“That shard of the Philosopher’s Stone tore this world apart the moment it crossed the veil, like a meteor punching the sea into steam. But by a string of accidents, the isolated world’s law of time warped. The world hit reset, like a clock rewound by a ghost. That reset became the story Mo Rain and the other two lived through.

The truth? They were already dead, and the world had been ground to particles, like sand blown off a shattered statue.”

On a field of ruins, with wind hissing through broken beams like reeds, Ouyang sighed and laid it out for White Cat and the rest.

This world exists only because the Stone’s power props it up, like a lantern held against night. When that power runs dry, or the feed from the Stone into this dead time-stream is cut, the world will snap back to its first state. Countless parallel worlds will collapse to primal dust, like bubbles bursting on a black sea.

By taking the Philosopher’s Stone out, Ouyang shattered the balance between the Stone and the world, like pulling the keystone from an arch.

“Boss, really no workaround? Nothing else can stand in for the Stone? Or we just shove it back in?” White Cat sounded naive, like a kitten batting at thunder, still soft from Yulithilis’s fine food and warm beds these days.

Saya answered for Ouyang, her voice as cool as moonlight on steel.

“The key is this—this world was already destroyed. That fact is iron. Even if the Stone gave power without end, this world would only loop, like a broken record. Parallel worlds would keep repeating a wrong logic, like a river returning to a false source.”

Saya’s words were deep water. Ouyang’s were a clean blade. “I was careless. I pulled the Stone without checks, and that wrecked the isolated space that threw off these parallel worlds. I won’t deny it. I’ll carry that blame, since I’m the most direct cause. As for saving it… impossible. It’s frost on morning grass.

Across the history of the Other Shore, the Stone’s shattering happened twice. The last was the end of the Eighth Epoch, when the Philosopher’s Stone was used as the crucial matter to blast open the Gate to another starry sky, like ramming a sun into a door. If it can batter open that Gate, White Cat, you get how vital it is, right? Finding a substitute? That’s chasing mist.”

“As for putting the Stone back?” His voice was heavy as rain. “Back then, only a snarl of accidents let the Stone and the world balance at all. To recreate that on purpose, first you’d have to solve the force that smashed everything in the first place. Saying the Stone destroyed this isolated world isn’t accurate. The real destroyer was a power at the utter summit of the starry void, like lightning at the crown of heaven.”

He exhaled, breath white as ash. It hadn’t been some bigwig aiming a spear at this world. “Think simple,” he said. “A person throws a rock at an iron gate. The rock hits, shatters, and fragments ricochet. One shard, on the rebound, punches through a beehive. In the end, the beehive wasn’t ruined by the rock or the shard. The culprit was the person.”

“From my probes and the data braided into the Stone’s shard,” Saya went on, voice fine as a needle, “it broke at the end of the Sixth Epoch.”

Hearing that, White Cat’s ears twitched like leaves in breeze. He’d grown up on the Other Shore; even if his childhood was spent with a pack of so-called lowlifes, few of them were simple. His horizon stretched farther than Dufei’s. Dufei thought nothing. White Cat already caught scent of the trail.

“The Sixth Epoch… that’s the Eternal Epoch. The age when the Eternal Empire ruled the myriad realms, like a crown over a storm.”

As for the very end of the Sixth…

White Cat sifted for what happened then. First thought: the fall of Eternity. Unknown events uncoiled, and the vast star-borne nation—the Eternal Empire—just vanished, like a continent swallowed by fog.

“In the Sixth Epoch,” Ouyang said, voice low like drumbeats, “the one who claimed to be one with Eternity didn’t vanish because he arrogantly challenged the Supreme Law and got erased. No. To break the Barrier, they tried to prove this—could they return to that starry sky without passing through the Gate? This isolated world was a victim of that attempt, a bystander hit by a stray thunderbolt.

After the collision with the Barrier, shards of the Stone splashed across star-space, carrying imprints of the Supreme Law and the third Tier’s Eternal power, like molten stars flung from a forge. You know how fragile isolated worlds are. You could shatter one with your own hands. Let alone power of the third Tier mixed with the Supreme Law.”

Like a stage tragedy with no audience, this world cut off from the stars died in place. No one targeted it. The world didn’t court death by gawking. It was like sitting home gaming, TV humming like a beehive, when an earthquake hits out of nowhere—and everything ends.

“To make the Stone balance with this world again? Not even that figure of the Sixth could do it. Because when this space died, it wasn’t just his Eternal power in the mix. What happened then wasn’t something one being could bear. That’s why, after the fall of the Sixth, through the whole Seventh Epoch, the third Tier faded from sight like whales diving deep—the attempt left them all wounded.”

Ouyang’s analysis fell like steady rain. White Cat suddenly saw clear, like mist blown off a lake. Dufei wore the face of a student just schooled. Devila and the Hell Lord Christo knew little of the Other Shore, so they could only put on that look—don’t get it, but feels towering.

Especially Christo. She stood a step from becoming a Tiered Being; she knew what the Supreme Law meant, like a mountain knows gravity. The lot on the Other Shore dared to buck the Supreme Law?

He sighed again, a wind through bare branches. He knew he’d broken the balance. Even without him, the shard’s power couldn’t keep this world going more than a handful of years, like oil guttering in a lamp. But since he did it, he wouldn’t dodge. He could declare to every living thing here, in broad daylight: I intend to end you.

He’d told Sarayka that sunset might be the last, like a candle at dusk. He’d thought the world wouldn’t outlast the night. His math was off. Without the Stone, the world could still run a few years, like a wounded clock that refuses to stop.

“Since that’s the case… they were going to die anyway. Wasn’t your move pointless?” Devila asked, voice cool as ice over a river.

Ouyang’s face went grave, like stone under rain. “I couldn’t give those three juniors a warm welcome. As traversers, to die like that—pettily, not even knowing how? As their senior, the only honor I can give is a grand funeral. Let this world… be their procession.”

Mo Rain and her two companions were already dead in the space tunnel, like sparks snuffed in wind. They never stepped out into the world of Aurela; they died to an unknown area-of-effect blast.

This world of branching parallels, full of people living their days like fish in a painted river, is only a residual image. On one hand, a miracle born from tangled forces. On the other, if this isolated world connects to the outer starry sky, the Supreme Law will correct the “error,” like a scribe scraping off a blot.

Only under such a tangle of conditions could parallel worlds bud like foam. They are all bubbles. Ouyang gave up probing how they arose, because the conditions can’t be copied, like lightning in a sealed jar.

—

“That’s the shape of it,” Mo Rain said, voice thin as frost. “We… everything… already died. I lived through countless parallel runs. I sank into despair. I let that cursed fate drop from my shoulders, and I turned to that starry sky like a moth to a lantern.

But that sky was false. The true sun and true moon had long been destroyed, like candles pinched by fingers unseen.”

The watch in Mo Rain’s hand was forged from the power of every living being in the first world, plus the shard’s force, a divine tool born from a world’s last breath. So it could sense the shard, like a tuning fork humming to its note. When Ouyang drew out the fragment of the Philosopher’s Stone, Mo Rain received echoes. Through the watch, linked to that shard, she learned part of the why, like a tide revealing stones.

As for where the shard came from, the story behind that lay beyond her horizon, like mountains behind rain.

“We’re dead already. Sooner or later, we’ll disperse back into heaven and earth, like smoke through pines. Rather than die again for nothing, I’d rather draw my blade and fall in a blaze. To die fighting the ‘Demon King who destroys worlds.’ At least our deaths will have weight. We’ll die to protect this world.”

She didn’t expect those ancient beings to believe. She herself hadn’t wanted to believe when she first heard it, like a child refusing winter.

Later, she accepted it. Dead is dead. At least she no longer carried the curse of fate. At least she no longer thrashed in that endless loop, like a moth in a jar. Later still… she understood the black cat senior’s intent.

This was a funeral.

A grand funeral, two whole epochs late, like a bell tolling after the storm.

So her fighting spirit caught fire. Before she faded, she chose a death that thundered, like drums under a red sky.

“Truly… a willful senior,” she murmured, a smile like a tear. “Not everyone chooses this end. Many would pick a painless passing, to slip away without a ripple.”

Under night, Mo Rain stood alone and watched the false sky, a silk screen pricked with cold stars. She touched her own hand. It was warm, like sun on a sleeve. Her pulse beat. However she looked, she was alive.

“Jin, am I really dead?”

Jin was the watch’s name. By chance, it had grown a self, like a spark catching tinder.

“Confirmed,” the watch said, voice wooden and halting, like a puppet’s. “The world was destroyed long ago. We are residual information products. In two to three years, all will collapse.”

Silence pooled, dark as a well.

Suddenly she heard shouts far off, a noisy swell like birds rising. Catching the words, she heard them speak of “the sky.”

The sky?

She lifted her head.

“A meteor shower…”

How could a false sky rain meteors, like silver spears?

The shower was beautiful, like needles of light sewing night. Huge comets dragged long rainbow tails across the dark, painting it with fire.

“Jin… those meteors are man-made, right?”

“Yes.”

She giggled, eyes wet and bright, like dew on bamboo. “Heh… I’m touched.

Hey… you stupid senior. You don’t know how to comfort people, but you’re making warmth in your own way, like a brazier in snow. Someone like you… you’ll spend your life being called a ‘nice guy.’”

Her shoulder-length black hair flowed on the night wind, like ink in water.

Eyes closed, Mo Rain’s mind, as if by a quiet miracle, filled with scenes of home. In the endless journey through parallel worlds they’d been forgotten, like names rubbed off wood. But tonight, under the meteors stitching the sky, as she stilled herself, those memories rose piece by piece, like stars surfacing after cloud.

“Senior, I’ll give it everything,” she whispered, voice soft as falling ash. “I’ll leave the deepest mark in your heart, a trace that says I was here.”