Countless phantom gears floated above the Tower of Truth, their teeth turning like moonlit mills. The clock hands swung, slicing through the hush like cold fins.
Watching the scene, hearing that voice, Ouyang felt an old familiarity, like a name carved under dust. When the inner storm stilled, Starry College’s iron gate sighed open.
A head poked through the gap, pale as porcelain. White shirt, white pants, white shoes—an icicle trio. On his back, two sheathed swords crossed like twin swallows. Short black hair. A sun‑bright, easy face. Faces and days he knew flared like lanterns in Ouyang’s mind.
“Mapleleaf?!”
This Mapleleaf—half legend, half trouble sprite—was burned into Ouyang’s memory like charcoal. He’d reported that Primordial Deity selling wish‑fruit, largely because Mapleleaf had egged him on like a mischievous wind. As a First Cult executive, Mapleleaf’s talent for torment was razor‑sharp, a cat with endless lives.
In those millennia Ouyang lingered in the Starry Citadel, eight out of ten major First Cult capers bore Mapleleaf’s shadow like a fox’s tail.
He slipped into the Moon Goddess’s domain and drained the Lake of Moonlight like a thief sipping silver. He ambushed near the Romance Hall, watched couples seal vows, then planted traps along the path, cleaving lovers like sudden frost. He even stirred the infamous “tofu‑dregs” projects—after a subordinate civilization of the Other Shore begged the gods to seed new stars post‑catastrophe, a “World‑Creators Consortium” took the contract. Under the skin, they were First Cult to the bone.
In short, the guy called Mapleleaf was a walking legend, a comet leaving chaos. The tales were negative, but fame glowed like ember under ash.
The instant Mapleleaf saw Ouyang, surprise flickered like a startled sparrow. Seeing Ouyang clearly wasn’t in his script. “You… you aren’t Ouyang, are you?”
Ouyang nodded, fog pooling in his chest like low tide. Mapleleaf should’ve gone home through the Golden Constant Gate back in the Eighth Epoch, riding the main convoy like a migrating flock. And Number Seven had just said time itself was flaring like a storm.
This smelled of layered time. Confusion bit like winter. Why was the guy who kept yelling to revive the Game Epoch’s “Three Scoundrels” era showing up here, of all places?
When Ouyang confirmed, Mapleleaf folded deep into a frown, thoughts knotting like roots. After a beat, he asked, “Hey, old classmate—what Epoch is this?”
What Epoch?
The question shocked Ouyang like cold water. Had Mapleleaf fallen into the river of time and drifted?
“It’s the Ninth Epoch. Which slice did you crawl out of?”
“Ninth Epoch… damn! The timing’s off! I was aiming for the First Epoch. How can the error be this huge?” Mapleleaf looked completely blank, a compass spinning in a storm. Ouyang heard it, and his fog thickened.
“Hey, shouldn’t you explain? Which cut of time did you jump from?”
Mapleleaf pushed the iron gate shut with a hollow thud and walked over, steps echoing like pebbles. On the way, he lifted his eyes to the lavish stars, then to the buildings by the gate, nostalgia soft as evening rain on his face. “Which Epoch… mm, let me think… The span’s too long. I can’t pull the number.” His brow stayed creased, a knot carved in wood.
“Ah—got it. My era’s the Eleventh Epoch.”
Eleventh? Two Epochs ahead? Ouyang’s mind flashed with the future he’d glimpsed, a cracked sky like broken glass. If Mapleleaf spoke truth, then he knew the shape of tomorrow.
“Mapleleaf, tell me—what is the Eleventh Epoch like? Is everyone okay?” Ouyang leaned in, heartbeat drumming like hooves. Reason slipped away like sand. He wanted one thing: to know that era. Would that shattered starfield truly arrive?
Mapleleaf flinched at Ouyang’s heat, then gave an awkward smile, thin as paper. “Easy… Start with your side. You’ve got me spun.”
For the Other Shore, the Ninth Epoch was a blank page, a fogged mirror. Mapleleaf had no idea what had unfolded here.
Ouyang’s surge cooled, a wave settling. “Here’s how it went…”
He told Mapleleaf about these days. The broken star‑sky, the bitter ending. The Raven still absent, a silence like a bad omen. Was the far side walking the track he’d seen?
“So I need to know what your future looks like…” He exhaled, a weight sliding off his shoulders like a pack dropped by the road. “I don’t know the Eleventh Epoch. But looking at your carefree face, I’m guessing it doesn’t end in pure tragedy.”
Mapleleaf didn’t answer at once. He hummed, then rubbed his forefinger along his nose, a habit like a switch that flipped his thinking. From that small ritual, Ouyang knew—this was the Mapleleaf he knew, the exact man stitched into his past.
“The ending…” Mapleleaf let the word hang like mist. Silence pooled. Under Ouyang’s gaze, uneasy as a moth near flame, he finally spoke. “Well… you do show up in the future. But you show up late—reinforcements arriving after the rain. Near the end of the Tenth Epoch, your side finally reaches that battlefield.”
End of the Tenth Epoch?
“Impossible! I know how bad it is over there. There’s no way I arrive an Epoch late!” In that shard of future, the stars were dim, the sky dead as ash. Ouyang couldn’t accept being late by an Epoch. By plan, he’d open the Golden Constant Gate in at most ten thousand years. An Epoch? How could he lag an Epoch?
In the Other Shore’s reckoning, an Epoch isn’t fixed‑length; it’s anchored to events like tides. A great event’s rise and fall can start and end an Epoch. The First Epoch was the shortest, under a hundred years, a spark in a gale. Beyond that special case, each Epoch spans roughly a million years.
From Ninth to Tenth—if not another First—could be hundreds of thousands of years. Would Ouyang arrive after hundreds of thousands, even a million?
His reaction was sharp, a blade ringing against stone. Mapleleaf sighed, rubbing his head like sand in hair. “Believe it or don’t—history, or future, says you show at the Tenth’s end. In the record, you’re the late reinforcements.”
Silence locked Ouyang like frost. He didn’t want that future. He knew the other side was bleeding. Why wait hundreds of thousands, a million, to execute a plan meant for centuries or millennia?
“Then… what about the Tenth Epoch? If they lost in the Ninth, the gods of the Other Shore fall, and the Ninth closes like a curtain…” Their chronology orbits great events. Twilight of the Gods closed the Second Epoch; in their thought, the rise of a Chaos Demon marks an Epoch like a thunderclap.
“The Tenth… is an empty Epoch. That’s all I can say.” Mapleleaf’s words came wrapped in gauze, caution like thorns. Ouyang understood. They weren’t from the same time. There had to be limits.
The sky still blazed in color, like a dream of childhood chalked across dusk. The street lay quiet, signboards whispering of old bustle like faded banners. Familiar roads, familiar facades—just missing the familiar souls.
Mapleleaf let out a long sigh, wind through reeds. “This place… yeah. In the Eleventh Epoch, it’s gone. Everything ended with the Tenth’s last bell. Folks rebuilt a new Starry Citadel, but the old Starry Citadel, this Other Shore continent… all of it drifted away.”
He sounded weathered as cliffs, but Ouyang’s doubt held steady, hard as iron.
“We’ve danced around it, and I still don’t hear the ending. Just say it—how many of the big ones are still alive?” He bit down on the ache, words like stones in the mouth.
If truth cut too deep, he’d rather bleed in ignorance. Yet he burned to know: in the future, how many familiar faces still breathe?
Mapleleaf hesitated for a long stretch, eyes clouded with grief like rain behind glass.
Seeing that, Ouyang’s mouth tugged into a thin smile. “Kid, you’re still as honest as ever. Your face already sold you out.”
Mapleleaf shrugged, the look of a man who knew that line was coming. “Plenty died, but most are still kicking. And as for why you only show at the Tenth’s end… I don’t know the rest. But one thing’s right in front of us. You’re weak as hell right now. You probably need an Epoch of tempering before you’re any use on that field.”
Ouyang thought it over and found no clean rebuttal. This guy—always blurting the hardest truths like a bell in winter.
