion that bent the light around it.
Shen Lian stared in horror.
"No..."
Her gaze shifted toward the stones beneath the man's feet.
"The road is feeding them!"
Han Feng looked down.
She was right.
The ancient road was more than a path. The marks carved into its stones formed part of an old formation, and the spiritual currents running through it had been flowing toward the corrupted man.
When Han Feng interrupted the current earlier, he had disrupted the pattern.
But he had not destroyed it.
Now the broken channels were gathering energy unevenly, and the corruption was drawing on the unstable flow.
The man was not creating the fissures from nothing.
He was using the damaged formation as a conduit.
And the formation was beginning to fail.
"Can you stop the flow?" Han Feng called to Shen Lian.
She stared at the ground, visibly fighting through the pain.
"Not all of it! I can barely tell where the currents meet!"
"Then find the weakest point."
"What are you going to do?"
Han Feng watched the fissures widen.
"Keep him busy."
Shen Lian looked at him as though he had lost his mind.
"With what?"
"Anything that buys me time."
He turned before she could answer.
The first black hand emerged from the nearest fissure.
Its fingers were long and jointed incorrectly, its surface shifting between smoke and something resembling charred flesh. It reached toward the road, searching for a point of purchase.
A second hand followed.
Then a third.
They were not fully materialized, and Han Feng could not tell whether they belonged to the same creature or to several different things waiting beyond the boundary.
He had no intention of finding out.
He released the Blue Star Flame Gu.
A small blue flame flickered above his palm.
It was weak.
Too weak to burn through the fissures or destroy whatever waited beyond them.
But it was still a force he understood.
He sent the flame toward the closest black hand.
It struck.
The hand recoiled, its surface breaking into fragments of dark vapor.
Han Feng immediately withdrew the flame before the foreign energy could interfere with it.
The maneuver cost little, but it accomplished even less.
The hand was already reforming.
Conventional attacks won't solve this.
The red-eyed man watched the blue flame with sudden interest.
Then his gaze shifted to Han Feng's chest.
"The other fire..."
His smile returned.
"The one that remembers."
Han Feng's pupils contracted.
The residual crimson trace associated with the foreign flame stirred inside its sealed container.
A faint warmth passed through his storage ring.
The man began to shake.
"YES!"
His voice cracked.
"THAT ONE!"
The fissures widened.
Han Feng felt the boundary react to the crimson trace, and the sensation was so unpleasant that he almost lost control of his breathing.
The red-eyed man was not merely detecting his energy.
The contamination was responding to it.
Whatever connection existed between the crimson trace and the forces beyond the boundary, Han Feng still did not understand it. He had never mastered the trace, and he had no intention of treating it as a weapon simply because it had reacted before.
He suppressed the impulse to release it.
The man screamed.
"THEY FOUND YOU!"
A black hand lunged from the nearest fissure.
Han Feng dodged, but the distortion caught the edge of his robe. The fabric vanished without burning, leaving behind a clean, unnatural gap.
He stared at it for an instant.
That had not been an attack against his body.
It had been an attack against the space his body occupied.
If he had moved a fraction slower, the result might have been much worse.
Han Feng's gaze hardened.
Enough.
He did not have the strength to destroy the corruption.
He did not have the knowledge to close the fissures.
But he had one advantage.
The Celestial Diagram could respond to the resonance of the boundary.
It had done so in Gray Ghost Valley, though the effort had nearly crippled him.
He could not repeat that feat on the same scale.
Not now.
So he would have to do something smaller.
Something precise.
Han Feng closed his eyes for half a breath.
The Diagram appeared within his consciousness.
Its golden lines flickered across the hexagonal structure. The seventh symbol remained dark, and the rest of the pattern was still incomplete.
He could feel the strain left by the previous activation.
The Diagram was not a limitless source of power.
Neither was he.
I don't need to control the fissures.
His thoughts sharpened.
I only need to interrupt the resonance connecting them to this road.
He opened his eyes.
"Shen Lian!"
She looked up from the stones.
"Find me the central node!"
"I can't see it!"
"Then listen to the flow!"
She gritted her teeth and placed her palm against the broken road.
The moment she did, her face tightened in pain.
"There!" she shouted, pointing toward a narrow groove beneath the remains of the monument. "The current splits there! But it's unstable!"
Han Feng moved.
The corrupted man lunged to intercept him.
Han Feng activated Shadow Displacement Gu.
His body blurred for an instant, carrying him past the man's outstretched arm.
Pain tore through his damaged meridians.
He nearly stumbled.
The displacement had cost more than it should have.
He forced himself forward.
Behind him, the red-eyed man screamed and swung his arm.
The air twisted.
Han Feng felt the attack catch up with him before it arrived. He threw himself toward the groove as the ground erupted behind him.
Stone fragments struck his back.
He ignored them.
His hand touched the ancient carving.
The Celestial Diagram answered.
Golden light surged through his consciousness.
For one terrible instant, the entire road appeared as a vast network of intersecting lines. Some glowed faintly. Others had already gone dark. Three unstable currents converged beneath the monument, feeding the fissures and the corrupted man.
Han Feng saw the central node.
He also saw the danger.
The node was not simply supplying energy.
It was regulating the flow.
If he severed it completely, the energy might collapse inward—or burst outward with enough force to tear the road apart.
He had to interrupt the resonance without destroying the formation.
One thread.
He gathered the smallest amount of Qi he could manage.
Then he allowed the Celestial Transmutation Gu to stabilize it.
The familiar golden-black sensation passed through his meridians.
He did not convert the energy into a new power.
He merely used the Gu to keep his Qi from collapsing under the strain.
Then he let the Celestial Diagram resonate through his hand.
The carved groove illuminated.
The corrupted man stopped moving.
His red eyes widened.
"No."
Han Feng pressed harder.
The golden lines flared.
For a fraction of a second, they appeared to spread across a third of the Celestial Diagram, connecting distant symbols in a pattern Han Feng had never seen before.
Then the structure shuddered.
The seventh symbol remained dark.
The golden pattern broke apart.
Pain exploded through Han Feng's chest.
He almost lost consciousness.
But the resonance had already reached the node.
KRAAAACK!
A golden pulse traveled beneath the ancient road.
The three fissures convulsed.
The black hands recoiled as if something had struck them from the other side.
One vanished.
Then another.
The third clung to the edge of its fissure, its fingers digging into the distorted space.
The red-eyed man staggered.
The black cracks beneath his skin began to glow.
For the first time, the corruption inside him faltered.
Han Feng understood what had happened.
He had not burned the corruption away.
He had interrupted the flow feeding it.
The distinction mattered.
The energy was still there.
The fissures were still there.
And whatever waited beyond them had not been defeated.
But for one brief moment, the damaged road no longer provided the corruption with a stable channel.
The red-eyed man fell to his knees.
His hands trembled against the stones.
"No..."
His voice had changed.
The distortion was fading.
He looked at Han Feng, and the madness in his eyes gave way to something painfully ordinary.
Fear.
"Please..."
Han Feng hesitated.
The man struggled to lift his head.
"Don't let them..."
His lips shook.
"Don't let them come through."
A black crack opened across his forehead.
The remaining corruption surged violently, fighting against the loss of its connection.
The man screamed.
Han Feng stepped backward.
He could feel the formation failing beneath his feet. The node was becoming unstable, and the golden resonance was fading.
He had seconds at most.
He raised his hand.
The residual crimson trace stirred inside its sealed container.
The golden lines of the Diagram responded.
For an instant, red and gold light flickered beneath Han Feng's skin.
The Celestial Transmutation Gu tried to stabilize the interaction, but the energies did not merge. They resisted one another, pulling in opposite directions.
Han Feng gritted his teeth.
He could not hold them.
He could barely keep them from colliding.
Still, the brief reaction was enough to produce a narrow pulse of golden-red light.
It struck the corrupted man's chest.
FOOOOM!
The man's body arched backward.
The black fissures beneath his skin brightened, then fractured.
The corruption seemed to peel away from his flesh in thin, writhing strands. For an instant, Han Feng thought he saw shapes moving inside the smoke—too indistinct to identify, too fleeting to understand.
The man let out a sound that was half scream, half sob.
Then the light vanished.
He collapsed onto the road.
Silence followed.
Han Feng stood motionless, his hand still extended.
The man was no longer moving.
His body began to crumble from the extremities inward, breaking into black ash that scattered across the stones.
Han Feng did not approach.
He watched until the last fragment of the man's body dissolved.
Only then did he allow himself to breathe.
The three fissures contracted.
One after another, they snapped shut.
The black hand disappeared with them.
But the air remained distorted, and the ancient road continued to tremble.
The passage had not been sealed.
It had merely lost its temporary foothold.
Han Feng's knees weakened.
He caught himself against the monument before he fell.
Blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
The Celestial Diagram was still vibrating inside his consciousness. Its golden lines flickered wildly, then gradually withdrew from the expanded pattern.
When the light finally settled, the Diagram looked almost as it had before.
Almost.
A thin new connection remained between two of its outer symbols.
It was faint and unstable, but it had not disappeared completely.
Han Feng stared at it.
He had gained no new technique.
No breakthrough.
No sudden increase in cultivation.
He had simply forced the Diagram to do something it had never done so clearly before.
And he had paid for it.
His meridians were burning, his remaining Qi was nearly exhausted, and the crimson trace had become quieter—not because he controlled it, but because the brief interaction had drained part of its already limited residue.
He would not be able to repeat the maneuver anytime soon.
Perhaps not until he understood what he had done.
"Han Feng!"
Shen Lian hurried toward him, then stopped when she saw the blood on his clothes.
"You're hurt!"
"I'm aware."
"You almost collapsed!"
"But I didn't."
She looked at him with a mixture of anger and disbelief.
"That is not a reasonable answer."
"It's the only one I have."
He tried to straighten.
Pain immediately forced him to stop.
Shen Lian caught his arm.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then she looked toward the place where the red-eyed man had disappeared.
"Was he still himself at the end?"
Han Feng considered the question.
He remembered the man's expression when the corruption had briefly weakened.
The fear.
The plea.
The desperate warning.
"I think part of him was."
Shen Lian lowered her eyes.
"Could we have saved him?"
Han Feng did not answer immediately.
He wanted to say yes.
It would have been easier.
But he had seen the corruption spread through the man's body. He had felt the boundary pressing against reality through him. Whatever had happened to that cultivator had gone far beyond an ordinary wound or a damaged spiritual sea.
"I don't know," he finally said.
"And I won't pretend I do."
Shen Lian nodded slowly.
That answer seemed to frighten her more than a simple denial.
A faint rumble passed through the sky.
Both of them looked up.
The clouds above the ancient road were beginning to rotate.
At first, the movement was subtle.
Then the spiral widened, drawing the surrounding mist into a vast circular current.
Han Feng's expression changed.
The disturbance was not centered on the road.
It was coming from far beyond the mountains.
A distant pressure descended over the region.
It was so immense that Han Feng felt it through his bones.
His injured meridians tightened.
Shen Lian stumbled, clutching his arm.
"What is that?"
Han Feng could not answer.
The pressure was different from the corruption.
It was not chaotic.
It did not tear at the boundaries of space.
Instead, it carried an ancient, overwhelming weight—the kind of presence that made every nearby fluctuation of spiritual energy seem insignificant.
For a brief instant, the Celestial Diagram became completely still.
Then it trembled once.
Not in rejection.
Not in recognition, either.
Something closer to caution.
Han Feng looked toward the Central Region.
A gigantic crack had appeared on the distant horizon.
It stretched across the sky like a wound in the heavens, its edges surrounded by layers of pale spiritual light. Even from this distance, he could see the surrounding clouds bending toward it.
But the crack itself was not the source of the pressure.
Something on the other side of the region had awakened.
Something ancient.
Something powerful enough that the land itself seemed to respond.
Han Feng swallowed the blood in his mouth.
"That isn't another ordinary fissure."
Shen Lian stared at the horizon.
"Then what is it?"
He listened to the distant fluctuations.
The answer arrived slowly, carried by a pressure he could barely endure.
An aura of Immortal Gu.
Han Feng's eyes narrowed.
"An Immortal Gu has been activated."
He paused, correcting himself.
"Or something powerful enough to make the entire region believe one has."
He would not mistake an aura for proof. The Central Region held ancient inheritances, sealed ruins, and forces whose true nature remained unknown. A disturbance of this magnitude could have more than one explanation.
But the distinction offered little comfort.
Whatever had happened, the strongest beings in the Gu World would feel it.
And they would not all respond in the same way.
Some would investigate.
Some would seek to seize whatever had awakened.
Others might try to destroy it before it became a threat.
Han Feng looked down at the broken road.
The corpses.
The black ash.
The faint golden lines still visible beneath his awareness.
The man had said that something was coming.
Now the Central Region was responding to a second disturbance, one far greater than anything Han Feng had witnessed on this road.
Were the events connected?
He had no evidence.
Only a growing suspicion that the cracks were not isolated incidents.
Something was testing the boundaries of the world.
And the people powerful enough to notice were finally beginning to move.
Shen Lian's voice trembled.
"Should we go toward the Central Region?"
Han Feng turned to her.
"No."
She blinked.
"But if an Immortal Gu—"
"Especially if an Immortal Gu is involved."
He looked toward the distant horizon.
"We're injured. We don't know what awakened, who is involved, or whether that fissure is stable. Walking toward it now would be the same as announcing our arrival to every powerful cultivator in the region."
Shen Lian fell silent.
Han Feng took a slow breath.
He had survived the corrupted man, but only by exploiting the ancient road and forcing a reaction from the Celestial Diagram that he could barely control.
He could not afford another battle like that.
Not today.
He needed shelter.
Medicine.
Time to recover.
And answers.
Above them, the enormous crack flickered.
For an instant, three colors shone within its depths: red, purple, and gold.
Then the light disappeared behind the swirling clouds.
Han Feng's heart tightened.
He remembered the three lights he had seen before.
He still did not know what they represented.
But now, one of them seemed to have answered a call from the Central Region.
The Celestial Diagram gave a single, faint pulse.
Far beyond the visible sky, something silent seemed to turn its attention toward the disturbance.
Han Feng felt the presence for less than a heartbeat.
Cold.
Distant.
Controlled.
Then it vanished.
He could not tell whether it had noticed the fissure, the awakening, or him.
Perhaps it had noticed all three.
Han Feng lowered his gaze.
"Let's move."
Shen Lian tightened her grip on his arm.
"Where?"
"Somewhere the sky isn't trying to break open."
He started toward the ruined hills, forcing his damaged body to keep moving.
Behind them, the ancient road fell silent.
But deep beneath its broken stones, one remaining formation mark continued to glow.
Faintly.
Patiently.
And far away, in the Central Region, the aura of Immortal Gu spread across the heavens.
The true monsters of the Gu World had begun to stir.
Han Feng did not know which of them would reach the disturbance first.
He only knew that when they did, the struggle would no longer concern a single corrupted cultivator—or a few unstable fissures.
It would concern whatever lay beyond the boundary.
And somehow, whether he understood the reason or not, the Celestial Diagram had already become part of that struggle.