The Astral Plaza breathed one motif—portals clustered like a hive of stars. He followed the guide-steles, drifting like a leaf on a current. The central teleport field opened; each gate stood like an anchor sunk into fate. The Starry Citadel was one of them, a lodestone on every map.

In Ouyang’s memory, the Citadel rose when the Supreme Sovereign hadn’t yet struck the hymn, when the Other Shore was still unborn. The Third Epoch had set like a bleeding sun; at dawn of the Fourth, the Other Shore was forged, and the Citadel was moved into its tide. So the Starry Citadel became the oldest root within the Other Shore—peerless, a city with bones older than stone.

In the central ring, every portal wore its own face. A silver, massive, six-pointed star stood there, bright as a frost-forged sigil. A sign hung beside it, clean as moonlight: Starry Citadel.

It was the gate to the Citadel. In its silver heart, blue ripples spread like pond rings in rain, and you could glimpse a sky of scattered stars pouring from the far side. One step through, and the azure firmament fell away; a black canopy unfurled, pricked with constellations. Meteors stitched the night without pause, and nebulae bloomed like slow flowers in the dark.

Pink nebulae drifted like silk; emerald suns burned like jade lanterns; bodies of white fire blazed like snow caught in noon.

Dazzling. The sky above the Starry Citadel was pure spectacle, hues so dreamlike they begged you to drown.

A sigh rose first, heavy as autumn wind. Ouyang looked at the empty street, and a thin ache pricked his heart. When the blaze of prosperity gutters out, the sweet and the bitter both turn into the kind of memories that never leave.

He stared ahead. A tower spearing for the stars loomed—the grounds of Starry College. The Tower of Truth, the reputed haunt of the Sage of Truth. The tower had ninety-nine floors, yet one of the Citadel’s ten great legends spoke of a hundredth floor. They said the Sage lived there, behind that last veil.

Find the path to the hundredth floor, and you could face the Sage and beg a single prophecy. As for what came before, Ouyang didn’t know. He’d lingered in the Citadel for thousands of years, and no one ever found that hundredth floor.

The Starry Citadel held four great streets—east, west, south, north—each a banner for one of the First Cult’s Four Heavenly Kings. Dongze was first among them, the East King; the east street was his turf, and Starry College fell within his reach.

Long ago, those Four Kings each led their own cult. There was no First Cult yet—only the four great cults. From old memories worn smooth, Ouyang still knew a certain scoundrel called Dream Chaser served as commander of the continental cult alliance. They went too far, louder than thunder, and the continent’s other powers joined hands to crush them. The alliance shattered, scattering like broken flags.

With the “Three Rascals” as their creed and the “Four Heavenly Kings” as their helm, the alliance quieted when the Three Rascals withdrew, fading like a bonfire going to ember.

Just when everyone thought those problem children had straightened up, the Four Heavenly Kings reached consensus. They gathered the ruins, stitched the remnants, and from that day on there were no four great cults—only the First Cult.

He tasted nostalgia first, bittersweet as old tea. That near-mad era of clowning—when reason wore bells—felt, in hindsight, like the freest days of all. I miss the spats between the Temple of the Moon Goddess and the First Cult.

He looked up. The star-washed vault kept its dream-colors, never fading. Back then there was no Eternal Heavenly Palace. Back then there was no Unbeaten Imperial Court.

The street lay empty, a riverbed with no water. On both sides, shopfronts still hung those ad boards that tugged at your smile. One glance at those ridiculous taglines and Ouyang knew a cult hand had written them. He’d eaten through the snack street a thousand times; the crowd that once surged like a tide was gone.

He remembered a fruit that swept the street like a spring storm. Legend said it flowered for ten thousand years, fruited for ten thousand, ripened for ten thousand. The story hooked everyone first; then one bite told the truth—it was absurdly good.

In those days, the fruit vendor raked in star-coins like rain into a cistern.

Later, the vendor vanished from the snack street. The crowd’s fearsome sleuthing kicked in, and the truth surfaced like a carp—the vendor was thrown into the “little black room,” reportedly for breaking Alliance rules.

That fruit, called Wish Fruit, grew in an ordinary world. In that world, any commoner who ate it could rise as a figure of destiny, ruling the continent like a storm. But the tree birthed a single fruit only once every thirty thousand years, so such figures appeared only once every thirty thousand years. The Wish Fruit took too long to come of age.

A certain shameless Primordial Deity yanked that world out of the main River of Time, then whipped its time forward like a horse—tens of thousands of years, hundreds of thousands, millions. He didn’t stop until he piled up a heap of Wish Fruit, then he finally eased the reins.

He’d broken the Other Shore Covenant clause that banned meddling with the time chain in worlds under Alliance protection. So he was tossed into the little black room, and the door slammed shut.

That vendor’s fate had something to do with Ouyang. In truth, Ouyang was the one who reported him. To buy just one Wish Fruit, Ouyang had queued more times than he could count. Every time he neared the stall, the vendor would announce the day’s “limited sale” was gone—come back tomorrow.

The next day, Ouyang queued again; near his turn, sold out again.

A week later, love soured into spite, and Ouyang swore to teach that deity a lesson. He happened to have a friend in the First Cult, a higher-up whose specialty was making trouble look easy. They marked the deity; black channels and white channels, every field yielded scraps. Soon, the vendor’s dossier landed on Ouyang’s desk. Since it had come this far, Ouyang didn’t half-step—he filed the report on that deity-grade vendor.

The poor seller, a Primordial Deity who could swagger sideways through the stars, never learned how his secret leaked—right up to the moment the little black room swallowed him.

Those years of wild youth—he tasted the sigh, then let it go. I feel older, a lot older.

Without noticing, Ouyang walked through starshine to a college gate. Starry College. It was founded only after the Other Shore was born. After the darkness of the Third Epoch, at the dawn of the Fourth, talent had withered like winter grass, so the College opened its doors. Among the civilizations sheltered by the Other Shore, nine out of ten gods graduated from Starry College.

He looked ahead, then felt the block like a cold wind. A barrier wrapped the College like a glass shell; there was no way in.

“Xiao Qi, get out here!”

At times like this, he called to a certain creature who claimed to be “Number Seven.” Back when Ouyang broke his seal, it fell like a meteor into his skull and tugged his soul into the Other Shore. Judging from what it had shown, Ouyang believed it could handle small knots like this.

A stone drifted into view, wrapped in a Yulan halo, soft as twilight. That was the “Number Seven” he’d called out.

“Your Majesty, I… don’t have authorization.”

Frustration hit first, hot as pepper. Ouyang had the urge to pitch that rock into a latrine. Can’t do this, can’t do that—what good are you? Perhaps sensing his face darken, Seven gentled its tone. “Your Majesty, this isn’t on me. You should know the three legendary places of the Other Shore.”

“The three legendary places?” He frowned, then admitted the gap. “I know of one—a palace said to exist outside time. I haven’t heard the other two.”

Seven explained, voice calm as a bell. “The Tower of Truth. The Eternal Heavenly Palace. The Void Illusion Realm. Those are the three.”

“Mm?” The sound was half doubt, half surprise.

He’d visited the Tower of Truth more times than he could count. People came and went like migratory birds. And that was a legendary place?

“Your Majesty, when I say Tower of Truth, I mean the hundredth floor—the floor that pierces all truths. Every legendary place has a singular function. The barrier around Starry College exists to protect the Tower of Truth. I don’t have the right to open it.”

Ouyang leaned on his chin, thoughts threading like smoke, then let the plan go. He’d meant to reach the hundredth floor and chase that legend.

The Sage of Truth wasn’t famed for battle. But in prophecy, if he said he was second, no one would dare claim first. People often compared him to the Watcher of Time and Eternity. The Watcher’s “prophecy” comes from peering into the River of Time, catching a shard of the future. The Sage doesn’t need the river; his prophecy is knotted to fate itself.

If the Watcher can glimpse one million years ahead, the Sage can trace at least five million. Yet his words don’t “see”; they come like old-school oracles—veiled, symbolic, a little fogedged.

Ouyang wanted to stand on that hundredth floor and see whether the Sage left a prophecy, whether anything remained.

It was a shame. That useless little Seven—too unhelpful to be cute—made his teeth ache with its answer. If the Sage had really left a future-script there, it mattered, deeply.

Maybe because Ouyang never saw that prophecy, he couldn’t snap the shackle of fate. So the future he’d seen was free to arrive.

“Your Majesty… the Tower of Truth… time power is erupting!”

Silence clenched first, then broke. In Ouyang’s eyes, the tower that seemed to lance into the stars flared white and silver, bright enough to bleach shadows. Light spilled like a flood, illuminating every corner of the Citadel.

After a long moment, a voice drifted out of the Tower, clear as a bell through snow.

“What time period is this? Why is no one here? Did we push it too far forward?”