Threads Between Worlds
1. The Silence After the Storm
The dust had barely settled.
Chen Zhen sat on a fallen log, staring at the pile of rubble where the Sleeper had once stood. The battlefield around him was eerily still—no birds, no rustling leaves, just the lingering hum of the qi turbulence left in the wake of his battle.
The fight had ended quickly, but the weight of it remained.
His fingers traced the still-glowing runes on his glaive. The energy in his body had settled, the storm and fire no longer raging wildly but simmering beneath the surface. Yet the Void remained, its presence always just on the edge of his consciousness, waiting.
And beneath it all, something else stirred.
A memory.
Not his own.
For a brief moment during the fight, he had seen something—Beijing's skyline, Li Na's face, a warmth he hadn't felt in what seemed like lifetimes. It had been real. He knew it.
Which meant he could reach it again.
If he could figure out how.
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2. The Pulse of the Nexus
Chen closed his eyes and focused.
The Nexus shard still pulsed in his chest, but it wasn't the chaotic, violent energy that surged during battle. Now, it felt… different. Almost like a beacon, faint but steady, waiting to be activated.
He took a slow breath, letting his awareness sink into the shard, feeling the strange rhythm of its power.
It wasn't like qi.
Qi flowed in the body, in the air, in the ley lines beneath the earth. It had weight, pressure, a living pulse that could be manipulated.
But the Nexus was something else.
It wasn't bound to this world. It wasn't even bound to him.
It was reaching.
But for what?
He exhaled and sent his intent outward, pushing through the pulse, letting the energy move the way it had during the battle. His thoughts drifted back to the moment he had seen Li Na—what had triggered it? What had changed in that instant?
The answer came slowly.
The Sleeper's death.
No, not just its death—its tether.
The runes on its body had connected it to something beyond this realm, something vast. When Chen had severed the tether, for just a split second, the energy had sought another connection.
And it had found Earth.
His heartbeat quickened.
"Then it's possible."
The realization sent a surge of adrenaline through him. If he could control it, if he could find a way to stabilize the connection, then—
"Then I can go home."
His hands trembled slightly as he clenched them into fists.
He had long since buried the idea of returning. He had resigned himself to the reality that whatever had happened to him had locked him away from the life he once knew.
But now?
Now, there was a way.
He just had to find it.
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3. Echoes in the Leylines
His focus returned to the Nexus shard.
He needed to replicate the effect.
The problem was, he had no idea how.
The Sleeper had been connected to something—a network of energy, a leyline that spanned beyond this world. If he could find another one, if he could follow it, maybe he could trigger the same reaction.
His eyes swept the ruined battlefield, looking for traces of residual qi. Even with his enhanced senses, there was nothing obvious.
But he wasn't relying on qi.
He was looking for something deeper.
Closing his eyes, he let his awareness expand, not outward into the world, but between it. The way the Nexus shard pulsed, the way it resonated—it wasn't just reacting to the world's qi, it was reacting to something beneath it.
And there—
A faint thread.
It wasn't visible, not in the normal sense, but he felt it, a tremor in the space between moments. A frequency barely perceptible, humming like a distant echo.
It led east.
Chen opened his eyes, exhaling slowly.
He had a direction.
He wasn't sure where it would lead.
But he knew one thing.
It was pulling him.
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4. The Forgotten Divide
Chen Zhen had walked for hours, yet the weight of the world pressed heavier with each step.
The Sacred Abyss was not an evolving world. It had long since reached its peak. Unlike Earth, which had only just begun to rediscover qi, this place had been steeped in it for eons.
This was a world where mountains bowed to the wills of immortal kings, where qi-infused rivers carved landscapes for generations, where wars had been fought over knowledge lost to time itself.
A world that once shared its existence with Earth.
But the portal had been sealed.
And Earth had been left to die.
The realization hit him harder than he expected.
It wasn't just that Earth had been cut off from qi—it had been abandoned. Struggling, suffocating, forced to survive with nothing but its own dwindling strength.
And yet, against all logic, against everything Sacred Abyss scholars had once believed—Earth had lived.
He wondered what the rulers of this world would think if they knew. If they remembered the world they once raided. If they missed it.
Or if they resented it.
Chen glanced at the runes still faintly glowing along the shattered remains of the Sleeper, the same kind of energy that had briefly linked him to Earth.
The portal was closed. But the echoes of it remained.
And somewhere in this world, something still remembered.
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5. The Broken Gateway
The pull grew stronger.
Hours passed, or maybe it was longer—time had begun to blur together. But eventually, the trees thinned, and he found himself standing at the edge of a cliff.
Below, nestled in the valley, was something wrong.
A structure.
No—something older. Something forgotten.
It looked like a shrine, half-buried in the earth, its pillars cracked, its entrance partially collapsed. The air around it vibrated with unstable energy, the same kind of distortion he had felt when the Sleeper had woken.
But more than that—
He felt the connection.
The same pulse, the same energy that had briefly linked him to Earth.
This place had been a gateway once.
A door.
He took a slow step forward, his fingers brushing against the cracked stone of the entrance. The Nexus shard in his chest hummed in response.
"This is it."
The path to understanding.
The path home.
Or the path to something far worse.
He just had to take the next step.
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