Chapter 103: The Beginning of the New Era (Part 3)
The void between the universes was disappearing.
Slowly.
Silently.
And in a manner so terrifying that even the oldest Immortals had forgotten how to breathe.
The spatial laws separating the two worlds were collapsing beneath the mere presence of the beings approaching one another.
There were no longer clear boundaries between the heavens.
Only fragments of reality, each struggling to preserve its own existence.
Han Feng felt his soul tremble.
Inside his consciousness, the Celestial Diagram shone so brightly that his vision turned golden. Ancient lines spun like maddened stars, intersecting and separating around the central fissure.
He could feel both universes simultaneously.
The Gu World.
And the world beyond the golden door.
He sensed their spiritual currents, their differences in essence, and the invisible principles governing their existence.
The Gu World was built upon a system in which Qi, Gu, and the will of living beings interacted through countless rules and relationships.
The other universe possessed a different structure. Its spiritual currents were broader, its laws stranger, and its relationship with space seemed fundamentally different.
Neither system was necessarily superior in every respect.
But they were incompatible.
And now they were being forced together.
Han Feng clutched his chest.
This is wrong.
The thought came instinctively.
Not because he understood the laws of either universe, but because the Celestial Diagram was showing him the consequences.
Every time the two systems overlapped, something broke.
A mountain might survive the collision, but the laws supporting its existence could become unstable. A cultivator might gain an unexpected increase in strength, yet lose control of the very energy that sustained his life.
The danger was not simply destruction.
It was the possibility that the rules determining what could exist were changing faster than living beings could adapt.
Han Feng had no way to predict what would survive.
And that frightened him more than the explosions.
Above the Central Region, the Gu Immortals watched in silence.
The remaining formations had collapsed.
Their strongest treasures were damaged.
Several Immortals had already retreated toward distant territories, attempting to protect the surviving sects and preserve whatever records they could carry.
No one dared approach the golden door.
Even the white-haired Immortal, whose pride had driven him to challenge the first being, remained motionless.
He had finally understood the danger.
If the two existences reached the same point in space, another attack might be meaningless.
Worse, any attempt to interfere could accelerate the collapse.
An elderly Immortal beside him spoke in a trembling voice.
"Can we still close the passage?"
The white-haired man did not answer immediately.
He watched the two figures.
The calm being standing before the golden door seemed almost untouched by the surrounding chaos. Its robes swayed gently, and its expression remained unreadable.
Across the thinning boundary, the black-robed presence stood amid distorted darkness.
Space bent around it.
The faintest traces of light vanished near its outline.
The old man swallowed.
"Not with anything we possess."
The other Immortal stared at him.
"Then what are we supposed to do?"
The white-haired man looked toward the ruined horizon.
"Survive."
It was not a command.
It was an admission.
For the first time in his long life, he had encountered a calamity that could not be solved by gathering more power.
The Gu World was no longer facing an enemy that could be defeated.
It was facing a change in the conditions of its existence.
And no one knew what would emerge on the other side.
Then the two beings moved.
The man before the golden door took another step.
The black-robed figure advanced at the same moment.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The cosmos exploded.
Fissures spread across both universes simultaneously.
In the Gu World, the oceans split apart as immense cracks opened beneath their surfaces. Water rose in enormous columns, suspended above the broken earth.
Far beyond the golden door, spiritual stars began falling from the heavens.
Some disintegrated before reaching the ground.
Others passed through layers of space and vanished into regions that no cultivator could locate.
Ancient beasts awoke in distant mountain ranges, their roars echoing across the skies.
Within the Gu World, Gu beasts underwent sudden transformations. Some grew stronger as foreign energy flooded their bodies. Others twisted into grotesque shapes, their instincts overwhelmed by forces they could neither understand nor resist.
The great sects lost control of additional territories.
Protective formations activated in cities that had not faced danger for thousands of years.
Entire populations fled toward the underground shelters of ancient clans.
Yet no shelter could guarantee safety.
The instability was spreading through the laws themselves.
Han Feng's eyes filled with blood.
He wiped them with his sleeve, but the golden light remained.
The pressure was too much.
His body had never been designed to endure a confrontation between such beings.
His cultivation remained unchanged, his meridians were damaged, and the golden seal beneath his skin was straining to regulate the foreign energy within him.
Still, he forced himself to look.
Because the Celestial Diagram was showing him something.
Something that might be more important than the destruction around him.
The two universes were beginning to overlap.
Not completely.
Not permanently.
But enough that the distinction between them was becoming uncertain in certain regions.
Mountains from the other world appeared above the Gu World like enormous mirages. Their shapes were so detailed that Han Feng could see forests growing along their slopes.
Then the mirages became solid for a few breaths.
A mountain peak emerged through a spatial fracture and occupied the same region of space as a distant ridge in the Gu World.
The two structures collided.
The result was neither a simple explosion nor a clean fusion.
Their surfaces distorted, their spiritual currents tangled, and the surrounding space collapsed inward.
When the distortion ended, both peaks had lost part of their structure.
One had vanished.
The other remained, but its upper section was covered in unfamiliar runes.
Han Feng's expression darkened.
The worlds are not merging.
He remembered the warning from the mysterious white-robed young man.
The worlds are not colliding. Not yet.
At the time, Han Feng had not understood the distinction.
Now he was beginning to.
A complete merging would imply that the two worlds could coexist under a shared structure.
What he was witnessing was different.
Their boundaries were overlapping without their underlying laws agreeing on what belonged where.
It was not a union.
It was a collision that had not yet finished.
And if it continued, the consequences might be worse than the destruction of either world alone.
In the other universe, a cultivator in silver robes hovered above a vast city.
His spiritual sense stretched toward the enormous opening in the heavens.
He had spent several thousand years cultivating.
He had witnessed ancient inheritances emerge, watched powerful sects fall, and survived calamities that had erased entire regions.
Yet he had never encountered anything comparable to the sight before him.
Beyond the opening lay a world whose laws felt fundamentally different from his own.
The cultivator raised his hand and formed a small golden seal.
A narrow strand of spiritual energy extended from his palm.
It crossed the distance between him and the rupture.
The moment it touched the boundary, the seal trembled.
Then it split into two contradictory patterns.
One half tried to follow the laws of his universe.
The other responded to the unfamiliar principles beyond the opening.
For a brief instant, both patterns existed simultaneously.
Then they collapsed.
The cultivator's expression changed.
He withdrew his hand.
"Impossible..."
An elderly woman appeared beside him.
"Did you determine the nature of the other world?"
He shook his head.
"No."
He stared at the opening.
"I determined something worse."
The woman frowned.
"What?"
The cultivator's gaze remained fixed on the two distant figures.
"Neither world is controlling the boundary anymore."
He paused.
"Something else is deciding what can pass through."
The woman's expression became serious.
"Then who controls it?"
The cultivator did not answer.
Far beyond them, the golden door shone against the darkness.
And somewhere within the ruined Gu World, a young cultivator was beginning to understand that he might be connected to the answer.
Han Feng staggered backward.
The Celestial Diagram pulsed.
A wave of golden energy erupted from his body.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
For a brief instant, the nearby spatial distortions vanished.
The fissures surrounding him stopped widening.
Floating stones dropped to the ground.
The oppressive pressure weakened within a small radius around his body.
Shen Lian stared at him in shock.
"Han Feng!"
He barely heard her.
The golden light spread only a few meters before stopping. It did not extend across the valley, let alone the Central Region.
Yet within that small area, the unstable spatial currents became strangely orderly.
The effect lasted only a few breaths.
Then the light began to fade.
Han Feng felt an immediate, sharp pain in his chest.
The golden seal beneath his skin burned.
A thin crack remained visible across its surface.
He pressed his hand against it and forced himself not to cry out.
Not again.
He had not activated the Diagram.
He had not attempted to create a protective formation.
The reaction had occurred on its own.
And he still could not determine why.
The Celestial Transmutation Gu stirred within his body, attempting to harmonize the conflicting energy passing through his meridians.
The Dual Chaos Larva responded a moment later.
For several seconds, the two Gu maintained a fragile balance.
Then the foreign pressure surged again.
Both Gu immediately withdrew their activity, protecting themselves from the unstable energy.
Han Feng nearly collapsed.
The golden light disappeared.
The spatial distortions returned.
He was left with nothing but pain and the faint sensation of something retreating deeper into his consciousness.
Shen Lian caught his shoulders.
"Stop using that power!"
"I'm not using it."
"Then what is happening?"
Han Feng looked at her.
For a moment, he considered telling her everything.
The ancient vision.
The voice.
The enormous golden formation.
The warning not to let the two beings meet.
But he had no explanation that would make any of it easier to understand.
So he gave her the only honest answer he possessed.
"I don't know."
Shen Lian's expression changed.
She had heard him admit uncertainty before.
But never like this.
Han Feng looked toward the sky.
"I think something inside me is responding to them."
He swallowed.
"And I don't think it cares whether I survive."
The two figures had reached the absolute boundary between universes.
Only a thin layer of distorted reality remained between them.
The man before the golden door stood with his right hand raised.
The black-robed presence mirrored the movement.
Neither appeared to be attacking.
Yet the pressure between their hands intensified.
Han Feng felt the Celestial Diagram react immediately.
The central fissure expanded.
Golden lines spread across the remaining dark spaces, forming a pattern that resembled the enormous formation from his vision.
He froze.
No.
The image returned to him.
The primordial void.
Worlds colliding.
The colossal golden formation dividing the heavens.
The two figures surrounded by incompatible forces.
And the formation placed between them.
Separating them.
Sealing something.
Or perhaps separating them from something else.
Han Feng could not determine which interpretation was correct.
But he understood that the formation had not been designed merely to protect one world from another.
Its structure had extended across countless worlds.
Its purpose had been larger than the survival of a single universe.
And the Celestial Diagram inside him appeared to be a fragment of that structure.
A fragment.
Not the complete formation.
Not the authority to control it.
Not even proof that its original purpose could still be fulfilled.
Han Feng's fingers tightened.
If this is a seal, what was it sealing?
The question had haunted him since the ancient voice first spoke.
Now it became unbearable.
Because the answer might be standing directly in front of him.
The black-robed figure.
The calm being before the golden door.
Or something beyond both.
The Diagram pulsed again.
And the ancient voice returned.
This time, it was clearer.
"The heir has finally appeared..."
Han Feng's entire body went rigid.
Shen Lian looked around.
"Did you hear that?"
He slowly turned toward her.
"You heard it too?"
She nodded.
The voice had not remained inside Han Feng's consciousness.
For a single instant, it had crossed the boundary between his mind and the surrounding world.
The ancient voice echoed again.
"The fragment has found its bearer."
Han Feng felt his heart sink.
The golden lines across his consciousness became brighter.
The incomplete rune spun.
Then the voice continued.
"But the bearer is not the seal."
Silence.
Han Feng stared into the darkness.
What does that mean?
The voice did not answer.
Instead, a vision seized his consciousness.
He stood within a primordial void.
The same void he had seen before.
But this time, the image was clearer.
The enormous golden formation stretched across the heavens, its lines connecting distant stars and worlds.
At its center stood a young figure wearing golden robes.
His face was calm.
His eyes were cold as distant stars.
Behind him, countless golden chains extended into the darkness, binding something that could not be fully seen.
Han Feng tried to examine the figure's face.
The vision resisted.
The figure seemed distant, as though separated from him by countless ages.
Then the young man raised both hands.
The golden formation brightened.
The chains tightened.
For an instant, Han Feng glimpsed the thing they were binding.
It was enormous.
Not a beast.
Not a cultivator.
Its outline seemed to extend beyond the limits of the void itself.
Black fissures ran across its indistinct body, and within those fissures were countless points of light.
Like eyes.
Han Feng's consciousness recoiled.
The vision shifted before he could understand what he had seen.
Now the golden-robed figure was wounded.
Black cracks spread across his body.
His arms trembled as the formation began to collapse around him.
One by one, the golden chains broke.
The young man looked toward the enormous diagram.
Then toward the darkness beyond it.
He seemed to understand that the formation could not survive in its current state.
He made a decision.
The colossal Diagram shattered.
Its lines broke into countless fragments of golden light.
Some vanished into distant worlds.
Others disappeared into the darkness between them.
One fragment crossed the void.
It passed through layers of reality, through collapsing boundaries and dying stars, until it reached a world of mountains, rivers, and spiritual energy.
The Gu World.
The fragment descended.
It entered the chest of a young boy.
Han Feng.
The vision ended.
Han Feng opened his eyes violently.
His heart pounded.
Blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
The Celestial Diagram continued shining, but the golden lines had begun to flicker.
He pressed a hand against his chest.
For several seconds, he could not speak.
He had seen the fragment enter his body.
He had seen the golden-robed figure split the colossal formation.
But he had not seen why.
He did not know whether the young man had created the Diagram, inherited it, or merely carried out a final act of desperation.
He did not know whether the thing bound by the chains was the black-robed presence.
And he did not know whether the formation had failed.
The vision had ended before the answer appeared.
Yet one thing was now difficult to deny.
The Celestial Diagram was not an ordinary cultivation inheritance.
Its structure resembled a fragment of an ancient formation that had once separated worlds.
And that formation had been created in response to a catastrophe involving powers far beyond the Gu World.
Han Feng lowered his head.
So this is what you are.
He could not tell whether the thought was directed at the Diagram or himself.
The ancient voice echoed once more.
"The fragment remembers..."
A pause.
"But the bearer does not."
Han Feng's blood ran cold.
The voice seemed to be addressing him directly.
"You carry the path, not the authority."
The golden light dimmed slightly.
"The seal was broken into fragments because no single world could contain it."
Han Feng's eyes widened.
No single world?
The voice continued.
"And no single bearer was meant to wield it alone."
The sound faded.
Han Feng tried to hold onto the words.
He needed more.
Who had divided the formation?
Why had the fragments been scattered?
What did it mean that no single bearer could wield it alone?
But the voice was already disappearing.
Before it vanished completely, it whispered one final sentence.
"Do not mistake the heir for the master."
Silence returned.
Han Feng remained motionless.
The distinction was painfully clear.
He might be the heir.
He might be the bearer.
But that did not make him the master of the Celestial Diagram.
Whatever had created the formation had left him only a fragment.
And a fragment could not command the whole.
Above the ruined Central Region, the black-robed figure finally spoke.
"So it was you."
Its voice was directed toward the man standing before the golden door.
The man remained calm.
For a moment, he seemed to be examining something far beyond the black-robed figure.
Then he replied.
"Interesting... the seal still exists."
The two statements carried different meanings.
The black-robed presence seemed to recognize the person standing before it.
The other seemed to recognize the survival of the ancient seal.
Neither offered an explanation.
Yet Han Feng felt the Celestial Diagram respond to both statements.
Its central rune spun violently.
The golden lines spread across his consciousness.
Ancient symbols appeared beneath his skin, extending from his chest toward his shoulders and arms.
Shen Lian stepped backward.
"Han Feng..."
He looked down.
The symbols were not ordinary marks.
They resembled the lines of the Celestial Diagram, but their arrangement was incomplete and unstable.
They appeared for a moment, then vanished beneath his skin.
He could feel no additional strength.
No new technique.
No increase in cultivation.
Only an unbearable pressure building inside his consciousness.
The golden seal on his chest burned hotter.
A sharp crack sounded.
Han Feng froze.
He looked down immediately.
The hairline fracture across the seal had widened by a fraction.
Not enough to break it.
But enough to remind him how close he was to losing the only protection that had helped regulate the foreign energy inside him.
He immediately stopped examining the Diagram.
He forced his spiritual sense inward and focused on suppressing the fluctuations.
The Celestial Transmutation Gu stirred.
The Dual Chaos Larva followed.
Their combined influence helped stabilize the energy circulating through his meridians, but neither could reach the deeper resonance within the Diagram.
After several agonizing breaths, the golden symbols faded.
Han Feng fell to one knee.
Shen Lian caught him before he struck the ground.
"You're going to die if you keep doing this!"
He wanted to argue.
He wanted to tell her that he had not chosen any of it.
Instead, he closed his eyes and took a slow breath.
For once, he had no clever answer.
The sky darkened completely.
The two presences had reached the absolute boundary between universes.
The man before the golden door slowly raised his right hand.
The black-robed figure did the same.
Their hands approached the thin layer of distorted reality separating them.
One movement.
One point of contact.
That was all that remained.
The cosmos began to scream.
Space emitted strange, grinding sounds as it fractured. The laws governing both universes twisted violently, struggling to preserve distinctions that were rapidly losing meaning.
Han Feng felt the pressure pass through his bones.
He could no longer remain standing.
Shen Lian dragged him behind a shattered ridge, but even there the ground trembled beneath them.
The golden Diagram inside his consciousness began to rotate again.
The central fissure opened.
The incomplete rune spun.
And the seventh symbol flickered for the third time.
Han Feng's eyes widened.
This time, he felt something beyond recognition.
A warning.
Not a voice.
Not a vision.
A sudden certainty that settled into his consciousness.
If the two hands touched, the seal would fail.
He did not know how he knew.
He could not explain whether the sensation came from the Diagram, the ancient voice, or the accumulated fragments of the vision.
But the warning was unmistakable.
Han Feng stared at the two figures.
The man at the door.
The black-robed presence.
Both hands were nearly touching the boundary.
The space between them was thinner than a strand of hair.
He tried to stand.
His legs refused to respond.
He tried to gather Qi.
His damaged meridians answered with pain.
He tried to activate the Celestial Veil.
The technique flickered and collapsed under the pressure.
There was nothing he could do.
He was a weak cultivator watching a catastrophe unfold at a scale he could barely comprehend.
And for the first time, his intelligence offered no immediate solution.
Han Feng clenched his teeth.
Think.
He forced himself to observe.
The golden formation in his vision had not defeated either figure.
It had separated them.
The Celestial Diagram was a fragment of that formation.
But the fragment inside him was incomplete.
It could not rebuild the original seal.
It could not overpower the two presences.
Perhaps it could not even stop the contact.
Then what could it do?
Han Feng looked at the central fissure.
The golden lines were not forming a barrier around his body.
They were aligning with the fractures in space.
The Diagram was responding to the boundary itself.
Not the two beings.
Not their strength.
The boundary.
Han Feng's breathing caught.
It isn't trying to stop them.
The realization came slowly.
It's trying to preserve the separation.
But the Diagram was incomplete.
And Han Feng was not its master.
He could not order it to act.
He could barely keep his consciousness intact.
The two hands continued moving.
The universe trembled.
Han Feng closed his eyes.
He did not attempt to seize the Diagram.
He did not force Qi into the central rune.
Instead, he stopped resisting its resonance.
He let go of the urge to control what he did not understand.
For a single instant, he allowed his consciousness to become still.
The golden lines responded.
Not by growing brighter.
Not by expanding.
They aligned.
Across the Diagram, the intersecting patterns shifted into a single incomplete formation.
The central rune stopped spinning.
The seventh symbol remained dark.
But the fissure narrowed by a fraction.
A thin golden line extended from the Diagram into the surrounding space.
It traveled no farther than the edge of Han Feng's body before fading.
Nothing dramatic happened.
No enormous barrier appeared.
No divine power descended from the heavens.
The two beings did not stop.
Yet for a fraction of a second, the boundary between their hands stabilized.
The collapse slowed.
Han Feng opened his eyes.
He had not stopped them.
He had not even touched their power.
He had merely allowed the fragment inside him to resonate with the boundary.
And even that tiny response nearly shattered his consciousness.
Blood poured from his nose.
The golden seal on his chest burned.
His vision blurred.
The Diagram fell silent.
The seventh symbol returned to darkness.
Han Feng collapsed against the broken ridge.
Shen Lian caught him.
"Han Feng!"
He could barely hear her.
The space above them trembled again.
The two hands continued approaching.
The brief stabilization had not solved anything.
It had only delayed the collapse for a moment.
But Han Feng had learned something important.
The Celestial Diagram could respond to the boundary between the universes.
It could not control the two beings.
And he could not force it to do more than it was capable of.
The difference was enormous.
One path led toward understanding.
The other led toward death.
Han Feng struggled to remain conscious.
He looked toward the sky.
The two hands were almost touching.
The ancient voice whispered one final time.
Not from the Diagram.
Not from the golden door.
From somewhere beyond the broken boundary.
"The seal remembers..."
A pause.
"But will the heir?"
Han Feng's eyes widened.
Then the voice disappeared.
The golden door remained open.
The black-robed figure stood at the edge of the darkness.
The man before the door held out his hand.
And between them, the last thin layer of reality began to vanish.
End of Chapter 103