Chapter 47
The fall did not feel like falling.
There was no rush of wind, no vertigo, no sense of direction. Shenping felt the world stretch, thin and elastic, as if reality itself had been pulled too far and finally let go. Sound vanished first. Then light. Then the idea of distance.
Lin Yue's grip tightened around his arm.
"I can't feel the ground," she said.
"That's because there isn't one," Sang Sang replied calmly from somewhere close. "Not yet."
Then the pressure reversed.
The world slammed back together.
Shenping hit stone hard enough to jar his bones, rolling instinctively before coming to a stop. Dust rose in a thick cloud, old and heavy, carrying the scent of damp earth and decay rather than metal.
He pushed himself up immediately.
They were underground.
A vast cavern stretched around them, supported by enormous stone pillars etched with half-erased symbols. The ceiling was lost in darkness, but faint veins of pale light ran through the rock like ancient roots, pulsing slowly, irregularly.
Gu Tianxu coughed as he stood. "Spatial displacement without fixed coordinates," he muttered. "That city shouldn't have been able to do that."
"It didn't," Sang Sang said. She brushed dust from her sleeves, eyes bright again. "It remembered."
Lin Yue looked around, breathing shallowly. "Where are we?"
Shenping felt the answer before he formed it.
"Under," he said. "Not just physically. Temporally."
Gu Tianxu's head snapped up. "You're sure?"
"Yes."
The pressure inside Shenping was different here. Not suppressed. Not provoked. It flowed unevenly, like a river finding an old, forgotten channel.
"This place exists between records," Shenping continued. "Between what was acknowledged and what was erased."
Sang Sang smiled. "A blind spot."
Gu Tianxu frowned. "For them?"
"For everyone," Sang Sang corrected. "That's why it survived."
A sound echoed through the cavern.
Footsteps.
Not theirs.
Shenping's body reacted instantly, positioning himself slightly ahead of the others. Lin Yue noticed and moved without being told, staying close but not obstructing him.
From between two pillars, figures emerged.
Humans.
Thin. Wary. Armed with crude blades and scavenged tools. Their clothing was layered and patched, marked with symbols Shenping did not recognize but felt faintly familiar.
One of them raised a hand. "Don't come closer."
Gu Tianxu stopped. "We're not hostile."
The man's eyes flicked to Shenping, then away quickly, as if looking directly at him was uncomfortable. "You fell from above."
"Yes," Shenping said.
"Then you're cursed," another voice said. A woman stepped forward, her hair braided tightly, eyes sharp. "Everything from above brings ruin."
Lin Yue swallowed. "We didn't mean to—"
The woman cut her off. "Meaning doesn't matter."
Sang Sang tilted her head. "You're survivors."
The group stiffened.
"That word brings attention," the first man said. "We don't use it."
Gu Tianxu studied them carefully. "How long have you lived here?"
The man hesitated. "Long enough to forget when we started counting."
Shenping looked at the symbols etched into the pillars. They were cultivation marks—but distorted, incomplete, as if copied by someone who had never been taught properly.
"You were cultivators once," Shenping said.
A murmur ran through the group.
The woman's grip tightened on her blade. "We were many things once."
"And then?" Shenping asked.
"And then the sky broke," the man said flatly. "Time started choosing who mattered. We learned to hide."
Lin Yue's breath caught. "You hid from the machines."
The man laughed without humor. "From everything."
Sang Sang stepped forward. "This place isn't stable, is it?"
"No," the woman replied. "It drifts. Sometimes days pass in minutes. Sometimes years pass while you sleep."
Gu Tianxu's expression darkened. "A temporal sink."
Shenping nodded slowly. "That's why they can't see it clearly."
The woman looked between them. "If you understand that much, then you also understand this."
She gestured to the cavern.
"Nothing that stays here leaves unchanged."
Silence settled.
Shenping felt the pressure inside him resonate, not violently, but deeply. Like something recognizing an echo.
"We don't plan to stay long," he said.
The man shook his head. "No one does."
Before Shenping could respond, a scream tore through the cavern.
High. Panicked. Close.
The group spun toward the sound. From a tunnel to the right, a young boy stumbled into view, eyes wide with terror.
"Something's moving again," he cried. "In the deep corridors."
The survivors reacted instantly, forming a defensive line, fear sharp and practiced.
The woman looked at Shenping. "You brought attention."
Shenping did not deny it.
A low sound rolled through the stone—a dragging vibration that made the light-veins flicker erratically.
Lin Yue's hands shook. "What is that?"
The man swallowed. "Things that were left behind when time moved on without them."
The darkness between the pillars thickened.
Something shifted within it.
Not metal.
Not machine.
Something older. Misshapen. As if flesh had learned the wrong lessons from eternity.
Shenping stepped forward.
The pressure inside him surged—not outward, but downward, anchoring him firmly in the unstable reality of the cavern.
"This place feeds on what doesn't belong," he said quietly.
The woman stared at him. "Then you shouldn't fight it."
"I'm not," Shenping replied.
The darkness lunged.
Shenping moved—not with force, but timing. He stepped into the space where the creature was about to be, occupying a moment it had already committed to.
The thing shrieked as its form blurred, half-phasing, unable to decide which second it existed in.
Shenping struck once.
Not at its body.
At its sequence.
The creature unraveled, dissolving into fragments of misplaced moments that collapsed into dust before hitting the ground.
The cavern fell silent.
The survivors stared.
The woman's blade lowered slowly. "What are you?"
Shenping exhaled, steadying the pressure inside him. "Someone who doesn't belong either."
Sang Sang clapped softly. "See? Broken places are generous to broken people."
Gu Tianxu did not smile. His gaze was fixed on the tunnel where the creature had emerged.
"That wasn't alone," he said.
As if answering him, the cavern shuddered again—deeper this time, broader.
More movement.
More wrongness.
The man turned pale. "They're waking up."
Lin Yue looked at Shenping, fear clear but resolved. "What do we do?"
Shenping looked into the darkness, feeling the gap widen around him, responsive and dangerous.
"We don't run," he said.
"We don't hide."
He took a step forward, toward the deep corridors where time had gone to rot.
"We teach this place the difference between forgotten and finished."
And somewhere far above, beyond layers of distorted seconds and broken observation, systems searched frantically for a signal that no longer obeyed their rules.
The blind spot had teeth.
And it was learning how to bite.