The collapse did not arrive as an accident.
It came as a precise consequence — punctual, exact, almost polite.
Lin Ye felt it just after midday, when the echo had been silent for hours. He was not meditating or training. He was simply sitting there, watching as He Lian tried to repair a defective spirit lamp with more patience than technique.
"If you turn it like this…" Lin Ye began.
The world tilted.
Not visually. Not in any obvious way. It was an internal sensation, as if something had decided to readjust its specific weight within reality. The air grew dense. The ground took a fraction of a second longer than usual to respond to gravity.
Lin Ye brought a hand to his chest.
"Ah…" he murmured.
Yan Mo reacted immediately.
"Don't move," he ordered.
Too late.
The echo closed in on itself.
It did not explode. It did not emerge.
It compressed.
The pain was strange — not sharp, not burning, but conceptual. As if something inside Lin Ye had tried to occupy a space that did not yet exist. His vision filled with white edges, not from light, but from lack of information.
He fell to his knees.
"Lin Ye!" Su Yanlin shouted.
The Threshold reacted instinctively, trying to stabilize the transition… and failed halfway. The result was worse: Lin Ye's body became trapped between two states — neither fully collapsed nor functional.
"This is not an injury," Yan Mo said, frowning. "It's an internal phase displacement."
Lin Ye was breathing, but each inhalation seemed to arrive late.
"The echo…" he gasped. "It's pushing… without permission."
Yan Mo clenched his teeth.
"Because you've already met too many conditions," he said. "The body was not designed to wait indefinitely for something like this."
He Lian, who had remained motionless until then, stepped forward.
"I can help," he said suddenly.
Everyone looked at him.
"No," Yan Mo replied at once. "You don't know what you're doing."
"I do," He Lian said. "But I know what I am."
He knelt in front of Lin Ye without asking permission and placed his palm on the ground.
"When people forget me," he continued, "it's not because I disappear. It's because the world never fully accepts me."
The air around him blurred.
It wasn't a technique.
It was a shared instability.
"If Lin Ye's problem is that something wants to be born too early," He Lian said, "then let it anchor for a moment in someone who doesn't fit either."
Yan Mo hesitated.
That was unusual.
"An imperfect anchor…" he murmured. "It might work."
"Or kill him?" Su Yanlin asked tensely.
He Lian smiled with unsettling calm.
"Both are possible," he said. "But right now… doing nothing is worse."
Lin Ye raised his gaze with difficulty.
"Do it," he said. "But if something goes wrong… don't try to close it."
He Lian nodded.
"I wouldn't know how, even if I wanted to."
He placed his other hand on the ground.
For an instant, nothing happened.
Then the echo shifted.
It did not leave Lin Ye.
It did not enter He Lian.
It misaligned.
The effect was immediate.
Lin Ye's internal pressure dropped abruptly, but in exchange, He Lian shuddered violently. His eyes unfocused, and his presence… became even harder to pin down.
"He Lian?" Su Yanlin asked.
"I'm fine," he replied, though his voice seemed to arrive half a second late. "It's just… now the world remembers me even less."
Lin Ye inhaled deeply.
This time, the air arrived on time.
He sank back, drenched in cold sweat.
"That…" he murmured. "That wasn't free."
Yan Mo nodded gravely.
"No," he said. "You've just created an involuntary dependency."
"Between whom?" Su Yanlin asked.
Yan Mo looked at both of them.
"Between an anomaly that is learning to decide," he said,
"and another that the world never decided to accept."
The silence that followed was heavy.
He Lian slowly stood up, swaying slightly.
"I suppose now…" he said with a crooked smile,
"I can't leave quite so easily anymore."
Lin Ye looked at him.
"I wouldn't ask you to," he replied. "But I won't promise you safety."
"I never had it," He Lian said. "This is… a relative improvement."
Before they could say anything else, a deep vibration rippled through the shelter. It wasn't local. It was structural. As if something in Huo'an had just finished breaking.
Yan Mo received an urgent transmission. He read it… and his expression hardened.
"The rift between factions is now public," he said. "Two minor houses openly clashed an hour ago."
"Because of me?" Lin Ye asked.
"Not directly," Yan Mo replied. "But you were the catalyst."
Lin Ye closed his eyes for a second.
"Then we can't stay here."
Yan Mo nodded.
"Not without turning Huo'an into your battlefield."
Lin Ye stood with effort.
The world took a moment… but accepted him.
"Then we move," he said. "Before the world decides the stage for us."
Somewhere in the north of the continent, a figure was observing a tablet that had just updated itself.
Echo displaced.
Dependency created.
Probability of manifestation: increased.
The figure smiled.
"Now," he murmured.
"Now it gets interesting."
———————————————
Well guys, the arc is getting better and better, and now the best part is coming.
I understand that these first 50 chapters may have been difficult to read — slow, complex — but that's because I wanted to create something different from the usual.
Not the same old story where the protagonist becomes powerful too quickly, faces cliché enemies who aren't intelligent, and fights in hollow, meaningless battles. This is a cultivation novel where, in the first arc, strategy is what matters most.
Our protagonist is NOT strong yet — he has to be intelligent and cunning. The enemies are not all easy, their true nature is gradually revealed, and death is a daily presence — from the closest ally… to our own protagonist.
I have truly crazy ideas for this work, ideas that will make it unique.
Support me if you can, and we'll meet again tomorrow, December 29th, 2025, with another chapter.
On the 30th and 31st there will be special chapters — not just one, but two.