Chapter 18 – The Sealed Fragment
That night… even the sky had stopped breathing.
No wind.
No sound.
No moon.
Shen Mu sat beside a black lake, high atop a barren plateau.
The water reflected nothing.
Not even his shadow.
[Heritage Fragment — Karmic Lock Broken]
➤ Loading… 0.6%
➤ Transmission initiated: Incomplete
➤ Surge detected — Source: Unknown
Suddenly, pain seared through his chest.
He barely frowned.
But inside his mind… an image surfaced.
Not a memory.
A reflection.
He stood alone in a world without light.
Everything was dead—
the heavens, the ground, the stars.
An entire universe extinguished.
And at its center, a throne.
Upon that throne… a man.
Immense.
Shadowed.
Unreachable.
Shen Mu couldn't see his face.
But he could feel him.
A chasm. An abyss.
A force too old for any name.
And when that man slowly turned his head toward him... Shen Mu fell to his knees.
He returned to himself, gasping.
His veins pulsed with a violet glow.
The ground cracked without sound.
The black lake trembled faintly,
as if it had witnessed something it should never have seen.
[Temporary Connection Interrupted]
➤ Status: Memory Not Authorized
➤ Fragment: 0.61%
Shen Mu remained still.
But his eyes… had turned completely black.
No emotion.
No humanity.
Not even thought.
He rose.
And everything alive within a thousand paces…
went silent.
A blind old monk, a thousand kilometers away, woke with a start.
— "He saw it… the other. He saw it."
And far beyond, in the sealed edges of the world—
within an inner dimension—
a being imprisoned in a realm of silence…
opened an eye.
But no one saw that gaze.
Because it was already within Shen Mu.