Watching the elder step from history’s scroll and cross the long river of time, even Xi and Wuhen felt a tide of helplessness rise.

The most ancient creature under the stars wasn’t a casual title; the Other Shore’s sages had dredged it from the river of time. Now the Ancient Turtle proved that age and strength marched in lockstep.

Step by step, the trembling elder looked frail as dry reeds, ready to topple in a breeze. Yet he trod the time current, ignoring time, ignoring space.

“What do we do?” Xi asked Ouyang, bitterness first, voice second. This prehistoric might had blown past her expectations.

Back in the Eighth Epoch, the Other Shore’s think tank had guessed that even if the Turtle was strong, Jiling—armed with causality and our gathered power—could end him.

Now reality had broken the sketch. In the plan, Jiling’s strength should have solved it.

But nothing’s absolute. A plan is only a plan; the future rarely obeys. The moment Jiling fell, the plan lost all meaning.

From that instant, the future slipped from their hands like sand.

As Ouyang sought words, a streak of gold tore the starry vault. With it, countless phantom stars bloomed across the shattered sky.

Meteors skimmed down. Comets flared by. The chorus of stars rose in chant and cheer.

The newcomer, Ouyang would never forget. He’d thought the severed causal chain meant no more handoffs. Yet in this harsh hour, she appeared.

Glorious Moon looked at Ouyang. She meant to speak, but the words died. Only her star-lit eyes held everything they couldn’t say.

In mere seconds, the white-haired elder neared the bank of the time river, ready to step into this spacetime again. Glorious Moon didn’t need to ask; she knew. If he returned, it was over.

Ouyang, Xi, Wuhen, and the rest had loaned their power to Jiling. Their battle strength stood stripped, ninety-nine parts gone.

Only Glorious Moon and Bai still held power. Bai’s strength came through Ouyang, so she had no direct causality with Jiling. She’d offered a share earlier, but Jiling refused.

Of the two, Bai wasn’t suited for a fight. Her power was vast, her heart still a child’s. Glorious Moon told Bai to stay and tend the powerless, then stepped into the long river of time.

“Idiot, come back!” Panic hit Ouyang first, reason later. He knew her intent: block the Turtle in the past, keep him from the now. The price might be her fall.

Glorious Moon wasn’t Jiling. At Jiling’s height, death had no teeth; a fall was a long sleep, and sleep ends in waking. Glorious Moon hadn’t reached that undying peak. If she fell, she’d truly vanish.

Ouyang shouted, but Glorious Moon ignored him. She turned and gave him a look that said, Let me be selfish, just this once.

It happened too fast. Ouyang hadn’t planned for this. The severed causality had only faded Ouyang from her memory. If she dug, their past would return.

He never meant to hide forever. In his plan, by the time she sensed the wrongness, everything would be done.

Why so early? Ouyang blamed Ou Xinxue. She was a variable, from a parallel world, able to step past certain bindings.

After Ouyang left, he’d asked Xian to send Ou Xinxue to the Stellar Courtyard. Their meeting likely made Glorious Moon notice the crack.

Starlight flooded the world, veiling all, swallowing every trace.

“Damn it. To hell with the plan. Bai—”

At his call, Bai nodded, solemn. She hugged Ouyang from behind and seemed to melt into him, then turned to light and vanished into the white wing on his back.

Bai’s Wing drank life. It took a spring as its source. And Ouyang felt his long-lost strength return like rain after drought.

Xi saw Ouyang’s panic, shook her head, and said, helpless yet firm, “Ayang, go bring that foolish Star Spirit back. This is our Other Shore’s affair.”

“Mm.”

Ouyang nodded, turned, and dove into the starlit river of time.

Inside that glittering current, he found Glorious Moon already fallen. A newly risen, beyond-tier Star Spirit—still far from the Ancient Turtle’s depth.

Holding her, Ouyang hovered on the verge of lost reason.

It wasn’t her wounds. She’d only fainted. The Ancient Turtle had shown mercy.

What truly crushed him was the Turtle’s foot already on the bank. One more step, and he’d return to this spacetime. With no Administrator present, the Turtle would become the new one.

In other words, his return would crown him on the spot.

Ouyang smiled.

Because the downstream glowed with a clear phantom, bright as a sun in the long river. “I’ve waited so long for this. Lord Azathoth, forgive me.

“Call it cheating if you like, but your strength is undeniable. In a universe without an Administrator, you’d have won without question.”

The phantom grew real. Ouyang saw it—a world. He knew it well: the Sealed Land.

From the downstream of time, from the future, the Sealed Land’s shadow rose before his eyes.

Legend said the Sealed Land was ancient beyond counting, like the First Continent, born of two skies overlapped. At its heart stood the gate home—the Golden Constant Gate.

How vast was the Sealed Land? Ouyang didn’t know. Back then, he couldn’t glimpse its end. Now, with beyond-tier power, he might.

But the Sealed Land vanished in the war before the age of battle, when the Tiered Beings clashed. Its whereabouts went dark.

That war shattered the “Source” world and severed Panworld Alliance links for tens of thousands of years.

Now the Sealed Land’s phantom surfaced downstream. In that pitch-black earth, a blurry figure stood like the world’s lone soul.

“Yesterday’s cause, today’s effect...” The man spoke slowly. The first half rang clear; the rest blurred under law.

Ouyang, reading the grain, guessed the rest—why the man could cross the river.

He’d known someone would appear in the future, but not when, nor at what beat of their fight.

Now he understood. The message reached him, and the identity clicked.

He was the master of the Sealed Land, custodian of the multiversal dead. The Sealed Land had been knocked into an unknown time. By chance, the man arrived. With years, he became its master.

Why the custodian of the dead? Ouyang saw the land and understood.

Back then, his vision was narrow. He hadn’t known the soil’s nature, only that it was dead black earth. Now he knew—it was Nether Soil.

How vast was the Sealed Land?

At least, Ouyang wouldn’t call it smaller than the current Eternal Slumber. Such breadth, all of it Nether Soil, likely the gathered underworld of the last cosmic epoch.

Every inch held the law of death. Becoming its master made him the keeper of the dead’s return. That fit.

He had found relics left by the Other Shore within the Sealed Land. That causality let him act across the river.

Even an Administrator can’t meddle too much with history. But the moment he took the Other Shore’s relics, causality bound him.

No love or hate without cause; no pies from the sky. He took the Other Shore’s legacy. As his price, once he became Administrator, he had to repay through the long river of time.

Across endless years, a black beam pierced time. At the very edge of the bank, the Ancient Turtle fell.

He looked downstream, at the man who kept the dead of many worlds. His chest was punched through. Blood flowed like slow, dark rain.

He fell smiling upon the bank.

He did reach the shore, yet still too late. He was already dead.

“So this is an Administrator at full strength? To kill across the river with a single strike...” The Ancient Turtle’s face kept its ease.

He fell with a smile.