CHAPTER 152 :Billy didn’t realize how much he’d changed…Not really.Not until the morning after Owen’s revelation.The safehouse was still dark, the kind of dawn where the light isn’t light yet — just a pale suggestion leaking through the trees. Owls still called. Fog clung low. The whole world looked like it was holding its breath.Billy sat on the edge of the cabin’s old water trough, splashing his face with freezing mountain water, trying to shock himself into feeling normal.It didn’t work.His reflection stared back at him — but it wasn’t the reflection he remembered.His eyes had always been brown. Soft brown. Uneventful brown.Now?They weren’t glowing… exactly.But they held a faint fractal shimmer, like the light inside them wasn’t bouncing off — it was coming from within.He touched his face.It still felt like skin.Still felt like him.But deeper down — in the bone, in the pulse — something was off.Something leaning away from human.He splashed his face again. Harder. L

CHAPTER 154 :The abandoned rift site wasn’t on any map, not even the Luoshen fragments Billy had memorized in his dreams. They tracked it through a thread of clues: old star-charts Tyla reconstructed from shattered murals, Owen’s hacked coordinates stolen from three different government satellites, and Billy’s own uncanny pull toward something he couldn’t name. The closer they got, the more the relic under his skin hummed—like a pulse that wasn’t quite a pulse, a heartbeat dragged through another dimension.By the time they made it into the valley, the wind had changed. It wasn’t blowing through the field—it was blowing inward, like the whole landscape was breathing toward a single invisible point.Tyla stopped walking first.“You feel that?” Her voice was low, almost reverent.Billy nodded slowly. “Like the world is drawing us in.”“No,” she said, eyes narrowing. “It’s drawing you in.”He didn’t argue. It was true. His bones felt magnetized, pulled forward by something older than an

CHAPTER 156 :The tunnel swallowed them whole.Billy led the way, one hand sliding along the ancient stone as if tracing a heartbeat only he could hear. The darkness wasn’t empty—far from it. It thrummed with low vibrations that crawled up his bones like a warning disguised as a welcome.Tyla kept close behind him, flashlight trembling occasionally in her grip. Owen followed last, muttering curses at every uneven step.“You sure this thing doesn’t collapse?” Owen whispered.Billy didn’t look back. “If it was going to collapse, it would’ve done it centuries ago.”“That’s… not comforting.”“It wasn’t meant to be.”They descended deeper until the tunnel flared open into a massive underground chamber—so large their lights got swallowed halfway up the walls. The floor was smooth, perfectly circular, like it had been carved by something that didn’t use tools or hands at all.Tyla stopped short. “This… Billy, this isn’t just a tunnel.”He nodded slowly. “It’s a Luoshen trial chamber.”Owen f

CHAPTER 158 :The walk back to camp should have been simple — a straight trail carved through the red canyons, wind scraping dust along their ankles, the sky dimming into that late-evening bruise color. But nothing felt simple anymore. Every step Billy took sent a faint metallic shiver through the air, like he was dragging an invisible wire behind him.Tyla tried not to stare.Tried.Failed.Billy could feel her watching him, even when she pretended to focus on the terrain ahead. Every time the relic-light flickered under his skin, he caught her flinch out of his peripheral vision — tiny, fast, involuntary. She’d pretend it was the wind or the flashlight glare or her own exhaustion. But he noticed.And each flinch cut a little deeper.He didn’t blame her. Hell, he didn’t trust himself right now.But hearing Tyla’s fear was different than seeing it.Hearing it made something inside him twist.Seeing it made something inside him crack.---They reached the base of the ridge where their

CHAPTER 160 :(Billy unleashes power that shocks even him.)The first thing Billy felt was silence.Not peaceful silence — the heavy kind, the kind that sits on your chest and refuses to move. He blinked, vision swimming back into place, and realized he was flat on the cold stone floor of the rift chamber. His own heartbeat sounded like it was echoing in a cave inside his skull.Something warm touched his cheek.“Billy? Billy—hey—”Tyla’s voice trembled, but she was trying hard to sound tough.He opened his eyes fully.The cavern was wrecked.Not partially.Not mildly.Destroyed.Pillars that had stood for centuries were cracked open like eggshells. Rift energy arced across the air in unstable ribbons. The Horizon Breakers — the faction that had tried to capture him — were scattered across the ground, unconscious or groaning. The leader’s mask was shattered, and her curved weapon lay in two melted pieces beside her.Owen was crouched three feet away, blinking like he’d forgotten what