"Ouyang, stop!" Xi shouted, and red lightning fell like a sky-wide crimson net, crackling without end.

Red clouds gathered like blood-soaked wool, yet they kept their distance from the twin eyes in the firmament, as if cowed. Thick scarlet bolts dropped like falling spears; everything around Ouyang drowned in lightning, even the nearby White Elf.

Behind him, Xi flushed and stammered, awkward as a child caught in rain. "I... I only meant to stop him... I didn't... didn't think it'd go like this..."

The red storm poured like a broken dam; the White Elf suffered in the flood. Ouyang's mind blurred like fogged glass as he caught her bewildered face. A familiar visage flickered—the one he’d sworn to shelter for life.

"Boy... a bond like this isn't permitted." The Watcher's words rang by his ear like an iron bell. It's forbidden. They aren’t allowed such ties, because they’re only passing guests, like leaves riding the wind.

If you're a passerby, the road always turns you back, like a migrating bird forced home. Leave a bond like this, and it cuts everyone like a hidden thorn.

"But I want to cradle her, to watch her smile each day. To watch the sun rise and sink. To watch dusk paint the sky red, and comb her hair beneath an ancient tree."

That had been Ouyang's answer then, young and hot-blooded like a wildfire in spring wind.

"People pay for what they choose, like sailors paying storms for a voyage. Choose this bond, and you may drop anchor and never return. Whatever comes, can you keep your first heart unchanged?"

"You have promise, but you're too young, like green steel not yet tempered. Our time can't wait for your growth. Maybe... staying is your best choice."

"My lord Watcher, did you see something? You keep watch over time like a lighthouse on a river and gaze on fate. Tell me, what will the future be like?"

In a daze, Ouyang saw that blurred silhouette again, mist over moonlight. The figure who shaped his life—the Watcher, forever hazy, forever unreadable.

"Keep the first heart? I..." Pain twisted the White Elf's face, and Ouyang's sigh rose like winter wind. "I don't know. But I can't bear her face dim. I'm clumsy with this stuff. I just want to guard her in my way, even if she hates me for it."

Decision landed like a stone in a still pond. Ouyang gathered the White Elf into his arms and shielded her from the crimson rain of thunder. Hate still smoldered like buried coal, yet a quiet smile found him.

The White Elf froze, stunned like a deer in sudden snow. She never thought Ouyang would do this. Their stances were deathless enemies. Her people betrayed him; as his strongest vassal, the White Elf Queen chose to bury their race to seal Ouyang.

A grudge like that burns to ashes or to the end. There’s no truce.

Why? Why would he do this? Lost as a boat in fog, she lay shielded in his arms. She was the last White Elf. Her mission was to kill the Demon King's Council's First Seat, the culprit who swept through worlds.

But now her blade-hand trembled like a leaf. She hesitated.

At last the thunder guttered out like a spent candle. Ouyang cast her a bright glance, then blacked out.

In the vault above, the twin eyes half-opened then softly closed, like tides ebbing. As they faded, everyone heard a single sigh drift through the world, like wind through pines.

Who... was sighing?

Every living thing heard that sigh, yet every soul forgot it, like dew that vanishes at noon. It doesn't belong to now. Only ancient yesterdays can keep it.

"Where... is this?" A murky sense carried Ouyang into a strange place, wrapped in pitch-black like the inside of a bell. Scenes started to wheel like a slow mill. He saw gods and demons wither, bodies stacked like cold stones.

Divine Bloom petals danced, drifted, and died, like snow in a windless courtyard.

"This scene... could it be..." His breath hung like frost.

As the thought rose, a blurred, twisted figure appeared before him like heat shimmer. "That's right. This is the darkest Epoch in history. In that age, deaths and killings, betrayals and lies, every negative tide converged and birthed Original Sin."

"My lord Watcher, you're... still here?"

"No. At that point in time, everything had already ended, like a book snapped shut."

"I'm doing this to untie the knot in your heart, like loosening a sailor's rope."

The figure stayed blurred and warped, a candle seen through water. Then or now, Ouyang had never seen his face. Some called him the Watcher of Time and Eternity. Legend says there were seven Watchers in the ancient days. In the most brutal age, five fell in battle. The Watchers of Fate and of Hope sleep in the Boundless Sea. The Watcher of Time and Eternity slipped into the river of time and vanished.

"Do you know what true persistence is?"

"Persistence? I know it. It's moving without wavering, staying with your first heart."

Ouyang didn’t grasp why he asked, and the hazy figure shook his head like a willow. "Still not mature enough. Then... you know this darkest age, right?"

"I know. I've heard it a thousand times. In the end, His Majesty the God Emperor cut the dark with one sword and brought dawn. His Majesty the Sovereign gathered the heavens' glory and struck the world's anthem, and the curtain fell."

"Heh..." The figure seemed to smile, a ripple on a dark lake. "Tell me, do you believe this? The so-called Dark Epoch was man-made. Cause and effect braid like vines. The undefeated God Emperor of the Second Epoch slaughtered the gods of all heavens and played the anthem, birthing a twilight of the gods. So the Third Epoch—the Dark Epoch—fell into that mire."

"Then the chief culprit would be..."

"Someone else!" His certainty landed like a gavel. "That person tore the barrier and invited the dark. He gathered every negative tide and birthed Original Sin. He pushed it all from the shadows."

So this was the truth behind history. Shock rang through Ouyang like struck bronze, yet he still didn’t see why the Watcher showed him this.

"True persistence doesn't bend for the crowd's gaze. Like that man—he did those things for his first heart. He kept at it, in his own way. Even if living beings burned like fields in drought, he persisted. He never changed.

Even if he spoke alone in the dark, he never let go. He wed solitude for life and kept no regrets. That was his persistence. He ruined the First Epoch, cast a shadow on the close of the Second, and the Third goes without saying. In the Sixth, he destroyed everything."

"The Sixth..." A thought flashed like lightning. "The Emperor... was it him?!"

"I don't endorse that level of madness. But that kind of persistence—I hope you inherit it. Only by enduring solitude, after a long wait, can you climb the absolute peak. Your first heart... have you remembered it?"

The voice thinned like smoke, and the world went blurry.

So bright. So blinding, like knives of light.

He opened his eyes. A pair of deep-blue pupils met his gaze, white hair spilling onto his face like silk rain. Seeing him awake, she parted her lips, joy blooming there.

Ouyang blanked for a beat, then smiled like sun breaking cloud.

"Persistence... first heart?" He still couldn't grasp the Watcher's purpose, but confusion thinned like fog. The early panic and despair no longer choked him.

"Hold to your first heart. Whatever hardships come, whatever... the ending is, at least live without regret." Ouyang knew the Emperor's end was grim. In the Sixth Epoch, he crazed and destroyed countless worlds, sacrificing lives beyond counting. In the end, the Supreme Law erased him. Ouyang didn't know why he was so mad, or what his first heart was, but that persistence—Ouyang thought it deserved the word Eternal.

The Eternal Emperor was worthy of Eternity.

"Boss Ouyang, heard you're up!" A rough voice rumbled from the door like a drumbeat. He didn't need to look. It was Kooson. Xi trailed in too, unusually fidgety today, tongue-tied like a cat with a thorn.

He knew what she wanted to say, and his mood was light as a spring breeze. "If you wanna apologize, just say it. No need to twist around. People might think you're confessing to me."

"Who... who's confessing to you? Anyway, I'm sorry!" Xi blurted it, face red as sunset, and bolted.

Then Ouyang squinted and studied the White Elf by his bed, like weighing a blade. "And you? Why sit here all this time? Planning to kill me while I've got my guard down?"

The White Elf shook her head, a thin bewilderment drifting across her face like mist.

"Anatasya. My... name." Anatasya said it with solemn calm, and this time Ouyang was the one confused, like a man hearing thunder in clear sky. What was this? Save her and she offered herself?

But her next words showed him he was overthinking, and the wind died from that fancy.

"Next time... I'll kill you." Anatasya said it almost cutely, then turned to go. "Still wanna kill me? You should thank the heavens I'm not hunting you," Ouyang chuckled, a fox lounging in sun.

He laughed and let it drift like a fallen leaf. There was no killing intent in her words.

"If I'm choosing to stick to my first heart... then those old events, looked at closely now, are full of holes." He gazed out the window, free and easy as a breeze. In Kooson's eyes, Ouyang looked reborn—like the old Ouyang who dragged them across worlds with a laugh.

That Ouyang... he was back, like a long-lost star rising again.