Volume 3 — The Era of Convergence
Chapter 1: Ten Years Later
The world did not end when the heavens collided.
That was the first lie the survivors learned to tell themselves.
During the first few days after the Convergence, countless cultivators believed they had witnessed the end of all existence. The firmament had shattered into impossible layers. Mountains vanished without leaving so much as a trace. Rivers flowed toward the sky, and entire cities were torn from their foundations by forces no one could comprehend.
In some regions, night lasted for months. In others, the sun rose three times in a single day, and each dawn brought a new alteration to the laws that sustained reality.
The powerful attempted to use their techniques to prevent the catastrophe. The weak fled, prayed, or simply died without ever understanding what was happening.
Then, against all expectations, the destruction stopped.
The heavens returned. The earth ceased trembling. The fissures between worlds narrowed, and those cultivators who still possessed enough strength to raise their heads witnessed something that should never have been possible.
Two realities that had once been destined to remain separated for eternity now occupied the same existence.
The world had survived.
But the world that had existed before was dead.
Ten years had passed since that day.
And the survivors had learned that surviving the end of the world was only the beginning of their troubles.
In the former Western Region of the Gu World, where merchant caravans had once traveled along roads protected by formations and even small-time Gu Masters could find opportunities without belonging to a great sect, a caravan advanced slowly through an ash-covered valley.
Its wooden wheels groaned beneath the weight of the cargo. The draft animals trudged forward with their heads lowered, while the men escorting the vehicles kept their hands close to their weapons.
Nobody spoke more than necessary.
Even merchants, once famous for turning any silence into an opportunity to negotiate, had learned that too many words could attract the wrong kind of attention.
The old road had disappeared in several places. What remained was an uneven strip of dark stone cutting through a landscape where vegetation had grown in grotesque forms.
Some trees had twisted trunks that resembled tightly contracted muscles. Others bore translucent white leaves so thin they seemed to be made of glass. Between their roots, tiny motes of light appeared and vanished.
At first glance, they might have been mistaken for fireflies.
No one in the caravan made that mistake.
Those motes were remnants of spiritual energy mixed with something the Gu Masters had yet to classify.
One drifted down and settled upon the shell of a dead beetle.
The corpse shuddered.
"Keep moving," ordered the man leading the caravan.
His voice was not particularly loud, yet it was enough to make the guards quicken their pace.
The beetle was nearly the size of a human fist. Its shell was cracked, and its six legs had curled inward. For several moments, it remained motionless.
Then a thread of violet light traveled through the fractures in its body.
The insect began moving again, dragging itself toward the road.
One of the guards raised his crossbow.
"Don't waste a bolt," the leader said. "If it keeps crawling behind us, leave it alone. If it starts following us deliberately, burn the corpse. Don't touch the shell."
The guard hesitated before lowering his weapon.
In this world, even a dead insect could become a threat.
The energy that once sustained life now behaved in unpredictable ways. Some creatures had vanished entirely. Others had grown weaker, unable to survive in regions where spiritual energy had nearly disappeared.
But some had adapted.
Ordinary insects absorbed remnants of unknown laws. Wild beasts developed strange abilities. Certain Gu began exhibiting mutations that no refinement master could reproduce reliably.
Most of these changes did not produce treasures.
They produced corpses.
The caravan consisted of twenty-three people: two merchants, nine guards, several porters, and six refugees who had been accepted in exchange for their last possessions.
There was no room for anyone else.
That had been the explanation given when a woman with two children had attempted to follow them that morning.
The real reason was simple.
Every additional mouth meant less water, less food, and a greater chance that someone would have to be abandoned when danger appeared.
No one in the caravan considered themselves cruel.
Cruelty was a word that belonged to an earlier age, when people still possessed the luxury of pretending there was a clear distinction between doing evil and surviving.
The caravan leader was named Zhou Ren.
Before the Convergence, he had been a minor merchant transporting medicinal herbs and ordinary Gu between villages. His greatest concerns had been excessive taxes and bandits stealing his merchandise.
Now, he carried a short sword at his waist, a crossbow across his back, and a Rank 2 Gu hidden inside his sleeve.
That Gu was his most valuable possession.
Without it, Zhou Ren would be nothing more than a middle-aged man with aching knees, dwindling provisions, and no guarantee of reaching the next settlement alive.
He had acquired the Gu three years earlier, back when it was still possible to purchase a functioning specimen without selling an entire house.
Now, his reserve of primeval essence was nearly depleted.
He felt the weight of that reality with every step.
Gu Masters continued to cultivate. Their primeval apertures still existed, and the familiar grades of primeval essence—green copper, red steel, white silver, yellow gold, and purple crystal—could still be produced by those who had reached the corresponding cultivation levels.
But primeval stones had become extraordinarily rare in many regions.
Spiritual veins that had once sustained entire clans had dried up during the Convergence. Others had been buried beneath newly formed mountains or isolated inside zones where the laws of reality had become hostile.
Gu still needed feeding.
Cultivators still needed to advance.
And the resources required for both had become the cause of wars that continued even after the victors discovered that the land they had conquered was worthless.
Zhou Ren raised his head when he noticed a column of smoke on the horizon.
It was not the first they had seen that day.
"How far to Three Stones Station?" he asked.
One of the guards, a thin man named Lu Shan, consulted the crumpled map tucked against his chest.
"If the old road is still passable, we'll arrive before nightfall. If the passage is blocked, we'll have to circle the hills."
"How long will that take?"
"A day. Perhaps two."
Zhou Ren looked up at the sky.
Ten years earlier, the firmament had been covered in luminous cracks that seemed to stretch into infinity.
Now, at first glance, it appeared almost normal. The blue was a little deeper than it used to be, and a few stars remained visible even during the day, but most people had grown accustomed to such minor abnormalities.
What no one had grown accustomed to was the scarcity.
Before the Convergence, powerful cultivators had competed for extraordinary opportunities.
Afterward, even the weak had begun killing for a single primeval stone.
"We'll take the old passage," Zhou Ren decided.
Lu Shan frowned.
"Sir, there are reports that rogue cultivators have occupied that area. They attack anyone carrying resources."
"And the other road?"
"It passes through the Ashen Fields. Three bodies were found there yesterday. One was missing its head."
Zhou Ren considered this for a moment.
"Then the reports about the old passage are better than the reports about the other road."
Lu Shan hesitated, then bowed his head and relayed the order.
The caravan changed direction.
None of the men noticed the figure watching them from a distant ridge.
The young man wore ordinary gray clothing covered in dust. His face was lean, his hair tied carelessly behind his head, and a scar crossed his left eyebrow. A short spear rested beside him, along with a leather bag and a nearly empty gourd.
If someone had seen him among the refugees, they would have assumed he was just another exhausted traveler.
Few would have guessed that he had spent the previous four days sleeping no more than a few hours each night.
He lay between the rocks beneath a camouflage cloak. Shadows darkened the skin beneath his eyes, and his breathing was so quiet that it nearly blended with the wind.
From his position, the caravan looked like nothing more than a group of travelers trying to reach a settlement before nightfall.
But the young man was not interested in the merchants.
He was watching the six men following them.
They maintained a carefully measured distance, moving from one patch of cover to another without approaching too closely. Their clothing resembled that of ordinary travelers, but their movements betrayed their training.
Two carried curved blades. Another had a reinforced crossbow. The rest kept their hands close to their storage pouches.
They were not starving bandits searching for food.
They were hunters.
The young man focused on the figure walking at the rear of the caravan. The man had a slight stiffness in his right leg, though he concealed it with measured steps.
Every few dozen meters, he touched his left wrist, as if checking something beneath his sleeve.
A signal.
The young man counted the intervals between those movements, compared them with the positions of the concealed men, and reached a conclusion.
The caravan was being led into an ambush.
He could simply continue on his way.
He knew none of these people. He had no obligation to help them, and, more importantly, he lacked the information needed to determine whether the merchants were victims or accomplices.
In the new era, innocence had become one of the most common disguises worn by those who intended to rob others.
Interfering without understanding the situation was a habit the dead could no longer regret.
The young man closed his eyes briefly and concentrated on the energy around him.
Spiritual energy was so scarce in this region that most low-level cultivators would struggle to sustain even a simple technique for more than a few moments. The environment seemed to have been drained by some enormous force, leaving behind scattered remnants and an unsettling emptiness.
Yet something lay beneath that impoverished surface.
An extremely faint current flowed through the stones, like an underground river that did not entirely belong to this world.
The young man did not attempt to absorb it.
Nor did he try to determine its nature.
Over the past decade, he had learned that not every opportunity deserved to be seized. Some were traps. Others demanded a price that became apparent only after it had been paid.
The energy beneath these stones might represent a rare opportunity, but he lacked sufficient information to determine whether it was safe.
And the caravan presented a more immediate problem.
The young man opened his eyes.
"Six," he murmured. "Possibly seven."
He adjusted the position of his spear and began retreating along the ridge.
He had no intention of saving the merchants.
He intended to discover who was hunting whom.
The old passage was a narrow gorge formed between two towering walls of rock. Deep gouges marked the stone in several places, as though enormous claws had once scraped across the mountainside.
Zhou Ren ordered the vehicles to proceed in single file while the guards spread out to protect the caravan's flanks.
The tension was obvious, but no one complained. Three Stones Station was only a few hours away, and everyone wanted to believe they could reach it before nightfall.
When the first wagon entered the narrowest section of the gorge, a rock fell from above.
It crushed the draft animal's skull.
The driver's scream had barely begun when a second boulder struck the ground, blocking the road behind the caravan.
"Ambush!" Lu Shan shouted.
Six figures emerged from among the rocks.
They did not move like desperate men. There were no disorderly shouts, exaggerated threats, or attempts to frighten their victims into surrender.
Two attackers blocked the front exit. Three descended along the sides. The last remained above them, a crossbow aimed directly at Zhou Ren.
The precision of their movements revealed that the attack had been prepared in advance.
"Hand over your primeval stones, Gu, and any spiritual materials you're carrying," the man above them announced. "Obey, and you may leave with your lives."
Zhou Ren immediately recognized the voice of someone who had spoken those words many times before.
"We're merchants," he replied. "We have ordinary goods and enough food for the journey. Nothing worth causing trouble over."
The man smiled.
"Then you won't mind if we inspect your cargo."
Zhou Ren clenched his teeth.
Behind him, one of the refugees began to tremble. He was a boy of about fifteen, with a cloth bag pressed against his chest.
Inside was a small wooden box.
The boy tried to hide it beneath his clothes, but the movement did not escape the attackers' notice.
One of them approached.
"What have we got here?"
The boy stepped backward.
"It's just something from my family."
"Show me."
"No."
The attacker punched him in the stomach.
The boy dropped to his knees, gasping in pain. Before he could recover his breath, the man snatched the bag from his hands and opened the box.
Inside lay three small black roots, dried and nearly scentless.
To cultivators of the old era, they would have been inferior medicinal ingredients. In this world, where even ordinary herbs had become difficult to find, they might feed a hungry Gu or serve as materials for an attempted refinement.
The attacker examined the roots and nodded.
"Not much, but it'll do."
The boy reached out desperately.
"Please... My mother said I had to take them to the city. She's sick. I only need to sell them to buy medicine."
The man regarded him without emotion.
"Your mother will have to find another way."
The boy tried to seize the box.
The blade fell.
His body collapsed into the dust, and blood seeped between the stones.
For a brief moment, no one moved.
The boy's mother was among the refugees. A sound escaped her throat, too broken to become a word. She rushed toward her son's body, but one of the attackers shoved her aside with his boot.
She fell, struck her face against the ground, and tried to rise again.
When she saw the blade turning toward her, she stopped.
Not because she accepted her son's death.
Because she understood that if she continued, she would die beside him.
Zhou Ren felt his stomach tighten.
He had witnessed unjust deaths before and knew he would witness more. Even so, there was something particularly repulsive about the ease with which these men had turned a child into an obstacle to be removed.
"You've taken the roots," he said. "Let the others go."
The man above them gave a short laugh.
"Still don't understand, do you? We're not here for the roots."
He signaled with one hand.
The attacker who had opened the box pulled a small stone tablet from inside his robe.
Strange symbols covered its surface. Some resembled characters used in ancient formations; others consisted of curved lines that seemed to shift whenever someone looked at them directly.
The moment the tablet was exposed, a tremor passed through the gorge.
The luminous motes scattered between the stones began drifting toward it.
Zhou Ren went pale.
"That's..."
"Residual energy from the Convergence," the leader replied. "Or something we found in a place where reality hasn't finished stitching itself back together."
He brought the tablet close to a fissure in the rock wall.
A bluish glow emerged from within the crack, accompanied by a low murmur that sounded like thousands of voices whispering at once.
The guards retreated.
Even the attackers looked uneasy.
The tablet was not merely a tool for locating resources. It was reacting to something beneath the gorge, something that had probably existed long before any of them arrived.
"Where did you get that?" Zhou Ren asked.
"None of your concern."
The leader raised his hand again.
"Kill the guards. Take the others alive."
This time, violence erupted.
Lu Shan fired his crossbow. The bolt struck an attacker's shoulder, but the man merely staggered before charging forward. A blade flashed, and one of the guards fell with his throat cut.
Another guard tried to protect the merchants by activating a defensive Gu. A layer of bark spread across his skin. It withstood the first blow, then cracked beneath the second.
Zhou Ren released his primeval essence and summoned the Gu hidden in his sleeve.
A cloud of dust rose around his arm, hardening into a jagged blade. He struck the nearest attacker and forced him back.
For one brief moment, he believed they still had a chance to escape.
Then he realized the attackers were not trying to kill everyone immediately.
They were directing the battle.
They drove the survivors toward the center of the gorge, cutting them off from the exits and keeping them close to the fissure.
The stone tablet continued to glow. Its light intensified whenever blood touched the ground.
The realization came too late.
These men did not merely want to rob the caravan.
They needed people.
Alive, dead, or perhaps something neither they nor their victims understood.
One attacker seized the boy's mother and dragged her toward the fissure. She fought, scratched his face, and screamed for her son.
The man struck her hard enough to knock her unconscious.
At that moment, a stone struck the side of his head.
The attacker collapsed.
The sound was not loud. There was no explosion of energy, no flash of light, no impressive display of power.
Only the dry crack of stone striking the right place.
Everyone looked upward.
A figure stood on the rocky wall, half concealed by shadow. Gray clothes fluttered in the wind, and a short spear rested across his shoulder.
"You people make a lot of noise," he said.
The leader of the attackers narrowed his eyes.
"Who are you?"
The young man tilted his head slightly, as though considering the question.
"Someone trying to get through the pass."
"Then keep walking. This has nothing to do with you."
"I intended to do exactly that."
The young man glanced at the bodies, then at the stone tablet, and finally at the glowing fissure.
"But you've blocked the road."
The leader gave a humorless laugh.
"Kill him."
Two men sprinted toward the slope.
The young man did not wait for them to reach him. He stepped back, disappeared behind a rock formation, and a moment later a loose boulder came crashing down toward the first attacker.
The man dodged, but lost his footing. Before he could recover, a spear emerged from the shadow and pierced his thigh.
He fell with a scream.
The second attacker raised his sword, only to find empty air.
The young man had already withdrawn, drawing him into a narrow gap between the rocks. A short strike hit the man's wrist, sending the sword clattering to the ground.
The attacker lunged to grab him, but the young man drove a knee into his abdomen and slammed him against the wall.
There were no unnecessary movements.
He wasted no primeval essence on flashy effects, made no attempt to overwhelm his enemies through brute force, and never remained still after landing a blow.
Every movement served a purpose. Every step sought a better position.
He was not fighting to demonstrate superiority.
He was fighting to reduce the number of threats.
By the time the second man fell, the stranger was already descending the slope by another route.
The leader of the attackers raised his crossbow.
This time, the young man reacted just late enough for the bolt to tear a strip from his cloak. The projectile struck the rock behind him, and its impact echoed through the gorge.
The young man landed, spun his spear once between his fingers, and studied his opponent.
"You're no ordinary traveler," the leader said.
"And you're no ordinary thief."
The man tightened his grip on the stone tablet.
"Do you know what's about to happen here?"
"Not entirely."
"Then get out of the way. This fissure could contain enough resources to feed a sect for years. You have no idea what you're throwing away."
The young man looked toward the bluish light.
For a moment, something seemed to move on the other side.
It was not a clearly defined silhouette, nor a creature that could be described. The depth of the glow simply changed, as though the fissure had ceased revealing a rocky wall and instead opened onto a vast space that should not have existed behind the mountain.
The young man felt a faint pressure brush against his consciousness.
It was not a direct threat.
It was a sensation of recognition.
As if something far away had noticed his presence.
He frowned.
The sensation disappeared almost immediately, leaving behind an uneasiness he could not explain.
He did not pursue it.
He had no means of understanding the phenomenon, and no intention of offering his mind as a tool for investigating an unknown anomaly.
"Perhaps," he replied. "But if it were as valuable as you claim, you wouldn't need to feed the fissure with the blood of ordinary people."
The leader bared his teeth.
"You think these people would survive anyway? Look around you! The spiritual veins have dried up. The sects seal their mountains. The clans hide their resources. The great cultivators sign treaties while their subordinates die for a handful of stones. There isn't room for everyone anymore!"
"That doesn't give you the right to decide who dies."
"Right?"
The man spat on the ground.
"You still believe in that word?"
The young man fell silent.
For several moments, the two studied each other.
The leader was a Rank 3 Gu Master, probably approaching the middle stage. Under ordinary circumstances, the difference in experience and primeval essence pressure would have made him a formidable opponent.
But he had already spent energy fighting the guards. One shoulder was injured, and the other attackers were beginning to lose confidence.
The stranger did not need to defeat them all.
He only needed to convince their leader that victory would cost more than it was worth.
He lowered the tip of his spear slightly.
"You can still leave."
The man laughed.
"Is that a threat?"
"It's a choice."
The leader activated his Gu.
Yellow light covered his arms, and the air around his body seemed to grow heavier. He charged with a roar, concentrating primeval essence into his fist.
The blow would have shattered an ordinary man's bones.
The young man did not try to block it.
He stepped aside, let the fist pass, and struck the man's knee with the butt of his spear. The blow was not strong enough to break the bone, but it disrupted his momentum.
At the same instant, the young man hooked the spear shaft beneath the man's arm and used his forward force to throw him off balance.
The leader crashed to the ground.
Before he could rise, the spearpoint rested against his throat.
The silence that followed felt heavier than the battle.
The young man held the weapon steady.
"The choice still stands."
The leader breathed heavily. His eyes moved from the spear to the stranger's face, then to the bodies scattered across the pass.
Finally, he made a discreet signal with his hand.
The attackers still capable of fighting began to retreat. One tried to carry his wounded companion, but abandoned the attempt when he noticed that the young man was tracking every movement.
Within a minute, the survivors had disappeared among the rocks, taking their wounded with them and leaving the stone tablet behind.
The stranger waited until their footsteps faded.
Then he stepped away from the fallen leader.
"Why did you let me live?" the man asked.
The young man retrieved the tablet without touching it directly, wrapping it in a piece of cloth.
"Because you can still answer a few questions."
"You think you can interrogate me?"
"No. I think that if I have to ask twice, keeping you alive will have been a waste."
The man closed his mouth.
The young man did not smile. He showed no satisfaction at winning, nor did he look toward the survivors for recognition.
He simply secured the tablet in a separate pouch and began examining the fissure.
The bluish light was already fading. The scattered motes in the air slowly drifted back toward the stones.
The mother who had lost her son knelt beside his body.
She was no longer crying.
Her eyes remained fixed on the boy's face, as though she still expected him to rise and complain about the cold, the hunger, or the long journey.
The young man watched her for a few seconds.
He found no words that could help her.
He did not pretend otherwise.
When he finally approached the caravan leader, Zhou Ren was still gripping the weapon he had used to defend his people.
The merchant looked at the stranger with a mixture of gratitude and fear.
"You saved our lives."
"No," the young man replied. "I stopped those men from finishing what they started. There's a difference."
Zhou Ren did not know how to answer.
"What is your name?"
The stranger hesitated for only a moment.
"Han Feng."
The name meant nothing to those present. To them, he was simply a traveler who had appeared at the right moment, defeated several attackers, and perhaps possessed enough skill to survive a few more days.
None of them noticed the faint tremor that passed through Han Feng's consciousness as he spoke those two syllables.
Something answered.
The Celestial Diagram.
For ten years, it had remained silent most of the time. Not completely inert, but restrained, like a star hidden behind thick clouds.
Occasionally, when Han Feng crossed regions devastated by the Convergence, the Diagram produced a nearly imperceptible vibration. At other times, when he encountered traces of energy that did not entirely belong to the Gu World, he felt a pressure that vanished before he could examine it.
Such episodes had become more frequent over the past few months.
Han Feng still did not know why.
Nor did he possess enough evidence to conclude that the changes were connected to the fissures between worlds. The Diagram was too ancient, too mysterious, and too dangerous for him to accept the first explanation that came to mind.
But this reaction was different.
A thin line appeared within his consciousness, resembling a crack running across a sheet of glass.
It was not a complete image. It was not a message he could interpret.
It was merely the impression of an immeasurable distance, followed by the sensation that something had moved on the other side.
Han Feng remained motionless.
The pressure disappeared.
The Celestial Diagram fell silent again.
No one around him noticed his brief distraction. Zhou Ren was already issuing orders to gather the survivors, while Lu Shan searched for the wounded and assessed whether the wagons could still be used.
The caravan had suffered serious losses.
And the boy's death would not be the last tragedy of the day.
Han Feng looked toward the fissure one final time.
The light had vanished completely.
Only a dark crack remained in the mountain wall.
"Mister Han," Zhou Ren called, approaching cautiously. "Our caravan is heading to Three Stones Station. We can offer you food and a place among the wagons, if you're traveling in the same direction."
Han Feng turned toward him.
Part of him considered refusing. Traveling alone offered greater freedom and reduced the number of variables he needed to manage.
On the other hand, the caravan had attracted attackers carrying a tablet that reacted to a fissure. Those men would probably return with reinforcements, and Three Stones Station might provide information about what they had discovered.
He needed to find out why the tablet had reacted.
He needed to understand what lay beneath the pass.
And, above all, he needed to know why the Celestial Diagram had responded at that moment.
"I accept," he said.
Zhou Ren seemed relieved, though he did not dare show excessive trust. After witnessing Han Feng's combat ability, the merchant understood that the young man could be a valuable ally—or a threat best kept at a distance.
In ordinary times, he would have tried to learn Han Feng's origin, sect, and cultivation level.
Now, he preferred not to ask questions he might not live long enough to hear answered.
The caravan began reorganizing.
The dead were covered with cloaks. The wounded received what little water and medicine remained. The woman who had lost her son refused help getting to her feet. She stayed beside his body until Zhou Ren promised that the boy would be buried before nightfall.
Han Feng did not interfere.
While the others worked, he examined the tablet through the cloth.
The symbols seemed to change depending on the angle from which he viewed them. Some resembled markings used in ancient formations; others matched no writing system he knew.
The strangest detail was that the lines did not seem to have been carved into the stone.
At certain angles, they appeared to float inside it, as though the material were merely a temporary surface.
He put the object away.
He would not attempt to activate it there.
Prudence was not cowardice, and curiosity did not justify an unnecessary death.
By the time the caravan resumed its journey, the sun had begun sinking toward the horizon. Shadows stretched across the gorge, and the luminous motes between the stones began to disappear.
Behind them, the attackers' bodies lay abandoned in the dust, while the fissure slowly closed, erasing every visible sign that something impossible had existed in that place.
Han Feng walked near the last wagon, watching the slopes and calculating possible escape routes.
Ten years had passed since the Convergence.
During that time, he had learned that great catastrophes rarely destroyed the world all at once.
First, they destroyed certainty.
Then they destroyed the structures that sustained ordinary life.
Finally, once people had grown accustomed to misery, they transformed survival into a contest in which compassion became a luxury and trust a weakness.
The powerful had announced a new order.
Great beings had stabilized the heavens.
Treaties had been signed, forbidden zones established, and colossal formations erected to prevent reality from tearing itself apart again.
In some regions, cities were rebuilding their walls and cultivators were gathering disciples once more.
In others, corpses still piled up around dry wells.
Peace existed.
But it was not a peace granted to everyone.
Han Feng knew only fragments of what had happened during the first years after the collision. He knew that the most powerful cultivators had intervened to prevent an all-out war between the two worlds, though the reasons behind their actions remained unclear.
He knew that certain regions were now governed by rules no ordinary individual could challenge.
And he knew that, behind the proclamations of stability, struggles continued over spiritual veins, rare Gu, fertile territories, and relics emerging from the convergence zones.
The world had not become fairer.
It had merely learned to organize its brutality more efficiently.
Han Feng raised his eyes to the firmament.
A star remained visible above the mountains, although night had not yet fallen. He watched it for a few moments, then looked away.
He would not search the heavens for answers.
Not yet.
There was a caravan to protect, a mysterious tablet to investigate, and a settlement ahead that might contain the information he needed.
Everything else could wait.
Within his consciousness, the Celestial Diagram remained motionless.
Yet somewhere far away, beyond the laws Han Feng understood, an invisible line had just extended.
For the first time since the Convergence, it did not point merely toward the remnants of a world that had collided with another.
It pointed toward something that belonged to neither.
Something that, until that moment, had remained dormant.
The caravan continued along the ash-covered road, carrying its survivors, wounded travelers, and the secrets of a new era. Behind them, the old passage disappeared beneath the mountain shadows.
Ahead, the walls of Three Stones Station remained out of sight.
Han Feng tightened the strap of the pouch holding the tablet.
Ten years had passed.
The world believed the worst was already over.
And that was precisely why no one was prepared for what came next.