7036, Mount Everest.
This is the last peak on Earth not yet swallowed by the sea. Once the roof of the world, it now stands as an isolated island. From the summit, below the sea of clouds lies eternal silence—blue waters have submerged everything: cities, forests, plains, and the civilization humanity once prized. All have sunk 30,000 feet into the abyss. Jinghai, Niuyue, Dongjing, Lundun—once thriving metropolises—are now nothing but underwater ruins, silently eroded by dark currents.
Qingmingzi stood atop the sheer cliff, his white hair hanging motionless in the thin atmosphere, untouched by the wind.
He looked up.
Above the sky, the stars are shifting their positions.
"Here we go again," he said softly, his tone calm as if stating a mundane fact.
Behind him, a figure emerged from the void. Xing Yuanche, draped in night itself, his elfin ears twitching slightly, his blue hair shimmering under the moonlight—he was listening to the stars' whispers, detecting disturbances deep within the cosmos.
"Master," Xing Yuanche's voice was soft, as if afraid to disturb the silence atop the peak. "It has been five hundred years. You have always been here watching."
Qingmingzi didn't turn around, his gaze still fixed on the shifting star trails. "I'm waiting for someone."
Who?
"A person who should have died three thousand years ago."
Xing Yuanche fell silent for a moment. He knew his master wasn't joking. On this planet, Qingmingzi was the last "Primordial"—the one who had survived every apocalypse. His age far exceeded human comprehension, like the snow and ice atop this peak, witnessing countless transformations of the world.
"The celestial signs have changed," Xing Yuanche said. "Nine stars in a line, Ziwei dimmed. This is—
"The prologue to the apocalypse." Qingmingzi finally turned around. On his face, which looked far too young, were eyes as aged as stars that had burned for billions of years. "But this time, it's not the end. It's the beginning."
He extended his hand, palm up.
In an instant, daylight turned to eternal night.
Billions of stars ignited simultaneously, brighter than any night before. The moonlight was never so brilliant, as if three thousand years' worth of lunar glow had been condensed into an instant and poured down, covering the entire peak.
"The moonlit sky is full of stars," Xing Yuanche murmured, his eyes filled with awe.
This is Qingmingzi's technique—in scientists' terms, "gravitational wave refraction and stellar spectral recombination." But to the Star-Scarred, it's an ancient power flowing through their veins, older than technology itself: a gift that resonates with heaven and earth.
"Summon everyone," Qingmingzi said. "At Mingxue Ridge, in seven days. Tell them we are about to begin telling a story."
What story?
"Our story of how we lost everything, and found ourselves again." Qingmingzi's gaze pierced through the sea clouds, through the ocean, through three thousand years of time. "About that girl, that boy, and the love between them that was never spoken."
Xing Yuanche's heart skipped a beat.
He knew who his master was referring to.
Qianlan. Xuanlin.
Those two names in Mingxue Lu are forbidden topics no one dares to touch lightly.
"Go," Qingmingzi waved his hand. "Tell them: on the eve of the end, we must remember who we are."
Xing Yuanche's figure dissolved into a streak of light and vanished into the void.
Qingmingzi stood alone atop the peak, gazing northward—where once lay the direction of Mingxue Lu. Now, only a vast ocean stretches there, with waves whispering in the wind, as if recounting a submerged past.
He raised his hand and touched his forehead.
Nothing is there.
But he remembered that long, long ago, someone had also marked his brow with a dot of cinnabar.
That's another story—a tale of waiting and promises.