The scene opens aboard the space board, where Hangfang sits immobile in a dim, cramped cabin. His legs crossed, his eyes closing, his breath so quiet you can barely feel it on the air. A faint, pulsing glimmer surrounds his body — gentle, gold, with a rhythm like the heartbeat of a distant star. The silence is oppressive, dense with concentration. Consumed with his thoughts, his mind, like an endless field, blends into nothingness; TIME is relative and the self gains infinity.
Into this mental stillness, a disturbance ripples through the void.
And then—he appears.
The true Hangfang.
He emerges from the shadows, calm and steady, his voice measured but tinged with an underlying authority. "What are you doing here? You should be cultivating."
The inner eyes of Xiao Tian open poco a poco. He has a look of pain, but determination in his eyes.
"I know," he says softly. "I know I need to cultivate. I know I must grow stronger. But first … I need to be clear about something. And I just need you to tell me truthfully. No riddles. No games. Just the truth."
Hangfang eyes him carefully. "Ask."
Xiao Tian pauses and breathes out.
"All those infinite universes… all those parallel realities… scattered like stars… Are you interconnected to them? To all of them? Am I simply one of a million versions of me, on a different course, having made different decisions? Did you choose me—this me—out of infinite ones? And if so… why? Why me? Why this timeline?"
His voice quavers slightly, emotion barely below the surface. "If I'm merely one among infinite possibilities, send me back. Pick another version. Someone stronger. Someone willing. Just… let me go."
A long, heavy silence unfolds between them.
Hangfang finally speaks, and his voice is steel drenched in silk. "Among infinite paths, you are the only one that aligned perfectly with what I needed. You know what that means, right? And in all of time and in all of space and all of possibility, you're the only one who rang at the frequency of this moment. The one whose soul sang like mine did. I don't know if I will ever again find another like you. And even if I do, it might be too late. Like it or not, you are my only candidate. You are it."
Xiao Tian's breath catches.
He lowers his gaze. "Great… perhaps you won't let me walk away. But at least… let me go home. Just for a few minutes. I haven't seen my family since I exited that universe. I don't even know if they're alive." But I need to see them. I need to know. Please. Just once."
Hangfang's voice softens, now, shifting. Heavy. "If you come back, you will not find peace. All you'll find is sorrow. I warn you — pain lies in wait for you there. Emotion… family… those will kill you now. If I see them again, they might splinter the very soul I must keep whole."
Xiao Tian's voice cracks. "If I never see them… it's going to ruin me anyway. The uncertainty … it's already breaking me. Even if it breaks me—even if it kills me—I have to see them. Please."
Another silence. This one goes so much longer. It weighs like something of the cosmos.
Then at last Hangfang exhales — a long, reluctant breath.
"…Five minutes. No more."
A shiver rips through the air.
Suddenly, somewhere at the bottom of Hangfang's mindscape, reality starts to twist.
There is a void that shudders behind Xiao Tian. A split crack opens, thin and red, like a wound tear into the face of reality. Its red sickening light seeps, oozy with an odd, ancient energy. The smell of blood, the sensation of something wrong, something old and animal, suffuses the space.
The crack yawns wider.
And with a thunderous, horrible scream, the area behind Xiao Tian explodes. A thundering vortex of black and red, enormous and stormy, rages open. Out of it, a hundred skeletal hands erupted — bleeding black ichor, lowercase ϲ fingers spaded and written on, whispering with greedy longing. They grab hold of Xiao Tian's soul, squeezing tight, pulling him into the darkness.
He screams.
He thrashes.
That's not resistance, it's gravity.
The scene fractures—
Xiao Tian falls.
He falls into a whirlpool of fire and shadow, tumbling through a storm of broken realities and shattered time. Screaming winds of lost souls howl about him. Blood falls from skies blinking with dead stars. What does exist underfoot is made of ruins of forgotten worlds, of fractured clay and ash baked over the bones of memory.
He is pulled through dimension after dimension — some stranger, more grotesque than the previous. Snatches of timelines flit past him in blinks: an iterate of himself holding his sister's hand; another on a battlefield dying; another laughing in a field of golden grass.
Every version flares up as he falls.
Then—finally—
At the end of it all, a gate opens.
And—
BOOM.
With a soul-rattling jolt, Xiao Tian's eyes pop open.
He gasps — gasping like a man dragged from drowning. His chest heaves with frantic urgency. Sweat drenches him. The sheets of the hospital bed cling to him
skin. His heart races.
He's back.
Back in the hospital.
Back in his body