In the Prison of Shadows, Ouyang stood before the cell door, hair and thoughts both in disarray like windblown reeds.

“Boss Ouyang, where’s the guy? Why don’t I see anyone?” Kooson peered and peered, eyes like lanterns in fog.

No one inside—only a black sphere hung in the center like a swallowed moon. Chains ran from every wall, threading the sphere like a spider’s iron web.

Kooson’s words snapped Ouyang back; doubt could wait, saving people came first like fire at the door.

He gripped the Oil Paper Umbrella and set its tip to the blue light-door. The light-sheet broke into glittering motes, like frost blown apart, and a passage opened.

He’d found the secret in that bygone era: this umbrella opened every door here, like holding a master key at the world’s throat. He didn’t know why, so he let time unwrap the knot like ivy undoing a wall.

He stepped in and pressed his palm to the black sphere. He sank into it, like ink into water.

Ouyang vanished. Kooson glared at the sphere like a bull at a boulder, then copied him with a grunt and vanished too.

A barren earth, a crescent moon red as a sickle.

They arrived in a place that felt wrong, like a dream that forgot to wake. This was the true cell. The Prison of Shadows, wrought by the Nightfall Clan, sculpts each cell as its own sky. That’s why Kooson had seen “no one,” like staring at a painting’s frame.

On the wasted ground, Ouyang looked around, heart hollow as a dry well. No one.

What’s this, he thought, chest cold as ash. Did I really step into their snare? A trap dressed like a welcome.

“Boss Ouyang, there’s writing here!” Kooson’s shout rang like a bell, and Ouyang hurried over.

He scowled as his eyes caught the scrawl carved into a cave wall, the letters crude as knife-cuts. “Hey, idiot over there—yes, you. Ouyang, you idiot, you’re wondering if this is a trap, right?” Of course the strategist guessed he’d come, like a chess-player reading the board two moves ahead.

He’d fancied himself peerless in wit, a lone peak above the clouds. Being called an idiot by that bastard stung like pepper in a wound. If he could find him, he’d challenge him on the spot.

He cooled the blaze in his chest, like a lid on a boiling pot, and kept reading.

“When you see this, I’m already dead. Yes, the undying myth that is me finally died. Don’t worry—my death is for the next epoch’s rebirth.”

He could almost see that smug face, chin tilted like a rooster at dawn. “Pure nonsense. Can’t he just say it straight?” he muttered, teeth tight as a snare.

“First, resurrect me with the Flowing Light Wheel, the Time Watcher’s artifact.”

“The Flowing Light Wheel? That thing vanished years ago,” Ouyang grumbled, voice dry as dust. “It’s got a mind of its own, remember?” He’d bragged before, claiming he owned it, but he’d only held it for a breath, like catching a rainbow with a bowl.

After the White Elf incident, it vanished like mist at sunrise. He’d always thought that stingy Watcher took it back. After what he’d done, that was fair; not erasing him on the spot was mercy like winter sun.

He read on, eyelids twitching like wings.

“I know you’re howling that you don’t have it…”

“You’re full of crap!” Ouyang snapped, and kicked the wall. Stone sunk with a dull thud, like clay under a heel, and a crystal-green coffin slid into view.

Beside it stood a stele, words on it red as fresh blood.

“Knew you’d do that, so I left a stele. Break things, and there goes your only clue. Now to business: my rebirth links to breaking my curse. Place the key to the Other Shore on the coffin. The Flowing Light Wheel will appear. That’s it—more after I return.”

Ouyang read it in one breath, then drew three more to cool his temper, each breath like wind combing pine. The guy’s personality was poison wrapped in silk; so much posturing, so few straight lines.

Annoyed or not, he had to follow the steps. The questions in his chest piled like storm clouds. He needed answers from the source.

He laid his hand on the coffin. Yulan light rose over his body like a river’s glow at dusk. Blue stripes unfurled from his brow to his palm, like vines crawling down a pillar. When the lines reached his hand, the coffin lit up.

Green light shone, crystalline and clear, dazzling like cut jade in moonlight, dreamlike as lanterns on water.

A seven-colored wheel flickered above the coffin, there and not there, like a rainbow caught between breaths. His first feeling was wrongness, like a bird in winter bloom; it didn’t belong to this time at all.

Suddenly, the world paused, a held breath between thunder and echo. A hand reached from the Flowing Light Wheel, white as flawless jade, perfect like snow with no footprints. Every inch lied of perfection, like a mirror that refused dust.

The jade hand grasped the air above the coffin, slow and elegant, like lifting a silk thread. A crack sounded—kachak—something shattered, something broke. You could feel it shred, but you couldn’t name it or look it in the eye.

The hand withdrew. Ouyang glimpsed a woman with gold, wavy hair meet his gaze like sunrise over steel. Her lips moved; no sound crossed the river of time. From the shape of her mouth he read a single gift: Take care.

As everything faded, he heard it, faint as storm behind mountains—the break of destruction, the scream of living things, the crying of despair like wolves at winter’s edge.

“No wonder… so they did it after all,” he muttered, mouth crooked as a knife. “We’re just passersby, huh? Our elders left this mess like a toppled shrine. If I wear their banner, I’ll be everyone’s enemy.” He kicked the coffin, frustration ringing like iron on stone.

Kooson stood aside, blank as stone. It was as if he hadn’t seen any of it.

“Wutong, get your ass out here and die for it!” Ouyang shook the coffin, venting a storm that had nowhere to rain.

Wutong—that was his name, a blade in four strokes. The coffin popped open, as if someone inside had mule-kicked it. The lid flew, and Ouyang ate it, face-first, like a slap from fate.

He raised his head. A being with long black hair spilled into view, tresses like a midnight waterfall. The sight yanked an old memory awake, a door he hadn’t opened in years.

“You effeminate bastard, cut your hair. People will think you’re a woman,” Ouyang snapped, words sharp as winter reeds. To him, Wutong’s name was neutral, and so was everything else.

From behind that curtain of hair came a voice smooth as polished stone, neither high nor low. “Sorry. Slept too long. It’s grown down to my waist.”

“Down to your waist? You could mop the floor with it,” Ouyang shot back, snorting like a kettle.

Wutong lifted a pale hand and swept the ghost-hair aside, revealing a beautiful face like a blade in silk. He fixed Ouyang with a flat, cold gaze, like looking at an ant on a plate. “The way you look at me drips with desire. Didn’t expect you to like men. I’ll have to be careful.”

The words jammed Ouyang’s throat like a fishbone. Wutong’s pride was one thing; his rotten temperament was the real thorn. How had the old him endured this for so long?

“Cut the crap. Tell me what happened. You even know the Flowing Light Wheel, and that I have a key. What’s going on? No answers, no peace.”

Wutong flicked his hair, a lazy snap like a willow in wind. Ouyang covered his eyes and muttered, “You’re a man. Why act so feminine?”

“Gender’s trivial,” Wutong said, voice cool as spring water. “You haven’t seen the core of life. From your reaction, my move tempted you. Your orientation’s suspect, clearly.”

Ouyang sealed his mouth like a jar and said nothing.

Kooson had been watching, scratching his head like a bear with an itch. “Boss Ouyang, who’s this ghost woman?” he asked, honest as earth.

“Ghost… woman…” Wutong blinked wide eyes, then turned his head slowly, face twitching like a plucked wire. Call him beautiful as a woman or handsome as a man, he’d swallow it like tea. But as a self-styled perfect lifeform, he couldn’t stomach anyone downgrading his looks.

Seeing him about to blow, Kooson just scratched again and said, guileless as a child, “Yeah, you look like a ghost girl, hair all over. I know you won’t like it, but… heh… can you beat me?”

The words slid like a knife between Wutong’s ribs. He couldn’t beat Kooson now—then or now, same mountain, same shadow. Maybe without the curse, someday the wind would change, but not today.

“Hmph. Foolish lifeform,” Wutong hissed, teeth set like a locked gate.

He had no way around Kooson, anger burning like oil with nowhere to spill.

“Kooson, let’s give this neither-male-nor-female a haircut,” Ouyang said, grin sharp as a saw.

Kooson clapped, palms ringing like boards, clearly pleased.

“No… I’m keeping it long. You dull creatures can’t fathom the glory of long hair. Move,” Wutong snapped, voice like a drawn blade.

But bone-knives grew from Kooson’s forearms, pale and cruel like crescent tusks. He was already sharpening for the harvest.