Seconds passed. A minute, or perhaps an eternity, in Zhang Yuzhou's soul. He looked at his master's body, laid out before him, as if his features were still alive, warm, as if his chest would rise at any moment. He did not cry. But something heavy, like an unseen mountain, sat upon his chest. He thought this weight was temporary, that it would disappear. But he did not know that that moment did not just kill the Ruler of Time. It killed the child, the disciple, the son, and everyone who once thought he deserved to be human.
The sky was lightly raining, droplets tapping on the intertwined branches, while the fog slowly crept through the trees, as if searching for something lost long ago. Light winds released a mournful moan, seeping through the crevices between the forest trunks. At the edge of the cliff, where no one went, stood a solitary hut; a small hut, its walls of crumbling wood seeming to cry for rest, its roof silently leaking rain, drops falling from its edges onto the muddy ground, one after another, in a rhythm like the beat of a sick heart.
Inside, there was no fire, no warmth, no sound but a faint, almost inaudible breath. On a damp straw mat, lay the slender body of a teenager: Lin Rui. The son of the forgotten clan's leader. For days, it had been rumored he was dead. He wasn't buried only because his death wasn't officially declared, but no one expected him to survive. His face was pale, his lips dry and cracked, and blue veins stretched across his neck like inscriptions of a deadly poison that hadn't finished its task yet. The room was immersed in grey gloom, and the air within was cold, as if time itself had abandoned this place.
Then… his left eyelid twitched, and a finger in his right hand contracted. His chest rose, then fell. His eyes—which hadn't opened for days—began to tremble as if something inside him was no longer dormant. A silent moment… but it was the beginning; not just the beginning of Lin Rui's life, but the beginning of something else entirely.
In another place… no earth, no sky, no time. Just a pure, silent void, stretching endlessly, as if time itself had stopped breathing. In the middle of this void, hung a fractured human shadow, composed of dark threads of light twisting around it as if trying to mend its wounds. It was Xuan Lin. He had no body, no voice, no pulse. Only a shattered soul, carrying on its back betrayal… and a fall… and an unforgiven silence. All that surrounded him were merely lost reflections of what once was: the echo of six seals holding him captive, the gazes of a disciple who dared not lift his head, and a final whisper echoing in a space that could not hear.
"May my will be reborn… where no one expects."
His inner voice returned… calm, yet bearing a hidden blade of pain. Xuan thought: "Five years… I haven't let a single moment pass without reckoning. Five years… and I've been searching for a small opening in the wall of this crumbling world." Before him, an image formed… a weak, adolescent body, lying on a straw mat, in an abandoned hut. Lin Rui. The only son of a forgotten clan. The body that was discarded, forgotten, and not buried. Xuan murmured inwardly: "This body… is fragile. It's not enough for a tenth of what I possess… but it's the only body that hasn't been sealed. The sects didn't watch it, no one expected it… and it wasn't accounted for." The dark light around Xuan's soul began to move… his eyes suddenly sparkled, like two glowing cinders, flickering with an indescribable color, as if reading the pathways of destiny. In an instant… the souls touched. A faint sound, like rain hitting glass, resonated in the void.
Then— the two wills merged. A new birth… not yet complete. But it had begun.
…And the image returned. The old hut trembled under the moan of the rain, and water droplets seeped from the wooden roof, hitting the ground with a soft, intermittent sound. But in the heart of that stillness— the boy's body stirred. Slowly… his chest suddenly constricted as if he had swallowed life, then slowly expanded, convulsively, as if his lungs remembered how to breathe again. The trembling eyelid opened… a dim eye quivered… searching. A lost gaze, like a child emerging from a long dream… then intense focus, then a tremor of fear.
"This…"
The boy spoke with an inner voice pulsating with silent astonishment:
"A weak human body?"
His weak fingers moved, as if they couldn't believe themselves. He slowly raised his hand, his frail hand… stained with the pallor of death, watching it as if it wasn't his own.
"I… I'm breathing?"
A long moment of silence passed, then a gleam appeared in his eyes; not just a gleam of life, but a gleam of an ancient mind. Memory. Pride. Return. He spoke it soundlessly, but its echo pierced the walls:
"I have returned. It seems my skill succeeded."
Outside… the fog still crept through the trees, and the sky sprinkled light rain as if silently weeping. Yang Mei sat near a small fire, holding an earthenware pot where herbal water boiled, her hands trembling slightly… from the cold, or from the despair whose remedy was long overdue. But before she could reach out to pour the drink, a small village boy ran to her, panting, his face flushed, his clothes wet, his eyes filled with terror and astonishment:
"Priestess! The boy… Lin Rui!"
Then he added, in an excited voice:
"He opened his eyes! He sat up! I swear he sat up by himself!"
Her hand froze in the air, and the medicinal herbs spilled onto the dirt unnoticed. She looked at the boy… then at the hut door, and whispered, as if doubting the entire world:
"No… this isn't possible… I monitored his pulse every dawn… his soul was fractured…! His warmth faded days ago!"
Nevertheless… she ran. She ran as if her heart outpaced her feet, pushed open the hut door forcefully… and was shocked. There, on the mat where a dead body had lain for days… Lin Rui sat. His body was still frail… but his head was raised, and his eyes—they were not his own. The eyes of a man… the eyes of a long time.
Yang Mei advanced with cautious steps, examining his features, searching for an explanation. She murmured, in a faint voice, as if the name had become strange:
"Lin… Rui?"
He did not answer. But he smiled; a small, tired smile, as if it had emerged from a century past.
"What fools they are…"
He said it in a voice barely audible, but its impact on her heart was like a thunderbolt:
"They thought death… could stop time."