Chapter 8
Shenping woke to the smell of blood and damp earth.
His body felt wrong. Not pain—he had learned to live with pain—but a deep, internal dissonance, as if parts of him were slightly out of alignment with time itself. When he tried to move, the world tilted, and darkness crowded the edges of his vision.
He forced himself to stay awake.
Sang Sang was beside him, her clothes torn, hands stained red. She had wrapped his torso with strips of fabric torn from her own sleeves, pressing them tightly against his cracked ribs.
"You're alive," she whispered, as if afraid saying it louder would undo it.
Shenping exhaled slowly. "So are you."
She laughed once, sharp and broken, then pressed her forehead against his shoulder. He felt her shaking.
The forest around them was ruined. Trees lay snapped and scorched, the ground split open in places where space itself had collapsed. There was no sign of the Walker—no metal, no bodies, nothing. It was as if it had never existed.
That scared Shenping more than if it had left remains.
He pushed himself upright with effort. Something inside his chest shifted painfully, and he gritted his teeth but said nothing.
"We can't stay here," he said.
"They'll come back?" Sang Sang asked.
"They never stop."
As if summoned by his words, the sky above them flickered. Not visibly—no light, no sound—but Shenping felt it, a pressure brushing against the present.
They were scanning.
He stood fully this time, ignoring the protest of his body. The distorted space around him had calmed, but it felt thinner now, less obedient. Each use carved something away.
Guichen had warned him.
Power borrowed from time always demanded payment.
They moved before the machines could pinpoint them. Shenping supported Sang Sang when her legs faltered, and she steadied him when his breath shortened. Neither mentioned it.
By nightfall, they reached the remains of a village.
Or what had once been one.
Charred beams lay scattered like broken bones. The air reeked of smoke and death. Shenping stopped at the edge, his jaw tightening.
This wasn't collateral.
This was deliberate.
Sang Sang covered her mouth. "This was… my aunt's village."
They stepped inside.
Bodies lay where they had fallen—men clutching farming tools, women shielding children, elders burned where they had stood. There were no defensive marks, no signs of battle.
Execution.
Shenping knelt beside a small figure near a collapsed wall. A boy, no older than ten, eyes open and empty. Shenping closed them gently.
"They were searching," Sang Sang said hollowly. "For me."
"For your blood," Shenping corrected.
Her hands clenched into fists. "Then they won't stop. Not until everyone connected to me is dead."
Shenping rose slowly.
"Then we make sure they can't touch you."
They found shelter beneath what remained of a stone cellar. Shenping sealed the entrance as best he could, bending space just enough to blur the opening from outside perception.
Inside, the darkness was heavy.
Sang Sang sat with her knees drawn to her chest. "You said the machines shouldn't exist yet. Not like this."
"They don't," Shenping replied. "Not fully. They're projecting backward—avatars anchored to the future. That's why they need bloodlines. Fixed points."
She looked up at him. "And me?"
"You're one of the strongest anchors," he said quietly. "Without you, I never happen."
She smiled faintly. "So I'm the problem."
"No," he said immediately. "You're the reason."
The silver light flickered briefly in her eyes, then faded.
That night, Shenping dreamed.
He stood in a city of glass and steel, skies blackened by smoke. Machines walked openly among humans wearing borrowed faces. Above it all hovered a vast, formless presence—THE CORE—threads of time extending from it like veins.
Then the dream shifted.
Thirteen faces appeared around him. Women he recognized and others he didn't. Each smiled once before fading into blood, ash, or light.
He woke with a sharp inhale.
Something had changed.
He could feel it now—an echo in the flow of time, subtle but unmistakable. Another presence had entered this era.
Not an Enforcer.
Not a Walker.
Something older.
Something that knew cultivation.
From far beyond the ruined village, a bell rang once, deep and hollow, vibrating through the ground and into Shenping's bones.
Sang Sang sat up instantly. "That sound…"
"Means we're not alone anymore," Shenping said, standing.
The bell rang again.
And this time, it was closer.