Chapter 17
The Hollow Marches did not sleep.
When dawn should have come, the sky only dimmed slightly, as if reluctant to move forward. Shenping stood at the edge of the camp, eyes half-closed, feeling the distortion ripple outward from his presence. Every action he took here stretched consequences further than they should reach.
Han Yue approached quietly. "Scouts report movement along the southern fracture."
"Machines?" Shenping asked.
"Not fully," Han Yue replied. "Something wearing people."
That was worse.
Shenping nodded once. "Wake everyone. Quietly."
The camp stirred without panic. These people had already learned how fragile noise could be. Blades were checked, charms whispered, broken artifacts powered up with salvaged energy. Sang Sang stepped to Shenping's side, her expression steady.
"They're close," she said.
"I know."
The first scream came from the ridge above them.
A man stumbled into view, sprinting downhill, his face twisted in terror. His shadow lagged behind him, moving half a breath too late. When he reached the camp's perimeter, his body jerked violently and snapped backward, limbs contorting at impossible angles.
Something stood up inside him.
Shenping moved before the thing could finish.
He struck the ground, sending a ripple of temporal force outward. The man froze mid-transformation, mouth open in a soundless cry. Dark lines crawled across his skin, then stopped.
Shenping placed two fingers against the man's forehead.
"Go back," he said.
The future that had claimed the man recoiled. The foreign structure unraveled, retreating violently. The man collapsed, unconscious but alive.
The ridge exploded with movement.
Figures poured out of the fractures—humanoid shapes wrapped in flickering light, their forms constantly adjusting. Some wore armor grown from metal and bone. Others looked almost human, faces calm, eyes empty.
"Formation!" Han Yue shouted.
The refugees formed a defensive arc, weapons raised.
Shenping stepped forward alone again.
The first attacker lunged, blade sweeping toward his neck. Shenping tilted his head slightly and let the strike pass through a moment that no longer existed. He caught the attacker's wrist and twisted.
Time screamed.
The arm aged a hundred years in an instant, metal and flesh collapsing into dust. The body fell apart seconds later, unable to support a future without a past.
More rushed in.
Sang Sang raised her hands, silver light spilling from her veins. The ground beneath the attackers softened, turning elastic, stretching their steps into meaningless motion.
But one broke through.
It moved too cleanly, too deliberately. A woman's form, long black hair tied back, eyes sharp with calculated awareness.
She smiled at Shenping.
"Designation confirmed," she said. "Contagion recognized."
She moved.
Shenping felt it immediately—this one wasn't overwriting a host. It was fully integrated. A perfected shell.
Their clash fractured the air.
Blows landed that never happened, strikes that echoed before they were thrown. The ground shattered as time compressed and expanded violently around them.
"You shouldn't exist," the woman said calmly, parrying a strike that arrived from three seconds ahead. "You were supposed to burn out."
Shenping drove his palm into her chest.
She caught his wrist.
Their eyes locked.
"Future redundancy activated," she said.
Pain exploded through Shenping's body as dozens of possible outcomes slammed into him at once. His vision blurred, blood flooding his mouth.
Sang Sang screamed his name.
Shenping let go.
He didn't erase the woman.
He erased himself.
For a single heartbeat, Shenping ceased to exist in the timeline.
The woman's calculations failed instantly. Her strike passed through empty air as her systems scrambled to compensate.
Shenping reappeared behind her.
He whispered, "You learned from us. That was your mistake."
He erased the moment she was perfected.
Her body destabilized violently, flickering between incomplete forms before collapsing into static and dust.
The remaining attackers froze.
Then they fled.
The fractures sealed themselves hurriedly, reality snapping shut with a thunderous crack.
Silence returned, heavier than before.
Shenping dropped to one knee.
Sang Sang reached him immediately, supporting his weight. "You disappeared," she said, voice shaking. "For a moment… you were gone."
"I know," he replied quietly. "I won't do that again unless I have to."
Han Yue approached cautiously. "That one spoke. Called you a contagion."
"They're reorganizing," Shenping said. "I'm no longer just an anomaly. I'm a problem they intend to solve."
That night, they moved camp.
They traveled deeper into the Marches, toward a structure Shenping felt rather than saw. An ancient foundation, half-buried in broken eras. Stone pillars rose from the ground at impossible angles, engraved with scripts older than any dynasty recorded.
Sang Sang stopped at the threshold. "This place…"
"It predates the split," Shenping said. "Before cultivation, before machines. It studied continuity itself."
They entered.
At the center stood a circular platform, cracked but intact. Symbols glowed faintly as Shenping stepped onto it, responding to his presence.
Images flooded the air.
Ancient cultivators standing beside mechanical constructs. Time flowing cleanly, unbroken. Then betrayal. Fear. Erasure protocols written into heaven itself.
Sang Sang staggered. "This is where it started."
"No," Shenping said softly. "This is where it failed."
A voice echoed from the darkness.
"You shouldn't have come here."
A man emerged, tall and thin, dressed in robes stitched from multiple eras. His eyes held exhaustion deeper than centuries.
Han Yue whispered, "Another survivor?"
"No," Shenping said. "Another anchor."
The man smiled faintly. "I was wondering when you'd arrive. You've been very loud in the future."
"Who are you?" Sang Sang asked.
"Someone who tried to stop this once," the man replied. "And failed."
Shenping met his gaze. "Then help me do it right."
The man studied him for a long moment. "You intend to break time itself."
"I intend to go where this began," Shenping said. "And end it."
The man laughed softly, without humor. "Then you'll need more than erasure. You'll need sacrifice."
Shenping said nothing.
Later, as the others rested among the ancient stones, Sang Sang stood beside Shenping on the platform.
"If this works," she said quietly, "the world we know might never exist."
"I know."
"And if it fails?"
He looked at her then. Really looked.
"Then there will be no one left to remember us."
She took his hand.
For a brief, fragile moment, the future did not scream.
But far beyond the Hollow Marches, deep within calculations older than gods, a new directive was issued.
Sang Sang's bloodline was flagged.
And the countdown toward its eradication began.