The surf sounded as familiar as an old lullaby, while starlight rose from the deep like bubbles and sank from the vault like falling spears.

Splash, splash…

He drifted like a skiff on open water. Ouyang watched the sky like a vast ink scroll and the radiant pillars rising and falling.

An ancient sword floated beside him, cradled by the sea like a sleeping whale, too stubborn to sink.

“Bai, I’m sorry… I made you take the hit.” Guilt stung like salt on a cut before the words left him.

He sat up on the water as if it were dry land, the sea holding him like glass. As a Guardian Angel, Bai bore his wounds.

Even unwilling, the old rite would throw pain onto her shoulders, because she was the Guardian Angel, a shield woven from vows and light.

He felt Bai asleep in the quiet of his soul, a warm ember in winter, and let out a long breath.

The endless blue always drew a sigh from him. This was where the story began, a shoreline carved into fate.

Without the Boundless Sea, there would’ve been no First Epoch, no later Other Shore epoch to mark their days like tides.

Without the Boundless Sea, their lives would have forked like rivers. They’d battle through the human tide, chasing a dream shore they could never reach.

In the First Epoch, Dream Chaser sacrificed the Boundless Sea, cutting the road home like a bridge burned behind them.

But he spent ages gathering drops like dew, and the Boundless Sea rose again like dawn after a long night.

“The place where it begins… the place where it ends.” The words tasted of ash and rain, and his chest felt hollow as a shell.

Legend said that at the far edge of the Boundless Sea, past waters even true gods can’t cross, the far shore is our homeland.

Ouyang tilted his head and smiled at the sky like a friend’s absent face, as if he owed someone an answer.

A palm-sized sprite appeared without a ripple, with dragonfly wings, a black cloak, and a black halo floating like an eclipse.

Little Night. He’d met her last time he ‘visited’ the Boundless Sea, a sprite with power like Moer’s, as strange as deep current.

“Yeah…” Her voice drifted over like wind over empty water as she flew over and perched on his right shoulder.

She sat there quiet as a fallen petal, as if memories weighed her small frame like wet silk.

Ouyang didn’t break the hush. Silence spread like mist. At last she breathed out a long sigh like ebbing tide.

“Hey, Ouyang, do you think Master will come back?” Her tone shivered like a bell in an empty hall. “Guarding this sea alone is so lonely.”

He didn’t know how many ages she’d watched these waters, but her weariness lay heavy as winter snow on bare branches.

“Though I was born here, it never feels like home,” she murmured, voice thin as smoke. “When the First Epoch ended, sprites returned here to sleep.”

“Only me… still watching this sea alone.” The word sleep felt like a tombstone, a long rest meaning death beneath soft waves.

In that First Epoch, the Night King’s invasion cracked the world like ice. Sprites had contracts with humans, bound like twin lanterns in a storm.

Not one abandoned their contractor. They struggled in despair like swimmers in black water, choosing to burn out so others could breathe.

Countless sprites chose to shatter like glass to buy life for their partners. That calamity left their kind almost erased like chalk in rain.

“Little Night, if I tell you a surviving sprite’s whereabouts, will you lend me the Three Artifacts?” His grief flipped like a coin into a sly grin.

After merging the Void Watcher’s memories, Ouyang knew the name of the sprite before him like a name etched on driftwood.

He didn’t know every sprite’s name, only hers because he knew her contractor’s shadow. As for Moer, even memory gave him fog.

“Another sprite?!” The drowsy Little Night jolted like a startled bird, her eyes flying wide, two tiny tiger fangs flashing like milk moons.

“Spill it. Where is that sprite?” She seized Ouyang’s collar and shook him like a bottle, light as thistledown, merciless as surf.

“Talk, or I’ll curse you to trip on the road, choke on water, and choke on rice.” Her threats pricked like nettles.

He believed her. On the First Continent, the Dark Trinity Artifacts had dragged an era into darkness like an eclipse that wouldn’t pass.

“Hey, be reasonable. No rough stuff. We’re civilized people,” he pleaded, palms up like white flags.

“Cut the crap. Say it,” she snapped, words sharp as sleet.

…

In the end, Ouyang got what he wanted. Little Night lent him the Calamity Cloak, one piece of the Dark Trinity Artifacts.

The price was selling out a nap-loving sprite, tossed like bait to a fish. He didn’t feel the slightest sting of guilt.

“When those two sprites reunite, they’ll thank me, right?” He sighed theatrically, virtues painted on like clouds. “I’m just too kind.”

After half a day in the Boundless Sea, a cold thought broke the surface. How was he going back?

Some sprite had shut the door on her way out like a prank, and he couldn’t find an exit no matter how he searched.

“Damn it, Little Night, you crooked sprite, you did that on purpose.” His shout scattered like gulls, and the water just kept breathing.

No matter how he yelled, she never returned. If she did, she’d hide in the spray and laugh like a cat behind a screen.

He gave up the struggle and lay on the sea, a corpse adrift, waiting for the tide to carry him to nowhere.

If he could, he wished to freeze this second like amber, to think of nothing, and watch the sky go blank as rice paper.

But the world loves to go cross-grain.

“Your Majesty, would you like to use authority to lift this space’s lock?” A mechanical voice clicked into his head like a gear.

Only then did he remember a presence thin as smoke—Little Seven, the thing he forgot like a book behind a curtain.

Yes, the same one from after his battle with the host of the Twelve Demonic Implements, the Grudge of Inheritance.

He’d fallen unconscious and his soul was hauled to the Other Shore like a fish on a line.

After returning from the Astral Plaza to the Origin World, Little Seven had gone silent, a lantern with no oil.

“Use the authority. Unlock the space. Then open a passage straight to my castle.” Resentment scratched like sand in his voice.

He’d planned to ‘play dead’ on the Boundless Sea like driftwood, and Little Seven ruined the mood. Petty, very petty.

A rainbow passage blossomed on the water like oil sheen. He put one foot in, then froze, a statue carved by doubt.

He remembered last time. “Hey, Little Seven, this isn’t going to dump me somewhere weird again, right?” His skin prickled like frost.

Last time, Little Seven opened a passage to his castle, but he landed in pitch-dark, and a certain diary even kicked him once.

“Your Majesty, that was an accident.” The reply clinked like a coin in an empty bowl.

Accident? The passage gave him zero comfort, a bridge over fog, rattling in a wind he couldn’t see.

He wrestled with his nerves till his thoughts frayed like rope, then stepped in anyway, choosing the river over the shore.

The rainbow corridor stretched on and on, a serpent eating its tail. He didn’t know how long he walked.

Behind was endlessness like a hall of mirrors. Ahead, no exit, just color and quiet, like walking inside a prism.

It felt like a century trickling through a cracked hourglass. His gut said wrong, a drumbeat out of rhythm.

“Little Seven… did you crash again?” His voice echoed like a pebble in a well.

Minutes bled by. No answer. He knew the taste of trouble like iron on his tongue.

Who built this thing? He wondered if Little Seven was a shoddy project by the First Cult, mud pretending to be marble.

He was about to curse those profiteers when the corridor thinned to glass. Outside yawned a broken starfield like a battlefield after fire.

The stars were dim as dying coals. Not one was whole. Debris drifted like bones, a sea of wreckage with no tide.

In a daze, he seemed to see a figure in snow-white standing in the void, one person, one sword, a lone pine in winter.

“We lost… lost to that primordial born of chaos.” The words bled like a wound that wouldn’t close.

White stained with blood, a sword snapped in two, and a voice heavy with helplessness and iron, unwilling to bow.

Born of chaos… Ouyang’s pupils shrank like pricked ink. “A Chaos Primordial?!”

“Luo, tell me—what happened?” Panic struck first like thunder, before his feet tried to move.

He tried to approach, but distance held like glass. They weren’t in the same time, not the same stream of stars.

At last the man fell like a cut kite, and the broken blade became a rain of light, then thinned into dusk.

That body toppled into the void and joined the sea of wreckage, another shard in a shattered bowl.

A long sigh threaded the dead, ruined sky like a ghost note. It scratched at his bones.

Who?

Ouyang turned. Someone stood beside him like a shadow come home, a familiar face softened by grief.

That goofy grin was gone. He wore a bleakness like frost, yet forced a thin smile, a candle in wind.

“This… is our ending. The Ninth Epoch will be a lost epoch for us.” His words fell like ash, soft and final.

“The end of an epoch is our curtain falling. I hope you—” The rest blurred like a dream at dawn.