The giant stood quietly beneath the enormous archway. Now we knew that it was not a gate at all, but some kind of relay node. What the giant truly guarded was not an entrance, but a relay system capable of switching the Forgotten Garden back into the real world. Facing us, he inserted the scepter in his hand into a groove beside the archway and said calmly, "I will continue waiting for my master's return."
"And what if he never comes back?" Lin Xue could not help asking.
Theoretically, we were the "masters" he had been waiting for, but his words carried another meaning: the one he awaited was not an ordinary Shilin Apostle, but perhaps the emperor who had split the Fifteenth Celestial Zone apart back then, or perhaps the Old Empire that had already collapsed and disintegrated. Either way, it was something destined never to return. And even if we could be considered the people he had been waiting for, it would be meaningless. According to the giant, something had "severed" everything. He could not recognize the technological-side apostles of the Fifteenth Celestial Zone that had been split away back then. It could even be said that, apart from the things already present in this remote world, everything outside was unrecognizable and untrustworthy to him. This barrier was incomparably firm, and the giant himself showed no intention of removing it. Looking at the metal colossus standing silently in the distance, I suddenly felt that what he was waiting for would probably never come—this was a mission that would never end.
"Then I will keep waiting until everything turns to ash," the giant said, lowering his head. The light on his body gradually dimmed, as if he were about to enter dormancy again. "Such is my mission."
"Wait!" Just