Chapter 104: The Beginning of the New Era (Part 4)
The two hands continued to approach.
Neither moved quickly.
Neither showed impatience.
Yet with every fraction of distance that disappeared between them, the foundations of existence grew weaker.
In the Gu World, the sky split open.
In the other universe, the stars began to fall.
And in the space separating them, something that had remained imprisoned for countless ages stirred in its sleep.
Han Feng watched the two figures through the Celestial Diagram.
His vision was already deteriorating.
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and every breath sent a sharp pain through his damaged meridians. The golden seal beneath his skin burned like a piece of molten metal, its hairline fracture spreading by another almost imperceptible amount.
He could barely remain standing.
Yet he couldn't look away.
The man beyond the golden door stood with the same unsettling calm he had displayed from the beginning. His long robes moved in a wind that existed nowhere else, and his dark eyes remained fixed on the presence before him.
Across the thinning boundary, the black-robed figure stood motionless.
Its face remained concealed.
Its aura was neither ordinary darkness nor the absence of light. It was something more fundamental, an existence that seemed to reject the rules governing everything around it.
Han Feng had seen powerful cultivators.
He had witnessed the terrifying strength of beings who could reshape mountains and annihilate entire regions with a single technique.
These two were different.
They weren't simply stronger than the cultivators of the Gu World.
They stood at a level where the distinction between power and authority no longer seemed meaningful.
And now, they were about to touch.
Han Feng's fingers tightened.
Don't.
He didn't know which of them he was addressing.
Perhaps both.
Perhaps the universe itself.
Then the ancient voice echoed through his consciousness.
"The seal is failing..."
This time, there was no distance in the voice.
It sounded as though the speaker stood directly behind him.
Han Feng's pupils contracted.
"You said that already," he whispered. "Tell me how to stop it!"
No answer came.
The golden lines of the Celestial Diagram twisted violently.
The seventh symbol, which had remained dark through every previous disturbance, flickered once.
Then it went dark again.
Han Feng's expression hardened.
Even now, the Diagram refused to reveal everything.
Or perhaps it simply couldn't.
He had mistaken its reactions for answers before. He wouldn't make that mistake again.
Whatever was happening, he didn't possess the strength to control it.
But he could still observe.
He could still think.
And until the moment his consciousness failed, those were the only advantages he had left.
The two hands drew closer.
The distance between them ceased to behave like distance.
A thousand kilometers became a single step.
A thousand years became a heartbeat.
The barrier separating the universes thinned until it resembled a sheet of glass stretched across an endless abyss.
Then the fingertips of the two entities reached the boundary simultaneously.
They did not touch each other.
They touched the same point in reality.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The sound swallowed everything.
Across the Gu World, cultivators fell to their knees as their spiritual senses were torn apart by the shock wave. Ancient formations disintegrated before their masters could even understand what had triggered them.
In the Central Region, mountain ranges split down their centers.
Rivers rose from their beds and hung in the air, their waters suspended in enormous twisting ribbons. Cities vanished beneath expanding spatial fractures. Some people saw the sun in the middle of the night; others watched daylight collapse into darkness.
The world had not ended.
Not yet.
But the rules that allowed it to exist were failing.
Far beyond the Gu World, spiritual stars exploded in succession.
Immortal palaces crumbled.
Ancient sects that had survived countless calamities watched their protective formations unravel like rotten cloth. Beings who had once believed themselves untouchable found their bodies trapped between overlapping laws, unable to determine which universe their existence belonged to.
The primordial void shuddered.
For one instant, both universes became visible through one another.
And then—
They began to tear apart.
Han Feng lost all sensation.
He could no longer hear the explosions.
He could no longer feel the ground beneath his feet.
The sky, the mountains, and the ruined ridge disappeared into a blinding mixture of gold and black.
He tried to breathe.
Nothing happened.
He tried to move his hand.
He couldn't tell whether he still possessed one.
His consciousness floated in a place where direction had lost its meaning.
Then the Celestial Diagram awakened.
Not gradually.
Not gently.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
Golden light erupted from the center of Han Feng's consciousness.
The incomplete hexagram expanded beyond the boundaries of his spiritual sea. Its golden lines extended outward, crossing the limits of his body and appearing in the heavens of both universes.
For a moment, every living being saw it.
A colossal celestial formation stretched across the fractured skies.
Its lines passed through mountains, crossed oceans, and disappeared into distant dimensions. Some extended beyond the visible heavens, vanishing into regions where even powerful Immortals could not direct their spiritual senses.
The formation resembled the one from Han Feng's ancient vision.
But it was not complete.
Several sections ended abruptly.
Others were broken into fragments that floated apart without connecting.
At its center, a vast fissure remained open.
The seventh symbol flickered beneath the surrounding golden lines, dark and unstable.
The Diagram was awake.
But it was still broken.
And whatever it had once been, Han Feng possessed only a fragment of its former structure.
He understood none of its deeper workings.
He had not awakened its full inheritance.
He had not become its master.
Yet the formation had responded to the crisis.
And that response came at a terrible cost.
Han Feng screamed.
Golden symbols appeared across his skin, spreading from his chest toward his shoulders and down his arms. They were not markings he had summoned. They were traces of the Diagram forcing its resonance through a body incapable of containing it.
His damaged meridians began to split.
Blood spilled from his mouth.
The golden seal beneath his skin flared violently.
A hairline fracture widened.
For one terrifying instant, the foreign energy it regulated surged toward the surface.
Han Feng felt the seal begin to fail.
No... not now!
He desperately tried to suppress the surge.
The Art of the Celestial Veil offered no protection against this.
The Dual Chaos Larva Gu struggled to harmonize the conflicting energies, but the pressure was far beyond its capacity. The Celestial Transmutation Gu responded a moment later, attempting to stabilize the interaction between Qi and Gu energy.
Neither could stop the process.
Both Gu trembled inside him.
Then they withdrew, instinctively protecting their own fragile existence.
Han Feng was alone.
The Celestial Diagram continued expanding.
His body began to crack beneath the golden markings.
And behind him—
Shen Lian collapsed.
She had tried to reach him when the first wave of energy erupted. Now she lay motionless against the shattered ground, her breathing faint but present.
Han Feng saw her fall.
He tried to call her name.
No sound emerged.
His consciousness was being dragged toward the Diagram's central fissure.
For a brief moment, he felt himself slipping away from his body.
He saw the golden formation from above.
He saw its broken lines spanning two universes.
And beyond them, he saw the space between worlds.
Something was moving there.
Something enormous.
Something that had never belonged to either universe.
The primordial void was not empty.
Han Feng had once assumed that the space between universes was merely a region without stars, spiritual energy, or ordinary matter.
He was wrong.
The void concealed a darkness that existed beneath those distinctions.
And within that darkness, a colossal shadow began to emerge.
Its outline was impossible to follow.
Sometimes it resembled a vast humanoid figure bound in chains. At other times, its shape dissolved into countless overlapping forms, each too immense to comprehend.
It was older than the Gu World.
Older than the other universe.
Perhaps older than the laws that governed either.
Han Feng couldn't determine its size.
The more he tried to understand it, the more his mind rejected what he was seeing.
He glimpsed something resembling a shoulder, then a shape that might have been a head. Vast structures extended from its body, disappearing into the darkness beyond the reach of the Celestial Diagram.
Then he saw the chains.
Golden chains wrapped around the colossal shadow.
They stretched into the primordial void, connecting it to points that no longer existed in either universe.
Han Feng recognized them immediately.
They were the same chains from his ancient vision.
The same chains that had bound the indistinct creature beneath the primordial formation.
But in that vision, the chains had been intact.
Now—
One broke.
CRACK!
A second chain snapped several moments later.
CRACK!
The sound carried no ordinary vibration, yet Han Feng felt it pass through every layer of his consciousness.
More chains began to fracture.
The Celestial Diagram shuddered in response.
Its golden lines bent toward the primordial void, as though an invisible force were pulling them away from their original positions.
Han Feng felt a sudden, terrible realization settle over him.
The Diagram had not awakened because he had become stronger.
It had awakened because something was happening to the seal.
The two entities had brought the barrier to the brink of collapse.
And whatever the Diagram had once been designed to contain, separate, or regulate—
It was reacting to that failure.
Is this what you were made for?
The question formed in Han Feng's mind.
The Diagram gave no answer.
Instead, its central fissure widened.
A pulse of golden light passed through the formation.
For a brief instant, the broken chains stopped moving.
Then the colossal shadow stirred.
The remaining chains tightened.
One snapped.
Then another.
CRAAAAACK!
The darkness surrounding the creature rippled outward.
Both universes trembled.
And the two entities finally reacted.
The calm man beyond the golden door narrowed his eyes.
It was a small movement.
Barely noticeable.
But for the first time since Han Feng had seen him, the man's composure had changed.
He withdrew his hand from the boundary.
The movement caused another spatial fracture to spread across the heavens, but he seemed not to care.
His gaze shifted toward the primordial void.
"So," he murmured.
His voice was quiet.
Yet the word carried across the collapsing boundary.
"It has begun."
Across from him, the black-robed figure remained motionless.
Then its head turned toward the same darkness.
For several breaths, neither entity spoke.
The pressure surrounding them changed.
Previously, their presence had threatened to destroy the universes through sheer incompatibility. Now, something more complicated entered the space between them.
Recognition.
Not surprise.
Not confusion.
Recognition of a danger that neither could ignore.
The black-robed figure finally spoke.
"The chains should have held."
The calm man's expression became colder.
"They were never meant to hold forever."
"Then why did you come?"
"To see whether the seal could still be preserved."
A faint, humorless smile appeared on the man's face.
"It seems I arrived too late."
The black-robed figure looked toward the broken chains.
"Not entirely."
Its voice deepened.
"The fragment has awakened."
Both gazes shifted toward the enormous Celestial Diagram spanning the skies.
Far beneath it, Han Feng's body trembled as golden symbols continued to spread across his skin.
The calm man studied the formation.
Then, for the first time, he looked directly toward Han Feng.
Not at the Diagram.
Not at the fissure.
At him.
"So the bearer survived."
Han Feng couldn't hear the words.
But he felt the attention.
It passed through him like a blade, exposing the weakness of his body and the instability of the seal beneath his skin.
He tried to turn away.
He couldn't.
The man's gaze lingered for a moment.
Then he looked back toward the primordial void.
"Bearer," he said quietly, "do you understand what you've awakened?"
Han Feng had no answer.
He barely understood what was happening.
But the man didn't seem to expect one.
The black-robed figure raised its head.
"Whether he understands is irrelevant."
A dark wave spread from its body.
"Something has remembered him."
The colossal shadow moved.
Not forward.
Not backward.
It simply shifted within the primordial void.
And the movement was enough to break another chain.
CRACK!
A wave of darkness passed through the space between universes.
Where it touched the golden formation, the lines dimmed.
Where it crossed the fractured skies, entire regions lost their color.
For a moment, Han Feng saw a mountain suspended in the air.
Then the mountain vanished.
Not destroyed.
Not transported.
Its existence had become uncertain, as though reality could no longer decide whether the mountain had ever been there.
The same thing happened to a distant section of the other universe.
A city appeared beneath a starless sky, its towers illuminated by pale spiritual flames.
Then the entire city blurred.
Its walls became transparent.
Its inhabitants looked upward in terror.
And the city disappeared from sight.
Han Feng couldn't tell whether it had been erased, displaced, or hidden behind a layer of reality he could no longer perceive.
That uncertainty frightened him more than destruction.
At least destruction left something behind.
This left a question.
The colossal shadow continued to emerge.
More of its outline became visible.
Then—
An eye opened.
It was so immense that Han Feng could not see its entire shape.
Its surface resembled a bottomless expanse of primordial darkness, surrounded by faint golden lines that looked like remnants of the broken chains.
The eye did not look toward either universe.
It looked through them.
For one instant, Han Feng felt that it was observing something far beyond the collapsing worlds.
Then another eye opened.
And another.
Countless points of awareness emerged within the darkness.
Each one seemed to look in a different direction.
Han Feng's mind nearly collapsed.
He had seen powerful beings before.
He had even glimpsed existences that appeared to stand beyond the laws of his world.
But this was different.
The creature did not feel like a cultivator who had reached an unimaginable realm.
It felt like something that had existed before the distinction between cultivation realms had ever been established.
The Celestial Diagram shuddered violently.
A golden line extended from its central fissure toward the colossal shadow.
For a fraction of a second, Han Feng thought the Diagram was attempting to reconnect the broken chains.
Then the line stopped.
It trembled.
And began to fracture.
Han Feng felt a sharp pain tear through his consciousness.
The Diagram was not repairing the seal.
It was reacting to it.
Perhaps it recognized the chains.
Perhaps it remembered the formation.
Perhaps it was trying to resist the collapse.
Whatever the reason, its incomplete structure could not sustain the connection.
The golden line shattered into countless fragments.
Han Feng cried out as the pain returned.
His vision darkened.
The Diagram remained suspended across the heavens, but several of its lines had dimmed.
It was still awake.
But even this fragment had limits.
And the thing in the void was becoming more visible.
The ancient voice returned.
This time, it was no longer calm.
"He is awakening..."
The words echoed through Han Feng's consciousness.
Then through the Celestial Diagram.
Then across the fractured boundary itself.
The voice trembled.
Not from weakness.
From fear.
Han Feng tried to focus.
"Who is he?"
The voice did not answer immediately.
A distant chain shattered.
The sound reverberated across both universes.
CRAAAAACK!
Han Feng's heart sank.
"Tell me what that thing is!"
The ancient voice finally responded.
"The one who was bound before the first division."
Han Feng froze.
Before the first division?
The Diagram's golden lines flickered.
The voice continued.
"The one whose prison became the boundary."
Han Feng felt his blood turn cold.
The boundary between the universes had not merely been used to separate them.
It might have been part of the prison itself.
The golden formation.
The broken chains.
The incomplete Celestial Diagram.
They were all connected to something much older than the worlds they had been designed to protect.
But the voice stopped again.
Han Feng forced himself to speak.
"Was the seal created to keep him out?"
"No."
The answer came immediately.
Han Feng's pupils contracted.
"Then to keep him inside?"
Silence.
The darkness within the Celestial Diagram deepened.
Finally, the voice answered.
"Both."
A terrible pressure passed through Han Feng's consciousness.
He understood only a fraction of the implication.
The formation had not simply separated two universes.
It had divided reality around a prison.
The worlds existed on opposite sides of a boundary that served another purpose entirely.
And now, as the two universes converged and the boundary began to fail, the prison was failing with it.
Han Feng looked toward the colossal shadow.
So the two entities weren't the only danger.
The thought had barely formed when the ancient voice spoke again.
"Do not mistake the approaching dawn for salvation."
Han Feng's expression changed.
"Dawn?"
But the voice had already begun to fade.
The seventh symbol flickered once.
Then the Celestial Diagram released a final pulse of golden light.
For one instant, every broken chain became visible.
And every living being in both universes understood the same thing.
The chains were not merely damaged.
They were losing their meaning.
The colossal shadow opened its central eye.
The universe went silent.
The explosions stopped.
The collapsing mountains froze in midair.
The waves hanging above the oceans ceased to move.
Even the spatial fractures paused, their jagged edges suspended across the heavens.
For one impossible moment, all motion disappeared.
Han Feng felt time itself become uncertain.
Then the eye turned.
Not toward the calm man.
Not toward the black-robed figure.
Toward the Celestial Diagram.
And through the Diagram—
Toward Han Feng.
He felt the attention strike his soul.
His golden seal burned.
The fracture beneath his skin widened by another hair's breadth.
His two Gu retreated deeper into his dantian.
Shen Lian remained unconscious behind him.
Han Feng could neither run nor fight.
He could barely think.
Yet he felt something pass through the Celestial Diagram.
A memory.
Not his own.
A golden formation spanning an endless void.
A figure standing before the chains.
A voice speaking a command that Han Feng could not understand.
Then darkness.
The vision disappeared.
The colossal eye remained open.
Han Feng's mind shook.
It remembers the Diagram.
Or perhaps—
The Diagram remembers it.
He could not determine which possibility was worse.
The creature's gaze lingered for another moment.
Then a voice emerged.
It did not travel through air.
It did not come from any direction.
It appeared directly within the souls of all living beings across both universes.
Cultivators heard it.
Immortals heard it.
Ancient beasts heard it.
Even those who had been born without spiritual roots felt the words engraved into the deepest part of their existence.
"The jailer... will return."
Silence followed.
Then the chains shattered again.
CRACK!
One.
CRACK!
Two.
CRAAAAAAACK!
The golden formation flickered.
The two entities stood motionless.
For the first time, neither attempted to cross the boundary.
They were watching the same thing.
The same colossal shadow.
The same broken prison.
And perhaps the same approaching catastrophe.
Han Feng fell to one knee.
The Celestial Diagram still hovered across the skies, its lines incomplete and its central fissure open.
His body was covered in golden symbols.
Blood stained his clothes.
The seal beneath his skin was close to its limit.
He had not gained control of the Diagram.
He had not become strong enough to challenge the entities before him.
And he had done nothing to stop the prison from breaking.
Yet the creature in the void had looked directly at him.
That fact alone was enough to change everything.
Han Feng raised his head with tremendous effort.
He looked toward the broken chains.
Then toward the two figures standing on opposite sides of reality.
A question formed in his mind.
If that thing is the prisoner...
His eyes narrowed.
Then who—or what—is the jailer?
The Celestial Diagram gave no answer.
Far above him, the last intact golden chains began to tremble.
And somewhere beyond the visible limits of the primordial void, something answered the distant call.
Not with a voice.
Not with light.
But with a single, unmistakable movement.
The prison was failing.
The prisoner was awakening.
And the jailer—
Was coming home.