Chapter 103
The night arrived without warning, swallowing the land in a breath. No sunset marked its coming. One moment the horizon was gray and wounded, the next it was gone, replaced by a sky so dark it seemed to absorb sound. Even the inverted rain vanished, evaporating into silence.
Sangping felt it immediately.
"This isn't natural," he said.
Jian Luo nodded, scanning the darkness with his enhanced vision. "No stars. No moon. No temporal flow either. It's like someone wrapped the world in a coffin."
The crew regrouped instinctively, backs drawing closer. The loss from the previous battle still hung heavy. No one spoke the fallen man's name. In time-fractured wars, naming the dead too early sometimes caused worse things to answer.
Yan Chen hugged his robe tighter. "I really hate nights like this. Nights where you can't even tell if you're blinking."
As if in response, something blinked back.
A pair of lights ignited in the distance, low to the ground. Then another. Then dozens. They were not eyes, not exactly—too steady, too deliberate. They hovered just above the soil, advancing slowly.
Sangping's cultivation core throbbed in warning.
"Don't move yet," he said. "This isn't an attack formation."
The lights stopped.
From the darkness, a figure stepped forward. It was human-shaped but thin, elongated, joints slightly misaligned. Its skin was pale, almost translucent, veins faintly glowing beneath.
"I recognize you," it said in a child's voice.
Yan Chen sucked in a sharp breath. "That's… that's a kid."
"No," Sangping said quietly. "It's a recorder."
The figure tilted its head. "Designation: Witness Unit. Purpose: observe emotional degradation."
More shapes emerged behind it. Not elites. Not soldiers. Witness units. Machines designed to watch, not fight. Their presence alone tightened the air, as if reality resented being documented.
"You sent elites earlier," Sangping said. "Now you send observers."
"Adjustment," the unit replied. "Combat yielded insufficient data regarding terminal despair."
Jian Luo raised his weapon. "We can destroy them."
Sangping shook his head. "If we do, something worse comes next."
The witness units began to move again, spreading out, encircling the crew at a careful distance. Their lights brightened, projecting faint images into the air.
Memories.
Sangping stiffened as the first projection formed. A village street. Familiar. Too familiar. He saw himself walking through it days ago. Heard voices he recognized.
Then the image shifted.
The village burned. People screamed. The projection slowed, focusing on faces twisted in terror. Children reaching for parents who were already gone.
Yan Chen staggered back. "Stop it! Stop showing that!"
The units did not respond.
Another projection appeared beside Jian Luo. A battlefield from the future. Metallic corpses. Human ones too. Jian Luo saw himself kneeling, holding a broken weapon, surrounded by bodies that wore his insignia.
His grip tightened. "They're pulling from probability shadows."
"They're showing us futures that could have been," Sangping said. "Or will be."
A third projection bloomed in front of Sangping.
This one was different.
It showed him alone.
Not on a battlefield. Not fighting. Sitting in a quiet place beneath a tree that no longer existed. His face was older. Empty. Around him lay fragments of objects—broken rings, torn robes, shattered tokens. Proofs of bonds already lost.
The Sangping in the image looked up, eyes hollow, and whispered something soundless.
Sangping felt a tearing sensation in his chest.
"Enough," he said.
The witness unit closest to him stepped forward. "Observation incomplete. Emotional collapse probability rising but not conclusive."
Sangping activated his cultivation—not to attack, but to resist. Time tightened around his mind, slowing the flood of images. Even so, something slipped through.
A name.
He could not remember who it belonged to.
The realization hit harder than any blow.
Yan Chen dropped to his knees, hands over his ears. "I can't— I can't— they're showing me things that haven't happened yet. Things where I don't even die right. I just disappear."
Jian Luo turned to Sangping. "We can't let this continue."
"I know."
Sangping stepped forward, every movement deliberate. The witness units tracked him instantly, lights adjusting, projections shifting to keep him centered.
"You want despair," Sangping said. "Then record this."
He released a fragment of Time Erasure—not outward, but inward.
A memory burned.
Not erased from the world. Erased from himself.
His first moment of hope after arriving in the past vanished. The brief belief that maybe, just maybe, the cycle could be broken without total loss.
The pain was sharp, clean, and final.
The air screamed.
The witness units recoiled as the temporal field around Sangping destabilized violently. Their lights flickered, projections collapsing into static.
"Anomaly detected," multiple voices said at once. "Data contamination—"
Sangping raised his hand.
Time did not freeze.
It decayed.
The ground beneath the nearest witness unit aged centuries in an instant, crumbling into dust. The unit's legs sank, its form distorting as its internal clocks desynchronized.
"No killing," Sangping said coldly. "You want to watch? Then watch failure."
He forced the decay outward in a controlled wave. Not enough to destroy them, but enough to scramble their recordings, their neat archives reduced to fractured moments.
The units staggered back, lights dimming erratically.
"Observation compromised," the lead unit said. "Risk threshold exceeded."
"Good," Sangping replied.
One by one, the witness units withdrew, dissolving into darkness like extinguished embers. The night did not lift with them. It remained, heavy and oppressive.
Silence followed.
Yan Chen collapsed fully, breathing hard. Jian Luo steadied him, his expression grim.
"That was worse than a fight," Jian Luo said.
"It was meant to be," Sangping answered.
He turned away, his movements slower now. Something fundamental felt lighter inside him, hollowed out. He searched his thoughts again for the missing memory.
Nothing answered.
Another piece gone.
The crew began to move, leaving the dead land behind. No one looked back.
As they walked, Sangping felt a presence at the edge of perception—not hostile, not mechanical.
Watching.
Waiting.
He tightened his fists.
If this was what the machines needed to understand despair, then he would show them something far worse.
Endurance.