Chapter 167 – Whispers from the Abyssal Gate

The storm had passed, but silence carried its own weight.

Zhao Lianxu sat atop the Broken Pinnacle, overlooking the jagged chasm where the Temple of Return once stood. The sky above was still fractured—cloudless, yet shimmering with soft traces of spatial dissonance, like old wounds reluctant to close. Around him, the grass did not sway. Time here was slower, heavy with aftermath.

He pressed a palm to his chest where the cultist's light had pierced him. The wound was gone, but something remained beneath the skin—a faint throb, a pulse not his own.

"You're awake," came Yue Xieren's voice behind him.

He didn't turn. "Barely."

She joined him, careful with her steps. Her robes were torn at the edges, dust from the temple's collapse still clinging to her sleeves. Yet her spirit was firm. She sat beside him, wrapping her arms around her knees.

"The sky still trembles," she said softly.

Zhao nodded. "The Temple was only a seal. Its destruction didn't end the convergence—it merely shifted it."

Yue looked at him, brow furrowed. "What does that mean?"

"That something older is waking up."

Three nights later, the stars began to fall.

The skies over the Eastern Province turned blood-red as dozens of meteor-like lights streaked across the heavens. Cultivators panicked. Farmers wept. Entire sects shut their gates and reinforced their defensive arrays, unsure of whether it was the wrath of gods or the cries of a dying realm.

In the Moonshadow Palace, Zhao stood before a pool of divination light, its surface swirling with fragments of alternate timelines. Master Li, his old mentor, hovered at the edge of the reflection, arms folded, expression grim.

"They're not stars," Li said. "They're keys."

"Keys?"

"Fragments of sealed realms... falling into alignment. One of them is the Abyssal Gate."

Zhao's breath stilled.

The Abyssal Gate. A myth. A door to the deepest pocket of darkness in the multiverse, said to predate the gods, sealed by the first Emperor of Time. It was where anomalies were cast to be forgotten—creatures, souls, and powers too dangerous to be destroyed.

"How many know?" Zhao asked.

Li's eyes met his. "Not many. But the Cult did."

Of course they did.

Later that evening, Yue found Zhao in the courtyard, where moonlight filtered through ancient cherry blossoms.

"They're afraid of you," she said after a while.

Zhao glanced sideways. "Who?"

"Everyone. The palace, the court, even your allies. You've changed."

He looked back toward the moon. "So have you."

Yue didn't deny it. She stepped closer. "I'm not asking for you to explain. I'm asking if you're still you."

That gave Zhao pause.

Was he?

His body bore three bloodlines now—Prime Minister of the Multiverse, Demon Queen of the Obsidian Sea, and the Sword Saint of Time. His memories were no longer linear. He could recall battles from other timelines, victories he never won, faces of people he never met in this life.

"I think I'm... becoming," he said finally.

"And will I recognize the person you become?"

He turned to her, and in his eyes, she saw both warmth and distance.

"I hope so," he whispered.

The next morning, Qiao returned with news.

She arrived bloodied, her clothing torn, and her face marked by a vicious gash along her collarbone.

"We found one of the meteor sites," she said, barely pausing to catch her breath. "It wasn't a fragment. It was a creature."

Zhao's brows furrowed. "What kind?"

"Not of this realm. Not of any realm I know."

She laid a crystal shard on the table. It pulsed with black-red veins.

Zhao picked it up, and for a brief second, the world around him dimmed. He heard screaming—thousands of voices in a language that had no shape. Then silence.

Yue caught his arm. "What did you see?"

Zhao's hand trembled.

"The Abyss... has already started bleeding through."

They left that evening.

Zhao, Yue, Qiao, and Lin—who had finally awakened, though he still winced with each movement—took a sky vessel east, toward the crater where the creature had landed. A team of elite cultivators from the Astral Sect joined them, each sworn to silence, bound by an oath that would erase their memory if they betrayed it.

The crater was massive—nearly three leagues wide, its edges smoking with ash and arcane residue. The creature at the center had been impaled by its own wings—if they could be called that. They weren't feathers or flesh but threads of reality twisted into blade-like appendages. Its head had no eyes, only a mouth that never closed.

And even dead, it pulsed.

Lin whistled. "Looks like it ate time for breakfast."

Zhao knelt beside it. "This is a Herald."

"A what?" Qiao asked, tightening her grip on her blade.

"A servant of the Abyssal Gate. Each time it opens, the Heralds come first. They don't conquer. They prepare the world for consumption."

Yue frowned. "So this is just the beginning."

Zhao nodded. "And we're late."

That night, Zhao sat alone in meditation inside a circle of sigils. His consciousness drifted deep—past the core of his soul, past the threads of time.

He reached the space between everything.

And something answered.

It did not speak in words. It opened a memory—one he had not lived.

He stood before the Abyssal Gate, not as Zhao Lianxu, but as someone else—an ancient version of himself, a young emperor with burning eyes and a soul forged from starlight. The gate had whispered to him, promising power, eternity, and vision beyond comprehension.

And he had turned away.

But now it was open again.

And it remembered him.

He awoke gasping.

Yue was at his side instantly. "What did you see?"

Zhao stood, sweat pouring down his face. "The Gate knows me. From a life I've never lived."

Yue touched his arm. "Then it's not just awakening. It's calling you."

He met her eyes, and for a moment, the weight of every life he had ever touched shimmered behind his gaze.

"Then we must go to it."