Chapter 2130: Into the Deep Void
The last star behind them vanished.
Jasmine and Yun Che stood at the edge of nothing—a tear in reality that pulsed like a wound in the sky. The Deep Void.
Yun Che stared into it. It wasn't darkness. It was absence. A place where even divine sense could not stretch, where time slowed—not from gravity, but from rejection.
> "It feels wrong," he muttered. "Like the universe doesn't want us here."
> "It doesn't," Jasmine said.
With no hesitation, she stepped forward—and vanished.
Yun Che exhaled once… and followed.
---
The Void.
They didn't fall. They didn't float.
They just moved, each step carrying them across unknowable distances, guided by the trail Caizhi left behind. Each resonance point shimmered for only a moment—stars that hadn't existed in billions of years, reawakening to acknowledge her path.
It was like following footsteps across a battlefield forgotten by time.
Jasmine paused at the third point.
A structure loomed ahead—half-buried in the fabric of non-space. Broken pillars, a staircase with no gravity, runes etched in languages the Ancestral Gods never spoke.
> "What is this place?"
Jasmine answered without looking.
> "One of the Five Thrones fell here… long ago."
A low hum vibrated through their bones.
A memory. Not their own.
> A scream in a language that cracked stars. A girl with silver in her eyes. A wolf who stood against silence, and broke its mouth.
Yun Che reeled back. "Was that—?"
> "Caizhi," Jasmine whispered. "She stood here once. And something remembered her."
Suddenly, the air split.
A voice—not loud, not angry, but cold enough to freeze thoughts:
> "You tread where echoes rot."
From behind the broken throne, something stepped out.
Not tall.
Not monstrous.
But wrong.
A humanoid figure—shrouded in half-light and shadow-stone, wearing a cracked mask shaped like a smile. No eyes. No breath. No movement that belonged in a living world.
> "Another one," Yun Che muttered, drawing Sky Poison and igniting his divine veins.
But Jasmine's hand stopped him.
> "No," she said. "This one isn't here to fight."
The figure cocked its head.
> "We remember the wolf."
"We remember the one who chose stillness over song."
"We seek the Broken Howl."
Jasmine narrowed her eyes.
> "What do you want with Caizhi?"
The figure twitched.
> "We want what she is becoming."
> "We want to see… if the wolf can still bite."
And then it split—not fled, not teleported. It simply scattered into threads of black and white, dissolving into the Deep Void.
Yun Che exhaled, sweat on his brow.
> "They're not just watching her," he said.
Jasmine nodded grimly.
> "They're courting her."