Chapter 104 – The Silence of the Root

He did not understand what had gone wrong.

At the exact instant the condensed energy crossed the border of his body into the real world, his Inner Universe lost its balance all at once.

There was no warning. The magnitude of the internal collapse was so colossal that the resonance leaked from his chest, making the entire Middle Realm tremble in response. Inside him, the thousands of stars began to crack and dissolve into the void. The heavy cables of the Primordial Loom snapped and broke, whipping the internal vacuum while the entire structure of his foundation began to collapse.

Zhì Yuǎn knew in the same instant that he was dead.

The only thought that passed through his head, however, was that if that uncontrolled cosmos exploded there, the detonation would pulverize the chamber, sweep the pavilion, and disintegrate his wives.

In a blind reflex to save them, accepting to pay the price with his own life, he forced the last remnant of control he still had over the Law of Space and tore the stone floor beneath his own feet.

The fissure of the Chaotic Void opened like a black mouth in the gravel, and he threw his own body into the darkness.

The fissure closed right behind him with the dry snap of an iron door slamming, swallowing the main explosion and leaving behind only the muffled echo of a tremor that made the capital shake.

And then the world ended.

The loss of the senses did not come as a progressive faint. It was a guillotine blow.

Vision went out first, swallowed by a darkness so heavy that the very idea of light seemed to have been erased from his memory.

Right after, sound died. The roar of energy in his spine and even the heavy beat of his own heart evaporated in the blink of an eye. All that remained was a hollow, dead, suffocating silence, pressing his ears as if he were submerged in cold oil.

Zhì Yuǎn tried to move his fingers. He tried to close his fist.

Nothing answered. The sensation of arms, legs, shoulders, and even the weight of his own skin vanished completely. It was as if his physical shell had been dissolved into nothing, leaving his consciousness floating without weight, without direction, and without a single point of support.

He sought the Dantian by habit. He tried to reach the Mill, summon the threads of the Loom, or trigger any remnant of the Law of Space to stabilize himself.

The only thing left to confirm that he still existed was the pain.

It was not a muscular pain or the burn of a cut on the skin. It was a white, continuous, unbearable burning that crushed the center of what used to be his chest—the rest of the compressed Qi collapsing upon his shattered foundation, grinding his flesh and his soul from within while he plunged into the nothing.

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The tremor beneath the soil lasted a few breaths and stopped, leaving in the underground air the muffled sound of cracks and the dust raised by the seams of the rocks.

Yù Qíng remained standing a few steps from the great stone door. Her hands seized the fabric of her dress with such force that the knuckles went white.

It was not only Zhì Yuǎn's presence that evaporated behind the wall. The Law of Devotion vanished like a candle snuffed out in the darkness.

The pain that followed did not come from the flesh, but tore her abdomen with the violence of an open wound.

Yù Qíng fell to her knees on the cold stone. The air fled her lungs in a painful hiss and, before she could recompose her posture, she folded her body forward until her forehead touched the floor, curling over her own stomach while she let out muffled cries and hot tears that stained the gravel. Blood began to run between her clenched teeth.

The sound of the First Wife's desperate crying echoed down the stairway, pulling the others who were descending in haste to the underground courtyard. Bái Wǎn, Qīng Yǔ, Mò Yán, Huáng Bìyù, and Lín Jié appeared at the curve of the corridor, stopping when they found that scene.

Yù Méi did not wait for orders or explanations. Seeing her eldest sister writhing on the floor and the dead silence behind the rock, the youngest advanced two steps and drove a punch straight into the center of the chamber door.

The blow on the rock was dry and raw. The thick stone shattered in a burst of dust and sharp pieces, but there was no gleam or expanding wave of the Law of Rupture. It was only a blind impact against what remained of the formations. Yù Méi drew her hand back slowly, her arm trembling faintly while blood ran red and dense from the scraped knuckles, revealing the absence of the strength that had always accompanied her.

The meditation chamber was destroyed. The wooden platform had been reduced to splinters, the mat had turned to dust, and the center of the room displayed only a charred hole, from which rose the cold smell of distorted space.

Zhì Yuǎn was not there.

Bái Wǎn and Qīng Yǔ raced down the steps, kneeling at once beside Yù Qíng. The Fourth and the Fifth wrapped the eldest sister's body in an awkward embrace, trying to hold her shoulders while Yù Qíng remained curled on the floor, her hands driven into her stomach as if her own core were bleeding. Neither Bái Wǎn nor Qīng Yǔ had the strength to console anyone. Tears ran freely down their faces, their bodies trembling as they felt the void where their husband's heat had once pulsed.

Near the rubble of the door, Huáng Bìyù and Yù Méi remained petrified. The Sixth Wife kept an erect posture, but her chin trembled faintly as she stared at the empty hole in the rock.

A step behind stood Mò Yán and Lín Jié.

Pallor washed over both faces, but Mò Yán's posture stiffened, the silence around her sharpening suddenly. She turned her body slowly and fixed her gaze on Xú Lán, who remained leaning against the stone wall of the corridor.

The Silver Huntress did not seem shaken by the panic that had taken the underground. She slowly left a trance, her clear eyes blinking while the corners of her mouth rose in a strange, unnatural smile on that face of ice.

"What happened?" Mò Yán's voice cut the sound of the crying, cold and clean as the snap of a blade leaving the sheath.

Lín Jié took a step forward in the same instant, her eyes narrowed on the slave.

Xú Lán faced Mò Yán without retreating. She raised her right hand slowly and traced her fingers along the base of her own neck, pressing the skin exactly where the Soul Collar had been engraved.

"The Master is alive," Xú Lán said. The voice came out hoarse, but it carried a certainty so absolute and unshakable that it made the crying in the corridor diminish for a moment. "I still feel his mark burning in me."

Yù Qíng's crying caught in her throat. She remained on the floor for a few more breaths, her forehead against the stone, but her chest little by little stopped shaking.

He was alive. His soul had not been destroyed.

Zhì Yuǎn would never give up what was his. If he had been forced to escape, the fault was not a calculation error.

It was the heavens.

Those damned, spiteful heavens, which had never accepted his existence and sought any crack to try to end him. The pain and the dread that had left her crumpled on the floor turned into something else—a dry, heavy, quiet rage, directed entirely upward.

Yù Qíng braced her palms on the gravel and got to her feet slowly.

Bái Wǎn and Qīng Yǔ tried to hold her hands, but Yù Qíng pushed the touch aside lightly. She passed the sleeve of her dress across her face, wiping the dust and the tears, and looked at the dark hole of the chamber.

"He is alive," Yù Qíng said, her voice coming out hoarse, but firm. "And he will return."

The answer to her declaration, however, did not come in the form of relief.

"We will not have time to wait in peace," Mò Yán's cold voice cut the air of the stairway. The Third Wife held a transmission jade slip that glowed faintly in her palm. "Mèng Lián just sent a warning. The tremor did not occur only here."

All of them turned their faces toward Mò Yán.

"It was on a worldwide scale," she continued. "The pulse cut the earth veins of every continent. Our spies inside the hegemonic sects report that the elders and sect masters left seclusion in a state of emergency. The entire world stopped to discover where the anomaly came from."

Lín Jié took a step forward, adjusting the folds of her tunic as she faced Qīng Yǔ and Huáng Bìyù.

"Elder Yáo sent an emergency transmission just now," the Seventh Sister said. "The Elder Council of the Empire is already gathered, and they are not second-guessing the origin."

"My mother just said the same," Huáng Bìyù added while storing a transmission jade back into her storage ring.

The silence in the underground chamber grew suddenly suffocating.

"The courtyard reserved for the two fairies of the young generation," Huáng Bìyù murmured, pallor washing over the Sixth Sister's face.

"Exactly," Lín Jié confirmed, staring at the destroyed entrance of the underground. "The forces of the Elder Council have already been dispatched. They are coming to this pavilion right n—"

Before Lín Jié could finish, the air of the stairway was cut off for good.

Space folded in two dry snaps. Lóu Jiàn and Jiàn Wúshuang appeared in the center of the underground corridor. Lóu Jiàn brought Mò Zhōng seized by the collar of his tunic; the butler had his arms drawn in and the expression of someone who had been ripped from the courtyard without time to blink.

In the same instant, Jiàn Wúshuang took a step forward, crossing his hands before the Mistresses, while the transfer array they carried in the ring snapped beneath the skin.

"Forgive me, my Ladies," Jiàn Wúshuang said, his voice short and without room for reply, "but we have no time."

The spatial pulse swallowed the group in an instant. Yù Qíng, Lín Jié, Mò Yán, Yù Méi, Bái Wǎn, Qīng Yǔ, and Huáng Bìyù vanished from the corridor before the dust of the destroyed door even settled on the floor.

Only one person remained.

Xú Lán continued leaning against the stone wall, watching the void left by her Master while she let out a long sigh, the cold air escaping her lips in a thin cloud. The sweet smile remained there, carved into the features of ice.

Two steps ahead, the shadows of the stone corridor began to stretch and climb her delicate bare feet. The technique was one of the rewards Zhì Yuǎn had given her. The darkness wrapped her ankles, rose along the silk of her clothes, and swallowed her body without producing a single sound, blending her completely into the structure of the pavilion.

It was at that instant that the world outside collapsed.

A dry, continuous thunder began to echo from the property's main gates, more than a mile away. The earth of the entire district trembled when the pavilion's outer barrier was pulverized all at once.

Dozens of heavy, dense, suffocating presences began to descend from the sky like a flock of crows upon the Autumn Wind Pavilion.