After scaling the campus wall, the boy followed Lan Yan toward the place she called home, two shadows slipping through dusk like sparrows skimming a gray river.
“Uh, Lan Yan… should I buy some gifts?” he stammered, hope fluttering like a caged moth; if he impressed her “future in‑laws,” maybe he’d go from pretend boyfriend to the real thing.
Lan Yan didn’t seem to care, her voice smooth as still water. “No need, Xuan. Just come as you are. Leave the rest to me.”
“Oh…” His mood crashed like a kite in sudden rain. He dropped his gaze, the bright spark from earlier snuffed out. Ouyang trailed him, brow knotted like a stormcloud that never broke.
Time blurred like fog on a river. Under Lan Yan’s lead, they reached a tangle of old alleys, a maze coiling like a serpent. The two‑meter lanes lay too quiet, silence pressed like damp cloth.
“Lan Yan… your place is here?” the boy asked as she stopped. He glanced around, hunting for a door that felt like hers.
Ouyang’s gut snapped taut like a bowstring. “Xuan, run! She lured you here!” The alarm came too late. The alley mouth bloomed with bodies, hair dyed in carnival colors, sticks glinting like winter branches.
“Heh. Young Master Xuan, still breathing, I see.” The lead thug strode up, red rooster‑crest hair flaring like fire. Tattoos crawled on his face and shoulders like coiled snakes. He grabbed Xuan’s collar and heaved him up.
While the boy stared in stunned fog, Lan Yan spoke to the red‑crested youth, her tone flat as ice. “I brought him like you said. You should release my boyfriend.”
“Relax. Red Crest keeps his word.” His grin cut like a blade. “A month ago I told you to cozy up to this kid. You did better—brought him in. A‑San, go fetch the guy. Let the lovebirds reunite.”
“Boss, on it!”
The boy finally pieced it together, hope clinging like a drowning hand to driftwood. “Lan Yan… this isn’t April Fool’s…”
Her gentle eyes turned winter‑cold. Emotion hit first, heavy as sleet; then the words fell like stones. “I hesitated. But you walked in on your own. Seems fate made the choice for me.” Ouyang could hear guilt threading her frost.
A month ago, a gang grabbed her boyfriend. Their boss told her to approach a target, win his trust, then lead him into this snare, orders coiled like iron wire.
Lan Yan earned the boy’s trust, and in those days she didn’t grow to hate him. She wavered, uncertain what horrors would swallow him once these men took him. Today, an ultimatum fell like a cleaver—deliver him, or they’d harvest her boyfriend’s kidney, maybe his life.
She cried alone, tears like rain on cold tiles, and then the boy wandered right into the storm.
“Xuan, you said you’d help me. Only if I hand you to them will my boyfriend be safe. You’ll help me, right?” Her last plea drove like a sword straight into his chest, young love pure as spring water cracking under frost.
It ended before it began, and all for another man, bitter as wormwood.
Lan Yan left with A‑San to retrieve her boyfriend. Red Crest still held Xuan by the collar, and the boy stared at the sky, blank as white stone.
“Hah! Fell for that whore, did you?” Red Crest yanked his hair, amusement slick as oil. “Your sister built your family a kingdom. With your name and status, you could net any woman.”
“Her company undercut others with cheaper, sharper products. Their profits froze over, so they paid us to move.” His laugh clattered like tin.
“Heard your sister dotes on you,” he purred, eyes gleaming like knives. “Maybe she’ll do things for you she’d never do otherwise.”
“Boss, we’ve already burned that bridge,” a thug rasped, voice a saw on wood. “Let’s use the kid. Make her serve us. Take photos. Hold her forever.”
“Ha! Qixiong, your poison’s fine.” Red Crest’s laughter snapped like firecrackers. “With photos, we’ll make her dance forever. She’ll never escape our hands.”
Ouyang stood frozen, mind broken like glass. He hadn’t seen this ending in any shadow. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t teased him to chase her… if I’d noticed sooner…”
He swung, same as always, fists cutting air like leaves in wind, never touching a single body.
“You… I won’t let you treat my sister like that!” The boy ripped free of heartbreak long enough to lash out, his fist crashing into Red Crest’s face like a sudden thunderclap.
He had to struggle, even if it killed him, a fish thrashing against a net. As long as they held him alive, his sister’s love would be their crooked knife.
“Bastard, you hit me?” Red Crest’s rage flashed like a torch. His slap cracked across Xuan’s face, a red handprint blooming like fire. “You dare? I’ll beat you to death!”
“Brothers, hit him. Hit him hard!”
Ouyang’s panic howled like wind over barren dunes. One name flared in his mind—the Heaven Departing Divine Sword. Its master had sworn it could cut anything, even time and space, clean as lightning.
“Litian, get out here, damn it!”
Bang, bang, bang. Blows fell like hail on spring clay. Xuan’s face swelled purple, bruises spreading like ink. Ouyang’s hands stayed empty, no Divine Sword glinting, only cold air.
“Why? Why this? Did I cross time just to watch a tragedy?” The thought slumped, heavy as iron.
He felt small before time, like a reed in a flood. If he had the power to strike up a triumphant hymn, if he were one of those out‑of‑spec, third‑tier Tiered Beings, he might bend fate’s blade.
He watched the half‑dead boy and finally understood. Behind every shine lies grit ground down like stone; no one sails smooth seas forever. Only by growing through thorns can you laugh last.
So‑called geniuses are greenhouse flowers—bright, yet brittle. They must shed that name and live through iron weather, carrying obsession, hatred, hope, and fire.
When the gang’s guard sagged, black suits stormed in like a tide, sunglasses flashing like midnight glass. They moved in patterns like a rehearsed dance, each strike clean, each target sealed.
In minutes, the thugs lay flat, bodies strewn like fallen scarecrows on a field.
“Young Master Xuan… apologies. We were late.” A man bowed, voice humble as slate.
“Xuan, rest easy.” The next voice was glacial, breath like polar frost. “They will suffer the cruelest punishments known under heaven.”
“Sis…” A woman gathered him into her arms, faces pressed as if to fuse warmth into bone. Time stretched thin as silk, then she rose, eyes locking on Red Crest like a hawk on a snake.
“Red Crest, you’ll regret ever stepping into this world. I swear it.” She lifted her hair with a fingertip, a gesture like moonlight on water—beauty that stole breath and tilted cities.
Her radiance wasn’t Xi’s misted mystery, a beauty veiled like a lake in morning fog. Hers was sovereign, a crown‑bright beauty—an empress declaring sentence, thunder held in palm.
She was the Sovereign—one day, a second‑tier existence of the Other Shore, the Lord of Qianling Lake, a name that would roll like drums across years.
The boy left with his sister. Ouyang didn’t follow. Guilt gnawed him like cold rats. If he hadn’t joked about chasing her, if he had spotted the wrongness early, maybe none of this would’ve happened. He couldn’t face them.
Twilight bled into sunset, then night fell like a black curtain. This time, Ouyang didn’t return to that strange place; he drifted in this foreign timeline, a leaf in a slow current.
Days blurred. He went to school, only to find the boy’s desk empty, absence stiff as an unlit chair. Wounds, whether skin or heart, never heal easy, not like a scab in a day.
Moon and sun traded places like sentries. A month later, Ouyang finally saw the boy at school. He’d gone quiet, sealed tight like a locked chest.
“Ouyang…” They met and had no words, two stones in shallow water. The boy’s spirit seemed drained, and Ouyang sensed his faint rejection of everyone, a chill like frost on glass.
Everything slid back to two years ago—the abandoned boy. This time, he had abandoned the world, turning away like a door shut in winter.
“Seeing you alive… I’m relieved.” As Ouyang spoke, space around him twisted like a quicksilver ribbon. “Next year… see you then. Not sure you’ll still welcome me.”
Next year, the boy would be sixteen. At seventeen… the curtain would rise, and everything would begin.
