Chapter Twenty-Five: The Clone That Walked Without Road

In the far edge of Fang Yuan's immortal aperture, beyond the mapped terrain and cultivation zones, one clone walked.

He did not follow orders. He did not seek rebellion.

He simply walked.

The land he passed through did not respond with resistance, nor did it welcome him. It was unformed, unaligned. A shadow of a world left untouched by Fang Yuan's will.

"Why do you walk?" a passing wind asked, though there was no Gu to shape it.

"Because I was not told," he replied.

There was no anger in his tone. No will to resist. Yet with each step, the clone passed through the lines that shaped suppression, bypassing fate-suppressing arrays as though they were fog.

A Gu trembled within him—round, grey, unactivated. It had no path, no echo.

Above him, the Vault pulsed once. Not in rejection, but in attention.

Elsewhere, the Starlight Echo paused.

It saw him—not through sight, but through absence. A figure it had once imagined, walking where nothing had been scripted.

"Threadless," the echo whispered."I did not dream this."

For the first time, the echo doubted its own authorship.

And still, the clone walked.

Each step made no sound. Each breath drew no Heaven's notice.

He walked—not toward destiny, but away from all that sought to name him.