The stars had no anchor.
The heavens above twisted like ink in a basin, swirling and churning, but never settling. Shen Wuqing stood on the edge of a floating cliff, jagged and weightless, suspended by nothing but defiance.
Below him, there was no ground.
Above him, there was no sky.
There was only the void — restless, rootless, unnamed.
He had walked beyond the final whispers of the forest, beyond the graveyard of forgotten prayers. The temple that had once rotted around him was now a corpse lost to memory. What lay before him now was not a place, but a question: What is heaven when it no longer remembers its own name?
His steps did not echo.
Not because there was silence, but because there was nothing for the sound to land upon. No air. No stone. No truth. Only him.
The wind did not howl.
It watched.
A thousand phantom breezes gathered around his robes like vultures made of sorrow, trying to peel away his existence strand by strand. The more he walked, the more the world flinched.
His presence was not meant to be here.
Not yet.
Not ever.
And yet he came.
His body pulsed with the resonance of the Shihun Jing — Realm of Soul-Eating — but it was no longer enough. Something ancient stirred inside him. Not a beast. Not a dao. Not a god.
But hunger.
Pure. Primal. Poised.
Above him, fractured constellations began to spiral inward. They blinked like dying eyes, drawn toward the singularity of his presence. Something from the Rootless Sky had noticed him.
And it did not approve.
—
He came upon the first altar.
It floated in the open sky like a shard of glass forgotten by reality — slanted, cracked, but pulsing. There were symbols etched into its surface, none of them legible. Not because they were ancient, but because they refused to be known. They bled meaning, and bled against meaning.
He knelt beside it.
Not in reverence.
Not in submission.
But to listen.
As he laid his palm upon the stone, coldness sank into his marrow. Not a cold of weather — but of memory. Something bled into him, not in words, but in impressions. Shapes. Screams. Silence too loud to ignore.
The altar had once belonged to a voice.
That voice had once belonged to a god.
And that god had tried to devour silence.
It failed.
Now, it wept as a rock drifting in a sky with no axis.
Shen Wuqing rose and whispered:
"You failed not because you were weak. But because you feared what silence would show you."
The altar cracked down the middle.
And the Rootless Sky stirred.
---
The altar's collapse was not loud.
It simply ceased.
As if its existence had been a suggestion—one that reality finally decided to reject.
Shen Wuqing did not flinch. His shadow, however, did.
It rippled beneath his feet, writhing like a wounded beast, even though there was no sun, no light.
Only perception.
And perception here was wrong. Deliberately, intimately wrong.
The Rootless Sky was not a domain of stars—it was a place where belief dissolved, where the framework of existence rotted from the inside. Here, identity unraveled like parchment tossed into black fire.
His breathing became erratic.
Not from exhaustion. But from the crushing sense that something… someone… was watching within him.
Not from above. Not from afar.
But inside his silence.
Something that did not speak.
Because it had no need.
Because its gaze alone could unmake a lesser man.
He closed his eyes.
The visions returned.
A boy eating a dead dog beneath a collapsed shrine.
A scream devoured before it could be heard.
A name etched on skin in invisible ink, only seen by those who had already forgotten their own.
And then—
A field of broken statues.
Thousands.
Each shaped like him.
Each cracked in the same place—across the chest, where no heart ever beat.
They stood on drifting rocks like mourners frozen mid-prayer.
He walked among them.
Some reached for him. Others crumbled as he passed.
None spoke.
Because they were never meant to.
Because this was not memory.
Not illusion.
But warning.
He stepped over a broken version of himself—eyes hollow, lips split, fingers still curled in a silent plea.
And he whispered:
"You feared silence. I became it."
---
From above, a voice cracked open the void.
No words.
Just intent.
Raw. Primeval. Final.
A great being loomed above the fractured sky—not a beast, not a god, but a presence shaped like absence. Its body was stitched from dead clouds and forgotten daos, drifting with jagged serenity.
Its mouth was a void.
Not black.
Not empty.
Just erased.
As it opened, the entire Rootless Sky twisted.
Rocks trembled. Statues shattered.
And Shen Wuqing… stood still.
The being did not attack.
It invited.
A communion. A pact.
A devouring.
If he reached out—if he took that final step—he would no longer be Shen Wuqing.
He would no longer be anyone.
But he smiled.
A cold, knowing, almost gentle smile.
"I do not walk toward you to merge," he whispered, voice like broken wind.
"I walk toward you… to consume."
And then—
He stepped into the erasure.
And the Rootless Sky screamed.
---
The scream of the Rootless Sky could not be heard.
It rippled through bone, through breath, through thought.
Even silence flinched.
As Shen Wuqing entered the maw of erasure, reality recoiled.
Fragments of space-time peeled like burnt skin, revealing the hollow gears behind what mortals called 'heaven.' There was no warmth. No structure. Only unraveling truths and the scent of absolute negation.
His flesh cracked.
His soul buckled.
His essence flickered between identity and dissolution.
But he did not fall.
Because he had never stood on the ground in the first place.
He had always existed between steps—between the devourer and the devoured. Between scream and silence.
Here, in the Rootless Sky, that paradox became his domain.
The being of unbeing tried to engulf him.
Tried to erase the last fragment of will.
But Wuqing… fed on it.
Not as a beast feasts on prey.
Not as a god absorbs offerings.
But as emptiness consumes definition.
He became the shape that refused to be contained.
He drank the absence.
He bit into the forgotten.
And in return, something ancient cracked open within his core:
A second path.
Not granted. Not inherited.
Devoured.
Heaven Devourer Physique—Step Two—unlocked not by enlightenment, but by consumption of erasure itself.
A new cultivation root sprouted—silent, shapeless, soulless—but it pulsed with weight far heavier than any tribulation.
And the Rootless Sky?
It began to fold.
Shrinking.
Caving into itself.
Afraid.
The stars cried. The void twisted.
But Shen Wuqing did not stop.
---
When he emerged, the sky above him had forgotten how to shine.
He stood again on a drifting stone, bare, bloodless, but whole.
His eyes—no longer fully gray—now shimmered with the faint hue of something untranslatable. Not color. Not glow. But… silence given form.
And all around him, the statues of himself lay shattered.
Not by force.
But by surrender.
They could no longer hold form in the presence of what he had become.
In the far distance, an echo tried to remember his name.
But no sound came.
No record.
Only fear.
Only awe.
Only him.
He exhaled.
And the sky, for the first time in eternity—held its breath.