The silence pressed in, not gentle but suffocating—like the moment before a storm that knew your name.
The book was closed, but it still burned.
His fingertips twitched against the cover, skin tingling as if the fibers of the paper whispered things it shouldn't know. His breaths came short and sharp, like a man who'd seen something he wasn't supposed to survive. And yet, Yanwei stood—no, loomed—spine taut, chest rising and falling as if the air had thickened into smoke.
He had touched many things in this world. Slain beasts that had swallowed cities whole. Torn ancient inheritances from the hands of dying sects. Wrestled fate by the throat and made it kneel. But this—this wasn't a relic of power. This wasn't a weapon. This was a truth. A truth so raw, so vast, it didn't need to explain itself.
The mirror? That was a miracle in disguise.
But this?
This was the damnation that came after.
He couldn't even understand it. That was what made it worse. He could read it—yes—but meaning slithered through him like oil on glass, each word cold and mocking, precise in form and yet violently out of reach. It wasn't encrypted. It wasn't protected. It was simply above him.
And that fact—that fact—gnawed at his pride like acid.
His hands clenched tighter around the book until the worn cover creaked beneath the pressure. He should have tossed it aside. Should have left it where it lay. But his body refused. His muscles wouldn't move unless they brought it closer. The weight of the technique was wrong—far too dense for such a thin book, far too alive. Like a dead god's whisper that had found its way back to the world, waiting for someone insane enough to listen.
And he had listened.
Oh, he had.
Something inside him cracked with the weight of that realization, and it let out a sound. A low, rasping thing. A laugh.
It escaped his lips like a man exhaling poison—broken, sharp, ugly. Then another followed. And another. Laughter peeled from his throat, uncoiling like something that had been caged too long. He laughed and laughed, the kind of laughter that didn't know whether it belonged to joy or terror.
Not because it was funny.
But because there was nothing else left to do.
He had faced death, destruction, betrayal. He had stood at the apex of power, one foot on the neck of heaven. But even at his peak, he had never once encountered something like this. This wasn't a technique to be learned. It was a threshold.
And somehow, it had let him cross the first step.
His laughter faded slowly, trailing off into a quiet shiver that danced across his shoulders. He stared down at the book, his smile now a shadow of its former self. There was reverence in his expression now—no, obsession. Not even hunger. Something deeper.
This wasn't just a technique. It was a test. A call. A question flung at the void, daring anyone to answer.
And it had chosen to show itself to him.
Yanwei's black eyes gleamed with something dangerous. Not hope. Not fear. But conviction.
He would understand it.
He had to.
Because now that he had seen it—now that it had seen him—there was no turning away.
"So in the end… the rumors were true, huh," Yanwei murmured, his voice low and hoarse. "Three supreme concepts—Space, Time, and Fate."
He stared at the closed book, but his gaze was distant now. He wasn't seeing the worn leather cover. He was seeing the past.
He remembered it clearly—the cold floors of his sect's dilapidated library, the crumbling scrolls, the smell of dust and mildew. Back when he was still Rank 2, too weak to be arrogant, too hungry to give up. That was when he first read about them—the Three Supreme Concepts.
The texts were old, fragmented, half-eaten by time and moths. Most had dismissed them as ramblings of madmen or poetic nonsense meant to awe weak minds. But Yanwei had read between the lines, piecing together scattered phrases and broken records.
Three Supreme Techniques, each forged from a supreme law. Space. Time. Fate.
They weren't meant to be cultivated, not by ordinary beings. They weren't even meant to exist within the mortal grasp. But the scroll had claimed—if one could collect all three… if one could master them, they could make a wish. A single, impossible wish.
Not just resurrection. That was said to be trivial.
The tale went further. Whispers that mastering all three was the only true path to breaking the final ceiling—to becoming Rank 10. A boundary that had never been crossed, only dreamed of. Most scoffed at the idea. Some revered it like divine scripture. But even then, even as a young and desperate Rank 2, Yanwei remembered thinking:
It makes sense.
If the Three Concepts governed all of reality, then mastery over them… was mastery over existence itself.
He clicked his tongue, the sound sharp in the still air.
"It does seem logical," he muttered, the corners of his lips twitching—not in amusement, but in a subtle, dawning obsession.
Because if this was truly one of them—if fate had just handed him one of the Three…
Then the game had changed.
Forever.
…
The wind howled like a beast through the endless sky, carving through clouds and slicing over mountain peaks far below. Yanwei cut through it all with unwavering purpose, a streak of black and silver as he soared toward some distant horizon—toward something only he still believed in.
Behind him, the air shimmered. A flash of golden light broke through the clouds, and with it came a man. A tall figure cloaked in flowing robes, his face sculpted like a hero from ancient myths—majestic, radiant, the very image of righteous grandeur. His presence could halt a war. It didn't halt Yanwei.
"You're still looking for those?" the man called out, his voice echoing across the sky like thunder rolling off the cliffs. "Again? It's just a tale, Yanwei! Just a story! You can't even find the one who started the damn rumor."
Yanwei didn't spare him a glance. His gaze was fixed ahead, sharp and distant, like a hawk that had locked onto something far beyond the horizon.
"You're chasing shadows," the man pressed, his voice tightening. "You think the three supreme techniques even exist? Time, Space, Fate…? You really believe they're real?"
Yanwei said nothing.
The man drew closer, flying parallel now, his frustration starting to show. "Why not enjoy what you already have? You're Rank 9. You could live like a king! Even if the world calls you a demon, no one dares challenge you. You've already won."
Finally, Yanwei scoffed—just a breath of contempt curling at the edge of his lips. "I'm not like you. Drunk on status. Drowning in women. Hollow."
The man laughed, but there was an edge to it, a flicker of sadness that slipped past the grin. "And you think chasing ghost stories makes you any less empty?" he muttered. "You never stop, do you? Always hunting something no one's ever seen. Something that might not even exist."
"I don't expect you to understand," Yanwei said, voice low and quiet, like a blade sliding into a sheath. "You stopped seeking the moment you were satisfied."
The man's laughter faded.
"You're too ambitious for your own good," he said at last, more softly this time, almost like an old friend trying—failing—to reach someone who was already too far gone. "One day, you'll reach the end of the sky and find nothing waiting for you."
Yanwei's only answer was silence.
The man hovered for a moment longer, watching as the figure before him grew smaller, swallowed by cloud and distance. He sighed, letting his gaze fall.
"Still chasing dreams no one else dared to believe in…"
He turned and vanished in a burst of golden light, leaving nothing behind but wind and emptiness.