Light devoured his vision.
Wind howled past his ears, not like air but like the roar of a torn timeline.
His body felt weightless—disconnected from existence—until suddenly, gravity seized him again.
Long Xingchen staggered forward as his boots slammed against solid ground.
Stone.
Cold.
Ancient.
The world snapped back into focus.
He stood at the edge of a massive valley carved between two towering mountain ridges. The sky above was twilight-purple, streaked with cracks of faint golden light—as if the heavens themselves were holding old scars.
A faint murmur rolled through the land, the whisper of a world that no longer existed.
The First Lost Dynasty.
Xingchen exhaled slowly.
"So this is where everything began."
The system confirmed:
> [Time Travel Successful.]
[Era: Dawn of the First Era Collapse.]
[Dynasty: Qingxuan.]
[Timeline Stability: 67%]
[Cause-and-Effect Fragment: Unlocated.]
[Warning: Do NOT say real names of vanished dynasties aloud in this era.]
He memorized the warning.
Anything erased from history was dangerous simply to speak.
The air prickled against his skin.
Spiritual energy here was richer than anything on Earth—dense, thick, majestic. Enough to make Earth cultivators cough blood from envy.
And yet…
Something felt wrong.
The qi wasn't flowing smoothly like a healthy world.
It pulsed, twisted, coiling back into the earth like something frightened.
A sick sky.
A trembling land.
A dynasty walking unknowingly toward extinction.
He stepped forward, surveying the landscape.
Ancient banners lay tattered on the ground.
Ruined watchtowers leaned at odd angles, their stone foundations cracked.
A blackened battlefield stretched across the valley, soaked in dry blood.
Not fresh.
Not recent.
Decades old, maybe centuries.
But the scent of death lingered like a stain.
He moved deeper.
---
1. The Whispering Plains
As Xingchen walked across the battlefield, the wind brushed past him, carrying faint whispers.
Not human voices.
Not spirits.
Memories of a world.
He knelt beside a fallen statue—once majestic, now broken in half. The pieces still radiated traces of ancient divinity.
A civilization that touched the heavens… reduced to dust.
"What happened to you?" he murmured.
Before his words faded, the system chimed:
> [Fragment Detected.]
[Distance: 2.1 km southwest.]
His pulse quickened.
The first key to unraveling the mystery of the erased heavens was close.
He stepped forward—
—and froze.
Footsteps.
Dozens of them.
From the fog ahead emerged armored soldiers wearing dark-blue lamellar armor, each carrying halberds etched with glowing runes. At their center rode a young general on a tall black horse, eyes sharp, spear strapped to his back.
They stopped when they saw him.
"Identify yourself," the general demanded, voice cold and commanding.
"No ordinary traveler enters a forbidden battlefield willingly."
Xingchen considered lying.
Then rejected it.
Soldiers of a vanished dynasty wouldn't believe modern nonsense. And cultivation worlds hated weakness.
So he simply bowed slightly, projecting calm.
"I am a wandering cultivator," Xingchen said, his voice steady. "Passing through."
The general narrowed his eyes.
He was young—perhaps mid twenties—but his aura was iron-solid, clearly at the Golden Core threshold.
Not bad for this era.
"Passing through?" the general repeated. "This battlefield is sealed by the Qingx— the Imperial Court. Trespassing is punishable by death."
He nearly said the dynasty's name aloud.
Xingchen's eyes flickered.
This was it—one of the effects of a vanished lineage.
Even its own descendants hesitated to speak its true name.
The soldiers raised weapons.
Xingchen remained utterly still.
He could annihilate all of them with a finger.
But he wouldn't kill innocent men defending their homeland.
He simply said, "You don't want to fight me."
The general scoffed. "You think—"
And then Xingchen let a sliver of his soul pressure leak out.
Just a whisper.
The entire squad collapsed to their knees.
The horses buckled.
The air itself groaned.
The general's face drained of color. His spear rattled on his back.
"What… realm… are you…?"
Xingchen took back his aura in an instant.
Calm returned to the valley.
"I'm not your enemy," he said softly. "But this place holds something I need."
The general swallowed hard, struggling to stand.
"T-Then… you must be a protector sent by heaven."
Xingchen inwardly winced.
Heaven hasn't protected you. Heaven erased you.
He stepped past them.
Behind him, the general cried out:
"Wait! If you continue deeper, you'll reach the Fallen Palace. The dead still walk there. The Imperial Court sealed it for a reason!"
Xingchen didn't look back.
"That's exactly where I'm going."
---
2. The Fallen Palace
The palace was hidden at the valley's end, half-buried in stone and earth.
Its roof was broken, its pillars shattered, but its aura…
Still alive.
Barely.
The system chimed urgently:
> [Cause-and-Effect Fragment detected.]
[Location: Inner Sanctum.]
[Warning: Malevolent spiritual presence detected.]
"I expected as much."
He walked through the palace gates.
Rotting banners hung from cracked beams. Stone murals depicting heavenly battles were gouged, as if someone—or something—had erased them intentionally.
The silence was wrong.
Heavy.
Artificial.
He pushed open the doors of the Inner Sanctum.
The stench of blood hit him like a wave.
Inside, bodies lay scattered across the marble—soldiers, priests, even children—all dried to husks, as if their life force had been sucked out in an instant.
A cold aura pressed against him.
A shadow stood at the center of the room.
Not solid.
Not spirit.
Something in between.
Its form flickered, soaked in grey mist, like a memory given shape.
Xingchen's breath slowed.
"That mist… it's the same I saw when the Immortal World collapsed."
The shadow turned toward him slowly, as if its movements were delayed by centuries.
A voice scraped out of its form:
"Who… walks the halls… of the forgotten…?"
Long Xingchen stepped forward.
"I do," he said calmly. "And I seek the truth of your fall."
The shadow shrieked, the palace trembling.
> [Host in danger.]
[Recommend using Peak Power: Activation 1.]
Xingchen didn't hesitate.
"Activate."
A quiet click echoed inside his soul.
Power exploded outward.
The palace trembled.
Cracks raced across the floor.
His strength surged back to the terrifying peak he once held in his second life. The air rippled around him as his aura rose like a divine storm.
The shadow recoiled.
Xingchen raised his hand—
And the shadow was pinned in place by invisible force.
"Speak," he commanded, his voice filled with absolute authority.
"What erased your dynasty?"
The shadow's form twisted violently, resisting something unseen.
A sound—half roar, half sob—tore from its throat.
"The… sky…"
Its head jerked upward.
"…the sky… disappeared."
Xingchen's pulse stopped.
"What?" he demanded.
"The heavens… fell… the gate… swallowed…"
The shadow spasmed. The grey mist inside it surged violently.
> [Warning: External interference detected.]
Xingchen stepped forward.
"What swallowed your world?!"
The shadow's final words tore out in a howl:
"—the E—d He—ns!"
Grey mist burst from its body.
The palace cracked.
The ground split.
And from within the shadow's chest—
A crystalline shard shot into the air.
A Cause-and-Effect Fragment.
Xingchen reached out—
The shard flew into his palm.
DING.
> [Cause-and-Effect Fragment acquired.]
[Fragment Type: Heaven Erasure — Level 1.]
[System Upgrade Progress: +15%.]
The world shuddered violently.
> [Warning: Timeline collapse detected.]
[Host must evacuate immediately.]
Xingchen turned—
—but the palace walls were already dissolving.
The mist—grey, cold, hungry—poured in from every crack.
It was the same mist he saw erase the Immortal World in his final moments.
A cosmic eraser.
"Trying to delete me too?" Xingchen muttered.
He flicked his fingers.
A golden shield erupted around him.
"System—return me."
> [Returning Host to primary timeline.]
The world folded.
Light swallowed the collapsing palace.
And Long Xingchen vanished—
just as the first dynasty fell into oblivion once more