Ten years of separation by death, the sound of longing echoes again through the glass.
Dawn did not arrive as expected.
The energy turbulence created by the annihilation of the Demon Lord tore an unhealable, pitch-black scar across the sky, later known as the "Starfall Scar." It lies across the heavens, ceaselessly absorbing the light and spiritual energy of this world. Occasionally, purple dragons churn within it, emitting muffled wails, like an eternal lament played by heaven and earth for the departed lovers.
That earth-shattering battle has been over for a full ten years.
The Demon Realm, the former site of the Suspended Mirror Palace.
This place is no longer the pristine, snow-covered royal city of yesteryear. Directly beneath the crater of the fallen star, the earth cracks, and black demonic energy, like venomous snakes, seeps from the fissures, eroding the foundations of the remaining palaces. A bone-chilling cold permeates the air, a despair that even spiritual energy cannot completely dispel.
A solitary figure stood atop the tallest broken pillar, the cold wind whipping his long, silver-gray hair and brushing against his pale, almost translucent face. He was Yun Zhiyu, the youngest Snow Owl guard under Yun Zhixue's command, now the nominal leader of the remnants of the demon race. In his hand, he clutched a warm, yet no longer radiant, shard of glass—the only remaining, fingernail-sized fragment of the "Glass Heart" after its final sealing.
Ten years have passed, and he still cannot fully accept that the young master who had just led the demon race to revival and whom he was willing to follow to the death, and the spirit of the glass heart who brought countless miracles, had simply vanished into the world.
"Chief, the scouting team is back." A snow owl warrior landed with difficulty behind him, flapping his tattered wings, his voice hoarse. "'The Wasteland' has expanded another thirty miles outward, and we... we have lost three more outposts."
Yun Zhiyu didn't turn around, but simply gripped the shard of glass in her hand even tighter. The faint warmth emanating from her fingertips was the only solace in this desolate world.
"Understood. Have your people retreat another hundred miles and abandon Black Wind Canyon."
His voice was calm, yet carried an indescribable weariness. For ten years, they had retreated again and again. Though the Demon Lord was dead, the demonic energy and distorted laws it released at the time of its death spread like a plague, giving rise to all sorts of bizarre wastelands and ominous monsters. The human race had also suffered heavy losses; major sects closed their gates to protect themselves, and the once fragile alliance had long since become a mere shell of its former self.
This world is slowly heading towards death.
Just then, the shard of glass in his hand trembled slightly without warning.
Yun Zhiyu froze, almost thinking it was his imagination. He suddenly looked down, staring intently at the piece of glass.
Buzz—
Another flash! Clearer than before! At the same time, a barely perceptible streak of light swept across the surface of the fragment, so fast it was like an illusion.
It's not an illusion!
Yun Zhiyu's heart pounded, and an almost absurd thought exploded in his mind. He immediately looked up at the menacing "Starfall Scar" in the sky. Was it because of it? Was it because the existence of this scar had broken some kind of balance? Or...?
"Pass down the order!" Yun Zhiyu's voice trembled slightly with excitement. "Summon all available 'Wind Listeners' and monitor the energy fluctuations of the Starfall Scar with all their might, especially any aura related to... or the Glass Heart!"
He lowered his head and gently stroked the cool glass with his fingertips, a glimmer of light rekindling in his eyes that hadn't been there in ten years.
"Young Master... Miss Mo... is that you?"
Meanwhile, in the human realm, at the forbidden area of the Heavenly Mystery Pavilion, the "Star Gazing Platform".
An elderly man with white hair suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood, staining the celestial globe floating in front of him crimson. The silver sand representing the stars on the celestial globe surged wildly, eventually pointing towards the northern demon realm, where it condensed without dissipating, yet a strange void appeared at its center.
"Master!" The disciple who was waiting by the side hurriedly stepped forward to help him up.
The old man was none other than Xuan Chengzi, the current head of the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion. He pushed his disciple aside, staring intently at the void, his turbid eyes filled with disbelief and horror.
“Impossible…this is absolutely impossible…” he muttered to himself, “The star orbit is broken, the destiny is over, why…why is there a sign of rekindling at the position of the ‘Dead Star’? And…there are two of them!”
His trembling finger pointed to the blank space: "Not in the past, not in the present, and not in the future... They exist in the 'gaps' of the rules... Yes, it's that 'mark'! It's the mark of a fallen star that distorted the continuity of spacetime!"
Xuan Chengzi suddenly grabbed his disciple's arm with astonishing force: "Quick! Investigate! Has the whereabouts of the fragment of the 'Myriad Manifestations of the Netherworld Map' that Bei Mingjun took with him when he defected fifty years ago? It contains the forbidden technique of 'Soul Return to Nothingness'! Perhaps... perhaps there is a glimmer of hope..."
The disciple was frightened by his seemingly deranged appearance, quickly agreed, and withdrew.
Xuan Chengzi stared alone at the visible black scar in the northern sky, his face a mixture of fear and a morbid fanaticism.
"Xie Yunzhi... Mo Xiaoyu... did you defy fate and return, or... did you trigger something even more terrifying?"
The rules of the world are becoming chaotic.
In the depths of the rainforest in southern Xinjiang, where spring should last all year round, a strange "Fountain of Youth" has appeared. Any living thing that approaches it will rapidly reverse its growth, regressing from adulthood to infancy in just a few breaths, and eventually turning into nothingness.
In the northern borderlands, on the edge of the "Wasteland of Time," a place where time seems to flow at an accelerated pace, a disheveled old man in a tattered Taoist robe, with a gourd of wine hanging from his waist, squatted on the ground, carefully drawing intricate rune arrays on the ground with cinnabar. He was Su Xiaolou, one of the survivors of the great war fifty years ago, and the only remaining person in the world with the complete bloodline of the "Dream Weaver."
His expression was unusually solemn, a stark contrast to his usual carefree attitude.
“Something’s not right…something’s very wrong…” he murmured, finishing the last rune. The rune array glowed faintly, not pointing into the Desolate Realm, but vertically upwards, pointing towards the streak of falling stars in the sky.
"The source of the turbulent flow of time is not these perilous places, but... that opening in the sky itself?" Su Xiaolou took a swig of wine, the spicy liquid unable to suppress the chill in his heart. "Is someone stealing time from this world through that opening? Or is... that opening itself a 'door'?"
He recalled the radiance of Mo Xiaoyu's final transformation into a glass heart, and Xie Yunzhi's resolute, burning bloodline. Did their sacrifice truly seal away the Demon Lord, or... inadvertently open a path to an even more terrifying being?
Just then, an old copper coin in his arms suddenly emitted a scorching heat. This coin had once resonated faintly with Mo Xiaoyu's glass heart; it was a little trinket she had given him years ago to save his life.
Su Xiaolou suddenly pulled out a copper coin, which vibrated slightly, and a faint light similar to the glass shard in Yun Zhiyu's hand appeared on its surface.
He froze, then, as if realizing something, his face turned deathly pale.
“Little Fish… Brother Yunzhi… could it be that your souls haven’t completely dissipated, but are… trapped in that ‘mark’?”
The thought sent a chill down his spine. If that were true, then the so-called Starfall Scar would not be merely a wound, but an eternal prison stretching across the sky, imprisoning the soul of the savior hero!
At this moment, the cage seems to be loosening for some unknown reason.
Deep within the scar of the fallen star.
This place is not pure darkness, but rather filled with shattered light and shadow, distorted fragments of spacetime, and turbulent energy currents that annihilate everything. This is a ruin of rules, a forbidden zone for life.
Amidst countless fragments of light and shadow, two tiny specks of dust nestled together, bobbing and swaying in the raging torrent.
A speck of dust, vaguely revealing the outline of a snowy owl, exudes a faint chill and a trace of indomitable sword intent.
The other one, like a point of bright light from crystal, though dim, stubbornly shone, radiating a warm life force.
They have no consciousness, only the most primal sense of existence. Like travelers seeking warmth in the dead of winter, they cling tightly to each other in eternal annihilation, bound by the deepest "symbiotic spiritual pact" of their souls and an unwavering bond until death.
I don't know how much time passed; it might have been a moment, or it might have been ten thousand years.
A tiny prayer and call from the world below, mingled with the resonance of shards of glass, like a pebble thrown into stagnant water, pierced through layers of chaotic barriers, creating insignificant ripples.
That glittering light flickered very slightly.
It was as if a consciousness that had been dormant for countless years was quietly stirred by this thread of connection from its homeland.
Simultaneously, the snowy owl-shaped dust particle also emitted a ring of almost imperceptible fluctuations.
At the heart of this absolute stillness and destruction, a tiny, almost nonexistent variable of "life" was quietly introduced.
The Starfall Scar continues to slowly devour this world.
But in this eternal darkness, the two intertwined star fragments seemed to... stir.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
