Humans live on imagination, like fireflies feeding on starlight.

The way wishes fail becomes a hidden engine, like a millwheel pushed by stubborn rain.

Lina, the Deity of the Hero King World, isn’t human, like a star that never learned the tides, so she can’t grasp this truth, and she can’t tell what Ye Weibai is testing.

He was testing who the protagonist of this World is, like a director peering through fogged glass.

By rights, that lead should be Ye Xiaobai, because most of the countless shards show him, like mirrors echoing one face.

Ye Weibai didn’t know what this place was called, like a traveler waking on a blank map, but the moment he opened his eyes, he was here.

A heartbeat earlier, he was sprinting through a pitch-black Void Tunnel, like an arrow in a cave, trying to rush back to the World where Little Ash and Xiaowei were before he died.

Using the Demon King’s leftover power, he computed fast that he wouldn’t make it, like ice thinning at sunrise.

In the Hero King World, to gain invincibility in that instant, he shifted all harm onto his future self, like a debt thrown downriver, so he could blunt the Deity—Lina’s—devastating blow.

But debts get collected; once he left the Hero King World and stopped playing the Demon King, that terrifying power bled away, like tide leaving a reef, and the reaper came on the wind.

In the breath when death brushed his skin, his heart felt an unearned peace, like a traveler finding shade, and a loosening like meeting an old friend.

He was so tired, like a lantern guttering in rain.

Misfortune and death across many Worlds piled up, like silt in a riverbed, and he kept pressing them down, twisting and fermenting them, until at his weakest, they burst like a dam.

A thought rose from an abyss buried eighty thousand miles deep, like a bubble surfacing in black water.

“Ah, I’m so tired. Maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad,” he thought, like a leaf letting go in autumn.

But as that thought and that surrender appeared, the world froze, like frost glazing a clock face.

Gray particles spread from his fingertips, like snakes and like vines, swaying softly as they climbed his arm, then pressed to his cheek to rub, like a cat.

Ye Weibai, already at death’s door, didn’t feel it, but Lina—sealed in the black-sheathed longsword—felt her skin crawl, like ice in her marrow, the instant she sensed it.

What drifted there was a substance more twisted and evil than any Demon King, any Hero King, the Cycle, the mood, other people’s gaze, jealousy, fickleness, hatred—more than even herself, like a shadow darker than midnight.

Strangest of all, she truly felt from that pure evil a tenderness toward Ye Weibai, like lovers reunited after years, and like a daughter coming home to her father with sugar-sweet cling.

The instant she noticed, she felt those gray motes glance at her, cool and indifferent, like an owl’s eye, and a vast unknown fear cloaked her, so she blacked out like a snuffed candle.

When her mind returned, she and Ye Weibai were already here, like castaways on a white shore; everything between was gone from her memory, including how they arrived in this World and the matter of the gray substance.

Only a deep-soul fear remained, like a thorn under skin, so she bristled with hatred at Ye Weibai yet held back with trembling hands.

Thus neither Ye Weibai nor Lina knew how they came to this World, like sleepers waking mid-journey.

It didn’t stop him from grasping, at once, that his prayer had come true, like an echo answered.

He clearly remembered that as consciousness broke, he said:

“Help me live. Live until I reach the Deity who can reverse the causality of death,” he pleaded, like a diver reaching for light.

That wish seemed granted, because the wounds crawling over him stopped spreading, like cracks arrested in ice, and even the Demon King’s power faded more slowly, like embers banked under ash.

He was still a mess, like a torn sail, but at least he was alive, like a coal still warm.

As long as he breathed, there would be a way, like paths after rain.

In this white World, multicolored shards floated in the void, like petals on still water, each shard filled with countless scenes.

He soon realized he stood at a World’s monitoring deck, like a lighthouse at the edge of fog, so he studied the stories playing in the shards.

He saw his high school self and flinched a little, like touching an old scar; a flash of complexity crossed his eyes that Lina caught, but he covered it quickly, like snow over footprints.

He sighed. “If some Deity heard my plea and built this world for me, at least leave some clues,” he said, like a man calling into a cave.

“What clues?” she asked, like a sparrow peering from a branch.

“Clues for the next step,” Ye Weibai said while scraping the dried blood from his skin, like peeling rust.

“If we just keep things like this, we survive, don’t we?” she said, like someone hugging a fire.

“What are you even saying? I won’t last,” Ye Weibai said, glancing at the black-sheathed longsword standing beside him, like a shadow at his shoulder.

“Slow or not, the Demon King’s power in me is still ebbing, like tide from a bay, and I’m badly hurt, barely kept alive by it.

At this rate, I’ll die sooner or later,” he said, like stating weather.

He spoke of his own death as if it were someone else’s, like pointing at clouds, and that airy indifference, with a faintly mocking undertone, made Lina choke with anger, like steam under a lid.

“Then hurry up and die! So long as I live, that’s enough,” she cursed, like throwing stones.

Ye Weibai laughed. “If this is some Deity’s handiwork, how do you know my death won’t collapse the world, like pulling a keystone?

Think about those Void Distorters; you don’t want to face them again,” he said, like a knife tapping glass.

“Ugh,” Lina shuddered, like a leaf in wind.

“And more importantly—” Ye Weibai’s mouth curved, like a fox’s. “You’ll get lonely, won’t you?

If I’m gone, it’ll just be you in this empty world, watching these silent TVs all day, like a lighthouse with no ships.

You can’t do without me, Lina.”

“I said—I’m not Lina! I’m a Deity!” she snapped, like thunder on a clear day. “Go die—now, immediately, this instant!”

“Alright, alright. There you go again,” he said, smiling as he shook his head, like dust off a sleeve.

“Does a local Deity still count as a Deity?

Isn’t Lina a nice name?

I borrowed a character from my eldest disciple—Aerin,” Ye Weibai said with a helpless fondness, like a brother soothing a stubborn cat.

“Instead of bickering, help me examine this World and these shards.

I don’t know how long I can hold on.”

Reluctant as she was, life and death were on the line, so Lina swallowed her anger, like bitter tea.

They studied each shard carefully and reached a few conclusions, like cartographers tracing coasts.

“As shards go, they’re razor-sharp beyond belief,” Ye Weibai said, looking at the fresh cut on his palm, like a red thread, while Demon King’s power slowly knit it closed, like moss over stone.

“What’s strange about that?

If they’re fragments of a World, the fact that touching them didn’t blast you into mince is luck,” Lina said with malice, like a cat waiting for a yelp.

She rather wanted to hear Ye Weibai scream, like wind through eaves.

“Even so, this proves something.

This World might not be tailor-made for me, or this Deity doesn’t just want me alive, like a fisherman throwing back a small catch.

Otherwise why set up obstacles that barely matter?”

He chuckled. “For all I know, that Deity’s watching my every move right now, like an eye behind the glass.”

“Putting that aside, the scenes in these shards are interesting.

If the names in the books are right—Ye Xiaobai, Mu Xiaowei—their story is here, like threads in a loom.

Why is there no university arc?” he asked, like a reader hunting pages.

“Why only high school, and then the year they meet again after years of work, like two trains crossing?”

“And then that poison-laced ending,” he said, like tasting metal.

“The info’s blurry, but we know this,” Ye Weibai said, looking at the mirrors, like a judge at a gallery.

“This one is the only Worldline still running; the rest are abandoned Worldlines.”

Lina gaped. “How do you know?”

Ye Weibai gave her a look like she was dense, like tapping a sign. “It’s written right there—Current Worldline.”

As he said, pale green letters in the upper-left of that shard read Current Worldline, like moss on stone.

“Oh. It vanished.

Was this Worldline abandoned?

Why?

This setup feels so game-like,” she said, like a player spotting UI.

Inside the glass, the world kept playing forward, like film through a projector.

Ye Xiaobai was chatting and laughing with Mu Xiaowei; though soundless, Ye Weibai couldn’t read lips, but the air carried a hint of budding romance, like spring sap.

Everything was heading the right way, like a wind filling sails—yet it was abandoned, like a ship cut loose.

The line of words in the corner disappeared, likely popping up on another shard, like a will-o’-the-wisp.

“Wei… Xiaowei…” Ye Weibai murmured, staring at the sunny short-haired girl in the frame, like sunlight on ripples.

Why was the name Wei? he wondered, like a knot in wood.

His gaze slid away, and in another shard a long-legged beauty was hugging her younger brother despite his protests, laughing loud, like bells.

“Ye Xiaokong… why that name?” Ye Weibai felt a strange familiarity, like a scent on the wind.

“A sister?

If this World is shaped by my memories, I had no such sister in the real world,” he said, like checking a ledger.

He spoke up suddenly. “Lina, do you know who’s the strangest among these characters?” he asked, like pointing at a star.

“Zhaomingming?” she said, like tossing a stone.

“No, not her.

She goes off-screen and comes back, but we’re not watching continuously, so montage can’t prove she’s odd, like cuts in a trailer.

The key is her motive fits—she quietly nudges the plot forward, like a hidden current,” he said, like tracing drift.

“Then who?”

“It should be—” he began, but Lina cut him off, like a door slammed.

“Demon King—look at that one, third shard right-rear,” she said, like a hawk sighting prey.

Ye Weibai turned, and his pupils tightened, like pinpricks.

He saw one Zhaomingming shove another Zhaomingming off a rooftop, like a shadow pushing a mirror.

…

…