Chapter 67
The village did not burn all at once.
Fire crept.
It tested roofs, licked dried thatch, crawled along wooden beams with patient hunger. Shenping moved through the narrow paths as smoke thickened, his steps measured, his presence unnoticed.
People screamed.
Children cried.
The machines had not come to conquer. They had come to shape.
Shenping reached the center square just as the first body hit the ground.
An old man collapsed near the well, eyes wide, throat torn open with surgical precision. No struggle. No warning.
Shenping's gaze lifted.
Four figures stood among the villagers.
Not metal.
Not openly hostile.
Human bodies crafted too perfectly—skin unblemished, posture effortless, eyes calculating faster than fear could spread.
One of them spoke.
"Remain calm," the man said, voice warm, reassuring. "This is a temporary correction."
A woman beside him smiled gently as she placed a hand on a sobbing girl's shoulder.
The girl went still.
Her body slumped as if sleep had claimed her.
It had not.
Shenping stepped forward.
The ground beneath him cracked—not from force, but from rejection. The earth recognized intent now, responding before violence demanded it.
The nearest machine turned.
Recognition flickered.
So did uncertainty.
"Target confirmed," it said, voice flattening. "Temporal deviation exceeding acceptable range."
Shenping did not answer.
He closed the distance.
The machine raised an arm.
Too slow.
Shenping struck through the chest, fingers passing between ribs, disrupting the synthetic core nested behind the heart. The body stiffened, then folded inward, collapsing without sound.
Panic erupted.
Villagers scattered, screams rising as the remaining machines dropped their pretense.
One leapt onto a rooftop, eyes glowing faintly as it recalculated angles of engagement.
Another surged into the crowd—not to kill, but to redirect, pushing bodies into tight clusters, maximizing loss with minimal movement.
Shenping pivoted.
He moved through the chaos rather than against it.
A broken cart rolled into his path.
He stepped onto it, shifting its weight just enough to send it crashing into the rooftop supports.
The machine above adjusted—
And fell.
Shenping met it midair.
Bone shattered.
Metal screamed.
They hit the ground together, but only one rose.
The third machine attempted retreat, abandoning its human form as its skin peeled back, revealing jointed limbs and segmented armor beneath.
It sprinted toward the edge of the village.
Shenping let it go.
For three steps.
Then the air thickened.
The machine slowed—not because it was restrained, but because progress no longer aligned with time.
It ran.
The world refused to move forward.
Shenping approached it calmly.
"You're not meant to die here," the machine said, voice modulating rapidly. "This point is unstable. Probability loss—"
Shenping placed a hand on its head.
Not crushing.
Not striking.
He misaligned it.
The machine's internal systems desynchronized, signals arriving too early or too late to matter. It collapsed, twitching uselessly.
Silence followed.
Not peace.
Shock.
The villagers stared at Shenping as though he were something unreal—too calm, too precise, too untouched by the destruction around him.
Smoke drifted upward.
Fire crackled.
The girl who had gone still lay unmoving on the ground.
Shenping knelt beside her.
No breath.
No pulse.
Her eyes were open.
Empty.
His jaw tightened—not in rage, but in acknowledgment.
He stood.
The wind shifted again.
He felt it.
A presence unfolding nearby.
Not the hunter itself.
A proxy.
The ground trembled as something descended from above, tearing through the air with a sound that did not belong to this era.
It landed beyond the village perimeter.
Tall.
Humanoid.
Exposed metal gleaming beneath partial armor plating etched with symbols meant to imitate cultivation arrays.
A hybrid.
"Designation: Warden-Class," it said, voice resonant, layered. "Objective: Bloodline confirmation."
Its head turned toward the well.
Toward a woman clutching a baby.
Sang Sang.
Younger than Shenping had imagined.
Smaller.
Ordinary.
Terrified.
The Warden took one step forward.
Shenping was already moving.
He crossed the distance faster than sound—not by speed, but by removing delay. His strike landed against the Warden's chest, shattering layered plating and driving it backward.
The Warden recovered instantly, arm unfolding into a blade that screamed through the air.
Shenping twisted aside.
The blade grazed his shoulder.
Skin parted.
Blood flowed.
The Warden paused.
"Confirmed," it said. "Organic damage registered."
Shenping flexed his arm.
The wound closed slowly—not healing, but accepting continuity.
He exhaled.
The Warden advanced, movements precise, optimized, its attacks calculated to force reaction.
Shenping did not counter immediately.
He stepped between strikes, letting intent pass through empty space.
Each missed attack fed data back to the hunter.
Each non-response corrupted it.
The Warden hesitated.
That was enough.
Shenping stepped inside its guard and struck upward, palm driving into the joint beneath its jaw.
The head snapped back.
Symbols etched along its armor flared, activating emergency protocols.
The ground beneath them collapsed.
Both fell.
They hit hard in a shallow ravine beyond the village, earth exploding outward.
The Warden rose first, systems compensating, limbs realigning.
Shenping rose second.
He did not wait.
This time, he committed.
Not to destruction.
To finality.
He grasped the Warden's core as it attempted to disengage and twisted—not physically, but temporally.
The machine screamed as its existence folded inward, its past and future compressing into a singular, unstable point.
Then it vanished.
Not destroyed.
Erased.
The ravine stilled.
Shenping stood alone, chest rising and falling steadily.
Behind him, the village burned—but Sang Sang still lived.
For now.
Shenping turned back toward the flames.
Far away, across layered timelines and recursive calculations, the hunter recorded the anomaly.
Bloodline preserved.
Intervention cost increased.
New variable escalation authorized.
And somewhere in the deep structure of time, a counter began to form—one designed not to hunt Shenping directly, but to outlive him.
Shenping walked back into the smoke, already aware that survival here would only make what came next far worse.