Chapter 60
The world returned sideways.
Shenping felt himself dragged through layers of resistance, not space but sequence, each moment scraping against him like rough stone. Light fragmented into colors without names. Sound stretched thin, snapping and reforming behind him.
Then it stopped.
He fell hard onto cold ground, rolling once before instinctively forcing himself upright. His breath came sharp, lungs burning as if he had been submerged too long.
Snow.
That was the first thing he noticed.
Not falling snow, but old snow—packed, dirty, layered over stone and bone. The air was thin and sharp, biting into exposed skin.
Lin Yue landed nearby, sliding several meters before crashing into a half-buried wall. She groaned but pushed herself up immediately, blades already in hand.
Gu Tianxu appeared last, dropping to one knee, one hand pressed to the ground as if steadying the world itself.
"Everyone intact?" Shenping asked.
"Alive," Lin Yue replied grimly. "Can't say the same for wherever we just left."
Gu Tianxu stood slowly, face pale. "We've been displaced far more aggressively than before."
Shenping scanned their surroundings.
They stood in the ruins of a city.
Not recently destroyed—ancient. Towers broken centuries ago lay half-sunk into ice and stone. Roads had collapsed into jagged ravines. Statues loomed everywhere, massive and eroded, their faces worn smooth by time and neglect.
But the poses were wrong.
Every statue depicted struggle.
People clawing at their own chests. Warriors impaled on unseen forces. Scholars screaming, mouths frozen open in silent terror.
None of them looked victorious.
Lin Yue swallowed. "This place feels wrong."
Gu Tianxu nodded. "Because it is."
He knelt beside a shattered statue, brushing frost from a symbol carved into its base. His expression darkened.
"This isn't just old," he said quietly. "It's forbidden."
Shenping crouched beside him. "You recognize it?"
"I recognize the absence," Gu Tianxu replied. "There are no lineage marks. No sect signatures. No divine attributions."
Lin Yue frowned. "That doesn't make sense."
"It does," Gu Tianxu said. "If this city was erased deliberately."
A low wind swept through the ruins, carrying with it a sound like distant breathing.
Shenping straightened immediately. "We're not alone."
The breathing grew louder.
From between two collapsed towers, movement stirred.
A figure emerged.
At first glance, it looked human—tall, cloaked, walking upright. But as it stepped closer, details unraveled that illusion. Its limbs were too long, joints bending at subtly wrong angles. Its shadow lagged behind it, moving a fraction of a second too late.
Its face was covered by a smooth, pale mask carved with a single vertical line.
It stopped several dozen meters away.
Then it bowed.
Lin Yue's grip tightened. "That thing knows manners?"
Gu Tianxu's voice was low. "That thing knows protocol."
The masked figure straightened and spoke.
Its voice did not echo. It did not carry.
It simply appeared inside their heads.
"Temporal migrants," it said. "Unauthorized. Contaminated. Observed."
Shenping took a step forward. "Who are you?"
The figure tilted its head slightly. "Designation has decayed. You may refer to me as a Warden."
Lin Yue scoffed. "Everyone's a warden lately."
"This one predates your machines," the Warden replied calmly. "And your cultivation."
Gu Tianxu stiffened. "You're not mechanical."
"No," the Warden agreed. "Nor am I human."
The breathing wind intensified, and Shenping realized it was not wind at all.
It was coming from beneath the city.
From far below.
"What is this place?" Shenping asked.
The Warden gestured slowly, encompassing the ruins. "A solution that failed."
Lin Yue stared. "Failed how?"
The Warden's mask turned toward her. "It survived."
The ground trembled faintly.
Snow slid from broken ledges. Loose stones rattled into cracks that plunged into darkness.
Gu Tianxu's voice tightened. "This is where it was sealed."
"Yes," the Warden said. "Here, time attempted to consume what it could not kill."
Shenping remembered the scream tearing through the night. The tear in the sky. The thing pushing through.
"The hunter," he said.
The Warden inclined its head. "One of many names."
Lin Yue's jaw clenched. "And you're guarding it?"
"I am ensuring delay," the Warden replied. "Until a more permanent resolution can be enacted."
Shenping's fists curled. "You mean until someone else pays the price."
Silence followed.
Then the Warden spoke softly. "Correct."
The ground shook harder.
A deep crack split the plaza behind the Warden, blackness spilling upward like liquid shadow. Something moved within it—slow, vast, patient.
Shenping felt pressure slam into his mind, images bleeding through uninvited.
Cities burning across centuries.
Machines torn apart like toys.
Cultivators screaming as their techniques unraveled mid-strike.
A thing that learned.
Lin Yue staggered, blood trickling from her nose. "It's in my head—"
Gu Tianxu dropped to one knee, teeth clenched. "It's broadcasting across time."
Shenping forced himself upright, stepping forward despite the crushing weight. "Why bring us here?"
The Warden turned fully toward him. "Because you do not belong to any single era."
The crack widened.
A limb emerged.
Not flesh.
Not metal.
Something layered—bone, shadow, light—overlapping imperfectly, as if multiple versions of the same limb were trying to exist at once.
The city groaned.
"This seal is failing," the Warden said. "And the future has decided not to intervene directly."
Lin Yue laughed harshly. "So they send us instead."
"Yes," the Warden replied. "You are expendable."
Shenping met the mask's empty gaze. "Then why warn us?"
The Warden paused.
"For the same reason you protect villages," it said. "Residual defiance."
The limb slammed down.
The plaza shattered.
Shenping moved without thinking.
He seized Gu Tianxu, throwing him backward as the ground collapsed where he had knelt. Lin Yue leapt clear just as a shockwave tore through the ruins, flattening what little remained standing.
The thing beneath the city shifted, rising higher.
Its presence distorted distance. The far side of the plaza seemed both meters away and unreachable.
The Warden raised one hand.
Symbols ignited across the ruins, ancient and brutal, forming chains of light that wrapped around the emerging limb, forcing it back inch by inch.
The Warden's posture stiffened.
"Run," it said.
Shenping hesitated. "You'll die."
"Yes," the Warden replied. "Eventually."
Another limb surged upward, smashing through restraints.
The Warden faltered.
Gu Tianxu shouted, "Shenping!"
The sky above the city darkened, not with clouds but with layered shadows folding inward.
The seal was breaking.
Shenping made a decision.
He stepped toward the Warden.
Lin Yue shouted, "Are you insane?"
"Probably," Shenping muttered.
He placed his hand against the glowing symbols anchoring the chains.
The pain was immediate.
Not physical—conceptual. His existence resisted the structure, every future screaming in protest as ancient time pressed against him.
"Do not," the Warden warned. "You are not designed for this."
Shenping gritted his teeth. "Neither was it."
He pushed.
The symbols bent.
Not breaking.
Adapting.
The chains flared brighter, locking tighter around the emerging limbs.
The thing beneath the city roared—not in sound, but in rupture. Reality buckled. Cracks spread across the sky itself.
The Warden turned slowly to look at Shenping.
"…You are worse than predicted," it said.
Shenping laughed weakly. "I get that a lot."
Gu Tianxu stared in horror and awe. "You're synchronizing with the seal."
"For now," Shenping said. "But it won't hold."
Lin Yue wiped blood from her mouth. "Then what's the plan?"
Shenping looked at the darkness beneath the city.
"Attract its attention," he said.
The Warden's mask tilted sharply. "That will mark you permanently."
Shenping met its gaze. "Already marked."
Far away, across centuries yet to come, systems trembled as something ancient recognized him.
Not as prey.
Not as anomaly.
But as a problem that would not go away.