The clock’s tick-tock echoed through a dead world, like rain tapping a sealed tomb. In a daze, Ouyang seemed to glimpse a thread of dawn inside the night. Was morning coming?

Tick...

Tick...

Gears clacked like iron beetles crawling through his skull, and the sound made his chest tighten. Had the last moment finally arrived?

The street was a blaze of life, a river of bodies flowing without end. Cars slid past, horns needled the air, engines rumbled, and haggling rose like sparrows squabbling over crumbs. Ouyang pushed through the tide, shadowing a seventeen-year-old boy just ahead.

He’d thought the “last moment” meant the world tearing at the seams—zombies, otherworld invaders, monsters crashing through the veil. In the end, he realized he’d overthought it. The world kept grinding on, ordinary as an old mill under gray clouds.

He glanced at the time on a giant street ad—ten a.m. Two hours left.

It was just another truancy day, though this truancy had nothing to do with Ouyang. He kept unusually quiet, words folded away, letting the kid choose his own path.

Right now, Ouyang felt like a watcher perched on a branch, eyes steady on the scene below, afraid a single word might startle fate into a different flight.

“Hey, A-Yang, listen. The kebabs in the garden square? Best in town. Never gets old. I’ve been eating them since seventh grade. Super good!” The boy bought two skewers, one for each hand.

Ouyang said nothing, only watched, and kept wiping his mouth. He was drooling, and the drool glinted like strings of dew he couldn’t drink.

It hurt. He could see the food, but he couldn’t taste it. Worse, the brat waved the skewer right under his nose, teasing it like a cat toy. Floating in the air, Ouyang held back, then snapped—he lunged and bit. His teeth clacked shut, his mouth passed through the meat, and he caught nothing but wind.

“Damn it, you jerk! Bullying me like this?” Ouyang’s teeth grit until they clicked like pebbles. The smell of grilled fat kept needling him, a smoky ribbon coiling through his hunger. If I can’t eat it, why can I still smell it? Too cruel. Way too cruel.

The boy’s swagger screamed “jerk mode, on.” What happened this year? Why did the little devil turn so unhinged? A year ago, he’d been drowning in a breakup. Now he bounced around like a firecracker, determined to get even with the world.

“Screw it, you idiot. I can’t eat it, but I can make sure you don’t either!” Ouyang could touch the kid, even if not the food. He drifted in and slapped the boy’s wrist. The skewer tumbled, meat smearing the pavement like a greasy comet.

“You bastard!” the boy exploded, his shout cracking the air. Heads turned. No one could see Ouyang. To them, the boy had been eating, then suddenly snapped, cursing the empty air like a street lunatic.

He glanced left, glanced right, felt the eyes on him like thorns. He coughed, forced a blank face, and slipped away from the crowd.

“Ahahaha—killed me. Come on, kid, keep cursing! I’m right here. I won’t talk back. Give me your best. Teach me!” Ouyang laughed until his stomach hurt, one hand pressed to his belly, gloating at the boy’s retreat.

The boy wasn’t stupid. He knew people were still streaming by. He wouldn’t scream at Ouyang again and get branded a nut in broad daylight.

After a while, the boy bought a fresh skewer and ate in silence, shutting Ouyang out with the stony patience of a monk. Being ignored drained the fun. Their “war” sputtered out.

“Hey, Xiao Xuan. Why are you even skipping? We’ve been looping the garden square like lost ghosts...” Ouyang felt a knot of worry: if they kept circling, their last meeting might dissolve into a walk with no end.

It was ten-thirty now. One and a half hours left.

“Why? Uh... I’m bored. I don’t know what to do.” The boy’s voice fell like a tossed pebble, light and pointless.

Ouyang went speechless. So this was the plan: step outside first, figure out the rest later. Bare impulse, no destination. That was probably his whole mood.

They kept orbiting the garden square, and when their feet got heavy, they sat on the public benches at the center. They watched the river of passersby, the thousand faces of life unfurling like banners in the wind.

“Gross—those two are shameless. Doing that in public?” The boy spotted a kissing couple in a corner. His whole body trembled, and he looked one breath away from charging in and breaking them up.

“Dogs in love! Xiao Xuan, let’s burn them. Where’s the torch and gasoline? Flashing affection in front of the great FFF Brotherhood? They’re asking for it.” Ouyang did have a girlfriend, but even so, this stuff prickled him like nettles. All heresy should be burned at the stake. Ahem—he and Xi were legal. Every other couple was heresy.

It was just talk. Neither of them was about to beat up a couple for kissing.

Time slid to eleven-thirty...

“Xiao Xuan, do you... have any last wishes—no, I mean, any place you still want to go?”

“Hm?”

The boy caught two words like hooks in Ouyang’s sentence. He squinted. “A-Yang, what are we? You’re not going to drag me to the underworld, right?”

He’d pegged Ouyang as one of those black-and-white wardens from folk tales—guides who haul souls to the afterlife. He thought Ouyang was asking for last wishes, a final stroll before the bell.

Ouyang shook his head hard, the denial jerking through him like a cold wave. He’d spoken on impulse. He hadn’t meant that. The kid had twisted it wrong.

He stammered and stalled, unsure how to explain.

One walked, one floated. Together they reached the sea. Sunlight spilled like molten glass, the beach lay pale and wide, waves whispered and slapped the shore. The boy never meant to swim. He just found a spot and watched. Ouyang didn’t speak. He watched too—watched ordinary people blazing like sparks, watched families laughing with faces bright as lanterns, watched the surfers draw silver knives across the water.

It became a mood, a quiet cup filled with the thousand flavors of life. Laughter or rage, blessing or bile—everything existed for a reason simply because it existed.

“A-Yang, look—her legs go on forever. Wow, her skin’s so fair. Whoa, check that one—baby face, huge—yeah.”

Ouyang sat inside that calm, and the boy’s words yanked him down like a god falling from a cloud. One breath ago, the world was clear as a tribunal of truth. Three lines later, the brat’s commentary shattered it like a thrown bottle.

“You... I seriously overestimated you. I thought you’d just, I don’t know, grasp the meaning of life. Turns out you’re scouting beauties.” Ouyang felt like laughing and crying at once. Idiot. Give me back my moment.

They returned to school.

Noon.

The boy’s backpack still sat in the classroom. It was just after dismissal. He could grab it and go.

“A-Yang, you said this is our last meeting... after today, you won’t appear again?”

Ouyang didn’t answer. His voice went quiet inside him, like embers losing heat.

“Okay, new question. Where are you going after this?”

This time Ouyang had an answer.

“Where? Honestly, I’m lost. Will we meet again... yes. We will. Only—” He didn’t finish. The word only hung like a cut thread.

For no clear reason, the sky began to spill a rain of Yulan light. One glance up—and shock hit like thunder. It was breathtaking, a thousand blue petals drifting down on noon.

Yulan light fell like raindrops, cool and luminous.

“A-Yang, look. So beautiful... but how does something like this happen at noon?”

The boy tilted his head back, caught by wonder. Ouyang didn’t look up. His gaze locked instead on a truck not far away. The boy stood at the school gate, not yet inside.

A big truck barreled toward the road, fast enough to blur. Its route didn’t line up with the gate. It shouldn’t crash there. But the Yulan light washed down, and the driver slumped onto the wheel as if clubbed from behind. He went limp, consciousness cut like a wire.

“Xiao Xuan, move!”

With the driver gone, the truck skewed and lunged toward the gate.

No time. Ouyang shouted, but the boy was still staring at the sky, slow as a dream.

Wait—I can touch him. The thought flashed like a match. Ouyang surged in and yanked the boy back.

Too late by a sliver. In any other moment, this speed meant nothing to Ouyang. In this bound and narrow time, even his full strength lagged by a heartbeat.

Bang. Blood splashed like a broken flag, painting the road in red at the school’s mouth.

“No! How could this—!”

Ouyang’s voice shredded. It felt like fate baring its teeth. One breath. One inch. One heartbeat. He’d been that close to ripping the boy out. Did he come to this time just to watch this happen?

No. If the boy dies here, the years to come will warp. The river will bend where it shouldn’t.

He shouldn’t die like this. It doesn’t fit the history I know.

Cold settled over him, sudden and clean.

How do I save him? Last time, I could only watch while Red Rooster Crest beat him, helpless as a stone. What can I change now? I should be panicking. Why am I calm?

He combed through memory for anything that could bite into time. The Heaven Departing Divine Sword was required—but to cut time, he’d need power to match it. Then there’s only one path left: borrow the strength I left myself in the future.

In the Mist Illusion, he’d done exactly that—called on future strength, then used the Heaven Departing Divine Sword to cleave the mirage in two.

“You finally found the key.” A voice stirred in his mind. Litian—the sword’s spirit—spoke, bright as steel in a cold room. Ouyang had called the blade before and gotten nothing. This time, it answered first.

“You can interfere, save him,” Litian murmured, and the words rang like chimes in an empty hall. “But time will hit back. Its current will punish you.”

The Divine Sword steadied in his hand, and a hazy figure rose behind him—Bai, but older in aura, tempered like wine left to breathe.

Black lightning braided along the Cursed Wings, and dense runes turned around Ouyang like a wheel of stars.

“I think I finally understand. This strand of cause and effect...”

He lifted the Divine Sword high, and a bright smile broke open on his face, a smile like sunrise on snow.

“Kid, know this. Once you do it, you’ll forget it all. Time’s wash will scour you clean.”

Litian warned Ouyang, his voice low like wind through pines.

“If this piece of history isn’t set right, the river of what’s to come won’t flow. And it’s my debt to him, carved on my bones!”

Litian fell into a heavy silence, then spoke slowly. “Who owes whom… it’s a knot you can’t name. Maybe because of your act now, that man in the Sixth Epoch risked his life. He snatched your soul origin back from the Supreme Law—like stealing fire from heaven.”

Ouyang—once the Void Watcher—had already fallen in the Third Epoch, like a star gone dark. Even set in the seam of time to linger, like a leaf in a crack, his fate was sealed. The difference lay in his unfinished wishes, threads left hanging. The day he shed all attachments, his last obsession would dissolve like frost in sunlight. Because his soul origin was taken back from the Supreme Law, returned like a stolen ember, this present Ouyang could exist.

Two Ouyangs. The Void Watcher carried memories from the First to Third Epoch, stones stacked in a cairn. The current Ouyang, the Void Messenger, carried the Earth-era memories, city lights bottled in his chest.

In the Eighth Epoch, his soul origin was made whole, and Ouyang appeared in the “Origin” world. Bearing only the Earth-era memories, he thought himself a fresh arrival, a seed blown across seas from Earth.

“Or maybe, because that man did such a thing in the Sixth Epoch, you now repay this causality. In this time and space, who owes whom is a paradox, a serpent eating its tail.”

Litian’s voice sank like dusk; it told of his condition. Things were far from optimistic.

Yulan’s rain of light had stopped. No blood stained the ground, and the big truck was gone. As if nothing had ever happened, the street lay clean and blank.

“Ayang… you…”

Ouyang’s whole body shed a soft white glow, and he smiled, calm as moonlight on water.

“Xiao Xuan, when you travel to that other, strange world, step through its fog gently. Be kind to a man named Ouyang. He doesn’t have your iron spine. He doesn’t have your stone-steadfast step. He’s an orphan who flinches at a shout, a timid kid who only wants a friend, a sparrow seeking a branch. And there are things I want to say, but time’s too thin, and the Rules won’t let me. So I’ll seal them in your soul, like words pressed into jade. When you reach that world, that memory will wake like a spring under ice. Memory will tell you everything.”

Before his words finished echoing, the boy’s eyes went dark, lamps blown out in a wind. He crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut—no sign, no warning—just like that driver before.

A few days later, national headlines blared like sirens. Across the globe, a thorny wave of “vegetative” cases erupted. In a single day, over a thousand people toppled without reason, falling into vegetative states.