Fang Yuan sat in stillness, far beneath the surface of his immortal aperture. Around him, the world obeyed—clones moved, time flowed, resources churned in carefully tuned formations.
Yet something felt off.
He reached into the flow of fate-path threads.
A flicker. Not of resistance, but of absence. A ripple left no trace. A mortal girl with no destiny. A Gu worm that should not exist.
He did not react. Not outwardly.
"A second heartbeat," he repeated to himself.
He sent no clones. No killer moves. Only a single will, sheathed in silence, began drifting outward—an invisible observer woven through pathless air.
Heaven's Will did not react.
But in the highest court of the sky, Star Constellation's Immortal Tomb blinked once. The Starlight Echo retracted a thread it had not cast. It no longer knew which story it was inside.