The avenue was a river of bodies, horns stitched into a relentless buzz. Ouyang drifted like a ghost, shadowing the little boy. He knew it was a bad idea.

A child slipping into city traffic was asking for disaster, and Ouyang couldn’t protect him. Letting Xuan climb a wall to sneak out only pushed him closer to danger. Still, Ouyang wasn’t worried.

“Hey, Xuan—your sister’s really… invested. She’s a total brother-obsessed guardian. Look, there’re bodyguards watching you from way back.”

“Brother-obsessed? What’s that?”

The boy’s innocent question jammed Ouyang’s throat. Explain it? No way. Inside, he flinched first, then forced a shrug. This kid was still clean as fresh snow—daydreams in class, sure, and a habit of hopping walls—but at his core he was simple and pure. Ouyang couldn’t poison that.

He found himself doubting the legends. Was the infamous “Xuan the Jerk” really this pure as a child?

“At birth we start good… ah.” He sighed up at the sky, thinking of a boy who didn’t even know those words, then of the veteran who’d floor it at the slightest provocation. He could only groan at the clouds. “Time’s a butcher’s knife—it darkens wood ear, purples grape, softens banana.”

“What wood ear and grapes… what are you mumbling about?”

Xuan blinked, eyes bright with curiosity, like a sparrow pecking at dew.

“No, nothing. You imagined that.” Ouyang shook his head hard. The last thing he dared do was dump weird trivia into this kid’s head. Sure, it’d feel good for a minute. In the far future, another Ouyang would pay for it in blood.

Having a sister that obsessed with her little brother was terrifying enough. If Xuan asked her what “brother-obsessed” meant, she’d ask where he learned it. Then, in some later life, that shameless someone would happily serve up Ouyang’s name.

Some day in endless years to come, the clueless Ouyang would meet a woman and get beaten senseless for no reason at all…

He’d already written his own ending. He refused to seed the boy with strange knowledge.

They slipped into a smoky cybercafé. Xuan, practiced as a street cat, fished an ID from his waistband. “Admin, swipe.” The attendant ran it through—a card belonging to a seventy- or eighty-year-old man—and grinned. “All set, kiddo.”

Ouyang felt his sarcasm pile up like storm clouds. Was the admin blind? No matter how you squinted, an octogenarian wasn’t this boy. Even if you’re in it for cash, at least ask for a nineteen-year-old’s ID. This was shame-free water over the dam.

From that fox-sly smile, Ouyang could tell they knew each other. The kid was a regular.

Maybe this admin was the mold that shaped a future “fast-lane veteran”? Ouyang couldn’t help wondering how a driver got trained. Keys clacked in a machine-gun rhythm under Xuan’s fingers, and Ouyang remembered why he’d dragged the boy out. Not for games. That wasn’t the mission.

He leaned in to see what Xuan was doing.

Baidu: darkened wood ear, purple grapes, softened banana.

A spray of results bloomed across the screen.

“Whoa—Lord Xuan, don’t search that. If your sister sees it, she’ll toss me into a black hole.” Panic hit first, then regret bit hard. Why did he mouth off like that in front of a pure kid? And why those bizarre terms…

Although, the terms weren’t strange. People were the ones who smeared strange meanings over normal words.

“Stop—close the tabs, shut the rig down, yank the cable…” Ouyang lunged, trying to hit the power. His hand slid through everything like smoke. “Boohoo—Lord Xuan, I messed up. I shouldn’t have brought up those words… boohoo—”

He stood helpless, pinned by his own mistake. The boy’s helplessness was different. Xuan’s eyes locked on the glow, gears turning under his calm. After a moment, he tapped again.

Baidu: black wood ear.

Ouyang had the urge to smash the tower flat. Done. A driver was stepping onto a road with no exit. Not the admin’s fault, not the school’s. It was Ouyang’s.

He finally understood why, in the Eighth Epoch, the Sovereign had punished him so ruthlessly. The root was here. He’d fed the Sovereign’s little brother strange seeds, so His Majesty had targeted Ouyang like fate. Truth, at last—an explosive secret dredged up from the river of time.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t all on him. He’d run his mouth, then shut it. The boy had searched on his own. No, the wrong one wasn’t Ouyang. It was Baidu. Because of Baidu, so many drivers were born. However you cut it, Auntie Du had to carry the blame.

As Xuan skimmed “knowledge,” a window popped open with a click. Ouyang went stone-still.

“Uh—Xuan, close your eyes. Quick. Kids’ll go cross-eyed if they see that.”

He dove again to kill the power, then slammed into the same brutal fact: he couldn’t touch a thing. All he could do was watch Xuan click through the web like stepping stones. He tried blocking the boy’s view, pressing into his line of sight. He could block for a moment. He couldn’t block a lifetime.

So Ouyang let the pot drop and shatter.

“Xuan, listen—this one’s called XX Pushing the Cart. That one’s XX Lotus Sitting. And this is…” He spoke like a devil coughing up black smoke, wings unfurling in the dark behind him. Ouyang got specific. Xuan listened with a student’s focus, different from his class-act boredom—he was drinking it in.

We reap what we sow. He finally understood why that certain someone in the First Epoch had kept burying him. From the First through the Ninth Epoch, he hadn’t figured it out. Now he did. Karma.

“But something’s off. I crossed from the future to the past, yet I can’t touch anything here.” Before, to make Xuan walk on lake water, he’d burned out all his power. Strength fit to face an ancient god only let the boy step on a mirrored surface.

Only because Xuan was a time medium. If Ouyang tried to let anyone else walk water like Xuan, he couldn’t do it if his life depended on it. What about Mapleleaf, that guy claiming he was from the Eleventh Epoch? He didn’t seem to have that leash. People forgot him, as if he never existed—that matched Ouyang in a way. But why could he unleash an ultimate art and beat Lingwen? It didn’t add up.

He hadn’t known the rules before crossing the river of time. Now, having paid in full, he understood the limits and the price.

He shook his head. Not the time to chase the Mapleleaf riddle.

“Xuan… I think it’s time to run.”

“Huh?”

The boy lifted his head, puzzled, breath steadying.

Ouyang said it with a crooked smile. “I’m guessing this PC mirrors to your sister’s machine. She’s probably blazing over here right now to drag you home.”

Xuan’s face blanched, color washed out like paper in rain. The shock flickered first, then settled.

He thought for a few seconds, then bolted toward the densest crowd, leaving the ID on the desk. Ouyang floated after him and found the boy wasn’t panicking. He ran on a route, a plan etched under his feet.

“Looks like I worried for nothing. He’s clearly not a first-timer dodging his sister… sigh. This pair—also, is this on me?” He muttered as he drifted. The crowd-pleasing scene—little brother caught watching 18X by his sister at the café—never happened. Because Ouyang’s loose tongue had warned him, Xuan slipped the net.

In a camera-less alley, Xuan leaned on the wall, panting, cheeks flushed from the sprint.

“Interesting…” he said between breaths, eyes sparking.

Interesting? He found 18X interesting? Ouyang couldn’t parse the boy’s thoughts.

“Hey, Xuan, when you surf at home, haven’t you run into those weird pop-ups?” It shouldn’t be this way. His family was well-off. He had his own machine. If you’re online, you trip weird stuff now and then.

Xuan made a soft hum, weighing a reply.

“No chance at home… I can only use the computer if my sister’s there. Otherwise, no.”

Ouyang snorted, barely stifling a laugh. Now he knew why the boy chose a boarding school. He wanted space away from his sister. In Ouyang’s memories of the First Epoch, someone hadn’t put it that way at all—talked about self-discipline, forging himself, tasting new life… all nonsense.

Dusk slipped in without fanfare.

“Another day’s shutting down. Next time we meet—in your timeline—that’s a year from now.” They leaned against a wall. A river ran ahead. The sinking sun dyed it red.

“Mm. Next year… I’ll be fifteen.”

Xuan picked up a stone and snapped it out over the water. It skipped a few times, then sank.

“We still get three more meetings… After the third…” Ouyang cut himself off, mouth closing on the rest. He watched the river go red, sunlight dancing in broken scales across it.

The world began to twist, like silk being wrung. Ouyang raised a hand to the boy.

“See you next year.”