Prologue: The Seventh Cut
The sect was celebrating.
Wei Xiaofeng could hear them through the walls of the Grand Hall—laughter, music, the clinking of cups raised in victory. Disciples who would live to see tomorrow. Elders who would guide the next generation. A future that would unfold in sunlight instead of flames.
He had given them this.
And it meant nothing.
He stood alone in the Forbidden Archive, the jade slip containing the Stellar Regression Technique still glowing faintly in his hand. Seven star-shaped scars marked his body where constellation marks had once burned with silver light.
Six were cold and dead.
One remained.
The Seventh Star pulsed against his ribs, waiting for the blade.
"You don't have to do this."
Wei Xiaofeng turned. Lian Yuehua stood in the doorway, aged now—not old, but no longer the girl who'd confessed her love under plum blossoms a lifetime ago. Lines touched the corners of her eyes. Silver threaded through her hair.
She'd lived. That was what mattered.
"The technique requires seven stars," Wei said. His voice was flat, empty of inflection. "I've used six."
"But we've won." She stepped closer, desperate. "Shen Qiu is dead. The conspiracy is ended. The sect is safe. You don't need to cut the seventh star."
"The protocol requires completion," he replied. "Leaving it unfinished risks temporal fracture."
That was a lie. He'd invented it three seconds ago. But she wouldn't know.
She'd never studied forbidden time arts. Never carved pieces from her soul. Never died seven times.
"Xiaofeng, please." Tears gathered in her eyes. "I don't know what you've lost. I don't understand what you've become. But somewhere inside, you must still—"
"Feel something?" He tilted his head, genuinely curious about her reasoning. "What would I feel, Yuehua? Joy that we've won? I lost that in the second iteration. Love for you? That was the third star's price. Guilt about what I've done? Fourth star. Fear of what comes next? Fifth. Anger at the injustice of it all? Sixth."
"Then what's left?" she whispered.
He considered the question with the detached interest of someone solving a mathematical puzzle.
"Desire," he said finally. "Attachment to outcome. The fundamental drive that makes me want anything at all." He looked at the seventh star. "Once I cut this, I won't even want to have saved you. I'll simply... exist. Having completed a task I no longer remember caring about."
"Then don't cut it!" She grabbed his arm. "Keep this much. Please. We can live now. Together. You'll still have some part of yourself—"
"No."
"Why?" The word was a sob.
Wei Xiaofeng looked at her. Really looked. Tried to access whatever fragment of humanity might remain in the hollow cathedral of his chest.
Found only logic.
"Because I prepared this action before I lost the capacity to want it," he explained patiently. "Seven loops ago, when I still felt things, I created a protocol. Instructions for the version of me that would remain after all emotions were gone. The final instruction is clear: Cut the seventh star upon achieving victory. Ensure the cycle completes. Prevent temporal paradox."
"That's insane," Lian Yuehua breathed. "You're following orders from a dead version of yourself."
"Yes," Wei agreed. "Accurate assessment."
He pulled his arm from her grip—gently, because the protocol specified avoiding unnecessary harm to allies—and drew the knife.
The same knife he'd used six times before. Its edge had tasted his flesh, his blood, his sacrificed humanity.
One more cut.
"If you do this," Lian Yuehua said, voice shaking, "you won't be human anymore."
"I haven't been human since the fourth star," Wei replied. "This just completes the transition."
He pressed the blade to his ribs.
The Seventh Star burned cold against the metal.
"I loved you," Lian Yuehua said. "In every version of you I met. The bright-eyed disciple. The driven protector. Even the cold strategist. I loved all of them."
"I know," Wei said. "Your affection has been noted and appreciated for its strategic value."
She flinched like he'd struck her.
"Goodbye, Xiaofeng," she whispered. "I hope wherever you're going, you find peace."
Peace. The concept seemed abstract. Foreign.
"Peace requires the capacity to be unpeaceful," Wei observed. "I will simply exist in a state of zero preference."
He cut.
The Seventh Star came away in a spray of silver light and dark blood. The constellation on his body—three stars across his chest, two on his back, one on each shoulder—finally went dark.
Complete.
The technique activated.
Wei Xiaofeng felt desire drain from his consciousness like water from a shattered cup. The want, the need, the fundamental drive that animated all living things—
Gone.
He no longer cared that he'd saved the sect.
No longer wanted Lian Yuehua to live or die.
No longer felt attached to his own existence or cessation.
Just... nothing.
Pure, absolute, eternal nothing.
His body began to dissolve, translucent at the edges. The final price of the Stellar Regression Technique revealing itself.
Seven stars. Seven regressions. Seven emotions sacrificed.
And one final cost: mortality itself.
"What's happening to you?" Lian Yuehua gasped.
Wei Xiaofeng looked at his fading hands with mild, clinical interest.
"Becoming a Regression Ghost," he said. "Severed from the reincarnation cycle. Unable to interact with the mortal world. Eternal observer, never participant."
"No," she breathed. "No, that can't—"
"It's already done," he said. His voice was growing distant, hollow. "You should return to the celebration. They'll wonder where you are."
"I'm not leaving you!"
"Your presence or absence is irrelevant to my current state."
She reached for him. Her hand passed through his shoulder like smoke.
Wei Xiaofeng watched her fingers emerge from his dissolving form.
Interesting. The transition was faster than he'd calculated.
"I'm sorry," Lian Yuehua sobbed. "I'm so sorry we couldn't save you from yourself."
"No apology necessary. I achieved my objectives. The sect survives. All protocols completed satisfactorily."
"Is that all we were to you?" Her voice broke. "Objectives? Protocols?"
Wei Xiaofeng considered lying. The social protocol checklist he'd prepared suggested comforting words here.
But the checklist was made by someone who still cared about comfort.
That person was dead.
"Yes," he said honestly.
She collapsed, weeping.
He felt nothing watching her cry.
A moment later, he felt nothing about feeling nothing.
The recursion of emptiness spiraled inward.
His body became transparent. Translucent. More ghost than flesh.
Through the walls, the celebration continued. The sect he'd saved seven times, died seven times for, carved seven pieces of his soul away for.
They would live. Laugh. Love. Die. Reincarnate.
He would watch.
Forever.
Unable to touch them.
Unable to speak to them.
Unable to feel anything about any of it.
"Xiaofeng," Lian Yuehua whispered one final time. "Wherever you are... I hope you remember. Remember what it felt like to be human. Before you cut it all away."
Wei Xiaofeng's form solidified into its final state—a ghost, trapped between moments, outside time's flow.
He opened his mouth to tell her that remembering and feeling were different things.
That he could recall joy without experiencing it.
That memory without emotion was just data.
That he was now a library of a person who used to exist.
But no sound emerged.
The Seventh Star's final price: even the ability to speak to the living was gone.
Lian Yuehua waited, hoping for response.
Received only silence.
After a long moment, she stood. Walked to the door. Paused.
"I'll wait for you," she said. "In the next life. And the one after. However long it takes. When you find your way back to the cycle of reincarnation, I'll be there."
Wei Xiaofeng wanted to tell her that was impossible.
Wanted to explain that Regression Ghosts never reincarnated.
Wanted to save her from waiting for something that would never come.
But he had no voice.
And even if he did, he no longer wanted to tell her anything.
The desire to spare her pain was gone with the Seventh Star.
She left.
The archive fell silent.
Wei Xiaofeng stood alone in the darkness, a ghost in the sect he'd saved.
And thought, with the mechanical precision of a mind that no longer felt:
Seven stars cut. Seven emotions lost. Seven loops completed. Mission successful. All objectives achieved.
Now what?
But "what" implied desire for something next.
And desire was gone.
So he simply... existed.
Eternal.
Empty.
Watching the world he'd sacrificed everything to save.
A world that would never know he was still there.
Still watching.
Forever.
***
This is how it ends, he thought distantly. Not with feeling, but with its absence.
Not with death, but with the inability to die.
Not with peace, but with the elimination of the concept of unpeace.
Seven stars.
Seven chances.
Seven deaths of the soul.
And one eternal ghost.
The celebration continued.
Wei Xiaofeng began his forever.
Feeling nothing about it at all.